According to the iNaturalist Plant Working Group page, we are following POWO taxonomy for vascular plants. However, in practice we aren’t. Since deviations are allowed, every time a taxonomic change happens in POWO an argument breaks out over on iNat about whether we should follow it or not. These t…

I know iNaturalist isn’t supposed to be a taxonomic authority, and the direction we’ve been given in the past is that iNat should always follow outside authorities, but something that isn’t talked about enough is that there are virtually no other platforms where the world’s taxonomic experts come to…

In theory, it is nice to use an up-to-date taxonomy but the problem is too complex to solve it by automatically following POWO or any reference. Let’s try to dissect it into manageable issues! There are different forms of changes to be made to iNat taxonomy to approach POWO. 1-to-1 naming issues: …

agreed, I’ve seen too many instances where action ended up making things more confusing or annoying more people (and I am one of those annoyed people, I’m still not happy someone went through and made Silphium conform to POWO’s outdated treatment last year).

[image] attilalengyel: Especially, never commit any changes to unfamiliar taxa distributed in other parts of the world without knowing them YES! This has been a source of much upset in the past where someone who doesn’t know the taxonomic group comes along and gets active.

Plant taxonomy is a lot messier and less stable than bird taxonomy, so that’s why it is the way it is. There’s a lot fewer people working on a lot more species. It’s an issue with many groups of insects as well, but we don’t have a single overall database for all insects like we are attempting to …

Some suggested guidelines regarding found deviations from POWO: If a deviation is found without justification given, first look for the justification elsewhere such as flags at the genus-level or a related inactived taxon. If nothing is found, then review the literature and/or contact experts. The…

I do feel this discussion is important to have, and it is one primarily meant for curators. I have been considering applying to be a curator for quite some time. For clarification of the rules, would this exact topic have been better in the “general” category? It’s certainly more relevant to the av…

One quick reminder that a friend gave me- POWO is an attempt to standardize an entire taxonomic kingdom. That is a lot to try to deal with, so while they’re good at what they do there’s no expectation of perfection and thus deviations will be necessary to use on this website probably forever.

These are great guidelines! In particular I recommend the advice of doing your own literature research and then contacting POWO if you feel their taxonomy could be improved. [image] keirmorse: If the deviation seems justified, contact POWO and ask why their taxonomy doesn’t align with the devia…

Plant Taxonomy - Are We Really Following POWO? Should we?

Curators

tiwane July 15, 2024, 3:57pm 32

@raymie only Curators should start topics here. I’ll let it slide this time but in the future pleaes don’t start any topics in the Curators category.

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Plant Taxonomy - Are We Really Following POWO? Should we?

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