Platform(s), such as mobile, website, API, other: web
URLs (aka web addresses) of any pages, if relevant: -
Description of need:
A common type of curator flag is “Add new species X” that is missing from inat tree, iNat dogmatically still relies on 2012 COL checklist which is far different than COL checklist of modern days and thus the recourse to create curator flags and increase their workload which could just have been avoided by fixing the code.
I would be even more supportive of just ending the ability of users to import taxa from external sources like this one. It was useful in the earlier days of iNaturalist when its internal taxonomy was still very incomplete. But now I think the utility has passed the point of diminishing returns for Curator time and effort.
I’m confident that having this updated would be a massive help to diverse users who continually are looking to expand and improve the taxonomy database, many of these folks are not curators. Those and other users are often left with the only option to raise a flag and ask a curator - which often is a simplistic taxa. Personally, i’d prefer to see the valuable skills and specialism of many curators being applied to addressing broader taxonomy changes and updates (like reflecting revisions) not straightforward basics!
Following from jdmore, I’m sure elsewhere on the forum we (various stakeholders) have had discussion(s) about whether the external name importer feature has any merit, or indeed should be deactivated. On this, I am absolutely adamant that at least for arthropods where i’ve likely added a few thousand taxon names myself (both by importer and manually) that the automated import feature still could have great utility - IF it gets updated.
As of 2026, there’s nearly a million more taxon names on the Catalog of Life database [i.e. on core COL26.5] beyond that absurdly outdated 2012 version. Many of us have regular interactions via taxon flags with enthusiastic users who are not curators but continually want to help efforts to build in or update taxon names. Even if just a curator responsibility to “add new taxa”, i find that it’s so much quicker and easier to use the importer to first pull in the core name information, rather than the cumbersome many clicks and box filling of the manual system.
As it stands, only a fraction of the taxon names now in the modern Catalog of Life database can be directly imported, and worse the ‘legacy’ nature of the 2012 database still freely allows many outdated combinations to be pulled in without checks, or old misspellings added that have since been purged, etc.
I agree that updating would be best, but if that isn’t possible, it seems like just removing the CoL 2012 import might be preferable to leaving it at this point.
I paused for other view - the question directed at jdmore, but now i go for reply.
With the importer being so outdated then yes, users are absolutely importing taxa (combinations, misspelling etc) that they shouldn’t. That’s not a reason to delink the system entirely, it can be functional with problems minimised by an update to a modern importer.
I’m sorry, this is obvious to me for an age and i’m increasingly angry about any lack of update
Essentially yes, but I do hear the feedback that the functionality is still helpful for curators in some groups, so I’d be in favor of keeping it but making it accessible only to curators. But of course, either way, we should be using the most current possible sources, which COL 2012 no longer is.