This unfairly puts the burden for the observer’s ID on the identifier (the IDer has to follow notifications for agreeing IDs, withdraw their ID, restore their ID, etc.), even though this is not really their responsibility. The person responsible for the agreeing ID is the person entering that ID (i.e., the observer). Many observers do not appear to take this responsibility seriously or realize what they are doing when they agree to an ID.
It’s great that you verify/research IDs before agreeing; my experience is that most observers who agree do not in fact do much if any research. (This is based on the fact that the agrees come quickly, often with in minutes or mere seconds of receiving the notification; they never ask questions, even if their original ID suggested little knowledge about the taxon in question; they agree to IDs that are non-obvious, such as a taxonomic level like tribe or subgenus that is unlikely to be mentioned specifically in the literature; they agree to IDs made by anyone, regardless of how plausible that ID is or whether the person who provided the ID has any experience with the taxon, etc.).
This is not my experience, unfortunately. I see lots of experienced users blindly agreeing to IDs on observations of insects that are frequently observed but difficult to ID.
I would welcome suggestions about effective ways to do this. My experience is that whenever I have tried to suggest to observers that they should not agree to an ID they cannot verify themselves, this has had little or no effect on their behavior, either for the observation in question or future observations.
So I do think something else is necessary to encourage different behavior. Asking observers to type in the ID they want seems like it would be a start because it would at least require observers to think about what they are doing when they enter an ID. I fail to see how this would be unfair to those observers who do research their IDs – if you know what it is, you should be capable of typing in the ID.
And how do you propose to measure whether a given individual is in fact an expert on the particular taxon in the particular region? How will you determine whether any given ID is within their area of expertise or outside of it? How do you know that that expert was not tired or distracted or in a hurry when entering the ID? For difficult taxa that require special skill and knowledge, the possibility that even someone who is an expert might make a mistake is greater than for easy taxa. Just because they may be more likely to be right than a non-expert does not mean the possibility of them being wrong is zero.
Someone else’s expertise does not justify adding an ID that you cannot verify yourself.
So? To use your own argument: logic dictates that multiple knowledgeable people are less likely to all make the exact same mistake than a single knowledgeable person plus a non-knowledgeable person who is blindly agreeing to the ID.