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I am trying to get a feel for how writers of Wikipedia articles about taxa approach the issue of what classification they use. I have not really understood the template system very well but it looks as if an automated taxobox is used by an author they will be importing the higher ranks with the taxobox. The data in the taxobox will represent the classification.
Presumably if an author wanted to make use of a different classification they could manually complete a taxobox with the higher ranks chosen by them to reflect the classification of their choosing.
I would like to be corrected on this if it is wrong and would also be interested in any discussions on Wikipedia's approach to classification which may be available. Gourdiehill ( talk) 23:07, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
|taxon_ref=WoRMS
(using a proper citation) in the {{
Taxonomy/Gastropoda}} template or |taxon_ref=AGP IV
for angiosperms. —
Jts1882 |
talk 20:34, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for interesting responses to my question. I have been trying to understand the Catalogue of Life Checklist which seems to be an attempt at a single classification based on consensus views from experts in different areas. They do make the case for the advantages of a single classification. There are a series of six papers published in 2021 they have released called "Towards a global list of accepted species 1" (to VI). I presume they would hope Wikipedia adopts their classification. I am hoping to get round to reading more about it and perhaps editing some Wikipedia articles... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gourdiehill ( talk • contribs) 21:12, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
Since @ Gourdiehill: brought up the series of papers I was involved in as part of the Global_Species_List_Working_Group the first paper in the series from 2020 is on Wikisource here. Ok with respect to Catalogue of Life, they are changing things significantly but for their release of CoL+ rather than the current iteration. The problem CoL has had is they are using roughly 180 checklists to develop their species list and there is problematic conflict resolution in this. The series of 6 papers released are also all available I can provide them to anyone interested went into the development of a governence system for a single global species list and ways to assess the quality of the various checklists on different organisms around the world. This system still being developed is being developed in conjunction with CoL and many other checklists.
@ Peter coxhead: brought up the issue of fossils, and as a paleontologist I wish there was a better answer, unfortunately the vast majority of users of scientific names want them effectively excluded, at least the older ones that have no living relatives. We actually surveyed the international scientific community on this and the results of that is in press. However myself and several others have fought not to have this happen. In my own works I am one of the few vertebrate taxonomists that actually does phylogenies with all living and fossil material combined so I certainly am against this. But we do have to find a way to reconcile them. Unfortunately a number of fosssil groups have determined to use PhyloCode over ICZN and this also creates areas of conflict as the two systems are not entirely compatable and yield vastly different results in higher order classification. Most end users of taxonomy refuse to use PhyloCode as it is not accepted as a nomenclatural system by the IUBS and hence has no legislative support with respect to the work many users do in the fields of Medicine, Conservation etc. It takes up to 10 years to change the nomenclature in the legislative framework for CITES for example.
As for what Wikipedia should do, well it depends on what your role is as you see it. On wikispecies we are more and more following the recommendations of the GSLWG as it is becomming an industry standard (at request of IUCN and CITES also) and already has the support of legislative bodies around the world. Which is why when I add turtles to Wikispecies I always standardise the higher order taxonomy according to that standard. Which means this is what ends up in Wikidata also. Checklists that do not meet these Governance standards will in the end not be used in the development of the Global List of Species, which will in the end be managed by CoL+ once it is released. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, ie review level taxonomy only, my suggestion would be follow the checklists because they are being reviewed using internationally accepted metrics, but its up to you all how you do it.We have a meetuing in two weeks to finalise the metrics that will be applied to this issue.
This is an onging problem and not one with a direct solution right now but it is in process. I thought you should all be aware. If anyone wants more info or any of our papers let me know. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 12:40, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
I noticed when Elmutanto ( talk · contribs) was changing the taxonomy of gymnosperms based on the proposed classification scheme of Yang et al. 2022 (which I think may have been premature) that they changed the automatic taxobox classification of Cephalotaxus to Cephalotaxaceae rather than Taxaceae as it had been previously. I known reading the literature that "Cephalotaxaceae" is widely used, but does it have consensus amongst the major authorities? Regardless, I don't think we need a separate article on Cephalotaxaceae. given that Cephalotaxus is the only member of the family. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 22:31, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
As stated in Wikipedia:Requested_moves/Technical_requests, I'm proposing the merging of both pages Cristidiscoidea and Nucleariida into a single page Nucleariid. Here is my explanation. There are three completely different classifications of these organisms (that I know of):
The informal name "nucleariid amoebae" agglutinates all amoebae in these groups. For this reason, I believe the title "Nucleariid" for a common page will avoid any controversial use of one name over the other. How many of you would support this? ☽ Snoteleks ☾ 13:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
Your feedback and/or implementation is appreciated at this edit request. Izno ( talk) 18:52, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at
Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent
Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class=
parameter to {{
WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.
