Interesting - I wasn't expecting Clements to split that! (And thanks for the flag - I hadn't been aware previously that the 2018 Clements update had been publicly released!)

(Can't do it now, but I'll work on updating iNat's bird taxonomy all at once to follow the 2018 update in a day or two.)

If you'd like to go ahead and make some of the common name changes, that would be great - I've already changed a few names (Gray Jay -> Canada Jay, Black-shouldered Kite -> Black-winged Kite, Australian Kite -> Black-shouldered Kite, and White-eyed Duck -> Hardhead), and at least a couple others have already had the new Clements names as the default for a while (Philippine Eagle and the two striped swallows), but there should still be a lot left to do. Thanks for helping!

@chlorophilia says:

Melanitta deglandi is the North American bird, yet most North American species are currently identified as Melanitta fusca. Although I have curator status I do not know how best to resolve this one.
--
Oh, I see the previous thread addresses this issue. It would seem that it is a burden placed on the community to identify all our North American observations as Melanitta deglandi? iNaturalist is still claiming this taxon is native to Canada, though...

Scott or Max are the only 2 who can fix this. They need to create an atlas for each species and then I suspect the easiest option is for them to delete the deglandi taxa record there now, recreate it and run a switch.

There is no real value in going and adding id's to try and move the records, you will need a corps of people to do it.

The reason it is not worth pursuing adding ID's is it just would take finding too many people to do them. I'm actually the top observer of this species on the site. An observation of mine like this one https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/18810372
would require finding 12 people to add the revised ID of deglandi (fewer if you could get the original id'ers in there to do it). Better to let the automated process play out.

I'm not sure why this one got missed when the Clements 2018 updates were applied. I've directed this to Scott and Max to look at and hopefullt resolve.

@loarie @maxkirsch

I feel like something has gone wrong here? Shouldn't M. deglandi be left as inactive until the split is actually committed? Some people are putting in identifications of M. deglandi, which are being treated as disagreements with the current taxon (M. fusca senso lato).

There's another example of problems with these pending changes that are not getting processed.

This is the new taxa that Mallard apparently will become after the Mexican Duck split:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/850855-Anas-platyrhynchos

Apparently I am the top identifier of this new inactive species, even though I've never entered an ID using it. What seems to be happening is identifications entered as Domestic Mallard are somehow showing up here. Goodness knows what they will become when this one is activated.

Can i echo Reuven's request and please get this run. If there is some work or other holding it up that I or anyone can help with, please let us know, I will find time to do it.

I don't know how the data feed works or if it will get fixed etc - but we are now sending bad data to GBIF as well:

https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/1986603155 etc

https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/340552

Please, please can we either get this run or the future one made inactive.

So Melanitta fusca ssp. deglandi becomes Melanitta deglandi
and Melanitta fusca ssp. fusca and Melanitta fusca ssp. stejnegeri stay with Melanitta fusca?
Where's the boundary between the species ranges relative to the Melanitta fusca (sensu lato) range? https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/7032-Melanitta-fusca

just to be clear the steps here are:
1) split the Melanitta fusca (sensu lato) IUCN range into Melanitta fusca (sensu stricto) and Melanitta deglandi portions
@jwidness made a great tutorial on how to do this here https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/taxon-range-map-editing/146
(anyone can do this)
2) create an inactive Melanitta fusca (sensu stricto) unless it already exists
(any curator can do this)
3) add the new taxon ranges to Melanitta deglandi and Melanitta fusca (sensu stricto) respectively
(any curator can do this)
4) atlas Melanitta deglandi and Melanitta fusca (sensu stricto) unless they already exist
(any curator can do this)
5) create a draft taxon split with input Melanitta fusca (sensu lato) and outputs Melanitta deglandi and Melanitta fusca (sensu stricto)
(any curator can do this)
6) create a draft taxon swap for Melanitta fusca ssp. deglandi to Melanitta deglandi
(any curator can do this)
7) move Melanitta fusca ssp. fusca and Melanitta fusca ssp. stejnegeri from Melanitta fusca (sensu lato) to Melanitta fusca (sensu stricto)
(only taxon curator can do this)
8) commit the taxon swap
(only taxon curator can do this)
9) commit the taxon swap
(only taxon curator can do this)

If someone can answer my initial questions above I'm happy to do all of this
But if any curator wants to try steps 1-6 happy to answer any questions / provide more detailed how-tos

Melanitta fusca ssp. stejnegeri goes with deglandi.

IUCN has implemented a three-way version of this split, and updated its range maps, which could be imported directly. Only complication is that the new IUCN range maps for deglandi and stejnegeri would need to be combined, the new IUCN map for fusca is correct.

