[Taxacom] Is "deprecation" a taxonomic term or informatics jargon has crept into taxonomic literature?

[David Patterson]

The answer to that question is 'Yes' - it just did.

On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 3:51 AM, Paul van Rijckevorsel
<dipteryx at freeler.nl>wrote:

> From: "Dan Lahr" <daniel.lahr at gmail.com>
> Sent: Friday, August 19, 2011 7:40 PM
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Out of curiosity, I've incidentally noticed the use of this term in
> > wikipedia as a description for names that are not anymore in use (one
> > example is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoptera another is
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannanosaurus and check out the search
> > result for deprecated+genus
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=deprecated+genus
> ).
> >
> > I do not believe having ever read this term in "off-line" taxonomic
> > literature.  Intriguingly, the definition of the term in wikipedia
> > itself is centered around obsolescence of software.
> >
> > My question is could it be that informatics jargon is already creeping
> > into the taxonomic thinking and literature (yes I do consider online
> > material literature) or is this an isolated incident?  If this is not
> > an accident, how prepared are we to deal with the merging of
> > jargon/meanings/semantics from both worlds?
>
> ***
> A quick Google search suggests that the use of "deprecated" in a taxonomic
> context is strongly tied to Wikipedia. I suppose this ties in with two
> phenomena that are natural to the 'Wikipedian', namely
> 1) to treat everything that is not nailed down otherwise as a software
> project and
> 2) to express an opinion ('This is the Truth') wherever there is room to do
> so.
>
> If this will remain limited to Wikipedia, well, who can say? The first
> question is whether it will spread online.
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
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-- 
___________________________________
David J Patterson

Senior Scientist, Marine Biological Laboratory
Life Sciences Lead, Data Conservancy
globalnames.org

7 MBL Street, Woods Hole, MASS 02543, USA.