also, as has been brought up multiple times, the flags for taxonomy are part of the same flagging system as the flags for moderation, including possible bad user behavior. It makes sense that it isn’t easy to just peruse the site for problems and drama or to be able to easily find flags otherwise involving harassment and such. But taxonomy is a different issue and there is no reason to ever hide taxonomic changes from any established user and if there is an effort to do so it is another sign of the broader issues that i keep bringing up here.
Hey folks, I’ll note again…
I would respectfully suggest that your time and effort would be better spent promoting and/or suggesting improvements to that feature request (or maybe proposing another one specifically for subscription/notification of taxon flags), instead of repeating the same complaints here when a viable solution has already been proposed.
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well, it’s two years old and nothing has happened. Staff hasn’t addressed it, and it doesn’t deal with all of the problems listed in this post. So yes, people are posting here too. I think people will continue to ‘complain’ about taxonomy until there is a better system. You could merge the threads i guess, but i find that the ‘feature request’ functionality of this forum isn’t actually very good and i personally feel that it’s better to discuss things outside of it.
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but then maybe flags should also have a dedicated box in the side column - as the Forum does. ‘Here we are, come and have a look?’
Or right at the bottom - where Blog and Help are hidden away ?
If we know it is there, we can choose to poke and prod.
If we don’t know it exists somewhere - we won’t bother to hunt it down.
The feature request section may not work perfectly (and I understand that you feel that the people deciding whether to approve feature requests are biased against you), but it seems like posting about a particular concrete, actionable measure that builds on an existing feature request would send a clear message to staff that it is something that users still see a need for – i.e., the chances that it might be translated into something that would actually improve the current situation are better than if it gets buried a general discussion thread that staff may or may not be closely reading.
(I understand that complaining can sometimes be a way to work through things one is bothered by, but it can become unproductive and rehashing the same complaints over and over rarely makes the upset person feel much better, and they are more likely to be listened to by others if they are open to trying to find a way forward – I say this as someone who has been the upset person stuck in such a scenario often enough.)
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This is part of what I was trying to get around to. I agree that the request to have a way to be notified of proposed changes seems great, but is there any way we can make that more likely to happen at this stage? It’s already “under review” (and has been, for a while).
Maybe we could brainstorm other changes which might be easier to implement? Would something as simple as having “flags” in one of the drop-downs (under “More” or “Community” perhaps) be helpful enough to even be worth bringing up?
Or perhaps it would be helpful if there were some way to separate moderation-related flags (“this is inappropriate behavior” or “this is a copyright violation”) from stuff that affects the structure of the site (name changes, taxonomy changes)? But I haven’t fully developed that thought.
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That would definitely be a more constructive and productive approach to this topic.
That’s actually good news - that means that the developers have taken notice and are seriously considering the request. Only about 10% of Feature Requests accepted for posting get to that stage. As the site continues to bring on more software development staff and reorganize their workflow, I’m guessing things will accelerate. Otherwise, the best the rest of us can do is continue to comment on the Feature Request topic itself. Comments in topics like the one we are in here are going to fly under Staff’s radar for the most part.
Maybe, and that might be quicker to implement. Personally, to directly address the issue raised by this topic, my suggestion would be a Feature Request similar to the existing request about taxon changes - allow anyone to subscribe to (e.g., be notified of) flags on taxa of their choice (whether broad or narrow), much the same way people can now subscribe to observations of taxa and/or places. (I’m not going to submit such a request myself, since my Moderator status would allow it to circumvent the normal review process). No guarantees it would be accepted for posting - it might run up against the current hiatus on requests involving the notification system, since that is actively being redesigned. But I think it’s worth a try.
That is already possible to do with the filters at https://www.inaturalist.org/flags. What I don’t know is whether those filters are available to non-curators (since I am always logged in as one). If they aren’t, that might also be a good topic for a Feature Request.
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A non-curator is unlikely to know that this page even exists – it is not linked on the homepage or anywhere in the menu bar/header/sidebar that I can find. So this is another potential barrier to user awareness about taxon flags.
(I mean, it is probably not a bad thing that a page with flags for inappropriate content is a bit hidden for regular users, but I can’t think of a good reason why possible future taxon changes should be difficult to find.)
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Not only flags, but taxon changes too are not easy to locate and selectively browse. (They are not the same: not all flags deal with taxon changes, not all taxon changes happen after a flag)
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Agreed, and we have already identified two possible solutions to that problem. Now we just need someone to submit a Feature Request for one or both of them.
