Something to remember is that you don’t always necessarily have to respond…
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Thanks for the input. I do get positive responses from scientists/experts and I do try to follow up. I also understand about doing my do diligence and research what I have. Sometimes I forget to check the distribution map, and I realize it was a mistake. I do also get comments telling me to not just blindly agree with Inaturalist suggests, when I spent a long period of time researching what the species is.
My concern isn’t just for myself, it is for how this affects “common users” as one person put it.
One of my examples about this is “dead end” responses. My example is Cantherellus cibarius. This mushroom is often sited in field guides and suggested by inaturalist itself. Often I see users getting called out that this is not a North American species and being sent to a scientific paper that is not very user friendly to the users outside of the academic world. On a regular basis I search the internet for a key or page that can help with this identification (since field guides continue to publish this). In addition there is an insurmountable amount of mushroom forager information that again sites it as Cantherellus cibarus. Hence for the citizen user this seems like a dead end. It also makes me wonder how many Cantherellus are simply not being identified in North America.
Another example is what I like to term “Everyone must have a PhD” example. An expert contacts a user and asks them an extremely pointed question such as “How to you know this is x species of spider. Do you have photographs of the genitalia? That is the only way you can determine it!” “Have you done the DNA sequencing for this mushroom?!? There are six other things it could be!”
I don’t think that all users are sheep, but I do think that they may become sheep or simply stop using inaturalist if they feel they have to have that level of expertise to identify something. I know that when go on an id-ing spree for a particular species that I know well (ie Hexagonal Polypore) I sometimes see an id I know, but then see that the observation already has conflict by an expert, I skip giving an identification to avoid further muddying things up.
Finally, I am trying very hard not to make this one side or the other. I used citizen vs scientist because I thought it was better than expert and novice. Novice in itself can be insulting in that it assumes that the person is a beginner. To me there are a hundred shades of gray in between these. One person might have participated in 20 breeding bird atlas projects, while another may be an expert feeder watcher, while another might be a student learning birds for the first time.
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Same here, I’ve gotten some very angry DMs telling me to stop adding “useless” stuff to their ID’s. It is frustrating, to say the least when you’re just trying to help.
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I don’t see anything wrong in your examples, we shouldn’t think users are stupid enough that they cannot read a paper which states species x is restricted to another continent. Iders are tired of wrong ids, so yes, they will occasionally add comments with questions about genitalia, because cv-originated ids in such cases have no basis. What iNat “suggests” for mushrooms is 99% wrong (taxa-wise).
I dunno about other resources, but even Wiki says it’s found not in NA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantharellus_cibarius
Btw white sheep was used not the way to call people sheep, but to say they’re not innocent, I ha very rude responces from new users, and other examples were mentioned before in other topics, e.g. guy thinking you’re laughable to say agree button is not for blind agreeing.
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Oops. I didn’t know that what iNat suggests for mushrooms here in New England is wrong almost all the time! I’ll stop adding the iNat suggestion to Unknown fungi and just ID them as Fungi. Thanks for the input!
It knows some species, though often with troubles, but really, everything 
-like (not fly agaric, but in shape) it really gives more random ids than correct ones, people use it a lot, so each year it learns more and more from those ids, we have far from enough people reiding things. So species which in literature is found in one place, but on iNat is found globally, is a “normal” situation. Plus many common species are not in cv at all.
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just use cantherellus :)
I don’t find Inaturalist suggestion for mushrooms all that off. One way that I know this is to save time on typing I hit the suggestions and often what I want comes up within the first four hits.
What I have noticed is that it seems to have gotten a little worse at identifying mushrooms compared to when I first started using it. 
It’s because of number of sp., proportion for observations would be better for cv, as people mostly observe bigger species, but I’ve seen cv couldn’t id a good close photo of Fomitopsis correctly and it still suggests american species everywhere, so ugh.
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what does cv stand for?
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Computer vision.
