I happened to notice that as a community we have observed precisely 46,000 species of vertebrates as of today. That’s a pretty impressive number and almost 61% of known vertebrate species.
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Turns out, I didn’t have many plants, so that didn’t take long.
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It’s my fifth year on iNat! I started iNat on Feb 6, 2021.
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This is duolingo level numbers; Holy cow.
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20,000 annotations finally! (and IDs almost at a round number too)
Also tried to pitch in on more curation to start the year and I’m happy with my balanced stats:
587 taxa curated
373 taxon changes added
376 flags resolved
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Thank you for all your hard work! 
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Well, here’s a milestone I could have done without: I just got my first block. No reason that I can see (unless it was that the user didn’t agree with my ID), no communication of any sort, just whammo with the banhammer.
The funny part is that the user did this while I was in the middle of asking the user whose ID they did agree with about the diagnostic features they saw in the photo. And, it’s in an area that I’m very familiar with, where both species are present (and there’s an as-yet undetermined amount of hybridiation going on).
I realize that you can have three blocks for any reason (even though the Community Guidelines say it should be a last resort for communication breakdowns, there’s no real way to enforce this). It just seems so …childish. Petty, even. At worst, it means that I’ll have a Maverick that I can’t resolve; really, I just kind of want to laugh at this person for being so ridiculously defensive.
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Yeah that’s happened to me. I came across this guy’s account because we got into an argument over taxonomy. He seemed pretty cool even if we disagreed, so I went through his observations and IDed some, unthinkingly using the taxonomy I thought best. Next thing I know there’s a flag on my IDs (something about “insufferable kid… targeting my observations… stinking them up with bad taxonomy” idk) and bam I’m blocked. Pretty annoying 
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No huge milestones here, but I was the top identifier and observer of snakes in FL for 2024. Also, I’m getting close to 2,000 obs (like 19 something hundred).
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How do you know you have been blocked? Do you get a message, or what?
I was wondering that myself
Yup; you’ll see a banner that looks like this:
Given the total lack of communication that I mentioned, you can probably see why I’d be confused. 
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The issue with blocked users not being able to undo mistakes has come up before, e.g. in the context of taxon swaps: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/taxon-swap-results-in-permanent-maverick-ids-when-identifier-is-blocked/55700/
As I noted in that thread, it seems like a problem that clogs up the ID process for everyone – including the blocker – without offering any real benefits. Because for any blocking scenario I can conceive of, the basic motivation to prevent unwanted interactions; if the trigger for blocking is an unwanted interaction (a bad ID), I find it hard to see how withdrawing the source of offense would be perceived as the blocked user continuing to provoke the blocker.
I wonder if it would make sense to make a formal feature request to allow blocked users to withdraw IDs.
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Nah, leave it. If the blocker doesn’t like the Maverick ID there, they can easily solve it by unblocking. Look at it this way: you get three blocks, right? And if you want a fourth block, you have to make your case to the iNat staff. If one or more of your first three blocks was for not liking someone’s ID, I hope the staff would have sense enough to say that’s not urgent enough for an exception and advise lifting it rather than granting a fourth.
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Except my ID should be MINE, to withdraw or delete after due and careful reflection.
Blocking should only prevent me adding a new ID, or changing my previous one to something else.
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Yes, this. Allowing blocked users to withdraw IDs is not about helping the blocker, but allowing the blocked user agency over their own IDs and an opportunity to correct their own mistakes. The ID is still in my name regardless of how I feel about being blocked.
If you don’t wish to withdraw an ID you have since realized is wrong in such cases because you don’t think the blocker deserves it, that’s your choice. But other users may wish to be able to do so. Just because you personally don’t want a particular option doesn’t mean it might not be valued by a meaningful proportion of the community; that’s kind of the point of feature requests – to determine whether there is a widespread need for a particular feature.
Some blocking is probably unnecessary, e.g., the blocker acts on impulse because they are annoyed by a single bad ID. The problem is that blocking also eliminates any path to resolution in such cases. The blocked person cannot signal that they are willing to fix their mistake, which the blocker may interpret as obstinacy on the part of the blocked user, confirming their view that blocking was the right choice. There is no way to communicate to them that they have prevented the blocked user from changing the ID that upset them, which means that the blocker has to figure this out themselves. If they do not make this connection, a completely unnecessary block will continue indefinitely.
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Can we split the conversation about banning and mavericks to a separate post? Something I can do or need a mod for it?
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