Taxon split that didn't split alongside IDs that did split?

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/13068100

bahianus was split in the Caribbean and is now tractus. in the above observation, there are 3 bahianus IDs. 2 split to tractus, but 1 didn’t. why?

You can turn off automatic taxon updates, it probably affects such situations.

So why is that even an option? This sort of taxonomic curation is essential to running a site like this. Taxonomy changes, whether a user is aware of it or not. What advantage is there in allowing users to micromanage something like this.

Really hoping for a response from iNat staff on this.

I think the logic is the same as opting out of the taxon ID (although personally I’m not a huge fan of that either). If you don’t trust other people to make the right taxon changes, you can keep the old name (albeit inactive). In the end, the community can override it so it doesn’t have to be a detriment to the community. In my experience this is pretty rare (rarer than opting out of taxon ID) and not an issue because an inactive name is overridden.

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If you check the forum, there’re people that ara totally against their ids being changed even if taxonomy updates, I can’t answer why, but that’s the choice they’re given.

in the example that I linked to, the observation was stuck at genus-level until I added my ID… that was how I stumbled upon it. so I wouldn’t say this option has no effect. it actually effects everyone who interacts with that observation, in particular the user who uploaded it. the classification of their own observation is being held hostage by the whims of whomever decides to add their ID to it (i.e. whether they opt in or out of taxon updates). this seems to be the polar opposite of the rationale behind the “opt-out of community ID” option. agency is being taken away from the user’s own observation, versus that agency being retained solely by the user.

Maybe I’m not correctly remembering then. Did you try asking the user if they meant to do that? It’s not easy to find content like this after a taxon change, so it could be an oversight (which is why I made this request). I think ultimately the problem in a lot of cases is the lack of identifiers, because the system is designed to give the community the last say.

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Hi, I’m the user who created that ID. At the time I made that ID, I had automatic taxon updating turned off. I did turn it on a year or two ago, but my previous taxon update IDs were not grandfathered in. Recent taxon swap IDs of mine will automatically update, however my older ones still would have to be manually updated.

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