I learned this morning that the
Richter Scale is no longer used by seismologists. The media mis-uses it all the time, but it fell out of scientific use years ago. It's been replaced by the
Moment Magnitude Scale.
Also of interest (to me, at least), the Richter Scale was specifically designed to measure quakes in California. However, as other sites around the world started to measure quake activity, they discovered it didn't always work well. Thus the MMS was developed and eventually universally adopted.