How do I locate a particular taxon swap/merge to see its origin or history?
I’m dealing with the mess resulting from the merging of the lichen moth genus Illice in its entirety with Cisthene. That merge was unsupported for all New World taxa and I’m trying to sort through the resulting muddle. When I search all of iNaturalist for “Illice”, I get no results at all.
you can look at the taxon changes for Cisthene, and you’ll find the swap: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes?taxon_id=143997.
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I was afraid of that. The swap was done in March 2022 by an iNatter from Thailand with no apparent expertise in the taxa. The swap was created and committed on the same day. The only reference cited is a 120-year-old publication on species in the collection of the British Museum.
This swap was quite inappropriate and has created confusion and complexity for the proper placement of these lichen moths.
How can such a swap be reversed?
What can be done to slow down or eliminate such spurious taxonomic changes?
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You can reach out to staff, and they may he able to reverse the swap. The best fix depends on exactly what the issue is. As for preventing ill-advised taxon changes, I’m not sure what the best course of action. You could reach out to some curators and ask for help/clarification.
I have created a thread previously asking how to deal with this user’s taxon changes (for a similar problem) and some amazing forum mods thought i was trying to get people to go against this user so they unlisted my thread and provided no solutions
Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again now :)
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Maybe a good idea to backup this thread before the mods get aware of it?
–De geschiedenis herhaalt zichzelf niet, maar ze rijmt wel.
Mark Twain
If anyone has issues with a particular user, the best thing to do is reach out to them directly (and politely). I don’t see any reason for this thread to be removed, but calling users out on the forum is against site guidelines.
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As long as posts stay within the forum guidelines, no special moderator action will be needed.
I will say, though, that issues with specific taxa and taxon changes are better addressed in iNaturalist itself using taxon flags and messages, instead of here on the forum. Once the OP’s original question has been adequately addressed, we may still go ahead and close the topic here.
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Thank you! This is the reasonable response that i did not get from the other mods the last time. And just to be clear i did not call anyone out- i worded it such that it was abundantly clear that i was only concerned with the taxonomy just like Chuck did here and gave a link to the taxon, so it was inevitable that the curator’s name was gonna be visible to anyone who clicked the link- that’s not my problem
(And i have also addressed this curator privately prior to creating my thread, just like you mentioned, so it baffles me why the mods reacted that way)
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Highlighting negative behavior of a specific user, even if that isn’t your primary intent, is something that moderators will act on. If the issue can’t be addressed publicly in a way that prevents this, then it is better to email the help address instead so that it can be handled privately by staff.
The original topic here has been addressed and solved, so I’m going to close it.