Wow, this is super rude. It isn’t about feelings and i’m not a laymen. I have worked in this field for two decades and have a masters. But it shouldn’t matter, because this is iNaturalist not LinkedIn. We aren’t ranked here by our level of education, or at least we aren’t supposed to be. The way a bunch of you can’t form an argument without attacking someone else, it says a lot here. Anyone who doesn’t agree with the splitters’ concept of species or how that is defined is described as ignorant, stupid, lazy, overemotional, or malicious. All because you don’t have any actual arguments that hold up, because in fact there isn’t a consistent definition between species and subspecies, and something that would have been a subspecies before is now a full species, just because that’s ‘how it is done’. I think i am done here, i was trying to resolve a real issue brought up by other users, but i just get attacked for it. Again.
I’m not ignorant i just actually do ecology work on the ground, and talk to landowners and stakeholders and see the problems caused by these policies all the time. It sucks that people won’t listen and try to help, instead they accuse me of being a fake scientist or more worried about my ‘feelings’. Just doing what Tony said, leave the old name and also add the new name, would go a long way but apparently that’s too much to ask to help out the 99% of iNaturalist users who aren’t taxonomists or self styled splitter fanboys. But apparently some people here are too caught up in their ‘feelings’ when they are hurt and offended that someone dare question their complete removal of the subspecies concept over the last 10 years.