For some taxa, the discussion would be, “We do not and cannot know what it is, end of discussion.”
I mean, if thats how it is, thats how it is? Some taxa are just like that. Like some Chironomidae you need the adults and the larvae to 100% confirm a species. Just the adults or larvae alone may not be enough.
Some taxa are also in limbo if they even exist and are questionable if they are valid.
Thanks for the thoughts, everyone. I didn’t know that some of the more visible cleanup campaigns were kicked off by a flag. I’ll just leave such flags alone then.
even if flags do not show up highlighted in red for a regular user, I fail to see the practical difference between your journal entry proposal and a flag. there’s nothing that says that a flag can’t in the same way be linked in comments or that identifiers can’t be tagged in the flag thread. flags are also still accessible via the drop-down menu on a taxon page, while journal entries are tied to specific users and if anything require more digging to find (and have the whiff of an opinion piece due to their affiliation with a user or rarely a project).
And I fail to see what advantage posting information about identification issues as a flag provides.
A flag warning people about identifications is no less a statement of opinion than a journal post. If anything, it may give an appearance of making a claim to authority and exclusiveness (implications about who has the right to have an opinion) that may be offputting for regular users who are not curators.
Whereas a journal post can provide more extensive information, it has more formatting options, it can be illustrated to provide assistance with the identification challenges, etc. Journal entries can be linked to the taxon page where they would be more visible than a curation flag. While searchability of journal entries is more limited than it could be, they are nevertheless a more flexible and multi-purpose tool than flags for coordinating the networking aspects of iNat (e.g. projects for working on learning or cleaning up a particular taxon). So it seems to me that directing activities towards an existing and well-established format rather than hiding them behind a flag is a reasonable suggestion.
People incorrectly identifying a particular taxon is not really a curation issue (that is, it has nothing to do with managing iNat’s taxonomic structure, nor does it concern users violating guidelines for behavior).
This brought to mind a paper I came across a while back:
Ogren, R. E. (1992). “The Systematic Position of the Cryptic Land Organism, Leimacopsis terricola (Schmarda, 1859) (Olim Prostheceraeus) (Platyhelminthes)”. Journal of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science, 66(3), 128–134. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44149401
It discusses a species that is known only from the original 1856 collection, a specimen that has now been lost or may have disintegrated in storage. It was described originally as a land planarian (flatworm), and later occasionally speculated to be some type of slug-like mollusk, but with little support. Without a specimen, the only evidence as to what Leimacopsis terricola may be is Ludwig K. Schmarda’s 1859 description and the rather sketchy illustration accompanying it (the scale bar is 5 mm). The original was colored in various shades of green, purple and gray, but was still quite low on identifying characteristics.
Robert Ogren’s paper is a seven-page examination of what exactly this organism may have been. It concludes with 10 points of conclusion. The first nine are basically “we can’t place it here and we can’t place it there either”. I like the final one the best.
- The taxonomic status of Leimacopsis terricola cannot be resolved since scientific classification is not currently possible. This name and its “image” clearly are part of the lore of the Cryptozoology (Heuvelmans, 1983, 1984) and belongs to a group of reported organisms waiting to be rediscovered.
The specimen was collected in Colombia in “Quindiu Pass,” which may refer to Quindio. Other places referenced in the description are “Gallego” (where the author sketched the specimen) and “Tocho” (the station where he planned to make a revision) – I have not been able to determine where these are. So for any iNatters in that part of the world, here is a potential observation challenge.
I found a paper in Portuguese about this species, including a color illustration. Perhaps Portuguese will be somewhat more accessible to Spanish-speaking observers than the original paper in German.