Not sure if irrelevant, but for curation i tend to limit my views on flagged issues only to ‘arthropoda’.
Since last Christmas (pre 2025) i’ve seen a reduction in unresolved flagged issues from a backlog of “44 pages” now down to “41 pages”, with the last shift yesterday to show a reduction of yet another page from the backlog. I’m simply writing to say - awesome work everyone who helped reduce the backlog down. Many issues seem recalcitrant as unpublished homonyms and such, but it’s really nice to see backlog reducing, so thankyou all. Hopefully we hear from staff about how they value all your contributions, rather than just my voice as a random volunteer, anyway - awesome work everyone who helped!
Just further to that, yes - should work with custom URL once logged into your account. Just different taxon id number for whatever lineage, the rest on "t_e_d"s version after the core is really just gravy. Essence for arthropods then like this https://www.inaturalist.org/flags?flaggable_type=Taxon&taxon_id=47120
But, it is possible to define that taxon limitation on the main options menu. From the flag page, change “content type” to read ‘Taxon’. That makes another radio button box below, but no actual magic until you press “Filter”. It should then convert that into a box you can type into, labelled taxon. Add the desired keyword “e.g. insect” and select the relevant thing from the dropdown. Then, click the magic blue filter button again and the number of flags should now be limited. Convoluted eh?!
Just to say, thanks to the efforts of many, it’s now down to a backlog of only 30 pages of unresolved flags for arthropods after a couple more months, which is an awesome change. That’s despite the abundance of newly raised issues, which seem especially frequent on weekends. In my initial comment, i had hoped to hear something from staff on this positive contribution to users for their system - at least a thank-you to all for the voluntary efforts. I increasingly see the investment being put into AI and such to get quick answers to casual users, rather than invest to supporting sharing the expertise from other users. I say that to just highlight that i’m seeing some modern direction of this initiative which is increasingly not inline with my own ideals of value and knowledge sharing based on experience, rather than “quick answers”.
Anyway, all such aside, for taxonomic issues with arthropods which remain unresolved. I’m still finding several which are practically straight-forward, but needlessly neglected such as “please add this one species?” which i find absurd got ignored. There’s also a few more challenging but actionable “which of these [mis-duplicated] combinations should be use?”. If those can be cleaned out, alongside some “please add all this long list of taxa?” (which seem like can be rejected as requests if no relevant observations), then it seems might be able to get to some actual issues worthy of some effort for action.
e.g.
subjective synonyms - i.e. not yet clear consensus in available sources
homonyms - i.e. need resolution in the published literature
intercalary groups - i.e. uncertainty for “complexes” and such, where some system based change actually be useful to users.
Which other such issues am i missing once we’ve cleaned out more actionable ones?
Only in February I started to do some curating, and was astonished by the many pages of backlog. Focussing mostly on insects (sometimes other invertebrates) and taxonomy, I found many uncommented flags from 2024 and even 2023 that were easy to resolve.
Something else I find frustrating are the numerous flags that correspond to unobserved taxa. I keep coming across uncommented flags requesting to merge duplicates, synonymize species, or move species to new genera, all with zero observations.
This leaves the question: Do curators put much more effort into adding new species in their group of interest rather than addressing flags?
Specifically to typophyllum, even though your contribution is only since recently, I see your many contributions to resolving outstanding taxon flags as astonishingly valuable. There’s a couple of other recent curators who also i see as especially valuable contributors, but i try not to cherry-pick where gratitude is needed, but in your case as engaging here, i will say a direct big thank-you.
The views of bouteloua are most welcome as one of the most experienced volunteer curators here, in many issues beyond taxon focus. In that context, exactly, there’s no stated expectation or limit of responsibilities that i’ve seen given to us volunteers. There’s upsides and downsides to that, but the general ‘hands-off’ view regarding taxonomy and resolution of taxon issues from central co-ordination is something that’s increasingly of concern to me [i.e. for how much (more) that i’m personally willing to (voluntarily) invest here].
Regarding the “numerous flags that correspond to unobserved taxa”, the reduction in past months for arthropods is awesome, but i’m continually amazed by how many new flags could be resolved in seconds but then get ignored then drift into obscurity unless searched out. I’ve frequently seen users state their own frustration about those. For the fraction that relate to ‘unobserved taxa’ then some actual evaluation of the data can be critical, but the tendency i’ve noticed leads me to see many of those resulting from old system-wide automated imports of past ‘name providers’, notable ones being the generalist EOL and the regional SANBI. Both of those i highlight as having being - to my view - particularly careless about spellings, misduplicates etc, and imported in bulk without question to iNat. Else some centralised initiatives have bulk added names from certain specialist databases, but then there’s been no central push to keep matching those against subsequent updates on those same specialist database since the automated imports, hence the differences accrue.
Anyway, what i’m saying is, when it comes to ‘taxon updates’, then i try to be mindful of the frequent past comment i’ve seen from central leaders of this initiatve to ‘avoid addition of empty names’, i.e. those without observation. Yet, from my anecdotal viewpoint of what i’ve seen, the bulk of the problematic ‘empty names’ needing curation (and having flags raised) seem to stem from centralised careless imports of poorly curated external resources, rather than deliberate action of volunteer curators. So if volunteer curators want to add ‘empty taxa’ then i’ve got no problem with them doing that, but i’d strongly favor doing so when the lineage is recently revised, when the flurry of papers after a revision has died down, and (lastly i think very much inline with central direction) ideally when those extra ‘empty’ names ideally could help users refine observations.
I think one big contributor to this is that it’s really easy for flags like this to get swamped under the many copyright and spam flags that are made on the site. These are really important, but by their nature, copyright/spam flags are often made in big batches when users stumble upon these issues, and so other flags can easily get overwhelmed by a wave of these flags. Now of course when you click the ‘view all’ button on the flags widget, these flags are filtered out by default, but many curators will rely on the widget preview of the latest 5 flags when judging whether to respond to something.
It’s also really easy to fall behind for curators not on the site all the time! I’m on iNat almost constantly, but if I’m out on fieldwork for a few days, a week, two weeks without a computer and/or internet, when I get back home there’ll be anywhere between several hundred and several thousand new flags while I was gone, so easy ones that I would have normally responded to quickly as they appeared can easily get buried as well. For example, I try to deal with [almost] every flag by an Australian user/involving Australian taxa ASAP, particularly if these flags are made during my work hours on the Sydney timezone, but some can easily slip between the cracks if I’m working on a manuscript, doing data crunching for my research, etc. Months later I may stumble upon one of these and wonder how it’s gone unaddressed for so long too, but it’s easy to miss things.
I periodically go through older stuff and try to address the low hanging fruit at a minimum, but don’t always have the time. So it’s really fantastic you’re taking on this burden and resolving these, it’s hugely appreciated and valuable, even if often thankless. Let me know at any time if you need help sorting out these flags, I’m always happy to help and share the load.
Perhaps it would help if the flagger (most of them I think know what they are talking about) could mark the flag as an easy to resolve one, id est: open access reference provided, parent taxon correct, not controversial and most important: with observations or likely observations.
I think I’d do more as a caurator if it was evident that it is an unproblematic move.
It isn’t always worthwhile to do so. As a subscriber to Aroideana, I have access to Tom Croat’s new species descriptions (often Anthurium and/or Philodendron) every quarter; but given the policy that discourages adding large numbers of unobserved species, I do not consider it time-effective to do this quarterly, especially given that Croat explores places where few casual observers go. Now, if someone observed what they believe to be one of those recently described species, I would gladly add them case-by-case.