Heartily agree regarding “professional” vs “amateur”. It’s a very blurry line between the two. Inevitably the most knowledgeable people out there are the ones motivated by love and dedication to documenting and understanding the natural world; something other than money. The root/essence of “amateur” is to do something “for the love of it”. Such a pure and noble calling. As a “professional”, I remind myself how lucky I am to get paid for some of what I love to do, and I strive to be worthy of being an “amateur” in that purest sense as well.
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I have argued that ‘Citizen Scientist’ should be replaced by ‘amateur scientist’, mainly for the reasons you have given. Apparently now it is seen as a pejorative term, but I think us amateurs need to reclaim it!
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A system for establishing reputation, that allowed knowledgable people to confer reputation to others they recognized as knowledgable, would benefit everyone. I suppose there would be ways to game that, too, but I think it’d still be a marked improvement over the current system.
That has been frequently discussed, and rejected by iNat.
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I’m not nearly that dedicated, passionate, or noble.
Well, shoot, now I feel like I have to change my iNat profile text from “rankest of amateurs”. Maybe “filthy casual”, to borrow a gaming term? 
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Just to clarify, the site has clearly and repeatedly said they will not implement any kind of reputation system based on external factors (education, profession etc) or one where users can designate others as experts to grant them more ‘power’.
While I understand there are no current plans to implement it, they have not outright rejected a system where your contributions to the site are built up into some kind of reputation system. The site has stated should they ever decide to initiate some kind of reputation system, it will solely be based on contributions to the site.
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“on your terms, independent of a built in” … This is exactly the type of observer bias I’d rather avoid though. This sort of determination should be data driven in order to improve the UX of new and casual users. I have no business vetting someone outside the biota I’m familiar with. That’s why I should be able to depend on the built in mechanism.
If we say it’s a problem, but don’t substantiate it with data; when you say ‘look it up yourself’ you’re asking each user to repeat the same set of speed bump tasks and that’s antithetical to the value of community ID.
These don’t seem like good solutions to the problem being posed.
But. We do, each want to learn to ID that for ourselves. What I am unfamiliar with I may fave or follow, but I won’t ID.
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I do not think there is any specificneed for that. Well, maybe beginners might benefit from that. It is very easy to check the reputation of the leaderboard or whoever. Just to tag them when in problem or ask for a comment/explanation or any specific question onthe species/species group the person is on the leaderboard for. The real ones will answer. Even in the cases when the answer is negative - when the person in question does not work with the species in the region you are interested in.
I hear that, but I rely on agreeing IDs to help me learn. An overabundance of agreeing IDs may just reflect someone’s “game” that they play with iNaturalist. If you are looking at, for instance, plants that need ID for IDs you can confirm, as I have lately, you are helping the observation reach research grade.
I have a hard time believing that there are users motivated by increasing their numbers, but if that’s helping me learn by confirming or disputing my IDs, I’m still grateful
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I hate to burst a bubble but I wrote that long before our interaction. To comment without explanation is not to comment responsibly. I appreciated your response after having to ask for it.
thanks
I had to laugh at “grouchy person” - @sedgequeen you are one of the most upbeat iNaturalists going! Keep doing what you’re doing. You lead by example.
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Well, no - you rely on both agreeing and disagreeing IDs to help you learn. And we often learn most from our mistakes, right? All disagreeing IDs start out as leading IDs, and will become improving IDs when enough people agree with them. If someone has over 95% agreeing IDs, that means they hardly ever disgree with anyone, and rarely provide the first ID on any observations.
I think this is a red herring and completely misses the point. Making lots of reliable leading/improving IDs is almost impossible to achieve by accident. By contrast, it’s very, very easy to make lots of reliable agreeing IDs by simply going along with what other people do (and there’s nothing wrong with that). But not all agreeing IDs are made equal. Some require just as much knowledge and experience as making a reliable leading/improving ID. The problem is that the leaderboards do not make this distinction. So it’s very easy to inadvertently end up at the top of a leaderboard without any gaming of the system whatsoever. I think this sometimes makes the leaderboards less useful than they perhaps could be.
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While you undoubtedly make some valid points here, I am struggling to understand why you find it “sad” that somebody might ID something several others have already IDed, or exactly what “valuable space” is being taken up. (After all, a web page will just keep stretching ad infinitum, no matter whether there’s 5 IDs, 50, or 5,000! If you meant server space, I can’t imagine iNat is running out of that. An ID surely only takes up a few bytes.) I can’t get my head around why more IDs wouldn’t be better. Sure, it’s not a particularly advantageous use of a IDer’s time to add the 21st ID to something 20 others agree upon, but as long as it’s a genuine ID rather (than a mindless agree) then 21 IDs cannot be worse than 20. At what point do you feel further IDs start to become “sad” and a “waste of valuable space”? A while ago I noticed a lemur that had 7 incorrect IDs (all in agreement with each other) and was able to point out that it was another superficially similar but not closely related species. So several agreeing IDs is by no means a guarantee of accuracy.
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Love the “Pokemon Go, but with nature”. I’m going to use that often. 
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HI
I use iNaturalist for two purposes - one to add to the scientific dataset and to keep my own records.
So, a genus level ID is not helpful.
What is really useful is if I do get it wrong and someone can correct the ID to another species. Some mistakes are loading up the wrong photo when doing multiple enteries, and so are clear mistakes, through rushing or just getting it wrong. And, I am really grateful when these errors are corrected.
Some species are hard to ID though photogrpahs, but additonal features seen int he field cannot be taken into account, so this does become very much a photo ID system, which is porbably safer than descriptions. But, it can result in someone changing th ID to Genus as the photo does not show the full ID features seen in the field.
I have had identifications changed to Genus where probably the identified from the photograph they cannot be sure that it is that species, but that becomes unfair slightly on the observer. They change it to Genus without comment, which is a little unfair. I then simply opt out of community ID to keep the record as a species fro my onw personal recording.
My comment is really, if you cannot be sure it is species A from the photo, and cannot be sure it is species B, why change it to Genus? If you are 100% sure it is not species A, then say so, but also say what it might eb but cannot be sure - if that makes sense? There are often reasons why it is Sepcies A - because that is the only on of that Genbus foudn at the site.
I think commenting on Genus level changes is important, but if you unsure from the photo what it is and cannot say it is another species, I would refrain from changing it, unless the ID is to the wrong Genus in the first place.
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A genus level ID can be helpful to you because it can get your observation seen by someone who knows how to ID the species of that genus. Some specialist identifiers search only in a narrow set of taxa.
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I agree. If I take the time to confirm at an observation in a species I follow, I give my opinion.
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Genus ID is not helpful - if the person changing is only doing it because they are unsure from the photo, it is helpful if they know it is not that species, but cannot be sure which it is , but in fairness to the observer they should say this and not change it to Genus without comment - I have had it with a Damsefly record, no comment, and only two of that Genus are found in the UK, one not at that site, and the record has been accepted by the regional Dragonfly recorder on iRecord.