It’s a process of continual refinement… sometimes that process is a short one, sometimes a very long (and interesting) one…
Even if an observation is ID’d wrong, and confirmed by someone else and goes to RG… at some stage down the track, one of those many identifiers that go through and mass ID on a taxa at a time (what I think of as “flash carding” are likely to have that experience of “same - same - same - same - slightly different - same - same … wait… go back to that… [makes a comment that this doesn’t look right]”… or perhaps someone studying a particular range of taxa are reviewing observations, and notice the mis-identification and are able to elaborate on why… I have made corrections to IDs under these situations often. I review ALL nz spiders obs, and I make mistakes from time to time and others pick up on those…
I’m not advocating for making IDs that are known to be wrong, but I think it’s a good thing to be pushing the envelope a little… and encouraging others to push the envelope as well. Science is all about putting up ideas and then trying to break them.
But I will add that one should only “push the envelope” and make IDs that are somewhat over-reaching if you will be around to change your ID when the discussion takes place. Likewise, avoid piling on with agreements unless you are going to be around to change or withdraw your ID.
We can’t really stem the flow of new users who make observations and then agree with the first ID made, that is just a human nature thing, and would need to be addressed at the on-boarding level, so I am not counting them when I say “need to be around to change ID”. And another reason not to put that pressure on them, is we want to encourage participation by new observers… they might not have useful ID skills at the time they join, but by being allowed to “have a go” they will learn and pick up the skills and knowledge required to become useful identifiers! So on that basis, I think an ID by the observer should never be subject to the same standards that we might expect of identifiers putting IDs on observations of others.
But to bring it back to topic… the squeeky wheel gets the grease… so the best way to get progress with an ID is to make some noise. Push the ID a little finer, ask some questions. I get tagged often for spiders outside of NZ, which I know little about. I hate it… It’s kinda like someone on the street asking you which way to go to get to the Louvre, and all I can suggest is “the airport?”. But every now and then I get tagged in on one that IS of interest, and so I am never ever going to discourage others from tagging me in.
@arboretum_amy in reply to the conundrum… I encourage you to not worry about that. We make IDs based on our understanding of taxonomic concepts at the time… and even if you get it right according to the currently accepted concept of that taxon, some future change in the concept could well render it invalid. And if you indeed have the wrong concept of the taxon, then the only way for others to become aware of that and for you to then learn the concept from them, is to express it.