'Semispecies' in iNat

[rjq]

I appreciate that this doesn't seem to be allowed in iNat, but there are some circumstances where a 'semispecies' level would be very useful. As an example, Northern Flicker is a species-level taxon in iNat. Yellow-shafted Flicker comprises two subspecies of Northern Flicker, while Red-shafted Flicker comprises three subspecies. Yellow-shafted Flicker can be easily distinguished from Red-shafted Flicker, but the two subspecies of Yellow-shafted Flicker can only be distinguished from each other by breeding range. Many (most) observations of Yellow-shafted Flicker in iNat are currently mislabelled as Colaptes auratus auratus when they should be Colaptes auratus luteus on range - as flagged recently by @jlayman - however, correcting this will lead to many observations reverting to Northern Flicker. This is unsatisfactory and confusing for observers who wish to record their sighting as Yellow-shafted Flicker. eBird deals with this straighforwardly, by allowing observers to record as 'Yellow-shafted Flicker Colaptes auratus auratus/luteus', but this option is not allowed in iNat. A 'semispecies' taxonomic level would solve this, and would be taxonomically accurate, as the two subspecies are each others closest relatives. Another option could be to suppress luteus in iNat? This is not the only example - Yellow-billed Kite, Burchell's Coucal and Grey-backed Camaroptera cause similar problems in Africa. There doesn't seem to be a straightforward way of dealing with these issues while maintaining user-friendliness? Apologies if this has been raised before

[Charlie Hohn]

for the time being, consider the 'Holding Bin' fields as described in https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/inaturalist/holding$20bin%7Csort:date/inaturalist/nSXEUKwKvSI/A_ioqSC9AQAJ . That's what most of the community seems to have settled on at least for now.

[Patrick Alexander]

I think the general solution to this issue is to allow identications as "this taxon or that taxon". In this case, I'm assuming what you want to do is identify observations as being either the taxon "Colaptes auratus auratus" or the taxon "Colaptes auratus luteus", rather than identifying them as a third taxon called "Colaptes auratus auratus / luteus". In general, I think better options for handling uncertainty in ID are needed, but I think taxa should be based on taxonomy rather than on how easily things can be identified in a particular context.