No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{ WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.
However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{
WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom
parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present.
Aymatth2 (
talk) 21:41, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Hi all. We have an issue regarding Patternless delma. This article been created twice by two users with the common name 'Patternless delma', with the IUCN also utilizing that name. However, the common name 'Olive legless lizard' seems to be more robustly sourced, with 64 hits on Google Scholar vs 9 for 'Patternless delma'. @ Pvmoutside and I were having a discussion on the talk page, and would like to hear from other editors to weigh in on what is the more appropriate title. For the life of me, I can't understand why the IUCN has chosen this apparently minor common name. Have other editors experienced this? SuperTah ( talk) 11:35, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
We have since at least 2008 had this pair of articles covering what is now the same taxon with two different names, both rather familiar to biologists. Heterokont is the older name, so might have precedence, but its definition has shifted as genomics has come to bear and it seems that the newer name Stramenopile is becoming accepted as the name of the clade (e.g. "A Phylogenomic Framework to Study the Diversity and Evolution of Stramenopiles (=Heterokonts)", Derelle et al 2016). Suggestions for a merge have been made in 2008, in 2014, in 2021, and now again in 2023 from User:Snoteleks, so it is about time we merged the two. I actually don't care which direction the merge is in, but as I've just mentioned, it looks as if Stramenopile is probably the best name at the moment. The team's thoughts would be gratefully appreciated. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 11:31, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
OK, I think we agree that we should merge them, and in the direction Heterokont to Stramenopile. I'll propose that on their talk pages. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 16:44, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
|always_display=yes
and used it as parent for {{
Taxonomy/TSAR}}. This results in the taxobox showing Diaphoretickes and Eukaryota rather TSAR as the top rank. This should probably also be used for Haptista and Cryptista when they are removed from Chromista, but not for plants where it has been decided that Plantae or Archaeplastida should be the top taxon displayed. —
Jts1882 |
talk 18:09, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
I've created a request regarding this at Wikipedia:Requested templates#Taxonbar template for tables to determine how difficult they would be to create; there has been some discussion on how to do this in the past, but any members of TOL have thoughts on the two different proposals I have made there, please share them either here or there. Please do not object at this time to the general notion of up-merging some species articles; these discussions are simply to determine how taxonbars can be included in tables - I will be opening other discussions where such comments will be welcome and appropriate. BilledMammal ( talk) 06:46, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm glad that people have finally circled back around to this topic, after earlier issues about content forking and page merges. It sounds like a technical fix to display multiple taxonbars may be attainable, but please do bear with my concerns about when and when not to merge, and issues with tables. Briefly, I can certainly see a "clutter reduction" utility when, for example, there are multiple higher taxon pages of different ranks that are all just lists of constituent sub-taxa and have no other text. In insects, at least, it is fairly common for a family page to have a lot of text, and I would not merge lower ranks into the family page under those circumstances. But it is ALSO not uncommon for a subfamily article to be nothing more than a list of tribes, each of which in turn is an article containing a list of genera, or even a list of subtribes. In such cases, I can see that merging all of the "list-only" articles into a tabular form would work, and make navigating the taxonomic hierarchy a little more straightforward. At the other end of this scale, I would be concerned about merging species articles into a single table in a genus article unless those species have - essentially - no actual text (i.e., nothing beyond distribution, year described, or maybe host data), and unless most of the species in the genus have data to include in the table. If you have a moment, look at the genus article for Trogoderma. It's almost entirely redlinks, like 130 of them, and a handful of actual species articles. But 4 of those actual articles refer to pest species about which there is information and text, and one of them (the Khapra beetle) has a rather substantial individual article. I would never want to see a species-level article like that reduced to a simple table entry because of a merge. But I also point to the Trogoderma article as an example of what I earlier voiced as a problem with making a table; every one of those redlinked names would have a large number of empty "cells" in a table, and waste a lot of space. The more columns in the table, the more blank spaces, for every redlinked name. Over the past 2 decades editing WP articles, I've seen hundreds of genus articles with over 100 species, and very, VERY few of those articles are NOT mostly redlinks. I don't feel great about pushing forward with this if it's just trading one form of wastefulness (too many forky, listy articles) for another (large sprawling tables with hundreds or thousands of cells, only a handful having any content). I have no objection to having the ability to do this sort of thing, but would advocate using it sparingly. Dyanega ( talk) 23:05, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Carabidae.org appears to have long been used as the authoritative reference for Carabidae taxa - we have ~7.4k active links to the site [2]. Unfortunately, and I don't know when that happened, they seem to have switched to a subscription model [3] which has disabled all direct links. As a consequence, what we've got now are 7.4k x 404 errors. Example subfamily, example genus, example species.
