Template talk:FishBase

Bullets question

I was taking a look at Nursehound and noticed the bullet before the FishBase entry in the references section was missing. I was going to fix it, but it seems the needed asterisk was already there. Could it be a result of this template's coding? --Gnome Economics 16:29, 27 October 2007 (UTC) Never mind, the problem seems to have rectified itself. --Gnome Economics 16:36, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Italics

I think the template would be better if species names were in italics, in line with its analogue on the Commons and Wikispecies. I would also suggest removing the quote marks at the same time. Does anyone disagree? --Stemonitis (talk) 19:01, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree, and I'd also like to propose that the format be changed to

Froese, R. and D. Pauly (eds). species name. FishBase. February 2009 version.

This would bring it more in line with our own {{cite web}} template, and be closer to how FishBase recommends that it be cited at the bottom of the page here. -- Yzx (talk) 14:59, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

How about:

"Barus barus" in Froese, R. and D. Pauly (eds). FishBase. February 2009 version.

—innotata (Talk • Contribs) 18:58, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

And the templates {{FishBase order}}, {{FishBase family}}, {{FishBase genus}}, {{FishBase subspecies}}, {{FishBase species alt}} need to updated if this one is. —innotata (Talk • Contribs) 19:14, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

FishBase vs. FishBase

I've boldly changed "FishBase" to "FishBase" in this and related templates. I can't see any reason for FishBase to be italicised- our article on the site does not italicise, and there seems to be nothing in the MoS suggesting it should be. I'd be inclined to think that this is a hangover from the ridiculous "work" parameter in {{cite web}}, which is a formatting nightmare. If you disagree with my actions, please explain why- I'm sure we can work something out. J Milburn (talk) 11:26, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but work remains italicised in cite web, so why should this be different currently? This makes sense to me; I was just about to directly add cite web. —innotata 14:51, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

I see the MoS says that "Other types of websites should be decided on a case-by-case basis". So basically we have no guideline either way here; I don't think any discussions of this will go anywhere in this situation. And if the websites that are italicised are those like books, newspapers, or encyclopaedias, it's rather hard to say which side FishBase is on. —innotata 14:53, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

That was added very recently, and seems to be completely contrary to how it has been dealt with in the past... How annoying... J Milburn (talk) 19:09, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

How annoying? Hard to disagree. Maybe this needs to be brought up at the MoS talk page again already then. —innotata 19:17, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The discussion is ongoing- I have left my thoughts. It seems to be completely contrary to how it has always been done, and how it is still done- that's why I said "how annoying". J Milburn (talk) 19:37, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Deadlinks

At least in some cases this template produces dead links when there are live links on Fishbase. See, for example, the citation on this page for Psilorhynchus robustus before the template was replaced with a straight link, or this one for Sinocyclocheilus robustus, again the template version was replaced with a direct link. Can the template be updated or can a newer template be created which actually accesses the data? --Bejnar (talk) 05:35, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

The links you provided are not to the actual species accounts, but to subpages of some sort. It's probably a technical problem with FishBase we can't solve (I'll look more later) —innotata 02:49, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

change author text

I think we should change

• Froese, Rainer, and Daniel Pauly, eds.

to

• Froese, Rainer; Pauly, Daniel, eds.

to match the output from the "cite" templates. Any objections? Jason Quinn (talk) 03:40, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 12 December 2021

In the template please change

{{{species|{{{2}}}}}}''"]

to

{{{species|{{{2}}}}}}''{{-"}}]

so that the close quotation mark is spaced versus the species name. (See Template:-".) —DocWatson42 (talk) 07:19, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

 Done. P.I. Ellsworth - ed. ^put'r there 08:25, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Update of FishBase Citation templates

This proposal was posted at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fishes#Conversion_of_FishBase_Citation_templates on 4 June 2024. I meant to post it here as well, but it slipped my mind.

I propose to update fishbase templates to using a module, which will generate CS1/CS2 compliant citations (e.g. {{cite web}}). I initially wrote the module for the Catalog of fish templates ({{Catalog of Fishes}}, {{Cof species}},{{Cof genus}}, etc.), which needed additions to make permalinks. These have been in use for five years. I made an option for FishBase in the sandbox at the same time but held off making the change because the template is high use. Now I propose to make the change as I’m confident it should be functionally transparent for existing uses (apart from some minor formatting changes consistent with CS1/CS2) while conferring several advantages.

Some advantages will be

• consistency with CS1/CS2 citations,
• easier updates when FishBase make changes
• the ability to use all the other citation template parameters when required (e.g.
  • setting |access-date=
  • selecting the citations style used by and article: e.g. setting |mode=cs1 for pages using {{cite web}} and other CS1 templates or |mode=cs2 for pages using {{citation}} or |name-list-style for pages using Vancouver style
  • using archived pages with |archive-url=, |archive-date=, and |url-status=,
  • using {{para|quote}], etc
• allowing other pages on Fishbase to be cited by setting a |title= and |url=, with the template automatically providing the other cite web parameters (author, website etc). Such pages include common names lists, synonym lists, notes on the Fishbase classification.

There are a number of issues that should be addressed:

• The templates default the month and year to April 2006. I think it would be better to omit this, as some later citations incorrectly default to this, but its retained in my current version so existing citations will be unchanged.
• {{FishBase subspecies}} is no longer useful. The subspecies links now go to the species page (FishBase made this change sometime between 2015 and 2017)
• {{FishBase family}} has options for parameter |ID= and |familyname=. I found two pages with the ID and both also have |family= meaning the ID was never used, while |familyname= is not used. This option will be dropped unless there is demand.

While I intend to keep the suite of fishbase citation templates (for backward compatibility), all the functionality will be available in the {{FishBase}} template, as follows:

• using |genus= and |species=) will behave like the current {{FishBase}}
• using |genus= without |species= will be equivalent to {{FishBase genus}}
• using |family= will be equivalent to {{FishBase family}},
• using |order= will be equivalent to {{FishBase order}},
• and so on.

Any comments?  —  Jts1882 | talk  14:56, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

I've updated the {{FishBase}} template as described above. The templates {{FishBase order}}, {{FishBase family}}, {{FishBase genus}}, {{FishBase subspecies}} now redirect to {{FishBase}} ({{FishBase species}} was already a redirect). There is no further need to use these templates as the parameters |order=, |family=, |genus=, and |subspecies= will work with the main template.

The main difference is that the template no longer defaults to |month=April and |year=2006. I'm not sure why this default was made as it wasn't added until 2010, so it's accuracy is questionable. As it turns out the default isn't used very often. There were about 100 uses of the template with "April 2006 version" and 40 of them were in the external links section with the month and year hard coded (often accompanied by an {{ITIS}} template with the same date).

There are a few other fishbase templates that I haven't changed and am not sure what, if anything, to do with. These are {{FishBase species alt}}, {{FishBase id1}}, and {{FishBase valid species list}} (the latter two are described as external link templates).

Please leave any questions, comments or requests here.  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:07, 7 September 2024 (UTC)