I don’t think that accurately reflects what I’m trying to get accomplished. There are numerous open flags in both avian and mammalian taxonomy where nobody can agree on a global default English name, and it gets bitter really quickly. And I try my best to interject with, “Why don’t we use the name provided by the taxonomic source?” and I get chewed out over it.
I want to see if we can agree on a set of rules for English common names so that way we can stop arguing over these things and start closing out these flags. The reason why I want to get it done sooner than later is because the latest Clements update is taking on some unpopular names. For example, Clements is splitting the Whimbrel. What common name are we going to use for the American species? Clements is using Hudsonian Whimbrel, but the species was described 1790 with the common name Hudsonian Curlew and was the name largely used until it was lumped with the Whimbrel.
Similarly, the Yellow Warbler is being split. Clements has chosen Northern Yellow Warbler for the migratory US/Canadian populations, and Mangrove Yellow Warbler for the residential Central/South American populations. This to me feels unnecessary because nearly no US birder is going to see the Mangrove species, so why change the names, especially since there is no Mangrove Warbler that would cause conflictions. What name are we going to use for iNaturalist? If we are going to use Northern Yellow Warbler, why aren’t we standardizing all names? And if we’re going to maintain Yellow Warbler for North America, what is the threshold for changing and not changing default common names?