What to do? Many, possibly the majority of these articles (hard to tell without Quarry-ing, I suspect) are only sourced to this reference. Those would need to be switched over to CoL or some other database that would be expected to include all these taxa. In other cases the ref could possibly just be deleted if other sources are also given. In either case some bot assist would be needed due to the sheer volume. (Dropping a note at Beetle project) -- Elmidae ( talk · contribs) 13:11, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
the sole purpose of [Fominykh et al. 2020] was to describe new taxa in order to sell their paratypes.Is this actually something that happens? I would support using CarabCat as a replacement. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 21:01, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
I've submitted a Bot Request for Approval to replace the dead Carabidae.org references with Catalogue of Life references. I'd welcome any comments, criticism, or suggestions. Bob Webster ( talk) 01:18, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
The Chlorophyta article begins "Chlorophyta or Prasinophyta is a taxon of green algae informally called chlorophytes." Obviously if these are actually synonyms we should not have two articles on the same subject; and if they're not synonyms then the article should not be claiming them as such. Chlorophyta does seem to be a valid clade; Prasinophyta is variously interpreted as a synonym for the same clade, and as a paraphyletic group with additional members from other clades. Actually the cladograms in Chlorophyta#Phylogeny have a strange attitude to synonymy as Viridiplantae are equated to Green algae, and Streptophyta are equated to Charophyta. Not sure what's going on here but a bit of clarification would be desirable. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 12:44, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Hey all, a bunch of new incorrect prehistoric reconstruction images were added to articles by User:Dinosaursroar127809. Does anyone have rollback rights to undo all of them? Thanks. Cougroyalty ( talk) 16:22, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
There is an open deletion discussion for five bacteria "not validly published" at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gabonia, and there was another one a couple weeks ago at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Saccharopolyspora salina. Wikipedia has hundreds, if not more than a thousand articles on not validly published prokaryotes.
Validly published describes the concept under the botanical code, but it is similar for prokaryotes (and is quite different from the zoology term "valid"). Aspects unique to prokaryote nomenclature are that valid publication is done in a single journal ( IJSEM), and requires designating a cultured type strain deposited in institutions in at least two different countries. The LPSN database is apparently the source for Wikipedia's bacteria classifcation (albeit sometimes indirectly, e.g. citing NCBI records based on LPSN). LPSN has entries for many names?/taxa? that aren't validly published. These are enclosed in quotes on LPSN. In cases where the entity hasn't been cultured, the name is preceded by Candidatus. For non-candidatus invalid names, the most obvious and common reason why the name is invalid is that it has been published somewhere other than IJSEM (although there may be other less-obvious problems with the publication). IJSEM regularly validates names that have been published elsewhere, and has recently been publishing lists of candidatus taxa (without validating them).
I would certainly not encourage anybody to create articles for invalid bacteria, but they can't be entirely avoided. There are invalid higher taxa that have valid children. I went though phyla, classes and orders in LPSN, and found the following non-candidatus invalid names with valid children. Phyla: Abditibacteriota, Euryarchaeota, Nanoarchaeota. Classes: Methanomicrobia, Tissierellia. Orders: Parvularculales, Synechococcales, Vibrionales. I didn't look into invalid families. Some invalid names may represent bacteria of significant interest: Mycobacterium orygis is a human and veterinary pathogen. Achromobacter obae has a unique enzyme that has been the subject of many research papers (Wikipedia claims the entire genome of this species has been sequenced, but I think there may only be a complete sequence for the enzyme).
What should be done about articles for invalid bacteria, if anything? Plantdrew ( talk) 18:47, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Nomenclature rules blocking recognition of species discovered by DNA sequencing.
- Donald Albury 18:31, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Recently on the WikiProject Paleontology discord server, FunkMonk pointed out the unconventional way that Fama Clamosa implemented the references for the taxonomic authorities in the infobox for Icaronycteris. I personally like how they're implemented, as it seems like a neat and tidy way to make the citations for the taxonomic authorities available in the infobox. However, Carnoferox pointed out that implementing citations this way prevents the authors from being wikilinked. As such, I felt it was a good idea to bring this topic up for wider discussion. Of note is WP:INFOBOXREF; it is generally encouraged to structure articles in such a way as to avoid needing citations in the infobox, but taxonomic authorities are a special case where making the citation readily available from the infobox is obviously desirable. I think formatting it in the way currently implemented at Icaronycteris looks tidier than using superscript-based references, and keeping the infoboxes tidy is desirable. Ornithopsis ( talk) 23:59, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
I would argue that implementing this would actually be advantageous in many of the cases Peter coxhead and Dyanega are describing, as it allows for a distinction to be drawn between the citation of the taxonomic authority itself and citations to sources being given in support of it being the authority.- In which case the linked citation would still need to be followed by one or more trailing references, leaving the taxobox no less cluttered than before.
