Quote Originally Posted by chris-uk View Post
I feel that I should defend Hoser, because however misguided and flawed his thinking was, he was the least attempting to follow some scientific process. He thinks he gained the right to rename species by splitting up the established classes, which would be correct if he had evidence to back it up. Now the posts are blatantly taking the Michael.

I would have considered posting a defence, but with only a year's experience keeping snakes what would I know about anything?
I know that feeling and on that note, what evidence would you require? Thamnophis is apparently paraphyletic (Pyron et al. 2011), and that warrants some measures to sort out the classification. At least one species of the genus Adelophis appears to actually be misplaced and belongs to the clade that currently consists exclusively of Thamnophis. Whether that justifies the splitting of Thamnophis, instead of simple reclassification of the misplaced species, or renaming the entire genus Thamnophis as Adelophis, is not something I'm 100% certain of.

Fortunately, it's just a matter of convention. Even the silliest name suggestions have a chance of sticking, if people choose to use them, but the chances are better if the suggestion is based on some widely accepted convention.