![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Since ITIS is grossly outdated for all (birds), many (e.g. fishes) or some (e.g. mammals) taxa (and should not be used anymore in favor of BirdLife, FishBase, MSW etc) but fairly or even highly useful for others, an additional parameter "Version of ???" would be most useful (use either the revision date if explicitly given or the publication date of a cited reference). I think I have grokked the syntax enough to add the param, but I am afraid to break it, so perhaps some of the folks who are regularly changing the template can do it.
It might also be more consistent to move the "Integrated Taxonomic Information System" text to the beginning of the output, to be more consistent with the usual citation layout. Dysmorodrepanis ( talk) 11:44, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Now, it is known that the "oligochaetes" are a grade rather than a clade, consisting of (at least 3 I think) lineages with the other three clitellates stuck in between them. So the consequences would be either to chop up the oligochaetes taxonomically, or to synonymize them with Clitellata. Personally I find the latter more charming, though Encyclopedia of Life uses the former. Since this gives us the reference we need, we might as well follow suit. But since there is nobody that can keep us from doing the other (preserving Oligochaeta) except our own consensus - the ICZN has no authority in that matter - if it is sourceable, we'd need to check whether treating Oligochaeta as the alid name for Clitellata has been formally proposed, so we can present both approaches. Dysmorodrepanis ( talk) 10:57, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Has anyone ever actually used the {{ Copy to Wikispecies}} template? I became aware of it when the Vampyrops genus stub got tagged for being 'just a list of species'. There are a grand total of two other pages ( Oliveridia and Flyriella) so tagged... both incorrectly in my estimation. I doubt we've ever had a page which was set up per Wikispecies standards for a species registry. Transwiki templates in general are useful, but I can't see this one ever being implemented. It just seems to get mis-applied by people who don't understand that Wikispecies is not an 'encyclopedia of life forms'. -- CBD 22:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Many geographical articles refer to a wide variety of organisms, but there is no agreement as to how the species names should be capitalised across taxonomic boundaries. I have posted a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Animals, plants, and other organisms to enable some kind of consistency in geography and other articles with similar issues. Please note that as the related essay states, this is not aimed at having individual projects change their policies. Ben Mac Dui 16:24, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
I've proposed a new WikiProject named WikiProject Biota of the UK and Ireland which would encompass all species and conservation efforts within Britain, an extremely interesting area. The project would include vegetation classification, Category:Lists of British animals, Category:Conservation in the United Kingdom, Category:Ecology of the British Isles, Category:Forests and woodlands of the United Kingdom, Category:Fauna of the British Isles and anything else to do with the flora and fauna of Britain. If anyone is interested just leave your name on the proposal page. Cheers, Jack ( talk) 17:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Hi,
I'm creating a bot to create short article on algal taxa from the genus level up. Stubs will appear over the next couple of days here; more details are available here, where any comments would be gratefully received.
Thanks, Martin ( Smith609 – Talk) 17:52, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
I have created {{ Biota}} for the display of in-line scientific names, with the same draft "species" microformat used by taxoboxes.
So far, it works only for vernacular, binominal, trinominal and genus names (example on template documentation), but I'll add a few other ranks soon ; and more complex processing for Foo bar ssp. boo and other such formats, later.
It allows wiki-linking, and the optional emboldening of vernacular names, and italicises scientific names automatically.
Comments welcome. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:33, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
←Thank you for your comments. Dealing with them in order:
You ask for more complexity; then say it's too complex! Microformats cannot be applied across multiple templates in the manner you describe. Is there anything about the template that you do like?
