Why is the Western/Eastern Cattle Egret split taking so long?

Curators
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The Clements taxonomy update for 2023 was released on October 27th this year. Most of this update was finalized on iNaturalist by November 13th.

However, Cattle Egret (B. ibis) identifications from East Asia and Australia have not been automatically changed to Eastern Cattle Egret (B. coromandus). This is creating lots of confusion for users and causing many observations to lose research grade status.

What is taking iNaturalist staff so long to fix this issue? Other similar splits, such as the Intermediate Egret species complex were split on iNaturalist in early November.

See the following flags:
https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/635039
https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/639138

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The discussion on this flag touches on why swaps involving many, many observations may take a long time – and some controversy over whether they should be made at all.

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I closed, because this seems like it would be better handled by contacting via tags or DMs. The forum isn’t for discussing issues around specific taxon flags.

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