The recently published paper - Tackling temporary names in WoRMS: interim solutions for the taxonomic impediment  - gives insights into the general topic of temporary names, how WoRMS can tackle these, and why doing so is important at the time of the triple planetary crises of biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution.
The capture of accepted and unaccepted names, as well as unavailable and temporary (informal) names was outlined by Horton et al. (2017) in light of the tenth anniversary of WoRMS, in which guidelines were provided to improve nomenclatural consistency. 

In-depth discussions on improving and standardising the inclusion of temporary names were held during several WoRMS Steering Committee meetings from 2019 onwards. The intention to publish these recommendations for standardisation of entry of temporary names in  WoRMS was formalised under the commitments WoRMS made under the UN Ocean Decade, when WoRMS was endorsed as an official UN Ocean Decade action in 2021 (ABC WoRMS). One of the high-level objectives for WoRMS under the umbrella of the Decade, is “to develop a strategy and guidelines to consistently deal with well-established temporary names and open taxonomic nomenclature within WoRMS, as this kind of nomenclature is being used more frequently by the taxonomic community and can no longer be ignored in taxonomic databases”.

To provide advice and guidelines to the taxonomic editor community, several (former) Steering Committee members, the Data Management Team and external experts worked together over a period of more than two years to clearly document different types of temporary names and their commonly used terminology. The paper - Tackling temporary names in WoRMS: interim solutions for the taxonomic impediment - above all formulates practical recommendations, including providing criteria clarifying which names can be selected for entry and how they should be entered in a standardised way, not only into WoRMS but also into taxonomic databases in general.

Although the Aphia infrastructure – and thus WoRMS – can already deal with and display temporary names. WoRMS does not expect editors to capture all existing temporary or informal names. The paper indicates that only the entry of Type 2 temporary names will be considered. Type 2 temporary names are those that have been confirmed as new to science in a scientific publication, but which currently lack a formal description and a Linnean binominal name according to the relevant nomenclatural code. The expectation is that these Type 2 temporary names will eventually be formally taxonomically described, so their name relationships can be tracked through synonymy in WoRMS.

Although this might only seem like a small step forward, the broad adoption of these guidelines and recommendations concerning temporary names supports the broader, robust integration of informal and formal taxonomies into global taxonomic databases.