The usefulness of the template, over and above its potential for the simplification of formatting, is that it emits a 'Species' microformat for the name of the organism. There is consensus for and very widespread use of microformats on Wikipedia already, including hCard for people, organisations and venues; hCalendar for events and Geo for coordinates. As you note, the species microformat is already emitted by {{ taxobox}}; this new template makes it possible to use the microformat on articles without taxoboxes, or where the content of an article with a taxobox mentions subspecies (as on Peregrine Falcon), prey/predator/pest species, symbiotic species, etc.; and for examples of species on genera and higher-rank pages, etc.; to mark up lists of, say, families like that on Neogastropoda; or simply in prose ("The hospital was shut by an outbreak of Escherichia coli") where taxobox use would be inappropriate or impossible. The only other way to do so in these cases would be by using in-line HTML spans (or other suitable elements) and classes; understandably some editors consider that approach unacceptable.
Taxonomic names are based on, but are not, Latin. When the taxonomic and IETF-langauges communities agree a language code for scientific names (I'm involved in discussion of the issue in both communities), the template will allow that language code to be applied, also.
There is no 1-1 relationship between a microformat and a page; a page on one subject can still have microformats about other subjects. For example, the page on David Beckham may have an hCard about him in his infobox, but also has over 100 microformats for all his team-mates in the relevant "squad" navboxes. Likewise for "species" microformats, which are intended for multiple use on a page; e.g. [1], which, at the time of writing, has 195 (it's updated regularly). The microformats community are looking at a method of indicating the prime microformat for the topic of a page, where it has one, and when a solution is found, it can be implemented here, not lest in Taxoboxes.
Calls for the deletion of this new template are premature. Though ready for use in limited number of cases (chiefly, vernacular, bi- and trinominal names using the Zoological code), it's still under development, and I have undertaken to include requirements and fix issues raised by more taxonomically-knowledgeable editors than. I trust that this reassures yo. but am happy to answer further questions. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Template:Biota has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Hesperian 03:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.
We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.
A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.
We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
I see that you've not been informed of this debate. Several of us believe that in order to avoid future conflict between the views of different WikiProjects (indeed, child and parent projects), you should be notified and given the opportunity to have some input on the debate. Papa Lima Whiskey ( talk) 08:22, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
OK, who can find the highest ranking taxon (phylum?? division?? order/class etc.) currently represented by a stub of less than 150 words. You don't have to expand it, but note it at Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Competition. I am seeing if there are notable stubs around and decided to have some fun. Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 08:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I think it is better to remove the dates. They give a false sense of precision (in what I edit, there sure is the odd article where I really can fix them with 2 Ma plusminus, but these critters are usually known by a single bone fragment only ;-) ). If we simply use the base of the Late Jurassic for a start, the error we might make in absence of exact knowledge of the age of the first fossil is hardly noticeable in the diagram. But with numbers given, this can indeed be factually wrong and usually is.
Plus, the numbers are usually redundant as the issue tends to be mentioned in the maintext in more detail. Plus, the taxobox header might contain less text, but certainly not more I think.
If removing the numbers, the epoch names can also be unbolded and made small again. I think that would pretty up the layout very much. Dysmorodrepanis ( talk) 01:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
A new IUCN Red List update just came out, and there appears to be some big updates. Consequently, I have created a new IUCN template, {{ IUCN2008}}, to replace the heavily used {{ IUCN2006}}. It is important to note that there have been changes in the IUCN Red List website's URL structure, and although it currently redirects the old links, I'm strongly recommending that people switch to this new template (as well as update the status on every species they can). To encourage the use of this new template, I have updated Taxobox usage and Conservation status, as well as added links on the old templates.
In creating {{ IUCN2008}}, I had a few questions regarding the citation style, given the differences from the citation offered on the IUCN Red List site. I left those questions on the template's talk page. Feedback would be appreciated.