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I would agree that posting links to scientific papers as a justification for an ID is not a functional justification for that ID for most audiences. Scientific papers are generally not written for a wide audience to be able to read. I tried reading one the other day, and was laughing at the technical vocabulary the writer felt he needed to use, terminology I didn’t understand, even though I knew the subject better than most. Also, now many of these papers are not freely accessible on the web. These papers also usually take too long to read for it being worth the time for most people to read to see why the ID for one observation should be a given ID. While I have studied my local species of plants, animals and fungi about as well as one might, and thus know these species better than most who haven’t studied them so much, I don’t generally find scientific papers readable.
If a species has been lumped or split by a taxonomist, who published a paper to justify the lumping, or splitting, in my justification for a different ID than yours, for a species that has been lumped with another, I may say something to the effect of “A taxonomist has recently come to the conclusion that the species you have identified it as is really just material within a species it has been lumped with, so now your species is widely being treated as having the other name of the species it was lumped with.” Then, if I wanted to offer a link to the paper, I could say: “If you wanted to read the paper with that taxonomist’s conclusion it is linked here.”. A shorter explanation for such a reason for a different ID from yours might be “A newer taxonomy puts this species together with X species.” (“If you want to read the taxonomist’s paper, it is linked here.”)
I also agree that saying you need a genital dissection or DNA to make an ID is not appropriate. iNaturalist is a forum in which we can all make whatever ID for an observation that we might guess / estimate it is. We may be right, or wrong, or there may be no definitive right, or wrong ID. A species widely accepted as having one name one day, might have that be said to have a different name the next day. That person may have learned they need a genital dissection or DNA to make their ID, but you never need a genital dissection to make your ID. It could be that those who teach that you need a genital dissection, or DNA, to determine the species, just haven’t yet learned a way to determine a species without a genital dissection, or DNA. Alternately, it could be that no one will ever be able to distinguish those species in the field, but you can still offer your best guess ID.
As you mentioned what to call different ends of the spectrum of knowledge or focus on a taxon, or group of taxa, the main way someone becomes an “expert” on iNaturalist is by giving the same ID more times, right, or wrong. I was laughing a couple of times when I came up with an ID for a species that had only been given that ID a few times on iNaturalist. After figuring out how to make my ID I checked the other 8 observations with that ID. I might then give my same ID 3 times, then iNaturalist declared me the top identifier of that species, a species I barely knew!
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I have never run into this - more along the lines of ‘I would need to see the genitalia to be sure’ (which I accept). In the latter instance I would be tempted to say ‘yeah I ran a genetic sequence in my bedroom last night while reading a book’. I can be snarky if I want!
However, if the person says the only way to determine species is to run a genetic sequence, I would accept that. @tiwane 's post is a great one to keep in mind. Also, for most amateurs (someone will likely castigate me for using that term) we need to accept that some advanced ID’s are beyond our skill level.
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The written word is a good communicator of information, but a terrible communicator of attitude - never mind when you have such a diversity of cultures, social backgrounds, levels of knowledge/experience, first languages etc. Personally it doesn’t come across badly to me if someone simply states why it can’t be what I think and is something else, or links to a resource - I’m grateful for the attention to my observation! But if there’s a sense that someone might be invested in a wrong ID (perhaps from a comment, or their notes - I’ve seen observations where a user goes into great detail talking about the species they’ve seen in the notes - when in fact it’s something else!) and you want to say more, there are ways to ensure you come across softer: adding a positive to the negative “Character Z rules out suggested species - but the genus is right!” or a little false uncertainty “Actually I think it’s X because…” (explanation makes it clear you know full well…), or empathising with the error “some specimens of X do look like Y, but …” or even just “This is a tricky group - best left at genus”
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A person does not even need to be a prof or a professional to run into this. I have spent a lot of time identifying the NA moth genus Feltia (or at least four of the confusing species). I’ve even made a Wiki to explain. I get the same ID mistakes over and over again. So yes, it can be frustrating. I’m not rude or condescending (I hope) with my replies.
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Ha! No. (Besides, I won’t remember that name for more than 15 minutes.)
Oh, I just assumed after looking at the most reported species (mallard, honeybee, monarch, lady bug, etc) that the way it works is still like a popularity contest. 
Yes, I couldn’t believe it when I started receiving requests for ID because I was considered the second best identifier of Irpex lacteus
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I was going to say something much like this. 
“Thank you” is always an appropriate response.
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thanks for all the suggestions, insights and humor! 
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