As far as the taxonomic authority not giving information on who revised or reassigned the taxon goes, take that up with the ICZN. It's not my fault that the parentheses don't tell you who reassigned it.There is a difference between "not giving information on who revised/reassigned a taxon (while showing the taxon *has* been revised/reassigned)" and "not showing the taxon has been reassigned at all". The ICZN system does the former (which is, indeed, not always ideal), but by using the original description as, essentially, a reference on itself, this format does the latter. (And yes, the parentheses in such a citation do still show "taxon has been reassigned/revised at some point", but as this is not backed up by linking solely to the original description, we're once again right back to needing those trailing references.)
In general, for some of the issues brought up by Peter coxhead and Dyanega, I simply don't see how this is creating a new problem. Aren't those concerns already relevant to citing taxonomic authorities in general?That depends. If, as your original post implied, this is effectively meant to replace the superscript-based references for taxon authors, then yes, it is creating new problems—because the solution for most of those issues is "back it up with sources" and by removing those sources, problems will be (re)introduced.
Hey all, what is our policy on replacement names for preoccupied homonyms of other names? When do we use a redirect to point to the new replacement name? I know I'm probably not asking this question correctly, so the example I am thinking of is Melanosteus, which was recently redirected by User:Carnoferox to newly created genus name Melanomontanosteus. It looks a little sketchy to me (I didn't recognize the journal proposing the name change), and a bit premature. Anyone else have any thoughts? Thanks Cougroyalty ( talk) 20:45, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Going back to the general question asked by @ Cougroyalty:: a junior homonym should not redirect to a replacement name. If the senior homonym is regarded as a synonym, the homonyms should probably be treated on a disambiguation page. If the senior homonym is regarded as valid/accepted, it should have an article (with a hatnote for the junior homonym); a dab page can be a temporary solution if there's no article for the senior homonym and you don't feel up to writing one). If the senior homonym is a very obscure synonym, and the junior homonym has been widely used, I would hope that taxonomists outside of Wikipedia would consider conservation/suppression as an appropriate nomenclatural remedy. Plantdrew ( talk) 01:26, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
There are two ways forward: (1) do exactly what Monster Iestyn suggested above ("that Melanosteus, once turned into a redirect after page move, should then be a redirect to Melanosclerite (which lists the senior homonym Melanosteus Eisenack, 1942), which itself could have a hatnote to Melanomontanosteus added") or (2) create the article for the senior homonym, with a hatnote sending interested parties to the Melanomontanosteus article. Personally, I favor the latter approach, but I don't have the resources necessary to provide content for an article on Melanosteus. A brief glance suggests that there may actually not be very much available information, because "melanosclerites" sound like they're obscure, enigmatic, and very poorly known. In that case, option 1 might be the only appropriate solution. Dyanega ( talk) 15:06, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
For those of you who use the {{
make cite iucn}}
template, I have changed it. I changed it because using {{make cite iucn}}
to translate the raw reference from the
IUCN redlist would return a rendering that is plain wikitext. For example, the reference from the
African Forest Elephant page at IUCN looks like this:
The old version of {{make cite iucn}}
would take that and produce this:
which is rather poor form. We should not be displaying the raw wikitext {{
cite iucn}}
template – even for the hour or so that it takes
AnomieBOT to get round to substing the template.
The new version presents a proper rendering while waiting to be subst'd:
{{make cite iucn|Gobush, K.S., Edwards, C.T.T, Maisels, F., Wittemyer, G., Balfour, D. & Taylor, R.D. 2021. Loxodonta cyclotis (errata version published in 2021). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2021: e.T181007989A204404464. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2021-1.RLTS.T181007989A204404464.en. Accessed on 25 April 2023.|nosubst=true}}
The above includes |nosubst=true
because I want to demonstrate the pre-subst rendering. When subst'd, this is what the {{cite iucn}}
wikitext and rendering look like:
{{cite iucn|access-date=25 April 2023|author1=Gobush, K.S.|author2=Edwards, C.T.T.|author3=Maisels, F.|author4=Wittemyer, G.|author5=Balfour, D.|author6=Taylor, R.D.|doi=10.2305/IUCN.UK.2021-1.RLTS.T181007989A64.en|errata=2021|page=e.T181007989A204404464|title=''Loxodonta cyclotis''|volume=2021|year=2021}}
This change should make it easier to cite the IUCN redlist. Questions? Comments?
— Trappist the monk ( talk) 22:49, 25 April 2023 (UTC)
This 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. |
Archive 50 | ← | Archive 53 | Archive 54 | Archive 55 | Archive 56 | Archive 57 | → | Archive 60 |
I am trying to get a feel for how writers of Wikipedia articles about taxa approach the issue of what classification they use. I have not really understood the template system very well but it looks as if an automated taxobox is used by an author they will be importing the higher ranks with the taxobox. The data in the taxobox will represent the classification.
