I suppose I may be a minority of one, but in the identify filters I check “Casual” so that I will see the casual (captive/cultivated) plants along with the wild plants. I realize that captive/cultivated plants are not the intended target of iNaturalist, and I understand the logic behind a binary wild/not wild toggle especially for users not familiar with the nomenclature of establishment means, let alone knowing whether a particular organism is native, introduced, naturalised, invasive, or managed. I do wish there was an “advanced upload settings” toggle in the iNaturalist app that would expose establishmentMeans as a set of checkboxes (radio buttons?) for those who can make that determination.
I think this is near the crux of the issue. iNaturalist is focused on wild populations and on engaging users with wild nature, not cultivated nature. The users who download the app often just want to know what that plant/bug/creature is - wild or not. My perception is that marking an organism captive/cultivated decreases the likelihood of identification, effectively downgrades the observation to a junior status. Which is why elsewhere I noted that this seems to be a question of whether, going forward, iNaturalist will evolve into a “big tent” that brings a sense of inclusion to those working in cultivated/captive plants.
I know the hope is that Seek will fill that need, but at present Seek does not provide a fallback to suggested identifications when Seek fails to identify a plant, limiting the usefulness and sending a user such as myself back to iNaturalist. Seek also does not meet my instructional use where I watch over what my students are photographically collecting and provide guidance and correction. Seek is perhaps useful for that instructor who adds dozens of students with dozens of observations but has only attempted 53 some identifications.
iNaturalist is not always used in ways that may have been originally intended, the users are also making decisions on how to use the app. I went through identifying a series of coconut trees on Guam from 2015 that were, for the most part, identified only to kingdom plantae as a part of some sort of Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle documentation effort. Their intent was not identification but documentation using observation fields. I did not see any that were marked cultivated/captive, though some were fairly clearly in the cultivated category. For those users, identification and wild/not wild was simply irrelevant and the couple users I checked had zero identifications of their one and only species: Cocos nucifera.
That sounds very useful to those of us who often work in a mix of wild and captive/cultivated plants, Ethnobotany always involves a mix of both, with both of equal value and importance. Thanks!