Template talk:Automatic taxobox/Archive 7

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|display children=

Species and genus names are currently not italicized. Also, call me oblivious but I'm not sure how to generate a children template for a given taxon. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:45, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Not sure whether this is related, but the appearance of the {{documentation}} suggests that a template limit has been exceeded at Template:Automatic taxobox. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 22:52, 3 January 2011 (UTC) (see below)

P.S. where not? Paradycheia looks fine in the taxonomy, title and page title. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 22:54, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

P.P.S. Child templates can be generated by going to Taxonomy/Taxon-name and clicking "Update" beside the Subgroups subtitle (in the taxonomy list). Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 22:55, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmmmm. I'm not immediately recalling what I did to generate that error; sorry for the poorly documented error there. However, I spy something wrong with the logic generating this box:

Automatic taxobox/Archive 7
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Dinosauria
Clade:	Saurischia
Clade:	Theropoda
Clade:	†Eutyrannosauria
Family:	†Tyrannosauridae

Can you spot it? Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:10, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Are you referring to the box's guessing of subdivision_ranks? This still requires manual input if the children aren't the obvious. I could create another set of bot-maintained templates listing all the childrens' ranks but this might be overkill. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:26, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

A wise guess. Shall we give it a try? The rollback links seem to be great friends right now... Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 06:36, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Any luck being able to italicize genera and species in mixed-rank children lists? MMartyniuk (talk) 04:13, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't this happen automatically when you specify |display children=? (Perhaps an existing |subdivsion= parameter is overriding the automatic generation?) Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:21, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm marking this as "resolved" since it was a false alarm... Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:18, 29 January 2011 (UTC) {{resolved}}

But fossil range is applicable

Now fossil range would be a really neat one to implement, on the other hand. That's something that would require descending tree traversal in order to calculate. A few years ago I actually tried to update taxoboxes using information from descendent taxa, but was stopped in my tracks by none other than my good friend Marty when I didn't provide references while doing so.

In order to do this correctly, we'll need to provide some references. The fossil range would therefore need to be able to pull both numbers and references from daughter taxa and adjust its calculation accordingly, as well as allow for new limits set by that particular taxon itself (perhaps a fossil that isn't listed as a member of a daughter taxon).

If we master this, all those other databases will have nothing on us except original research, paid data clerics, and a few years. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:12, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. As for references, my main concern would be making sure the range is also discussed somewhere in the article text, not necessarily having all relevant references in the taxobox itself (which could get cluttered in some instances). I think the best option would be to simply include a reference for species-level taxa, calculate higher taxa based on that, and leave it up to article editors to mention what the earliest/latest representatives of a particular taxon are in the text.

(While we're at it, is "fossil range" really the best term to use for this field? Many boxes will go to Recent, where the range is indicated by living or subfossil specimens rather than proper fossils. For example the Coelocantha is a Lazarus taxon where the fossil range ends in the Mesozoic but the taxon is extant). MMartyniuk (talk) 02:48, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

"Fossil range" works fine for me...the solid green bar shows the range of the fossils, and the transparent green bar shows upper and lower extensions taxon is believed (or confirmed) to have existed via some method other than fossil evidence.

Also...I'm not quite sure your method of calculating the taxonomy does not conflict with itself...so I'll ask if this is what you meant-- for a parent taxon, I'd pull the four numbers or words from the daughter taxa, and allow four fossil range parameters on the taxon template itself. If any of the daughter information would extend beyond the limits specified in the taxon's parameters, the combined daughter information would override the taxon's parameters. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:20, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I've always used the transparent green bar to indicate uncertainty or controversy, for example fossil specimens which have been suggested but not confirmed to belong to a certain group (e.g. Therizinosaur). MMartyniuk (talk) 00:44, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree that it's a neat idea. However there are some complications, such as how we'd support the |earliest= and |latest= parameters of Template:Fossil range (see Coelocanth for an apt example of when these are necessary). It would also be rather template-heavy. In addition, there may be cases where one putative Cambrian example of a recent group (e.g. Thaumaptilion and the sea pens) drags back the fossil range of the group unreasonably. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:15, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Just a further note that this would have to be something that was hard coded, in a similar fashion to the subdivision lists. Therefore computational effort isn't a problem. One good solution would be to display an automatically-generated fossil range, based on the child taxa; and to allow the manual override with |fossil range=. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:20, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Precisely. As for the sea pens example, I think it's great that an outlier like that would drag the putativity forward in the ancestral taxa. That's actually the whole point here, and the fossil range does clearly distinguish between what is confirmed and what is hypothetical. And the manual override that would be necessary in order to extend a range for a parent could also easily be used to push out the outliers if it's really a problematic outlier (although I can't think of any putative outliers I'd leave out, personally). As for the coelacanth example, "(but extant)" is adequate for indicating that the putative latest date indicates no present-day fossils. After all, the header for the diagram does say "fossil range", so anyone looking at it should be able to tell that that's what's going on. I do find it awkward, though, that no present-day fossils have been found of coelacanths...perhaps they've just not ever been indicated in any journals. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:01, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Why not just change the field to "Known Time Span" or something? MMartyniuk (talk) 08:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. However, that's a paleontology template...we better make sure it's okay with the rest of the WikiCavemen. I've put up an RfC. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:49, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

As a Caveman I would note that the fossilrange template is also being used in the Geologic formation infoboxes (see Fox Hills Formation) So it prob should be be renamed to geologic range or similar to take into account other uses of the template in geology pages. --Kevmin § 10:23, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

The template is called Template:Geological range, and the prefix "Fossil range" is produced by Template:Taxobox/core. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 16:36, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Template talk:Geological range#RfC: Rewording of "fossil range"

Back to the idea of automatically displaying the fossil range. Here's how I'd see a bot doing it:

• For each child of the taxon in question:
  • If a fossil range is specified in its taxobox, store the start, end, earliest and latest parameters
  • If a fossil range is absent, examine each of its children
• For the taxon in question, use the earliest "earliest", the first "first", the latest "latest" and the last "end" parameters

My question would be whether there would need to be any indication to the user that the fossil range had been automatically generated and how. I would suggest only displaying the automatically generated fossil range if |fossil range=auto is set.

Any comments on this procedure? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 12:56, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

On a side note, the fossil range (it seems to me) would likely cause a load problem in checking unless it used cached data. However, we can worry about algorithms improvements later. Back to your question-- I like the idea of it checking for a fossil range and displaying one if the children have one-- but I wouldn't leave it to the bot to do this; I'd have the automatic taxobox itself do it, unless it really does cause a huge problem in load time. Since Wikipedia is about sources (despite what outsiders say), I'd recommend the text be displayed something like this hypothetical example:

Strange hypothetical taxon Temporal range:
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animal
(unranked):	Strange hypothetical taxon

Let's say the client has entered the following fossil range:

|fossil_range={{fossil_range|auto|400|100|earliest=600}}

Perhaps there's a better symbol to use for cross-referencing to another article, but that should definitely clear up any confusion, I think, as to where the numbers came from. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:09, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

It's going to have to be cached by bot -- there's no way for WP templates to navigate down a heirarchy. The bot would create a page for each taxon containing a string to include in the taxobox. The noinclude of this page could display a list of all childrens' fossil ranges, to make the source data clear, to be linked perhaps from the word "fossil range". (This would also be quite a handy graphic!) Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 23:39, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Makes sense. Perhaps the template could be set up so when a "purge" link is clicked, the bot runs out and updates it? Also-- any thoughts on the example I posted up above (output is in the taxobox on the right)? Is that what you had in mind? Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:54, 27 December 2010 (UTC)