How exhausting plant taxonomy curation has become

Curators
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I’ve been recentely experiencing an exhausting and frustrating feeling as plants curator in Old Wold, i wanted to share my thoughts to take some step back about why i currently feel this way :

1/ Voting system

I don’t wan’t to talk about pro/con of this system that have been already discuss, but results are the following :
With votes to make taxa changes, it has inevitably lead to endless taxonomy controversial discuss, despite iNat policy about. This issue is then completely getting worst because of issue 2/ (and issue 3/ as im concerned).

2/ Taxonomic guide lines are actually relative

Curator taxonomic guide-lines leave too many “grey-area” (or are outdated) for the current uses/pratices of iNat taxonomy :

  • Complex species : monophyly required ? Well yes but no
  • Hybrid : validely published combinaison ? Well yes but no
  • Infragenus/section : published geneticaly-supported taxa ? Well yes but no
  • POWO : plant taxonomic backbone ? Well yes but no

And so on : whatever answer you bring to a taxonomy-related flag, a curator will argue a “yes but no” answer (frequently getting worst by issue 3/).

Having a margin of choice is crucial as curator (POWO can be completely out off track ; creating a newly never published hybrid find on iNat, so on).
But for the most part it, it has just lead to a general stallmate for many flags and inconsistent taxonomic treatment (orchids for exemple have “rights” that other taxa don’t have ; ferns treatment is a big mess, so on. ).

Eventually hybrid, complex, infranodes are considered/treated as ponctual in guides line (and they used to be), meanwhile those are actually the point of many flags nowadays.

3/ Overwhelming impact of North America curators

Don’t get me wrong, it has nothing to do with the [presumed] native country.
The point is NA curators are much more numerous (and/or more active ?) and have a way better capability for long-run technical-scientific discuss with long dense blocks in their [presumed] fluent mother-tong (including also forum) - this is much more exhausting to follow when english isn’t your native language and even more when discuss are dense and technical - often it makes you just give up.
iNat being US-based, this has always existed - but this is getting worst because of :

  • issue 2/ guide-lines are actually relatives - leading to those discuss above more frequent than ever (for me)
  • NA curators interfer more than before outside their predilection areas and taxa - maybe just a personnal feeling for this one - but as a lot of work have been done for NA taxonomy over past years, i assume it leaves time and energy now to go more outside.
  • Voting plant system (see issue 1/)

Over past years, i have noticed a decline of activity for “Old World” plants curators (i don’t even mention less represented world areas), i certainly can’t make any relationship between this statement and issues aboves - but i would be surprise there is no relationship neither.
Current situation, is for me, exhausting softly willing souls on this plateform - the first being me.

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I am not a curator, but that does sound exhausting and challenging.

The new 5 votes rule needs to be paired with recruiting more curators, so 5 is an achievable target.

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In the current situation, more curators would just mean more endless debates

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Thank you for posting this thoughtful article. As an identifier, I am equally frustrated with the curation process. All but the simplest requests either go unanswered or get caught up in endless debate as you describe. Writing flags is just as exhausting as resolving them.

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Thanks to remind that regular identifiers are also concerned.
Yes i didn’t mention the “no unanswer scenario” because everyone knows how painful it will be to try resolving the flag.

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Honestly, the best approach is probably to pick a specific source as the reference (eg. Kew, GBIF, WFO, etc) and stick with that as the final reference source and not have curators make any changes unless they have previously been made in the designated reference source.

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Although I expect a lot of people would disagree with this approach, it makes a lot of sense and moves the controversy outside of iNaturalist.

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I have only been involved in one proposed taxon change so far that required a vote and it seems like it is working as intended in at least some cases. Before casting my vote, I asked the person who proposed the change to ask POWO why they were following the taxonomy they were following and not that of a paper published seven years. POWO said that they were holding off to see what the Flora of North America authors decided to do in their upcoming treatment before making any changes. The iNat curators then decided to wait as well.

The problem before was that people would make taxonomic changes on iNat without having the needed debate or someone would go rogue and make a change even though there was not a consensus. Many changes are pretty straightforward and should be able to go through fairly easily if you can find enough curators to vote. If there is a stalemate in the vote, that means there would likely be a stalemate among other iNat users as well. Those ones are the difficult ones and they need a good discussion. And, of course, the taxonomy of many plants is unresolved and won’t be resolved any time soon, so a decision will need to be made that at least some people won’t like, but hopefully a consensus can be reached.

That said, there are some people that are very adamant about making particular taxonomic choices that benefit them but are problematic for others. Any change that is destructive to the data (taxon merges) should be approached with extreme caution. If it is a 1 to1 change, it shouldn’t matter that much what name is used and curators should be able to come to a consensus.

