Show taxon Source on taxon page

Whenever a taxon is added by hand, or a taxon_change is made, the curator is supposed to cite a source. But as far as I can tell, the only way to see the entered source is to attempt to edit the taxon (meaning that only curators can get to this). And the URL of the source is displayed as text, not a clickable link. Can we display the source somewhere on the taxon page, perhaps under the Taxonomy tab?

(I edited your title slightly.)

Adding a screenshot – this is the Source as it appears when you are on the Edit Taxon page:

I agree, it would be nice if this were visible to everyone.

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I would love to see this information. Great idea.

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I would actually oppose this. It is only one click away, and from a curating perspective at least I would argue what is more important is how the taxa aligns (where relevant) to the assigned reference in the taxonomy framework documentation.

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It’s one click away if you can get to it at all, but not everyone has access to the Edit Taxon page. On the other hand, the Taxon Framework Relationship can be viewed by anyone, but it doesn’t always show the source when there is a deviation. And even if someone has opted to type a source into the TFR, it doesn’t necessarily match the source on the Taxon Edit page.

For example, here’s one with no source or reason given for the deviation:

Here’s one that does name a source:

But as it turns out, that source is the reason for the deviation, but not the actual source listed for the taxon name on the Edit Taxon page:

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I understand that, I am just not sure I can come up with a use case for knowing or seeing that information outside of doing curator tasks.

Here’s the example that prompted me to suggest this. A well known group of butterflies were recently moved to a new genus, and I wanted to find the reasoning behind this and hopefully read the paper. The only way I could get to that was using my curator privileges, and this wasn’t a group that I am actively curating.

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That information should have been in the taxon changes.

Are taxon changes visible to non-curators? As a curator, I’m not sure what can and can’t be seen.

Yes I believe they are

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Yes, visible to everyone. Besides getting a dashboard notification when your observations/IDs/subscriptions are affected by taxon changes, every ID added as a result of a taxon change will have a link to the taxon change as well:

image

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In that case this changes isn’t as important, but then raises a related question: why does iNat collect source information on taxons, if it is never displayed?

As a curator who sometimes adds taxons not already there and not auto-importable (usually insects), I try to always include a source. But non curators will never be able to see those.