I think you should exercise these changes with caution.... The paper by Smith and Jacobi (2015) has been criticised by many of us in the theraphosid taxonomy community for its poor layout, lack of adequate justification and the fact it appears type material of H. doriae (the generic type of Haplopelma) and some other crucial species was not examined by those authors.

H. doriae is not synonymous with C. paganus the generic type of Cyriopagopus and I have seen fairly concrete evidence of this courtesy of a colleague working on terrestrial ornithoctonids. Further, the latter holotype has not been accessible to researchers for many years, two specimens supposedly exist in that jar, the original Simon specimen and another specimen added later. It is not known if they were conspecific nor which specimen Smith examined back when they were accessible.

Hauke (2017) gave a fairly good overview of the situation, also illustrating Smith and Jacobi (2015) ignored modern taxonomic characters laid out in von Wirth and Striffler (2005) which further brings their results into question. Finally, the World Spider Catalog itself (who have followed these changes as usual, since the WSC is a list of taxonomic works and taxonomic acts) has weighed in noting: "Haplopelma, Cyriopagopus, Melopoeus and other "ornithoctonine" genera are in urgent need of revision (e.g. Hauke, 2017: 48). Genus transfers and synonymies without thorough analysis and without including the type species will not be taken over." which shows the group needs thorough re-evaluation.

@bobby23, I think that's a fantastic idea! I've just been making my own notes as I come upon things, and some of us have exchanged messages or comments in observations, but a centralized place to discuss curation and new developments would be great!

I agree the WSC should be followed to its very latest versions for all spider taxa on iNaturalist and it is good you are updating these taxa. However, it is important in cases like this for the papers/taxonomic decisions in question to be discussed especially if some of the results are questionable. It is good to hear that these changes are changeable at a future date without too much hassle, as at some point H. doriae will be restored to its original placement. It is simply not congeneric with the material in Myanmar and neighbouring countries, being endemic to Borneo with different morphological features.

Echoing the sentiments of Rebecca and @portioid above I think a centralised group for discussion on spider taxonomy may be very useful, like @tigerbb I also typically make changes on a case by case basis and discuss nomenclatural and taxonomic issues on individual records. Principally it is because I use iNaturalist in my (limited) free time and typically I refer people with similar nearby records to read the information on the previous records where I've discussed relevant topics.

The Mygalomorphae section (and in a small way the Mesothelae section too) needs some work to be brought into line with the current version of the WSC and I am slowly trying to achieve that as and when I can get the time to do more curation within them (not as often as I'd like). I am sure this is dwarfed by the tasks facing Araneomorphae taxa on here though.

Thanks, Bobby! I appreciate your time on this. I would like to be a member of the working group. ~Rebecca

Hi! How do I 'follow' the group? I am currently working on a spider taxon split (this one), but am not sure how much energy I could put into being in the working group, so I'd like to follow.

Tagging a few that I don't think have been tagged here yet in case any of them would be interested. @kschnei @d_b @mhedin

@claggy there should be a button in the upper right corner of the banner on the Spider Working Group that reads “follow”.

Hi, @claggy. I'm sorry for the late reply. I haven't been on iNat in a week.
"Join" and "Follow" are one in the same.