I agree with the previous posts, so I’ll focus on this instead:
I’d say nooooo, definitely not! one of the purposes of iNat is to determine where/when things are, what/when they are doing it, and how that is or is not changing. It can therefore be really detrimental if people keep IDing things based on what they perceive is “the most likely species” (personally I’ve come across lots of wrong IDs like that that, and it’s incredibly irritating). That basically consists of confirmation bias- The organisms that you think you see now are just the organisms that you think you saw before, and then that feeds into what you’ll think you see in the future. It’s a vicious cycle, and that’s something that affects groups of people and not just individuals. Even the scientific literature is full of errors because people tend to just assume that the only organisms that are possible to see in an area are the organisms that have been seen/reported in the area before. Sometimes the misconception gets propagated for decades and decades simply because the original person to report that a particular organism was there actually misidentified it. It’s understandable why people do it, and sometimes it’s even perfectly warranted, but I think people rely on that way too much. That often leads to a lot of confusion, and it takes a LOT of effort and a LONG time to fix things once they become entrenched. I think ddennism said it really well:
Please try to emphasize observable features of the specimen when making an identification, rather than appealing to the location. “X is not native to this region” is not a compelling reason to disagree with someone’s identification of X. Animals move, spores blow, and seeds travel. Nature doesn’t read the published range maps. Neither do gardeners and released pets.
Location is a clue, not a proof, of ID.
My opinion is that if you can’t justify an ID based on specific traits, it’s best to not make an ID. Having said all of that, please don’t take this as a discouragement to IDing!!! we definitely need more IDers, and everyone, regardless of your level of knowledge or specialization, can help- even if it’s just by narrowing down the ID a little. I’m also not saying that you always have to be 100% sure of everything and that you should be terrified of making mistakes. We all make plenty of them, and everyone who has any experience with identifying things understands this. What I AM saying is that it’s important to try to be thorough and rely on the actual traits of the organism rather than overly relying on location or your perceived notion of the probabilities involved.
IDing is a great excuse to learn, so try to look up exactly what the distinguishing characteristics of a particular organism are. It’s often much easier than you think*, and I’ve learned a LOT from the process of trying to identify other people’s observations. It’s also quite fun. And if you hit a wall and aren’t sure how to tell certain species apart, you can always ask the top IDers (and others) for help. Some won’t reply or won’t tell you anything useful, but you can just keep going down the list until you find someone helpful :P
*Although sometimes it does get a little ridiculous… I recently caught a mosquito, and to ID it to the species level I had to take a super macro shot of the tiny claws on the tip of the anterior leg. To differentiate two taxa, one needs to look at the angle that the two claws make, and the difference is very subtle!.