Regarding the “Xanthium case”, it is still not completely resolved here in iNat since many users, understandably, refer to the North American taxonomy in which orientale is a synonym of strumarium.
This is a model case in which referring to just one reference can influence so much the treatment of a group of taxa.
The same can happen, for example, with the “Orobanche vs Phelipanche diatribe” and, more specifically, with the Phelipanche ramosa vs nana case.
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This was just an example among others. Mistakes, wrong decisions, bugs or inconsistencies happen everywhere - that’s why safeguards exist, in scientific publishing as in nuclear bombing.
The extent of consequences (and the amount of effort it takes to fix things) may differ. My use of the Xanthium example was a convenient instance of a cascading effect - whereby a very minor, transient issue at some external “reference” results in larger, longer-lasting problems somewhere else. Right now, there are various inconsistencies at POWO (e.g. in Dactylorhiza orchids) but fortunately, iNat curators haven’t noticed… yet. ;) Still, in the absence of further safeguards, one has to keep a watchful eye on both POWO’s shortcomings and iNat’s curation, to make sure that the latter does not uncritically mirror the former.
Two days ago, a glitch at POWO removed (for a few minutes) >99% of their taxonomic framework from public view. I can’t imagine the mess if, at the same moment, some uncritical iNat curator obedient of the Reference Framework had been on a curating spree for daisies or dandelions: “oh, the whole Asteraceae family has been removed from POWO, let’s delete it here too”. 
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The original paper had 645 new combinations, as well as being a much more comprehensive work. Reviewers – unpaid, short on time, and not necessarily with expertise in the group – aren’t going to check every single reference, at best they’ll check a sample. Having close to a third of them with issues is rather high, but only half of those affected whether the combination was validly published. Also, if they had been published under the ICZN none of these would have been a problem.
Perhaps not, but it is up to iNat to decide whether to accept changes that are appear there.
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@SQFP , So what I was suggesting is;
(1) in 2006 someone at POWO implements a questionable taxonomic change: Xanthium orientale is declared a synonym of X. strumarium, following FNA .
(2) someone at iNat notices that change at POWO and contacts them to question if it is correct to follow the cited references FNA and Flora of China on this or if this is now outdated and ideally provides a more recent reference that agrees with iNat.
(3A) POWO changes that, following the more recent reference(s). All done.
(3B) POWO disagrees and does not make the change. Because a taxon merge involving thousands of existing obs is a lossy operation which could cause a big mess if performed hastily, a minimum delay of N weeks + a minimum requirement of N curators/topIDers is enforced. It is decided to deviate. A deviation is implemented.
easy.
For all practical purposes, (2) does not always happen, for obvious reasons - hence the current thread and, imho, the need for at least some safeguard(s) at iNat’s level.
(edit: if my limited language did not properly convey the viewpoint: I’m not arguing against contacting POWO, but in favor of additional safeguards against damages from curation at iNat. Belts and suspenders.)
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I think that this thread has been visited and commented by a relatively high number of users. So, it turns out that his topic is considered interesting as far as the category “curators” si concerned.
On this basis, I take the liberty to ask the staff behind iNaturalist to consider the possibility to take into account the considerations here expressed for a possible update of the guidelines for curators.
Thanks
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I have a problem with the split Sorbus. There is now good Sorbus s.l. taxon available. Sometimes I really don’t know if something I see on a short trip to Scandinavia should be Hedlundia or Scandosorbus. And the Karpatiosorbus genus for all apomyctic hybrids is really weird.
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And how do they always find ways to make the names so much longer and more complex? You can tell some of them have never had to do field surveys or manage a database.
Doesn’t that rather support the lumper point of view?
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To be facile: humans and chimps overlap in most morphological characters and DNA. Should we lump them into one species?
