Learning about an organism =/= being able to distinguish it from other similar-looking organisms (with “similar” being a fairly relative concept that changes with experience). If someone provides me with a refining ID for, say, a fly or a beetle, I can look up the species, read about its habitat, how it feeds and reproduces, etc. This increases my knowledge and appreciation of what I have seen.
Will this also increase my ability to recognize it at a species or genus level in the future? Possibly (for example, if it is strongly tied to a particular habitat, or if the characteristics are easily recognizable). Possibly not.
Yes, having observed an organism before often contributes to recognizing generally similar organisms in the future. But am I required to learn that the distinguishing features for a particular species are the shape of the second whatitsname when viewed at exactly 120° and the number of hairs on the upper eyeball? No.
Learning how to ID is not a requirement for participation on iNat – I mean, that’s the whole reason the Computer Vision exists. Some users just want to know what they saw. iNat is not a platform for training taxonomists. It is a platform for connecting people with nature, whatever form that takes.
Edit: OK, I decided I am going to post this part after all. I’m sure it’s not your intent, but your repeated insistence on “just learn how to ID it” comes across as pretty dismissive of the concern originally being expressed here (the loss of IDs as a result of account deletion) and also a bit exclusionary (i.e., if you can’t learn how to ID it, you’re not trying hard enough).
The concern is about the disappearance of information (an ID provided by others) that is valuable for all sorts of reasons, including our own learning processes. Consider that perhaps I’m not able to make use of another person’s ID at the time they provide it, but in a year, or five, I might return to it. Or someone else might be able to use and learn from it. – Except now we can’t, because the ID is gone. In the case of the plant IDer, this isn’t general stuff like recognizing Asteraceae vs. Lamiaceae. There’s a reason why there are relatively few users who are adding species-level IDs to Carex and Prunus and Salix. These are difficult taxa and it takes not only knowledge but also practice to become confident at IDing them. It’s surely not so difficult to understand that some of us are both frustrated and saddened at the loss of this.