Thank you for your time. - Visionholder ( talk) 17:47, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
It says on the project page "However, for a genus that contains a single species, the genus name should be used since it is included in the binomial. For instance the order Amphionidacea, which has the single species Amphionides reynaudii, is discussed at Amphionides." There seems to be some confusion here since many prefer having the article at the species and having the genus as the redirect. Shyamal ( talk) 01:52, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
A heads up, Brain is at FAC. Would be great to get this one over the line. Needs some work on evolutionary stuff maybe (?). Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 03:10, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
There are about 1500 articles on organisms that have no image in their taxobox, but that do have a page or category at the Commons. If you want to help out illustrating these articles, you can find a list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Articles without images/Commons list. -- Eugène van der Pijll ( talk) 23:31, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi,
I'm working on a proposal to make sure wikipedia tries to keep articles seperate with talking about diseases and the organisms that cause them.
Please take a look User:ZayZayEM/Proposal:Distinguish disease from infectious organisms if you feel this is a topic that should be discussed further.
I think that articles on disease should not be caught up talking about the infectious agent themself. They should focus on the infectious agent really only in terms of the disease itself (ie. epidemiology, and how the discovery of a connection between disease and infectious agent was found). This would prevent medical articles being bogged down with too much taxonomical classification data and general microbial ecology.
At teh same time it will allow more focus in organism articles on ecology, taxonomy and non-medical biology regarding the actual organism itself rather than mashing that together with information that would be mostly very human-centric.-- ZayZayEM ( talk) 05:29, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
The French system for categorisation is as follows (I used Great Britain as an example though this will usually be a country):
This way you can still navigate by category, when you get to the country you are interested in then you can go to the relevant list. Featured species articles aren't in 'Fauna by country' categories only the continent article. If there are a large number of insect articles for example (like here) then they can be placed in a sub-category.
Species categorisation has been discussed multiple times, and may, like species capitalisation, be an issue that's never resolved. But, I believe this would be one of the best ways to tackle the problems categories cause, while not disposing of them entirely. What does everyone else think, or are you tired of this topic already? Jack ( talk) 18:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi,
A while ago I started writing a bot to automatically create stubs on algal taxa. I've now got it just about working. If anyone has any constructive criticism to offer over the content and style of the stubs created so far, which you can view here here, I'd appreciate it if you could leave it here. To avoid duplication, and because I've asked for input from other Wikiprojects, please don't reply on this page.
Thanks, Martin ( Smith609 – Talk) 18:09, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
There is a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora) that may eventually have some ramifications for naming of articles about other taxa. You might want to check it out and weigh in. I'd be happy to summarize if anyone were interested, but I can't guarantee my summary would be neutral.-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 02:52, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
Talk:Blackbird. Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 10:54, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
It's been nearly a year now since I traversed the mammals without images list.
My discovery was positive: over 19% of the articles listed could be removed from the list, since they had been assigned pictures. By adding my own images, I was able to eliminate an additional 2%. This brought the overall total down from 1844 to 1468 entries.
I am happy to announce that my next mission to add images to plant articles and remove is proving even more successful!
The list of plant articles without images originally contained 3618 entries. I have progressed a little more than halfway through the list so far, so the percentages you are about to see are low. So far, nearly 29% of the entries could be removed since having had pictures added. I have been able to contribute images for approximately 1.5% additional entries, bringing the current entry reduction to more than 30%.
This marks a success for the Tree of Life, that these articles have been maintained as well as they have. For the first time ever, both these lists have had significant falls in counts.
Keep up the good work! I'll keep going through that plants list... Bob the Wikipedian ( talk • contribs) 06:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Now we just need to see if we can get a consensus. If we get five yays and no nays, I'd say we go ahead and implement it. Bob the Wikipedian ( talk • contribs) 05:11, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
A few more that still need to be merged.
