Like I said in the original post, blocking is not something we want to implement, but there have been some unpleasant situations where it’s been necessary and, as I’ve said elsewhere, we shouldn’t be asking people to divulge traumatic events or relationships to us so we can judge whether or not they’re severe enough for us to approve a block.
I agree being blocked or rejected here or on another platform can feel like a gut punch, especially if you believe there was no transgression on your part. The way I think about this is that iNat is an incredibly diverse community where everyone has their own tolerances and sometimes one’s tolerance is breached. If you interact with enough people on iNat you’ll run into someone who for whatever reason doesn’t want to hear from you and I would try to not take it personally (easier said than done, I know) unless a pattern starts to form. Then you might consider what you could do to change the way you communicate, and ask for feedback from some trusted folks. I’m also hoping that making muting more prominent will help people choose that option if they’re just tired of getting notifications or something.
What I think could be helpful is iNat messaging you every 6 months or so and remind you that you have blocked X number of accounts and you amy want to reconsider those blocks.
As @charlie said, this is a bit tricky. There’s no designation for “expert” on iNat, and curatorship doesn’t necessarily mean you’re an expert identifier. Being a curator is about resolving flags and following the policies in the Curator Guide.
What would be cool (but not easy, I understand) is to see more experts work/collaborate on ID resources that people can use, similar to what these fly identifiers and others are doing, at least for commonly seen things. That would empower the community to help maintain data quality at a larger scale.