Have uploaded the range for fusca ss, haven’t done deglandi

Clement's is splitting deglandi and stejnegeri

https://ebird.org/news/2019-ebird-taxonomy-update

Alright this has been going on long enough and I want to get this settled properly. There are still some things left that curators can do (atalsing and range maps). I am planning to do this soon, and am posting below partially for my own reference. But if anyone wants to help, just let me know that you are doing so. Here's the situation:

Clements 2017:
Melanitta fusca, with three subspecies

fusca of Europe
stejgneri of Asia
deglandi of North America

Clements 2018:
Melanitta fusca
Melanitta deglandi with two subspecies

stejgneri
deglandi

Clements 2019:
Melanitta fusca
Melanitta deglandi
Melanitta stejgneri

M. fusca sensu 2017 is still active:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/7032-Melanitta-fusca

The three subspecies sensu 2017 are also still active:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/512853-Melanitta-fusca-fusca
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/512852-Melanitta-fusca-stejnegeri
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/336863-Melanitta-fusca-deglandi

A bunch of other taxa have been improperly marked as active. If whoever did this is reading this, please don't do this in the future. It is better to have an out-of-date taxonomic concept than to have multiple active taxa representing the same concept.

Active taxon for M. deglandi sensu 2018:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/827373-Melanitta-deglandi

And active taxa for both subspecies sensu 2018:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/827423-Melanitta-deglandi-deglandi
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/827422-Melanitta-deglandi-stejnegeri

Final taxa that we want to have:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/144233-Melanitta-stejnegeri
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/7032-Melanitta-fusca
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/827373-Melanitta-deglandi

So what needs to happen is:

Taxon split of 827373 into 827373 and 144233 based on atlases
Taxon split of 7032 into 7032, 144233 and 827373, based on atlases
Taxon swap of 512853 into 7032
Taxon swaps of 512852 and 827422 into 144233
Taxon swaps of 336863 and 827423 into 827373
Make sure all taxa except 2033, 144233 and 827373 are properly marked as inactive, and that any other taxon changes have been cancelled.

To do:

Atlas all three species on the final taxon page
Range maps for all three species on the final taxon page
Create drafts for all the taxon changes described above (some may already exist).
Double-check everything!
Get taxon changes committed.

All three species have updated range maps on IUCN. Here are notes for making the atlases.

7032:
All of Europe including Turkey (but not Cyprus), Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia from Yamal-nenets to western edge

144233:
Russia from Krasnoyarsk to eastern edge, China, Mongolia, Japan, NK, SK, Taiwan, Aleutians West County (AK, US), Nome County (AK, US)

827373:
Cuba, Bermuda, Mexico, United States, Canada, St. Pierre & Miquelon, Greenland, Iceland, Kamchatka (RU), Chukot (RU), Japan

The following areas have overlap, from eBird records:

deglandi/fusca
Iceland, UK, Denmark, Sweden, Norway

fusca/stejgneri
Iceland, Ireland, UK, Denmark, Poland, Norway, Sweden

stejgneri/deglandi
Japan, Chukot (RU), Kamchatka (RU), Aleutians West County (AK, US), Nome County (AK, US)

Of these, Nome County is probably the only location where multiple species are expected. Need to check if the following actually matter for iNat: all European locations, Japan, Kamchatka, Chukot, Aleutians. If there are no iNat records of the vagrant species in these areas, we can automatically set them all to the expected species. Here is an observation search showing all current records of any of these taxa: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=7032,827373

I drafted the taxon changes a while ago, for both the 2018 changes and the 2019 changes, with some minor differences: 827373 is deglandi sensu 2018, the final deglandi taxon is 144222. And the final fusca is 850858. I added some but not all atlases and range maps.

Three weeks later, my requests for the deglandi and stejgneri range maps at IUCN are still not approved. Has anyone else experienced this?

@loarie any chance of getting this done? I'm starting to see more grumblings in the community (e.g. https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/velvet-white-winged-scoter-split/) and more and more people are going in and "correcting" IDs it seems, so we're getting quite a mess with records now. See:
https://inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&taxon_id=827373
https://inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&taxon_id=7032

If there's anything I can do to help, I will happily do so.

@rjq I've got ArcGIS here if there's anything I can help with. Shoot me an email mike.burrell@ontario.ca (assuming it's some sort of file conversion?).

So everything should be ready to go, starting with split 45717 (the 2018 change) and then the 2019 change

All seems smooth, there are a couple of Iceland obs which have gone to genus. May be worth checking the central Asian obs as well as they are on the boundary between the two species