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It just supports the point of view that keys are hard to write. Some keys are like that because the taxa should be lumped or there may be some intergradation but many (maybe most) keys are like that because keys can be very difficult to write. Think about writing a key to distinguish all of the people you know based on morphology. Presumably you can easily distinguish all or most of those people at a glance because you are familiar with them and they look different. Now write a key to distinguish all those obviously different people that will work any day of the year. It would be a very difficult thing to do unless you have a very small pool of very distinct people. Someone who is familiar with those people can distinguish them readily without a key. If you give your key distinguishing those people to someone who isn’t familiar with them, they probably would have a very hard time. The same applies to taxa. Many taxa are obviously distinct but it is very difficult to write a key that distinguishes them. Someone familiar with those taxa can often ID them with no or little effort. Someone unfamiliar may find IDing those taxa about as easy as IDing a bunch of strangers in a room using a morphological key to distinguish them. The classic quote about keys is often accurate: “Keys are written by people who don’t need them, for people that can’t use them.”
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Some keys go as far as asking to consider or measure other plants from the population, to ID an individual plant. Circular reasoning at its best… 
(agreed, could make sense for clonal sp.)
Fascinating questions… alas! sliding off-topic
This makes sense even for non-clonal species when morphological or morphometrical differences exist, but can be obscured by individual variability. If supported genetically (sometimes by ploidy, sometimes cytometry), there is no problem with that. With mushrooms you often have to use microscopy when morphology itself is not determining enough.
The are more than enough morphological differences and differences in DNA are also not that small (even the ploidy differs!). In many well established and uncontroversial species of animals and plants the differences are smaller.
In such cases, how would one pick a second, third, fourth… individuals from “the same population” (is it really?) to look at… if specific assignment of each individual proves remarkably hard (karyo! cyto! DNA!) to ascertain in the first place? Just assume that because they occur in close proximity, they must be conspecific?
i mean you are getting towards the apparent splitter’s dream of making every individual a different species, publishing a lot of papers, and making it impossible to ever identify anything again.
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Nope. There are supposed mixed stands of Achlys triphylla and Achlys californica.
From Douglas, G.W., G.B. Straley, D.V. Meidinger, and J. Pojar (editors). 1998. Illustrated Flora of British Columbia. Volume 2: Dicotyledons (Balsaminaceae Through Cucurbitaceae).:
Recently some taxonomists (e.g., Williams 1993, Kartesz 1994) have recognized a second species (A. californica) in western North America. The latter is characterized by having a central leaflet with 6-8 lobes, whereas A. triphylla has a central leaflet with 3 lobes. Examination of herbaria material reveals that many sheets have mixed collections of plants with central leaflets with both 3 lobes (actually the 3-lobed ones usually have 2 additional, much smaller lobes, on the sides) and 7-9 lobes. This has also been noted in the field. At this time, we are not convinced that A. californica is worthy of recognition.
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I can’t figure out if people are intentionally missing the point I am trying to make, or if i am just doing an awful job communicating. The ‘splitting’ isn’t recognizing that there are a huge number of generically distinguishable entities within most species. No one disputes that. The ‘splitting’ is deciding every tiny genetic grouping should be elevated to species level in and of itself. My two kids shouldn’t be a totally new species of human because they are a genetically distinct grouping, and we shouldn’t split up Taraxacum into 500 undistinguishable entities at species level just because they are technically genetically distinct
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Well as i’ve said before i don’t thik the correct approach to endangered species composition is to define species so finely that nearly everything is then considered endangered. I want nearly every ecotype of every native species to be conserved too but i fear this is going to set us up for very bad backlash moving forward. Kind of like the awful Rapanos decision destroying a bunch of wetlands in the United States… the decision was horrible but the foundational law trying to connect wetlands to ‘navigable waterways’ instead of just saying wetlands should be protected set us up to fail as well.
100% agree. Also i 100% think research of finding clades is really valuable. I just don’t agree with the very ‘splitty’ definition of species vs subspecies we now have.
Whatever is being used to chop iNaturalist taxonomy to bits.