Hmm, what if the current Research Grade system was renamed, but otherwise kept the same, and then an additional label was made to be given to observations that have been identified by an “expert”. Sort of like the tiered system described here except that the “Research Grade” level isn’t just by any third person.
The new label wouldn’t be as in-your-face as the current Research Grade label (which has bright colours and is right at the top of every observation; very attractive). Instead it would be more hidden on the side, perhaps near the Community Taxon box, and indicate that someone recognized by the community to be knowledgeable about the taxon has identified it. Then normal users could still contribute to making the community of the ID more trustworthy, but more authoritative users can still increase the confidence more than others. Or pehaps even instead of a label, the community taxon confidence would just be affected by the level of “skill” attributed to each identifier?
I’m not sure what I think of this, just an idea I had…
The most vocal opposition, both on this thread and in the many other threads discussing this topic over the past couple years, has been from extremely dedicated users of iNaturalist who intentionally chose to contribute to iNaturalist instead of alternative citizen science websites.