When I go through flags, I see a lot of taxon flags requesting for taxa to be added or edited, but the flagger has not cited any sources. I don’t respond to taxon flags much, but to me the flagger should be citing a source with their flag to reduce the amount of work curators need to do to check up on the request. I suspect many people just don’t think to do it, which I understand.
Here’s what the current new taxon flag page looks like:
Yes, and also add the addendum (rephrase it how you like) if you are flagging a taxa to add a new species, a link to the observation that needs the species-level ID being reqeusted is useful.
Many curators don’t prefer to add species if there isn’t an observation that needs the ID
I think this would be a good change, low risk and potentially high reward. Changing the language to specifically ask for a link would make things even easier in case somebody decides to give APA citations instead or something.
Your Source Link here - I remember to add POWO since a curator kindly explained that it is quicker and easier for them (plus I get to learn a little more about a new to me taxon, and to untangle iNat uses A, while POWO uses B …)
Relevant obs link here - since I am mostly flagging as a service to other observers - haven’t got a hope of finding That obs again otherwise.
I think this would be good. I think it would be even better if there was a list/table of external authorities for groups that have them (POWO, WoRMS, etc.) or a link if that’s too much text. Some people don’t realise we use those for our taxonomy. There could be a sentence saying that if there isn’t an external authority for the group in question, some sort of site (or maybe ideally peer-reviewed paper) should be included.
I personally find most important to make clear whether a missing taxon is needed to ID an observation. Many flaggers thankfully provide a link to a related observation, and if they don’t and request only a single species, their numbers of observations or identifications often indicate that they really need that missing species.
When requesting a change to iNat’s taxonomy, providing a source could indeed be helpful.
Independent of whether the flaggers provide one, I always look for sources myself (I think this is what curators should do anyway). Making this a requirement might reduce the number of flags requesting invalid or doubtful names as well as unsubstantiated changes. But this concerns only a minor number of flags which usually can easily be refuted (I resolve, or help to resolve, almost exclusively taxon flags related to insects and other invertebrates).
I think that is too much for taxa accepted at POWO. Hopefully the POWO curators had checked their sources and iNaturalist should have specific reasons to deviate, not the other way. Normally I assume that when I provide a link to POWO, it is sufficient.
Thanks for the suggestions. I’m trying to not add engineering work and just see what we can get done with some messaging. Although I think it would be nice to have a separate source link field, etc, new fields means more complexity. A new category of field would have to be added to the database, for example.
I mostly want to get across that the onus is on the flagger to provide as much detail as possible from the outset, it shouldn’t be a curator’s job to track down sources, IMO (although I’m sure some curators like doing it, which is cool).
Not that I particularly like doing it, but I consider it part of a curator’s due diligence, regardless of the source(s) that the flagger already provided. But having those initial sources is still a very helpful head-start and time saver for a curator.
Here’s text that tries to include some of the suggestions here. It’s a bit long, but I think maybe the first two paragraphs could be above the Comment box, and the third below it (I suspect no matter where it is, most people won’t click on the link, but it would be good to have there.)
Add an optional comment to this flag that further explains why you are adding it and provides links to supporting evidence.
Flags with supporting evidence, such as links to taxonomic sources, conservation listings, and iNaturalist observations documenting the taxon, are much more likely to be investigated and resolved by iNaturalist’s volunteer curators.