Cheers, Jack ( talk) 15:02, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
This has come up in the past whether taxon authors become automatically notable just like species. This Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Andy_Lehrer may be of interest. Shyamal ( talk) 06:00, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora) is being assaulted for over two months now by two editors, User:Philip Baird Shearer and User:Born2cycle whose intent now seems to be only to disrupt editing. However, their battle is largely about trying to force plant editors to use "the most commonly used name," for plant article titles. While attempting to get the two of them to source precisely where plant editors should find the most commonly used name, I have come to realize that all Wikipedia naming policies for organisms which require the use of common names are destined for failure. It simply cannot be done. All attempts to use the most commonly used name in English for article titles, for all but a few organisms, are ethnocentric, full of original research, and create problems and opportunities for disruption by editors such as PBS and B2c that would not exist at all if Wikipedia simply had a naming convention policy for organisms that required the articles be titled with the scientific name, according to the rules of scientific nomenclature, introduce the most common names in the lead, discuss them early in the article, and create redirects from the common names to the scientific name. -- KP Botany ( talk) 19:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
In the areas that have elected to use common names in article titles, there are a few instances where the Order/Family/Genus article also uses a common name (for example, Owl for the Order Strigiformes). Such articles usually use the singular of the noun (a few use plurals). However, such articles are not about one species, they are about a group of species collectively known as such-and-such. Therefore, I would propose that it would be proper that said articles use the plural in their title, such as Owls. This would also allow for clarification when a genus and a single species share a common name ( African Linsang - species & African_linsang - genus); the genus would be plural and the species would be singular. Thoughts? Rgrds. -- Tombstone ( talk) 13:58, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
On my talk page, Kim van der Linde has objected to my bolding the scientific name of a taxon in the first sentence of the article. For example, in Kiang I made the intro "The Kiang (Equus kiang ..."; Kim changed it to "The Kiang (Equus kiang ...". Which of these styles is customary in WP:TOL? -- Una Smith ( talk) 17:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
The question I posed is what is the underlying policy or guideline? Does it specify bold or not bold? -- Una Smith ( talk) 17:33, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
The lead section, lead (sometimes lede), or introduction of a Wikipedia article is...
Ok, as this is not official policy or guideline, maybe we should formalize it, by holding a straw poll so that we can get a feel for what people think. Anyone opposes? 128.186.177.188 ( talk) 17:00, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Since ITIS is grossly outdated for all (birds), many (e.g. fishes) or some (e.g. mammals) taxa (and should not be used anymore in favor of BirdLife, FishBase, MSW etc) but fairly or even highly useful for others, an additional parameter "Version of ???" would be most useful (use either the revision date if explicitly given or the publication date of a cited reference). I think I have grokked the syntax enough to add the param, but I am afraid to break it, so perhaps some of the folks who are regularly changing the template can do it.
It might also be more consistent to move the "Integrated Taxonomic Information System" text to the beginning of the output, to be more consistent with the usual citation layout. Dysmorodrepanis ( talk) 11:44, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Now, it is known that the "oligochaetes" are a grade rather than a clade, consisting of (at least 3 I think) lineages with the other three clitellates stuck in between them. So the consequences would be either to chop up the oligochaetes taxonomically, or to synonymize them with Clitellata. Personally I find the latter more charming, though Encyclopedia of Life uses the former. Since this gives us the reference we need, we might as well follow suit. But since there is nobody that can keep us from doing the other (preserving Oligochaeta) except our own consensus - the ICZN has no authority in that matter - if it is sourceable, we'd need to check whether treating Oligochaeta as the alid name for Clitellata has been formally proposed, so we can present both approaches. Dysmorodrepanis ( talk) 10:57, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
Has anyone ever actually used the {{ Copy to Wikispecies}} template? I became aware of it when the Vampyrops genus stub got tagged for being 'just a list of species'. There are a grand total of two other pages ( Oliveridia and Flyriella) so tagged... both incorrectly in my estimation. I doubt we've ever had a page which was set up per Wikispecies standards for a species registry. Transwiki templates in general are useful, but I can't see this one ever being implemented. It just seems to get mis-applied by people who don't understand that Wikispecies is not an 'encyclopedia of life forms'. -- CBD 22:58, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
Many geographical articles refer to a wide variety of organisms, but there is no agreement as to how the species names should be capitalised across taxonomic boundaries. I have posted a proposal at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Animals, plants, and other organisms to enable some kind of consistency in geography and other articles with similar issues. Please note that as the related essay states, this is not aimed at having individual projects change their policies. Ben Mac Dui 16:24, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
I've proposed a new WikiProject named WikiProject Biota of the UK and Ireland which would encompass all species and conservation efforts within Britain, an extremely interesting area. The project would include vegetation classification, Category:Lists of British animals, Category:Conservation in the United Kingdom, Category:Ecology of the British Isles, Category:Forests and woodlands of the United Kingdom, Category:Fauna of the British Isles and anything else to do with the flora and fauna of Britain. If anyone is interested just leave your name on the proposal page. Cheers, Jack ( talk) 17:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Hi,
I'm creating a bot to create short article on algal taxa from the genus level up. Stubs will appear over the next couple of days here; more details are available here, where any comments would be gratefully received.