Presumably if an author wanted to make use of a different classification they could manually complete a taxobox with the higher ranks chosen by them to reflect the classification of their choosing.
I would like to be corrected on this if it is wrong and would also be interested in any discussions on Wikipedia's approach to classification which may be available. Gourdiehill ( talk) 23:07, 5 March 2023 (UTC)
|taxon_ref=WoRMS
(using a proper citation) in the {{
Taxonomy/Gastropoda}} template or |taxon_ref=AGP IV
for angiosperms. —
Jts1882 |
talk 20:34, 6 March 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for interesting responses to my question. I have been trying to understand the Catalogue of Life Checklist which seems to be an attempt at a single classification based on consensus views from experts in different areas. They do make the case for the advantages of a single classification. There are a series of six papers published in 2021 they have released called "Towards a global list of accepted species 1" (to VI). I presume they would hope Wikipedia adopts their classification. I am hoping to get round to reading more about it and perhaps editing some Wikipedia articles... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gourdiehill ( talk • contribs) 21:12, 7 March 2023 (UTC)
Since @ Gourdiehill: brought up the series of papers I was involved in as part of the Global_Species_List_Working_Group the first paper in the series from 2020 is on Wikisource here. Ok with respect to Catalogue of Life, they are changing things significantly but for their release of CoL+ rather than the current iteration. The problem CoL has had is they are using roughly 180 checklists to develop their species list and there is problematic conflict resolution in this. The series of 6 papers released are also all available I can provide them to anyone interested went into the development of a governence system for a single global species list and ways to assess the quality of the various checklists on different organisms around the world. This system still being developed is being developed in conjunction with CoL and many other checklists.
@ Peter coxhead: brought up the issue of fossils, and as a paleontologist I wish there was a better answer, unfortunately the vast majority of users of scientific names want them effectively excluded, at least the older ones that have no living relatives. We actually surveyed the international scientific community on this and the results of that is in press. However myself and several others have fought not to have this happen. In my own works I am one of the few vertebrate taxonomists that actually does phylogenies with all living and fossil material combined so I certainly am against this. But we do have to find a way to reconcile them. Unfortunately a number of fosssil groups have determined to use PhyloCode over ICZN and this also creates areas of conflict as the two systems are not entirely compatable and yield vastly different results in higher order classification. Most end users of taxonomy refuse to use PhyloCode as it is not accepted as a nomenclatural system by the IUBS and hence has no legislative support with respect to the work many users do in the fields of Medicine, Conservation etc. It takes up to 10 years to change the nomenclature in the legislative framework for CITES for example.
As for what Wikipedia should do, well it depends on what your role is as you see it. On wikispecies we are more and more following the recommendations of the GSLWG as it is becomming an industry standard (at request of IUCN and CITES also) and already has the support of legislative bodies around the world. Which is why when I add turtles to Wikispecies I always standardise the higher order taxonomy according to that standard. Which means this is what ends up in Wikidata also. Checklists that do not meet these Governance standards will in the end not be used in the development of the Global List of Species, which will in the end be managed by CoL+ once it is released. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, ie review level taxonomy only, my suggestion would be follow the checklists because they are being reviewed using internationally accepted metrics, but its up to you all how you do it.We have a meetuing in two weeks to finalise the metrics that will be applied to this issue.
This is an onging problem and not one with a direct solution right now but it is in process. I thought you should all be aware. If anyone wants more info or any of our papers let me know. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 12:40, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
I noticed when Elmutanto ( talk · contribs) was changing the taxonomy of gymnosperms based on the proposed classification scheme of Yang et al. 2022 (which I think may have been premature) that they changed the automatic taxobox classification of Cephalotaxus to Cephalotaxaceae rather than Taxaceae as it had been previously. I known reading the literature that "Cephalotaxaceae" is widely used, but does it have consensus amongst the major authorities? Regardless, I don't think we need a separate article on Cephalotaxaceae. given that Cephalotaxus is the only member of the family. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 22:31, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
As stated in Wikipedia:Requested_moves/Technical_requests, I'm proposing the merging of both pages Cristidiscoidea and Nucleariida into a single page Nucleariid. Here is my explanation. There are three completely different classifications of these organisms (that I know of):
The informal name "nucleariid amoebae" agglutinates all amoebae in these groups. For this reason, I believe the title "Nucleariid" for a common page will avoid any controversial use of one name over the other. How many of you would support this? ☽ Snoteleks ☾ 13:54, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
Your feedback and/or implementation is appreciated at this edit request. Izno ( talk) 18:52, 11 April 2023 (UTC)
Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at
Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent
Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class=
parameter to {{
WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.
