For effective international implementation, conservation action and legislation should rest on a broadly accepted scientific classification. Such classifications must keep pace with advances in taxonomic research. Provision is necessary for potentially as well as currently recognized taxa. Regional classifications of primate subspecies are scarce. None was published from 1968 to 1997 for Asian primates as a whole. Napier and Napier's (1967) now outmoded (global) classification was only a list. Groves'; (2001) classification caused consternation in the number of subspecies promoted to species. In response, a workshop was convened in Florida, USA, in 2000 to address this issue and to compile a consensus classification. The resulting Asian annotated list was published in 2004. Such a compilation usefully collates various taxonomic sources in a single reference citable as that adopted in reporting research results. This need not imply wholesale acceptance. Departures can be specified. The classification can, and should be, the springboard for further research. Its consensual nature tends to reduce individual bias and error and broadens the research input. Conversely, a single-authored classification might surpass it in consistency of taxonomic approach and in evading awkward compromise. By its rarity any classification risks entrenchment, discouraging further taxonomic research and encouraging antipathy toward its successors. Conflicts over the significance of genetic evidence and other questions raised during the compilation of the Asian list confirm that, like its predecessors, this list is not definitive. It should and will be superseded.