Thanks, Martin ( Smith609 – Talk) 17:52, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
I have created {{ Biota}} for the display of in-line scientific names, with the same draft "species" microformat used by taxoboxes.
So far, it works only for vernacular, binominal, trinominal and genus names (example on template documentation), but I'll add a few other ranks soon ; and more complex processing for Foo bar ssp. boo and other such formats, later.
It allows wiki-linking, and the optional emboldening of vernacular names, and italicises scientific names automatically.
Comments welcome. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:33, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
←Thank you for your comments. Dealing with them in order:
You ask for more complexity; then say it's too complex! Microformats cannot be applied across multiple templates in the manner you describe. Is there anything about the template that you do like?
The usefulness of the template, over and above its potential for the simplification of formatting, is that it emits a 'Species' microformat for the name of the organism. There is consensus for and very widespread use of microformats on Wikipedia already, including hCard for people, organisations and venues; hCalendar for events and Geo for coordinates. As you note, the species microformat is already emitted by {{ taxobox}}; this new template makes it possible to use the microformat on articles without taxoboxes, or where the content of an article with a taxobox mentions subspecies (as on Peregrine Falcon), prey/predator/pest species, symbiotic species, etc.; and for examples of species on genera and higher-rank pages, etc.; to mark up lists of, say, families like that on Neogastropoda; or simply in prose ("The hospital was shut by an outbreak of Escherichia coli") where taxobox use would be inappropriate or impossible. The only other way to do so in these cases would be by using in-line HTML spans (or other suitable elements) and classes; understandably some editors consider that approach unacceptable.
Taxonomic names are based on, but are not, Latin. When the taxonomic and IETF-langauges communities agree a language code for scientific names (I'm involved in discussion of the issue in both communities), the template will allow that language code to be applied, also.
There is no 1-1 relationship between a microformat and a page; a page on one subject can still have microformats about other subjects. For example, the page on David Beckham may have an hCard about him in his infobox, but also has over 100 microformats for all his team-mates in the relevant "squad" navboxes. Likewise for "species" microformats, which are intended for multiple use on a page; e.g. [1], which, at the time of writing, has 195 (it's updated regularly). The microformats community are looking at a method of indicating the prime microformat for the topic of a page, where it has one, and when a solution is found, it can be implemented here, not lest in Taxoboxes.
Calls for the deletion of this new template are premature. Though ready for use in limited number of cases (chiefly, vernacular, bi- and trinominal names using the Zoological code), it's still under development, and I have undertaken to include requirements and fix issues raised by more taxonomically-knowledgeable editors than. I trust that this reassures yo. but am happy to answer further questions. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 22:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
Template:Biota has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Hesperian 03:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.
We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.
A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.
