Re: [dinosaur] ICZN 5.0

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> I earlier asked about what changes should be made in the next edition of the 
> ICZN code, but I never got a response, probably because it was in the middle 
> of another thread. So, what does everyone think?

I don't think there are any Commissioners reading the DML, so there may not be 
much of a point in discussing this here...

I have long dreamt of taking the whole Code and just rewriting it, without any 
changes to its meaning, so that the gaps and the contradictions will at least 
stand out instead of having to be inferred from going through the whole thing 
in circles for hours.

Most of the changes I think should be made are simple clarifications: Does 
supplementary information to a published work count as published? What is the 
"final version" of a work published first electronically and then on paper? 
There are corrections to badly formed names that either must or must not be 
made, but it's not clear which; the only thing that's clear is that whichever 
it is, it's not optional. And so on.

I don't have a well-thought-out opinion on any farther-reaching changes. It 
would probably be a good idea to make registration mandatory for all new 
nomenclatural acts; those that are published on paper are currently exempt. The 
idea of requiring peer review for any new nomenclatural acts, as in the 
PhyloCode, should definitely be explored, but peer review is actually a bit 
hard to define, and it can be hard to tell whether a work was reviewed or not. 
Measures might be taken, beyond the current Recommendation, to avoid intercode 
homonyms and ambiregnal organisms*. Names at ranks above the family group are 
currently almost unregulated (e.g. there's no priority among them, they don't 
compete for synonymy or even homonymy); they might either be regulated (very 
detailed proposals exist), or instead regulation might be abandoned even for 
the family group, so that everything above the genus group could be left to the 
PhyloCode.

* "both-kingdom"; those that have variously been treated as plants or animals 
for nomenclatural purposes (and are of course neither). For example, there are 
two whole parallel nomenclatures for the dinoflagellates, complete with the 
names Dinophyta and Dinozoa; if you want to read the primary literature on 
dinoflagellates, you better know them both. And so on and so forth ad nauseam. 
Of course the PhyloCode has the potential to make this problem (and the problem 
of intercode homonyms) disappear in the long run, but in the short run it has 
the potential to just add a third nomenclature.