I have seen a closed post about this, but it did not seem like a sensible resolution was met, rather someone just said this was a change intentionally made. If I am not allowed to rehash this just let me know and I will take it down. I did not post this under bug since the change was made intentionally, I am advocating for another change (sorry if it is out of the realm of reasonability).
I have noticed this problem–that an initial subspecies ID prevents an observation from reaching “research grade” even with 2 or more agreeing species level ID’s–on many occasions (one example) and I only ID commonly among woodpeckers in the United States, specifically DOWO. It seems detrimental to disregard this data as research grade or force the user to withdraw their initial ssp. ID just because other users may not feel comfortable IDing at that level.
As mentioned earlier, I am just identifying in woodpeckers in the US, so I can only infer that this problem is widespread based on what I have seen and imagine the total relevant data loss to be significant. Is there no fix for this issue that will not bring back the previous error of ssp. being labelled research grade with only one ID at that level?
Edit: adding photo of example problem observation in case more ID’s are added or withdrawn so problem cannot be viewed from link
At the bottom of the observation page, it says the observation has been shared with GBIF, I assume under the species name. If that’s the case, then this seems like the best of both worlds. The species-level observation is getting shared for use in research, but the observer can still be requesting ID to see if their subspecies ID can be confirmed.
Yeah, I guess if it is being submitted to GBIF that is good, although it would be nice to tell at what identification it was submitted. Could be the same as the previous error and it is submitted under the subspecies, but hopefully not.
I guess I was more referring to data within iNaturalist specifically (i.e. filtering by research grade) but it makes sense that it could still be available to be ID’d if the poster still wants it confirmed at the ssp. level. Definitely a tough situation, and I do not have an easy solution, and I am sure there is not a simple one otherwise the iNat team would have thought of it.
You can click that GBIF logo to navigate to the occurrence record there. It’s apparently still the observation taxon that’s shared - subspecies in this case: https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/5828855334
Thank you for showing how to do that. Seems like the previous error carried over to this one particular feature, definitely a bug to look into for the iNat team in that case
Well, the “fix” was that observations only get sent to GBIF if the observation taxon and the community taxon match, so in that sense, the community taxon is getting sent to GBIF.
Interestingly, the observer has now withdrawn their (subspecies-level) ID - even though nobody had explicitly disagreed or exposed arguments for/against; only species-level IDs are remaining, it will therefore be reexported to GBIF soon.
It makes me wonder about the psychological workings at play in such instances: non-disagreeing species-level IDs piling (with as many notif’s), and/or the persistence of a ‘dreaded’ Needs-ID status, making observers finally fold and recant their initial ssp. ID…
Looks like loarie had asked them to confirm (and indeed their proposed subspecies would be well out of range at that location and can’t be reliably ID’d visually). I’ve commented with some more details.
See also this observation: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/2559987
While range is regularly used for identifying bird species (e.g. American vs. European Herring Gulls) it has risks and is more often avoided for subspecies. Subspecies are also just controversial in general… there have been many discussions about this subject on the forum.
