I agree with all of the above. Putting in my own thoughts — I typically tell people engaging well with iNaturalist is like a book. It’s a great resource but you really do get out what you put in. Which varies by experience going in and attention/time put toward it.
It can be easy to screw up majorly referencing even the best quality guidebook if you just glance at it, or have some fundamental misunderstanding, or hit the 1 major error in an otherwise good source and don’t reference anything else, much diminishing your chance of catching an error or misleading but technically correct stumbling block.
Therefore I say for something new, 3 or more different quality sources (well-referenced guidebooks or sites) that aren’t just copying each other if you want to ID for non-ingestion (eg like for dyes), at least 5 if you are a beginner and want to ID to ingest. And even then of course we all cringe and say go to a club! Ask an experienced friend! But there’s always someone starting out without those things, so in their absence, at least close reference of ~5+ quality sources.
And for iNat engaging with it fully makes it count as one quality source . Fully to me is:
Check what the computer ID says, note everything listed not just the top one
Post your observation with a genus from one of those IDs or a higher taxa (ex: Russulaceae), see what people say,
in the meantime look through a number of potentials
Refer to the maps of observations,
And the “similar species” tab (available on desktop version of the site),
Check out that taxonomy tab and click through to explore your best guess(es)’s near relatives
Just taking a glance at the computer ID or the first suggestion by someone else just working off a picture? No. That’s something but not book or 1:1 expert counsel equivalent.
But!! If you put a lot into it iNat can for sure be a book equivalent to me. Or at least a strong support (though you do have to go elsewhere for keys and descriptions — unless you count how iNat users post their own keys in journals/guides on the site sometimes)
Same for Mushroom Observer and certain well-managed identification Facebook groups