Table of Contents

One of the most helpful things you can do as a curator is to resolve taxonomic flags created by the community. In this tutorial, we describe how to respond to some of the most common taxon flag requests:

• Intro
• Section A. How to respond to a flag requesting to add a new taxon
• Section B. How to respond to a flag requesting to change the name of a taxon
• Section C. How to respond to a flag requesting to move a taxon
• Section D. How to respond to a flag requesting to split a taxon
• Section E. How to respond to a flag requesting to insert nodes, add hybrids, extinct taxa, or deviate

Intro

Unresolved flags should contain enough information for any curator to respond to it. If this is not the case, add a comment asking for the missing information. Exceptions are flags that require a decision to be made among curators (e.g. " Should we do X?"). In these cases, a good course of action is to add a comment mentioning a person who has been involved in creating or curating the taxon in question.

They can often be found by checking the history page linked to from the curation tab. Or if the content predates the history page launch in February 2022, then the bottom of the taxon edit page.

Many unresolved flags require no action other than resolving them. For example:

• If another curator dealt with the issue but forgot to resolve the flag
• If a flag is not a curation issue but something that must be addressed with functionality issue more appropriate fort the iNaturalist Forum or help@inaturalist.org
• If the flag requires more information from the requester and more than a month has passed since the information was asked for in the form of a comment

In these cases, simply add a comment explaining why and resolve the flag.