@loarie, according to https://zenodo.org/record/5156259, which is also reflected in Orthoptera Species File, N. vittatus in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore should be N. malaya, and N. vittatus is confined to Sumatra and Borneo. Any issue to commit this draft? Thanks.

Ok, good to update https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide, which is still showing the old way. I've reactivated Nisitrus vittatus 57482, and edited its atlas. Have also inactivated and removed Nisitrus vittatus 1270922 from the taxon change.

Excellent! thanks a lot

Hi msone, thats frustrating. But I agree if there's overlap in the species ranges that should be reflected in the atlases that the split used. They are:
https://www.inaturalist.org/atlases/36392
https://www.inaturalist.org/atlases/36390

When a species is split, on iNat we have 2 options, one is to just activate the carved off species and let the community sort out existing IDs that intended sensu lato but the presence of the carved off species now implies are sensu stricto. The rule of thumb is if you can manually engage with each of these obs with such existing IDs (e.g. 'hey please replace/update your ID because this was split) then thats the best approach

But if a species has too many existing IDs thats sometimes not tractable so option 2 is to split the species with a taxon change. A taxon split will replace all IDs of the input (Nisitrus vittatus) with the common ancestor of the outputs (e.g. Nisitrus) if there are no atlaes, or for obs outside of the atlase or where the atlases overlap.

but if the obs are uniquely inside the narrowed species' atlase (Nisitrus vittatus) it will leave that ID untouuched. Likewise if the obs is uniquely in the carved off species' output (Nisitrus malaya) it will replace the ID with an ID of that species

you can read more here: https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/40417-using-a-taxon-split-input-as-an-output

But essentially there was a choice to do option 1 or option 2 here. kokhuitan opted for option 2

But then there's a separate debate about overlap in the ranges and whether that was captured in the atlases

I hope that helps give some context. But specifically to your comment, if the intent was to roll back existing IDs of Nisitrus vittatus with Nisitrus, then overlapping atlases would be the way to achieve that

tony_robillard : I did not really mean to deny the validity of your published results. Your work was excellent, and I repeat the distribution of N. malaya seems plausible in general. However, I don't think you can be so certain that N. vittatus is NEVER present in the peninsula (and vice versa for N. malaya in Sumatra etc.). I don't think anything can be so definite in Biogeography.

Nevertheless, my concerns about this Taxon change are different.
I still think this Taxon Split (atlas) was a little too hasty (and too "dynamically" a bit - I quote tony's word although ironically) without the sufficient. This was based merely on a single paper that was only published 2 weeks ago. This kind of mass change should ideally be done, based on a (well-)accepted/agreed idea (not on a 2-week old proposal).

loarie: Thank you for your detailed explanation. Now, I can see some merit in applying Taxon Split Opt. 2 for some cases (e.g. island populations etc.), although I am still unsure if this was necessary or appropriate for the current case. Just no discussions/feedbacks yet available from the community/specialists on those new species prior to this curatorial change.

kokuitan mentioned the new species name was listed in the database (Orthoptera Species File). Please be reminded it only means the new taxon becomes available for science (in nomenclature). It does not mean the geographic distributions of the new species in the hypothesis become 'confirmed'.

Plus, iNaturalist is citizen science, not the platform for particular authors to promote their publications.