Taxonomic Swaps: Are there instructions or is there advice on how to handle them?

For example, I just received this notice on my Dashboard:


It is based on a paper from way back in 2002 (which I find puzzling) and gives me the option to update my content. Should I wait to see if this might be controversial? Or perhaps there is only one plant gall guru so I should go ahead and click?

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Unless you have opted out of such changes, your observations have updated automatically. The swap has already been committed and I think the Update your content will just show you where it’s applicable to you.

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What do you know… I didn’t even think to check if my observations had already been changed. Thanks. It looked like there was an action to take, but apparently not.

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Well it makes sense to think that selecting that will actually do something. I think it’s more to help you check and see if you actually like how it implemented? Sometimes things go a little wonky. If you don’t want your observations to automatically update, you can uncheck this feature in your settings. If you do this though, make sure you are updating your content manually to what you think it should be or else you might end up with inactive taxa but nothing to replace it.

Screen Shot 2020-06-11 at 10.34.52 PM

Reading the fine print there I see that you would need to update changes from an ambiguous split, for example, so the button isn’t completely useless. You can read more about all the confusing details here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide#changes

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