Taxacom: A compromise solution (was Re: Single official lists of taxa (sensu Doug Yanega many proposals to this list))

[Stephen Thorpe]

 Jared,
Just for clarity, my argument is that whatever the outcome in terms of the Code, taxonomists will continue to do whatever they like about gender agreement and other Code related issues. Many of them choose to follow the Code, but many will, reasonably enough, consider gender agreement to be an unimportant little nomenclatural technicality and will either make only a token effort to respect it, or disregard it altogether. Hence, my view is that we need a robust coping system for actual taxonomic practice. This is more important than adherance to somewhat idealistic notions of respecting traditions with little or no modern relevance. So, my point was that spelling variants due to gender are just a subset of other alternative names, combinations, misspellings, synonyms, etc., of a taxon. All we really need is a robust and efficient way of tracking these alternative names and spelling variants in a way that keeps together published information about a taxon. Hence my other point about making sure that anyone who publishes information associated with a taxon specifies the original combination (basionym in botany) of whatever combination that they prefer to use.
Stephen
    On Saturday, 8 July 2023 at 04:01:05 am NZST, Jared Bernard via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:  
 
 At a glance, out of the 55 or so of us who have participated in the
multiple threads of this debate, about 11 seem in favour of changing
nomenclatural rules. This is only my estimate based on the discussion, so
an actual poll may be different. Plus, my estimate could be biased because
I agree with Doug's plan. Of course, I wonder whether this is a situation
where we need a decision based on evidence and logic rather than popular
opinion. This may especially be the case seeing as the two sides have
essentially the same but inverted argument, meaning there is little room
for adding new counterpoints.
Jared
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Nurturing nuance while assailing ambiguity and admiring alliteration for about 36 years, 1987-2023.