I agree, a Draft DQA (or separate checkbox) might best get at the use case that seems to cause the most consternation – folks who upload huge batches, want to get them onto the web site first, but then have a chance to use the web tools to complete their intended data set before making them visible for community input. It’s just a workflow thing as I see it. Seems reasonable, and I think still fits under the topic of this Feature Request as an alternate solution.
I do think that any Draft mode should come with an automated, regular (weekly?), single notification, something like “Reminder, you have draft observations pending” and provide the link to view them all in Identify mode.
[Edit to add:] also, date/time posted should be updated to the date taken out draft mode, and once out of draft mode, it can never go back.
Definitely agree here too, and think that should also be part of the solution to this topic. If it involves some kind of automated pop-up reminder, that should only be for non-“draft” observations coming in as “Unknown,” and no more than say 5 times per user, so it doesn’t become a continuing annoyance if someone wants to ignore it. (Or maybe just a “don’t show this again” option.)