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Unfortunately that approach is problematic since POWO has no opinion regarding species complexes or infrageneric subdivision. An internal process is definitely needed in those cases.

I’m glad POWO exists as a baseline (otherwise there would be chaos) but blindly following POWO is partially responsible for the mess we’re in. The number of infraspecies being elevated to species rank is alarming. (Maybe it’s always been that way, I don’t know.) Such changes are disruptive and counterproductive. The quality of iNaturalist data has been significantly diminished in numerous such cases.

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I’ve worked with POWO to effect change, that is definitely the way to go in some cases. But that’s only one side of the coin. Changes to POWO come from all directions. When a curator implements a change via POWO without discussion, it sometimes leads to problems since observers and identifiers lack visibility. Some changes are disruptive to the iNat process.

I disagree that as long as there’s a one-to-one correspondence between taxonomies, the choice is arbitrary. For example, elevating subspecies to species rank and adding a species complex gives a one-to-one correspondence but the resulting data sets are not equal. Despite the species complex, observers continue to lead with species-level IDs since that’s how the iNat platform works. The end result is a very different (and less correct) data set compared to what might have been if the taxa were left at subspecies.

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Agreed. I try to flag taxa endemic to the Southeast US when they have missing conservation status, but there are often debates around whether or not coordinates should be obscured. Often flags will just be left open as no one takes the initiative.

I tried applying to be a curator so I could help with things like this, but was immediately denied (presumably because I showed little interest in moderating the behavior of other iNat users).

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Taking a look at the pending taxon changes. Honestly most just seem to lack engagement. So do not have enough votes.

Those can be seen here

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes?utf8=✓&filters[split]=0&filters[merge]=0&filters[swap]=0&filters[stage]=0&filters[drop]=0&filters[change_group]=&filters[taxon_scheme_id]=&filters[status]=pending&filters[iconic_taxon_id]=&filters[taxon_name]=&filters[taxon_id]=&filters[ancestor_taxon_name]=&filters[ancestor_taxon_id]=&filters[source_id]=&filters[user_id]=

This one seems to have no discussion or flag, but 4 votes?
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/165714

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It looks like there is a flag from 2019 but it was resolved in 2021 (without discussion so it’s unclear why) and it wasn’t linked in the taxon change.

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That is why people should contact POWO. We don’t need to follow POWO but we need to know why POWO made the choice they made so that we can decide if we should follow them or not. Likewise, POWO often needs an update and contacting them can get that going.

That’s at least partly the result of decades of heavy taxonomic lumping with limited or no evidence/justification to do so. Modern scientists are reinvestigating those lumps with much more evidence and, in some cases, proving them to have been wrong. Alarming is the number that still need to be fixed from this wave of lumping. That said, where you draw the line between a species and a subspecies or variety is generally subjective. Varieties and subspecies are young species on their way to being solid species. There is rarely a hard line for where to draw between them, though a lot of modern research finds that hard line in that they just look similar but aren’t closely related to each other (morphological convergence).

That’s the tricky part. The votes mean there is less likely of a chance a taxonomic change will be pushed through that shouldn’t be, but how do you find the votes when it should be? I mostly just focus on taxa I’m familiar with and only when I stumble across them or am tagged as I don’t have that much free time to delve deeper into iNat taxonomy.

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I don’t think that would be a reason. I didn’t express an interest in moderating behavior either, but my appliation was accepted.

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I don’t to derail this conversation, but I want to make clear that I explained to you why your application was not accepted when I replied to you, as I do with everyone. You’re welcome to reply to the email I sent, or apply again.

EDIT (Nov 10th): sounds like there was some confusion about my email to dsandii, but we’re back in dialogue about what they can do to improve their application.

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Going back to the original topic:

I’d like to bring up another problem with the voting system for Plantae, which is that it includes non-vascular plants and algae (e.g. Bryophyta, Chlorophyta etc.). As I understand, the voting system was put in place because following/deviating from POWO has sometimes led to controversy. But I feel like this change (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/166165) which is just a nomenclatural issue for a green alga, doesn’t need to require five votes to push it through, right?

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oh gees, that’s pretty crippling if this is effecting things like bryophytes and algae. Those aren’t exactly the most popular taxa, I imagine there aren’t that may curators that feel confident in those taxa

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earthknight’s suggestion is a great solution. Just pick a reference and stick with it. It makes everything a lot easier. That’s what we do for spiders.

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“There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong”.–H.L. Mencken

(Most of the strife in plant curation for the past few years has come from attempts to apply your prescription, because there are about 20x more vascular plant species than spider species and there’s no single, universal reference that’s fit for purpose.)

[Edited: zygy, I’m sorry. This was somewhat rude, and I realize you were trying to be helpful. This situation is very frustrating to me, and I’ll try to post at a bit more length about the nuts and bolts of it, but I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.]

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