Yeah, after this whole conversation, I just realized that taxon changes are a completely separate thing from flags, which is not intuitively obvious. Individual taxon changes are a bit easier to find (they are linked directly on the taxon page in the section on taxonomy), but the page that collects all of the taxon changes is just as obscure (inaturalist.org/taxon_changes).
My guess is that this system was pieced together bit by bit, and so it makes sense to people who are used to it, but it’s fairly opaque otherwise.
Before coming up with a feature request, it might be helpful to know how curators access the tags and taxon changes pages (which appear to be designed for curators, but anyone can see them). Is there a link in the interface somewhere? Do you just have to know it’s there?
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Curators get a Flags widget on their dashboard that shows the 5 most recently submitted flags (of any kind) and a link to the flags page.
There are no direct links to the taxon changes page. One either knows where it is, or can click back to it from an individual taxon change window.
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yes i certainly get stuck that way sometimes, but my point here isn’t to complain just to make myself feel better or irritate others, it’s to call attention to a problem. I haven’t found the feature requests to be effective in that, but if others want to proposes these sorts of features i’ll certainly ‘vote’ for them.
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I certainly like the suggestions so far. I believe more transparency and accessibility will do good for the iNaturalist community.
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Even as a curator I sort of have to go out of my way to keep up with flags on taxa I’m interested in. Like let’s say I’m curious why the taxonomy is the way it is on a particular species, I’ll go to the taxon page of the species and click on the “Curation” drop-down menu to see if there’s any old flags on it. But sometimes the flag discussing it isn’t on the species but on the genus (or a complex or another level) so I have to go check there as well.
There is a way to do this search from the Flags page, but it’s difficult to access. Here’s how the flag page appears by default to me:
I have to do some URL modification (appending ?flaggable_type=Taxon&taxon_name=Willows&taxon_id=53453) to reveal a secret additional option to filter for the flags on a taxon and its daughter taxa:
For taxon changes, when I wanted to find the taxon change pages for these changes:
the most efficient way I could think of for finding the pages was to find an old observation of one of the new species (e.g. view observations and sort by oldest) and click through to the taxon change from the link on the auto-updated identifications.
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The two categories actually work in concert, and might make more sense if you think about them this way:
- Flags are requests for action - either to curate taxa (or places or checklists) or to moderate other content.
- Taxon Changes are one possible action a curator can take in response to a request for taxon curation.
There is a way to do this without having to manually modify the URL:
- In the Content Type box, select Taxon.
- Click the Filter Button. This adds the Taxon box underneath, where you can start typing the taxon of interest (and also narrows down the filter results to just taxon flags).
- Type and select the taxon of interest, then click the Filter button again.
- Adjust any of the other filter options as needed.
That is one good way to do it. Two other ways that also work currently:
- Go to the taxon page of one of the taxa involved, click on the Taxonomy tab, then click on Taxon Changes. (if none are listed, you are still taken to the Taxon Changes page where you can try other filters)
- Bookmark https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes in your browser, and go directly to that page to use the filters.
Obviously I agree that more direct ways to get to both kinds of content would be a good improvement, as already discussed in earlier posts.
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There is a bug with the ‘Taxon’ list item, sometimes the Taxon box does not appear underneath. Maybe browser-dependent… Reloading the page fixes it.
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I followed the link as a non-curator. It came up with “Inappropriate” and “Other” checked by default, and “Spam” and “Copyright Infringement” unchecked by defalut.
The difficulty is that I do not see any way to search for flags based on taxonomy. The forms are only for flagger’s name, author’s name, reasons, and resolver’s name, and dropdowns for content type and whether it is resolved. If I choose “taxon” as the content type, the new dropdown that appears is only for whether the content was deleted.
As described above, even with @jdmore 's helpful link, possible future taxon changes are still difficult to find.
Thank you. That one has the functionality I was hoping for: type in “Ancestor taxon” and see the taxon changes for all descendant of that taxon. I can pick “no” from the “Committed” dropdown and see the ones that we might actually be able to do something about (because they aren’t a done deal yet).
And that wouldn’t occur to everyone, even if we know about other ways of tweaking the URLs.
Okay, trying that replaced the “Deleted” dropdown with a taxon form.
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Glad to know that the instructions worked.
Okay, for the purposes of moving things along, I created a feature request for just adding links to the taxon changes and flags pages. I made a cute little mock-up. (…it does make the menu look more cluttered, but also, isn’t that what a “More” menu is for?)
It is currently pending, I will add a link when (or if, haha), it is approved.
…please don’t make me regret getting involved in this conversation. 
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