There’s a funny little graph in topic Tomatoes, berries, fruits, and vegetables - discuss! that also fits well with how confidently I’ve done identification over time.
ID confidence is a rollercoaster:
- First Observation: Let me pay extra attention to this one
- Next Ten: I know exactly what that is!
- Another Nearby: Saw this 10 times before! click & misidentify
Not the best feeling, but it definitely reinforces open-mindedness to:
- Is this a different species or just a variation?
- Confident but could be one I don’t know
Most of the identifiers whom I admire and seek for help seem to have this cautious confidence.
Regarding ID/withdraw, I think withdraw is helpful to other users. Your observations are your own, of course, but seeing someone struggling with an observation would encourage me to:
- Look more carefully, maybe tricky, a hybrid, etc.
- Leave a note if there’s an easy way to tell them apart
With delete, there’s no history of the struggle to ID and the assumption is that the observer just knows/agrees with the ID.
Lastly, the iNat suggestions, books, keys, etc. can exaggerate how “expert” people appear on iNat. I’ve seen this with in-person naturalist events like a bioblitz. Respected book authors and top iNat identifiers don’t just point to every single living thing and name the species, sometimes it’s just genus or family. They also have to look some things up and can make mistakes, just like everybody else.