No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{ WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.
However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{
WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom
parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present.
Aymatth2 (
talk) 21:41, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Hi all. We have an issue regarding Patternless delma. This article been created twice by two users with the common name 'Patternless delma', with the IUCN also utilizing that name. However, the common name 'Olive legless lizard' seems to be more robustly sourced, with 64 hits on Google Scholar vs 9 for 'Patternless delma'. @ Pvmoutside and I were having a discussion on the talk page, and would like to hear from other editors to weigh in on what is the more appropriate title. For the life of me, I can't understand why the IUCN has chosen this apparently minor common name. Have other editors experienced this? SuperTah ( talk) 11:35, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
We have since at least 2008 had this pair of articles covering what is now the same taxon with two different names, both rather familiar to biologists. Heterokont is the older name, so might have precedence, but its definition has shifted as genomics has come to bear and it seems that the newer name Stramenopile is becoming accepted as the name of the clade (e.g. "A Phylogenomic Framework to Study the Diversity and Evolution of Stramenopiles (=Heterokonts)", Derelle et al 2016). Suggestions for a merge have been made in 2008, in 2014, in 2021, and now again in 2023 from User:Snoteleks, so it is about time we merged the two. I actually don't care which direction the merge is in, but as I've just mentioned, it looks as if Stramenopile is probably the best name at the moment. The team's thoughts would be gratefully appreciated. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 11:31, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
OK, I think we agree that we should merge them, and in the direction Heterokont to Stramenopile. I'll propose that on their talk pages. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 16:44, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
|always_display=yes
and used it as parent for {{
Taxonomy/TSAR}}. This results in the taxobox showing Diaphoretickes and Eukaryota rather TSAR as the top rank. This should probably also be used for Haptista and Cryptista when they are removed from Chromista, but not for plants where it has been decided that Plantae or Archaeplastida should be the top taxon displayed. —
Jts1882 |
talk 18:09, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
I've created a request regarding this at Wikipedia:Requested templates#Taxonbar template for tables to determine how difficult they would be to create; there has been some discussion on how to do this in the past, but any members of TOL have thoughts on the two different proposals I have made there, please share them either here or there. Please do not object at this time to the general notion of up-merging some species articles; these discussions are simply to determine how taxonbars can be included in tables - I will be opening other discussions where such comments will be welcome and appropriate. BilledMammal ( talk) 06:46, 8 April 2023 (UTC)
I'm glad that people have finally circled back around to this topic, after earlier issues about content forking and page merges. It sounds like a technical fix to display multiple taxonbars may be attainable, but please do bear with my concerns about when and when not to merge, and issues with tables. Briefly, I can certainly see a "clutter reduction" utility when, for example, there are multiple higher taxon pages of different ranks that are all just lists of constituent sub-taxa and have no other text. In insects, at least, it is fairly common for a family page to have a lot of text, and I would not merge lower ranks into the family page under those circumstances. But it is ALSO not uncommon for a subfamily article to be nothing more than a list of tribes, each of which in turn is an article containing a list of genera, or even a list of subtribes. In such cases, I can see that merging all of the "list-only" articles into a tabular form would work, and make navigating the taxonomic hierarchy a little more straightforward. At the other end of this scale, I would be concerned about merging species articles into a single table in a genus article unless those species have - essentially - no actual text (i.e., nothing beyond distribution, year described, or maybe host data), and unless most of the species in the genus have data to include in the table. If you have a moment, look at the genus article for Trogoderma. It's almost entirely redlinks, like 130 of them, and a handful of actual species articles. But 4 of those actual articles refer to pest species about which there is information and text, and one of them (the Khapra beetle) has a rather substantial individual article. I would never want to see a species-level article like that reduced to a simple table entry because of a merge. But I also point to the Trogoderma article as an example of what I earlier voiced as a problem with making a table; every one of those redlinked names would have a large number of empty "cells" in a table, and waste a lot of space. The more columns in the table, the more blank spaces, for every redlinked name. Over the past 2 decades editing WP articles, I've seen hundreds of genus articles with over 100 species, and very, VERY few of those articles are NOT mostly redlinks. I don't feel great about pushing forward with this if it's just trading one form of wastefulness (too many forky, listy articles) for another (large sprawling tables with hundreds or thousands of cells, only a handful having any content). I have no objection to having the ability to do this sort of thing, but would advocate using it sparingly. Dyanega ( talk) 23:05, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Carabidae.org appears to have long been used as the authoritative reference for Carabidae taxa - we have ~7.4k active links to the site [2]. Unfortunately, and I don't know when that happened, they seem to have switched to a subscription model [3] which has disabled all direct links. As a consequence, what we've got now are 7.4k x 404 errors. Example subfamily, example genus, example species.
