Make 'Needs ID' Independent of BOTH 'Research Grade' AND 'Casual' Statuses

[regnierda]

@swampster

I think this highlights my biggest concern. I don’t want someone adding subspecies IDs unless they are already familiar with the subspecies and their diagnostic characteristics. I feel the same about higher taxon levels as well.

If we both agree that the same rigor should be applied to all observations regardless of the rank of the taxon being suggested, then why do we disagree that the process for surfacing observations of taxa at or above the rank of species that could be potentially ID’d further and those below the rank of species that could potentially be ID’d further should likewise be the same? Like, why is it once we get to talking about sub-species it becomes “Whoa, whoa, whoa, time out!”

I feel like this is one of those conversations where it feels like we disagree but we actually agreed the whole time and then someone’s like “so… what’s the problem here?”.

@swampster

To explore this, make use of the high rank filter: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?hrank=subspecies&place_id=3. It won’t be perfect, but it should give you a pretty good idea of which species in your state have subspecies that can actually be determined from iNat observations.

You’re right, it’s very far from perfect. Of the 146 subspecies I mentioned in my post above, I randomly checked a small handful (like 5 or 6) and two of them had no observations in iNaturalist at the infraspecies level at all though they did have a taxon page and did have observations at the species level. Totally not comprehensive, I know, but hopefully you get that how many of them there are is not my primary point.

EDIT: I just went back and looked through the first 25 in the list to see if I could find more without observations. A few aren’t in the taxonomy (for these, I did not investigate whether they’re in POWO) but most are. I didn’t find any of the 25 infraspecies to be lacking observations entirely, so I must have just been real “lucky” to encounter some that had no observations…

@regnierda

This is a great use of iNat! But I think there are better ways to learn about subspecies identification that are already possible under iNat’s current system. When I want to learn a new taxa, I do not start learning in the role of an identifier. I feel it’s better to review observations already identified to subspecies (in addition to finding some written descriptions of the diagnostic characteristics, when possible).

I think I miscommunicated and/or you misunderstood what I was saying. The route you describe is exactly what I do to learn to identify new taxa. But when attempting to find observations already identified to subspecies (to compare what I read in my local flora and in FNA with pictures), it’s very helpful when such observations actually exist. And it’d be nice if once learned, I can find those observations (of taxa I know) that could be potentially be ID’d beyond species without having to write a specific query that contains the taxon ID of each and every one of them.