iNaturalist's secret to success: What did iNat do differently? (if anything)

That’s not true. You can tell if an expert has ID’d a bugguide photo in either of two ways–if the photo has been placed in a taxon by someone other than the observer, then an expert has ID’d it because only contributing editors can move others’ observations to a taxon; also, you can just look at the bio of the identifier–if the identifier is designated as a contributing editor, then they have been approved by bugguide’s staff as an expert identifier.

And I will also add I’ve seen many, many more misidentifications on iNat than BugGuide. The vast majority of bugguide observations are ID’d by experts.

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