What to do? Many, possibly the majority of these articles (hard to tell without Quarry-ing, I suspect) are only sourced to this reference. Those would need to be switched over to CoL or some other database that would be expected to include all these taxa. In other cases the ref could possibly just be deleted if other sources are also given. In either case some bot assist would be needed due to the sheer volume. (Dropping a note at Beetle project) -- Elmidae ( talk · contribs) 13:11, 13 January 2023 (UTC)
the sole purpose of [Fominykh et al. 2020] was to describe new taxa in order to sell their paratypes.Is this actually something that happens? I would support using CarabCat as a replacement. Hemiauchenia ( talk) 21:01, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
I've submitted a Bot Request for Approval to replace the dead Carabidae.org references with Catalogue of Life references. I'd welcome any comments, criticism, or suggestions. Bob Webster ( talk) 01:18, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
The Chlorophyta article begins "Chlorophyta or Prasinophyta is a taxon of green algae informally called chlorophytes." Obviously if these are actually synonyms we should not have two articles on the same subject; and if they're not synonyms then the article should not be claiming them as such. Chlorophyta does seem to be a valid clade; Prasinophyta is variously interpreted as a synonym for the same clade, and as a paraphyletic group with additional members from other clades. Actually the cladograms in Chlorophyta#Phylogeny have a strange attitude to synonymy as Viridiplantae are equated to Green algae, and Streptophyta are equated to Charophyta. Not sure what's going on here but a bit of clarification would be desirable. Chiswick Chap ( talk) 12:44, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
Hey all, a bunch of new incorrect prehistoric reconstruction images were added to articles by User:Dinosaursroar127809. Does anyone have rollback rights to undo all of them? Thanks. Cougroyalty ( talk) 16:22, 19 April 2023 (UTC)
There is an open deletion discussion for five bacteria "not validly published" at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gabonia, and there was another one a couple weeks ago at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Saccharopolyspora salina. Wikipedia has hundreds, if not more than a thousand articles on not validly published prokaryotes.
Validly published describes the concept under the botanical code, but it is similar for prokaryotes (and is quite different from the zoology term "valid"). Aspects unique to prokaryote nomenclature are that valid publication is done in a single journal ( IJSEM), and requires designating a cultured type strain deposited in institutions in at least two different countries. The LPSN database is apparently the source for Wikipedia's bacteria classifcation (albeit sometimes indirectly, e.g. citing NCBI records based on LPSN). LPSN has entries for many names?/taxa? that aren't validly published. These are enclosed in quotes on LPSN. In cases where the entity hasn't been cultured, the name is preceded by Candidatus. For non-candidatus invalid names, the most obvious and common reason why the name is invalid is that it has been published somewhere other than IJSEM (although there may be other less-obvious problems with the publication). IJSEM regularly validates names that have been published elsewhere, and has recently been publishing lists of candidatus taxa (without validating them).
I would certainly not encourage anybody to create articles for invalid bacteria, but they can't be entirely avoided. There are invalid higher taxa that have valid children. I went though phyla, classes and orders in LPSN, and found the following non-candidatus invalid names with valid children. Phyla: Abditibacteriota, Euryarchaeota, Nanoarchaeota. Classes: Methanomicrobia, Tissierellia. Orders: Parvularculales, Synechococcales, Vibrionales. I didn't look into invalid families. Some invalid names may represent bacteria of significant interest: Mycobacterium orygis is a human and veterinary pathogen. Achromobacter obae has a unique enzyme that has been the subject of many research papers (Wikipedia claims the entire genome of this species has been sequenced, but I think there may only be a complete sequence for the enzyme).
What should be done about articles for invalid bacteria, if anything? Plantdrew ( talk) 18:47, 17 April 2023 (UTC)
Nomenclature rules blocking recognition of species discovered by DNA sequencing.
- Donald Albury 18:31, 18 April 2023 (UTC)
Recently on the WikiProject Paleontology discord server, FunkMonk pointed out the unconventional way that Fama Clamosa implemented the references for the taxonomic authorities in the infobox for Icaronycteris. I personally like how they're implemented, as it seems like a neat and tidy way to make the citations for the taxonomic authorities available in the infobox. However, Carnoferox pointed out that implementing citations this way prevents the authors from being wikilinked. As such, I felt it was a good idea to bring this topic up for wider discussion. Of note is WP:INFOBOXREF; it is generally encouraged to structure articles in such a way as to avoid needing citations in the infobox, but taxonomic authorities are a special case where making the citation readily available from the infobox is obviously desirable. I think formatting it in the way currently implemented at Icaronycteris looks tidier than using superscript-based references, and keeping the infoboxes tidy is desirable. Ornithopsis ( talk) 23:59, 16 April 2023 (UTC)
I would argue that implementing this would actually be advantageous in many of the cases Peter coxhead and Dyanega are describing, as it allows for a distinction to be drawn between the citation of the taxonomic authority itself and citations to sources being given in support of it being the authority.- In which case the linked citation would still need to be followed by one or more trailing references, leaving the taxobox no less cluttered than before.
