[Taxacom] "deprecation" (was Taxonomy... in the 21st century)

[Paul van Rijckevorsel]

From: "Jim Croft" <jim.croft at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2008 12:32 AM
> Also heavily used in W3C and other software standards.  But there is a
> subtle difference.  Deprecation in this sense means that "it still
> works but we would rather you did not use it if you could possibly
> avoid it because there are better ways of doing business and there is
> no guarantee that it will continue working should you try to use it
> sometime in the future".  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deprecation

> I am not sure either nomenclatural code can accommodate this level of
> transitional nuance or optionality.  When it comes to conservation and
> rejection we do not have a choice - it is "the law"...  That is not to
> say "the law" can't be, and isn't, regularly broken... :)

> jim

***
To some extent the term deprecation could be applied here, in the sense: 
"this name can be used (has not formally been rejected), but we rather you 
did not use it (we don't know if it is a good species)".

It would be the category that in monographs is listed under "excluded 
names", "dubious names", etc. Of course, it may not be all that easy to 
determine such things: a species may be very rare and known only from the 
type collection, but still be a good species.

Paul