Every once in a while somebody will flag a taxon with variations of “be careful identifying this taxon, it’s difficult and most ID’s are wrong.”
What is an accepted/useful curatorial response to these? My instinct is to resolve, as I don’t see any available curatorial action. But maybe you all have different ideas.
depends on why the IDs are wrong. I think some of them could actually receive observation splits that kick up the identifications to a higher rank, if that is where any ID should indeed sit. some of them are probably mixtures, which behooves tagging identifiers of that taxon and perhaps using the flag as a thread to coordinate. there is no one single curatorial action that can be applied to all such case.
There’s maybe potential for a conversation on adding species complexes
First, a polite explanation to the flagger that this is not what flagging for curation means.
Ha, yeah. But on the other hand if the flagger is a curator, and has been for many years…
But this isn’t meant to be about one particular flag, just about such flags in general since they do come up from time to time. So I’m leaning towards this as well. Trying to reach out to the identifier community via a flag seems, at a minimum, ineffective.
I’m just not sure what is being proposed here as an alternative. Where else can users discuss problems with a taxon entry except on a flag? On an individual observation, which doesn’t necessarily stand in well for the whole bloc of observations? In the forums, where only the most terminally online iNaturalist users even ever visit? Yes, this isn’t necessarily a taxonomic type of problem (though it can be! as in the case of absent complexes or other intermediate ranks as mentioned above), but not every issue with a taxon entry is taxonomic per se.
I think in the past adding a flag to alert others to commonly misidentified taxa has been the suggested course of action. At least I seem to remember that suggestion on some forum topics. I don’t have the time to go searching right now but I think it was in the context of cleaning up misidentifications that lead the CV algorithm astray.
I’m not really in favor of resolving even if there isn’t explicitly an obvious curator action that can be taken. As sbrobeson states nicely, flags can serve as important places to talk about issues regarding a taxon.
Resolving a flag like these
1 basically hides it from common view and one has to know where to search to refind it. This stiffles the ability for conversion.
2 removes the ability to “warn” the rest of the community about a taxon. If there is an issue with a taxon, a flag is an easy way to tell.
It can be very valuable to know a taxon is experiencing enough issues, the community feels a need to flag it.
I mean, that’s exactly my question, what alternative actions are there?
All fair and good, but “the identifier community”, as well as all observers would be reached more effectively by more identifying with comments. Effective recent identifying campaigns come to mind, e.g. for lumbricus terrestris, or for ligustrum species, or what the few dedicated fly identifiers from the UK and the US are doing. I’m sure you know of examples like this as well. (You’ve done it yourself!)
One thing is that these issues can be solved sometimes. Say the flag is hypothetically, x is almost always wrong in the CV suggestions. This sometimes can be something that improves or even mostly gets fixed. Could it be a year or two? Sure. But flags regarding identifications can sometimes be solved, not just the flag being resolved not addressing the issue.
Granted this is just one example, there are multiple different flags that can be brought up related to this, each with their own solutions or none at all.
it’s reasonable to ask the question, but you suggest above in this thread that flagging the issue “seems, at a minimum, ineffective.” so if you think that these issues should not be addressed in a flag, in my opinion the onus is on you to propose an alternative place to discuss them. as I said, I believe the forum or on an observation are inappropriate locations to centralise discussion, so the alternative I propose is in fact in a flag after all. iNaturalist does not have a lot of places to hold court as a discussion, and the other options (atlas pages, taxon changes, checklist entries) seem even more specialised and not relevant. I would add that flags are visible as a brightly coloured marked link right on a taxon entry, so even besides identifiers who get tagged in the flag threads, anyone can easily find them. in addition, as zoology123 notes, going ahead to resolve the flag on a sometimes tenuous assumption that no curatorial action can be taken only buries the thread in those cases, when I would tend to argue that curators usually can help in some way. even if it’s only to go ahead and tag identifiers or other experts, I don’t see this as being terribly different to intractable taxonomic issues (for example).
There were many such flags in this wiki, most of which have been resolved. Flags make a red tag on the taxon page so at least curators know there’s something wrong, and they provide a place to discuss efforts to fix the issue. Better than a forum thread for every species I think.
Not if you are not a curator, which a lot of identifiers are not, and people who are IDing a taxon based on popular misconceptions are almost certainly not. So I fail to see what purpose a taxon flag serves if it is not going to serve as a caution to the people who need to see it.
Of the limited tools available on iNat for such a purpose, a journal post + linking to it in comments on observations would likely be more effective for tackling such problems, but of course more work for the person trying to spread the word.
It would be nice if the AI could keep this in mind when identifying things - perhaps taxa could have a checkbox when they are edited that marks them as hard to identify so the AI knows not to go to species.
We worked on Sarcophaga carnaria following a flag which was used to raise awareness of the issue - after all the species level IDs were bought back to genus and it no longer seemed to be autosuggested, the flag was marked as resolved.
Note also that on the dedicated wiki connected to this topic, it was specifically suggested to people to use flags :
My understanding was that this was largely considered best practice.
I agree with others on the thread that this still makes sense as the optimal approach, even if the flag can’t be resolved easily.
Makes me wonder if a new kind of flag would be helpful. one that doesn’t require resolution - this way copyright violations, spam, and discussions on species can be flagged without clogging the system.
Imagine if every taxon had a public discussion tab. This could be used to discuss identification or really anything related to it. How to ID
I think this is something like where the proposed and controversial AI on iNat might be headed.
While this would be a great idea in a perfect world, it would also likely be a moderation nightmare.