As far as the taxonomic authority not giving information on who revised or reassigned the taxon goes, take that up with the ICZN. It's not my fault that the parentheses don't tell you who reassigned it.There is a difference between "not giving information on who revised/reassigned a taxon (while showing the taxon *has* been revised/reassigned)" and "not showing the taxon has been reassigned at all". The ICZN system does the former (which is, indeed, not always ideal), but by using the original description as, essentially, a reference on itself, this format does the latter. (And yes, the parentheses in such a citation do still show "taxon has been reassigned/revised at some point", but as this is not backed up by linking solely to the original description, we're once again right back to needing those trailing references.)
In general, for some of the issues brought up by Peter coxhead and Dyanega, I simply don't see how this is creating a new problem. Aren't those concerns already relevant to citing taxonomic authorities in general?That depends. If, as your original post implied, this is effectively meant to replace the superscript-based references for taxon authors, then yes, it is creating new problems—because the solution for most of those issues is "back it up with sources" and by removing those sources, problems will be (re)introduced.
Hey all, what is our policy on replacement names for preoccupied homonyms of other names? When do we use a redirect to point to the new replacement name? I know I'm probably not asking this question correctly, so the example I am thinking of is Melanosteus, which was recently redirected by User:Carnoferox to newly created genus name Melanomontanosteus. It looks a little sketchy to me (I didn't recognize the journal proposing the name change), and a bit premature. Anyone else have any thoughts? Thanks Cougroyalty ( talk) 20:45, 12 April 2023 (UTC)
Going back to the general question asked by @ Cougroyalty:: a junior homonym should not redirect to a replacement name. If the senior homonym is regarded as a synonym, the homonyms should probably be treated on a disambiguation page. If the senior homonym is regarded as valid/accepted, it should have an article (with a hatnote for the junior homonym); a dab page can be a temporary solution if there's no article for the senior homonym and you don't feel up to writing one). If the senior homonym is a very obscure synonym, and the junior homonym has been widely used, I would hope that taxonomists outside of Wikipedia would consider conservation/suppression as an appropriate nomenclatural remedy. Plantdrew ( talk) 01:26, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
There are two ways forward: (1) do exactly what Monster Iestyn suggested above ("that Melanosteus, once turned into a redirect after page move, should then be a redirect to Melanosclerite (which lists the senior homonym Melanosteus Eisenack, 1942), which itself could have a hatnote to Melanomontanosteus added") or (2) create the article for the senior homonym, with a hatnote sending interested parties to the Melanomontanosteus article. Personally, I favor the latter approach, but I don't have the resources necessary to provide content for an article on Melanosteus. A brief glance suggests that there may actually not be very much available information, because "melanosclerites" sound like they're obscure, enigmatic, and very poorly known. In that case, option 1 might be the only appropriate solution. Dyanega ( talk) 15:06, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
For those of you who use the {{
make cite iucn}}
template, I have changed it. I changed it because using {{make cite iucn}}
to translate the raw reference from the
IUCN redlist would return a rendering that is plain wikitext. For example, the reference from the
African Forest Elephant page at IUCN looks like this:
The old version of {{make cite iucn}}
would take that and produce this:
which is rather poor form. We should not be displaying the raw wikitext {{
cite iucn}}
template – even for the hour or so that it takes
AnomieBOT to get round to substing the template.
The new version presents a proper rendering while waiting to be subst'd:
{{make cite iucn|Gobush, K.S., Edwards, C.T.T, Maisels, F., Wittemyer, G., Balfour, D. & Taylor, R.D. 2021. Loxodonta cyclotis (errata version published in 2021). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2021: e.T181007989A204404464. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2021-1.RLTS.T181007989A204404464.en. Accessed on 25 April 2023.|nosubst=true}}
The above includes |nosubst=true
because I want to demonstrate the pre-subst rendering. When subst'd, this is what the {{cite iucn}}
wikitext and rendering look like:
{{cite iucn|access-date=25 April 2023|author1=Gobush, K.S.|author2=Edwards, C.T.T.|author3=Maisels, F.|author4=Wittemyer, G.|author5=Balfour, D.|author6=Taylor, R.D.|doi=10.2305/IUCN.UK.2021-1.RLTS.T181007989A64.en|errata=2021|page=e.T181007989A204404464|title=''Loxodonta cyclotis''|volume=2021|year=2021}}
This change should make it easier to cite the IUCN redlist. Questions? Comments?
— Trappist the monk ( talk) 22:49, 25 April 2023 (UTC)