We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
I see that you've not been informed of this debate. Several of us believe that in order to avoid future conflict between the views of different WikiProjects (indeed, child and parent projects), you should be notified and given the opportunity to have some input on the debate. Papa Lima Whiskey ( talk) 08:22, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
OK, who can find the highest ranking taxon (phylum?? division?? order/class etc.) currently represented by a stub of less than 150 words. You don't have to expand it, but note it at Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Competition. I am seeing if there are notable stubs around and decided to have some fun. Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 08:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I think it is better to remove the dates. They give a false sense of precision (in what I edit, there sure is the odd article where I really can fix them with 2 Ma plusminus, but these critters are usually known by a single bone fragment only ;-) ). If we simply use the base of the Late Jurassic for a start, the error we might make in absence of exact knowledge of the age of the first fossil is hardly noticeable in the diagram. But with numbers given, this can indeed be factually wrong and usually is.
Plus, the numbers are usually redundant as the issue tends to be mentioned in the maintext in more detail. Plus, the taxobox header might contain less text, but certainly not more I think.
If removing the numbers, the epoch names can also be unbolded and made small again. I think that would pretty up the layout very much. Dysmorodrepanis ( talk) 01:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
A new IUCN Red List update just came out, and there appears to be some big updates. Consequently, I have created a new IUCN template, {{ IUCN2008}}, to replace the heavily used {{ IUCN2006}}. It is important to note that there have been changes in the IUCN Red List website's URL structure, and although it currently redirects the old links, I'm strongly recommending that people switch to this new template (as well as update the status on every species they can). To encourage the use of this new template, I have updated Taxobox usage and Conservation status, as well as added links on the old templates.
In creating {{ IUCN2008}}, I had a few questions regarding the citation style, given the differences from the citation offered on the IUCN Red List site. I left those questions on the template's talk page. Feedback would be appreciated.
Thank you for your time. - Visionholder ( talk) 17:47, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
It says on the project page "However, for a genus that contains a single species, the genus name should be used since it is included in the binomial. For instance the order Amphionidacea, which has the single species Amphionides reynaudii, is discussed at Amphionides." There seems to be some confusion here since many prefer having the article at the species and having the genus as the redirect. Shyamal ( talk) 01:52, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
A heads up, Brain is at FAC. Would be great to get this one over the line. Needs some work on evolutionary stuff maybe (?). Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 03:10, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
There are about 1500 articles on organisms that have no image in their taxobox, but that do have a page or category at the Commons. If you want to help out illustrating these articles, you can find a list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Articles without images/Commons list. -- Eugène van der Pijll ( talk) 23:31, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi,
I'm working on a proposal to make sure wikipedia tries to keep articles seperate with talking about diseases and the organisms that cause them.
Please take a look User:ZayZayEM/Proposal:Distinguish disease from infectious organisms if you feel this is a topic that should be discussed further.
I think that articles on disease should not be caught up talking about the infectious agent themself. They should focus on the infectious agent really only in terms of the disease itself (ie. epidemiology, and how the discovery of a connection between disease and infectious agent was found). This would prevent medical articles being bogged down with too much taxonomical classification data and general microbial ecology.
At teh same time it will allow more focus in organism articles on ecology, taxonomy and non-medical biology regarding the actual organism itself rather than mashing that together with information that would be mostly very human-centric.-- ZayZayEM ( talk) 05:29, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
The French system for categorisation is as follows (I used Great Britain as an example though this will usually be a country):
This way you can still navigate by category, when you get to the country you are interested in then you can go to the relevant list. Featured species articles aren't in 'Fauna by country' categories only the continent article. If there are a large number of insect articles for example (like here) then they can be placed in a sub-category.
Species categorisation has been discussed multiple times, and may, like species capitalisation, be an issue that's never resolved. But, I believe this would be one of the best ways to tackle the problems categories cause, while not disposing of them entirely. What does everyone else think, or are you tired of this topic already? Jack ( talk) 18:03, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi,
A while ago I started writing a bot to automatically create stubs on algal taxa. I've now got it just about working. If anyone has any constructive criticism to offer over the content and style of the stubs created so far, which you can view here here, I'd appreciate it if you could leave it here. To avoid duplication, and because I've asked for input from other Wikiprojects, please don't reply on this page.
