Woah – I hadn’t considered this before and now I’m wondering why I hadn’t lol. It’s like something I’ve heard. Living data vs. Stable data
- iNaturalist wants “Living Data”: The platform is designed for continuous learning. If a “Research Grade” observation is exported to GBIF and locked down, it stops interacting with the community. Keeping the “Needs ID” flag active on iNaturalist ensures that if a world expert logs in two years from now, they can still refine or correct that identification.
- GBIF wants “Stable Data”: The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) requires data to pass a strict data-quality threshold before it can be ingested into scientific models. For iNaturalist data, that threshold is the “Research Grade” status (requiring a 2/3 community consensus)
By definition on iNaturalist, an observation cannot be “Research Grade” and “Needs ID” at the same time. [1]
Once a consensus is reached (e.g., two people agree it is a Monarch butterfly), the status automatically flips to Research Grade. The “Needs ID” filter is obviously a tool for identifiers to find new observations. If Research Grade observations stayed in the “Needs ID” pool, the identification queues would become completely overwhelmed with millions of common, easily identified species.
Personally I just take time to look through the RG observations as well, what were you thinking?