@eric-schmitty - Haha, thanks, it was fun to write! Under the POWO rubric - which iNaturalist has committed to using - all research-grade T. officinale and T. erythospermum in the United States are inaccurate. So if we’re going to follow what we’ve committed to follow, then all of them - even the seed ones - need to be changed.
There’s clearly some reluctance to follow through - that’s partly why 80,000 observations have sat mostly without review. Aside from the taxonomic uncertainty, really there are some huge, fascinating philosophical questions behind these dandelion issues. For example, they: (1) touch upon traditional “splitter vs. lumper” taxonomic disputes, and (2) theoretically have a big impact on the iNaturalist ethos of ID’ing things to species (you can’t do that if you have a billion poorly described micro-species).
My manifesto, however, more has to do with our collective inactivity resulting from these issues. Let’s ID some dandelions! We’re all capable of ID’ing things - that’s what we do on iNaturalist! Dandelions shouldn’t be an exception!
Right now, I recommend we resolve the low-hanging fruit - generally pushing observations to research grade, where the original observer ID’d at genus level and there are no seeds present. There are 45,000 Needs ID at genus level, so plenty to do!
Then I propose tackling more of the Needs ID observations at species level without seeds, then Needs ID with seeds. Seeds certainly aren’t the end-all-be-all of POWO dandelion taxonomy, and of course, it’s not necessary to strictly follow this order. But it’s somewhat harder, for example, to suggest in an already research-grade observation that the obviously red-seeded specimen is not, despite what the North American flora guides say, Red-seeded Dandelion. Non-seeded specimens are easier to resolve, because even under North American flora guides, lots of them say you need seeds.
Theoretically, at some point we / iNaturalist may do a taxon swap to move everything where it belongs. In the meantime, we shouldn’t just ignore dandelions! For the most part, especially on most of these 80,000 - we already know what should be done!