Thanks, Martin ( Smith609 – Talk) 18:09, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
There is a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora) that may eventually have some ramifications for naming of articles about other taxa. You might want to check it out and weigh in. I'd be happy to summarize if anyone were interested, but I can't guarantee my summary would be neutral.-- Curtis Clark ( talk) 02:52, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
Talk:Blackbird. Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 10:54, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
It's been nearly a year now since I traversed the mammals without images list.
My discovery was positive: over 19% of the articles listed could be removed from the list, since they had been assigned pictures. By adding my own images, I was able to eliminate an additional 2%. This brought the overall total down from 1844 to 1468 entries.
I am happy to announce that my next mission to add images to plant articles and remove is proving even more successful!
The list of plant articles without images originally contained 3618 entries. I have progressed a little more than halfway through the list so far, so the percentages you are about to see are low. So far, nearly 29% of the entries could be removed since having had pictures added. I have been able to contribute images for approximately 1.5% additional entries, bringing the current entry reduction to more than 30%.
This marks a success for the Tree of Life, that these articles have been maintained as well as they have. For the first time ever, both these lists have had significant falls in counts.
Keep up the good work! I'll keep going through that plants list... Bob the Wikipedian ( talk • contribs) 06:33, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
Now we just need to see if we can get a consensus. If we get five yays and no nays, I'd say we go ahead and implement it. Bob the Wikipedian ( talk • contribs) 05:11, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
A few more that still need to be merged.
Cheers, Jack ( talk) 15:02, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
This has come up in the past whether taxon authors become automatically notable just like species. This Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Andy_Lehrer may be of interest. Shyamal ( talk) 06:00, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora) is being assaulted for over two months now by two editors, User:Philip Baird Shearer and User:Born2cycle whose intent now seems to be only to disrupt editing. However, their battle is largely about trying to force plant editors to use "the most commonly used name," for plant article titles. While attempting to get the two of them to source precisely where plant editors should find the most commonly used name, I have come to realize that all Wikipedia naming policies for organisms which require the use of common names are destined for failure. It simply cannot be done. All attempts to use the most commonly used name in English for article titles, for all but a few organisms, are ethnocentric, full of original research, and create problems and opportunities for disruption by editors such as PBS and B2c that would not exist at all if Wikipedia simply had a naming convention policy for organisms that required the articles be titled with the scientific name, according to the rules of scientific nomenclature, introduce the most common names in the lead, discuss them early in the article, and create redirects from the common names to the scientific name. -- KP Botany ( talk) 19:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
In the areas that have elected to use common names in article titles, there are a few instances where the Order/Family/Genus article also uses a common name (for example, Owl for the Order Strigiformes). Such articles usually use the singular of the noun (a few use plurals). However, such articles are not about one species, they are about a group of species collectively known as such-and-such. Therefore, I would propose that it would be proper that said articles use the plural in their title, such as Owls. This would also allow for clarification when a genus and a single species share a common name ( African Linsang - species & African_linsang - genus); the genus would be plural and the species would be singular. Thoughts? Rgrds. -- Tombstone ( talk) 13:58, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
On my talk page, Kim van der Linde has objected to my bolding the scientific name of a taxon in the first sentence of the article. For example, in Kiang I made the intro "The Kiang (Equus kiang ..."; Kim changed it to "The Kiang (Equus kiang ...". Which of these styles is customary in WP:TOL? -- Una Smith ( talk) 17:09, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
The question I posed is what is the underlying policy or guideline? Does it specify bold or not bold? -- Una Smith ( talk) 17:33, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
The lead section, lead (sometimes lede), or introduction of a Wikipedia article is...
Ok, as this is not official policy or guideline, maybe we should formalize it, by holding a straw poll so that we can get a feel for what people think. Anyone opposes? 128.186.177.188 ( talk) 17:00, 4 February 2009 (UTC)