then I’ll say it in more personal terms: I am active daily on iNaturalist, but I get so many tags or other notifications that I have a standing pile of (as of right now) 150 notifications. I have other things to do than spend all of my work breaks, off-hours, and mealtimes poring through that heap. even when I do read something, it sometimes takes me days or weeks to respond if it requires me to dredge up literature and write an informed response to flags that unjustifiably cite POWO for an underinformed decision. I am not saying this is what’s happening here, or that your cactus identifiers couldn’t potentially respond sooner. I’m saying that most botanists or any other users involved are probably going to need some time to deal with the tags et cetera especially if they need to express a view at odds with the consensus picked up by taxonomic aggregators.
to your question about deviations, I would also not bother. since the taxa have been fine without them, and there’s a large probability that you’ll just be assisting in switching to POWO, that’s just more work performed in advance of your actually knowing the outcome.