I am one of those people who have never investigated subspecies and don’t have any interest in following them. I have my Account Settings set so that I am not supposed to receive confirming identifications, but I still get notified every time someone puts a subspecies identification on one of my old…

The way subspecies are used by some people bugs me in general, and i’d probably turn notifications for them off if given the option, but i don’t care that much since the behavior i dislike would continue to affect my observations.

Yes, you’re doing it for work, so I get that. I have just about decided not to post observations of certain organisms any more (even up to Kingdom), since I’m just doing this for fun.

oh no, i’m agreeing with you. i don’t tend to use subspecies for work stuff either, because we tend to only have one in the area and there’s no point, it just complicates data management

My 2c of input. Subspecies plays a significant role. In a few hundred kilometers there may be a definite difference in a species, resulting in the need for the subspecies. Protea aurea subsp. potbergensis is less than 300km road trip from my place where we get Protea aurea subsp. aurea . Closer as…

My perspective – not all subspecies fit in one bucket. Some are more significant than others, and it would be hard to create general rules to weed out the less significant ones. Some have major conservation status; some will be found eventually to represent distinct species. And others are crypti…

[image] Shauns: I realize a lot of people do not care for the subspecies, but why get offended when an organism is narrowed down. I am not offended, and I’m not judging people to whom subspecies are important. I just want the ability to either unfollow my observations, selectively, the same w…

[image] jdmore: For me, if the evidence clearly supports a recognized subspecies, I want to know about it. I agree that anyone should be able to choose to be notified. I am only interested in the notification system and the inability to unfollow my own observations. I will add, though, that y…

[image] saturnring: they are stuck in “Needs ID” even though two people agree on the species, just because someone other than the user chose not to simply agree with the species ID but instead selected a subspecies of the same species. This must be confusing to new users. It doesn’t make sense t…

[image] jdmore: I do totally agree that “Research Grade” (for what that’s worth) should only be based on agreement at species level. Then if enough people agree on a subspecies, that can flip the observation ID from the species name to the subspecies name. If someone later comes along and disagr…

[image] saturnring: I wonder if it’s a bug or intentional? The way I read the topic on etiquette, no one can ever add a species level identification unless the person who added the subspecies ID decides to change to species level. My vague recollection is that it is intentional, but I can’t r…

Notifications of Subspecies

General

charlie April 24, 2019, 11:57am 13

One issue is iirc if you add a non disagreeing ID to species level because you don’t know the ssp… or knocks the community id back to species which isn’t ideal.

Topic		Replies	Views
Leading subspecies IDs should change the obs taxon like leading IDs of other ranks Feature Requests issue-made , implemented	115	11464	February 24, 2023
Two new notifications preferences available News and Updates	32	2005	May 26, 2025
Request not to add subspecies ID? General	40	1610	December 29, 2025
Etiquette concerning subspecific identifications General	12	1107	April 13, 2021
Why does identifying a few subspecies change the entire observation to that subspecies? General question	33	1056	March 29, 2024

Notifications of Subspecies

Related topics