Setting extinct state should cascade to child nodes

If a taxonomy concept is set to extinct, that should automatically cascade down to any children.

Example
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/712320-Kalligrammatidae

Subfamilies should have been auto set.

In principle this is an obvious feature to have. But I think as with the introduced/native label it’s risky precisely because of what you point out: that it will override all children, and even when in some higher taxa it’s clear that is extinct, in others not so much, or any user can label it by “accident”, so maybe the extinct label for higher taxa should be only allowed to curators

In the current system only curators can set taxa as extinct (but only at ranks finer than order; ranks higher than that can only be edited by staff).

With this context you mention, then this means that even if is a curator who set a family as extinct it doesn’t cascade to all its children taxa?

Correct. That’s the feature Chris is asking for. :)

To minimize potential for “accidents,” I would like to see a confirmation step that displays a list of all subordinate taxa not currently set to extinct that will be changed, with Confirm / Cancel buttons only at the bottom of the list. If it is a long list, then all the more reason that one should have to scroll through it all first before committing such a wide-ranging change. And there should probably be a way to undo it also.

(A similar concept could be helpful for cascading Establishment Means changes on place checklists, but that is for another thread…)

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Made an issue here: https://github.com/inaturalist/inaturalist/issues/2853

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