Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Archive 27

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Your opinion on photo caption?

Taxon is illustrated with a photo of seven elephants, captioned "All the elephants together are a taxon".
This strikes me as likely to confuse readers, who might take as meaning that "taxon" has roughly the same meaning as "herd".
Comments? -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 00:04, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I see the potential for confusion and ambiguity. Sabine's Sunbird talk 02:12, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Shyamal's wording seems better to me.[1] But, by all means, have a go at improving it. Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:20, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

I seem to recall noticing this and wasn't sure how to fix it. Glad someone has fixed it. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 06:29, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Thx to all. :-) -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 14:11, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Italic title (again, sorry)

Has there been a general consensus reached yet about whether to italicize binomial article titles by using {{articletitle}} or by removing the name parameter? I looked above and didn't really see any consensus reached (maybe I missed it). I ask because recently I've noticed both methods being used by different editors on fungus species articles. Sasata (talk) 14:56, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

I think there has been a bit of a hiatus in this discussion whilst we struggle to convince other editors that italicisation of titles should be allowed at all, see this RFC. Celefin (talk) 15:17, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

There were two main opinions expressed, both in regard to a bug that occurs in external parsers. First someone pointed out that the tax hack confused the external parsers. Second someone expressed that that's not our problem. So basically it's "do you support external parsers or not?"

It's clear that there has been no objection within the ToL that names should be italicized, we're just trying to decide which solution is optimal. I don't think anyone at ToL will get upset if you use the template, although a few will get upset if you use the tax hack. Personally, I don't have much preference. External parsers that need data from Wikipedia should be programmed according to what we do, not the other way around. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:26, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Ignorant of this discussion, I asked for a bot to add here. I was going to set up a new poll, but the last is sooner than I thought. Having said that, the parser question did seem to dominate over what is best for Wikipedia. Is another poll, asking about Wikipedia only, regardless of impact on 3rd parties, worth doing? Heds (talk) 03:14, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Fungus is at FAC

This is a big article and sort of tree-of-lifey, and is at FAC, so all input on how to improve the article welcome. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:05, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Standards for range maps

Are there standards for the range maps included in the taxoboxes? I notice that many pages that have simple, two-color (or three-color) range maps, such as White-headed Capuchin or Gorilla, and others (Blue Jay) have 3 or 4 color maps with information in text below the map, while others, such as Ring-tailed Lemur or Tiger have more colorful maps with legends and other information included in the image. I'm currently polishing up a template Madagascar range map (adding a legend) that I plan to use for all the lemur articles. Is this design breaking some Bio-locator map standard, or is it just a step above a standard range map that species should have? I'd like to know the general concensus before I put a lot of time into polishing up this range map template, especially if I should be using a simpler image for my range maps. –Visionholder (talk) 19:20, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Because different resolutions may mess up the text, it's critical that the text is left out of the image when possible. The text should be included both on the image description page and wherever the map appears. This also allows for easier translation between wikis. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:02, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

In that case, how do you recommend handling range maps that demonstrate the ranges of several species or subspecies in a genus, such as the one in Ruffed lemur or Sportive lemur? In the map description/caption, should I label each color, or use numbers (which can be messed up due to varying resolution) to help label the colors in the caption, as was done in Common Chimpanzee? –Visionholder (talk) 04:08, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

There is always room for an exception or two. I think the Sportive lemur map is well done, even for including text. The map isn't meant to be viewed at lower resolution, of course, but the thumb-size image still conveys the map's purpose, if not the details. There are general guidelines in any artistic medium, but there are also ways to successfully break those rules when the artist is skilled enough to do so. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Well-said, my friend. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:15, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Requesting comments on interpretation of style guidelines on bolding in TOL articles

I am requesting comments on the interpretation of the style guidelines on bolding the family name in the lede of an article about a group of animals, at Talk:Elephant#Bolding of Elephantidae in lede. -- Donald Albury 09:32, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Elephantidae

Per recent discussion on Talk:Elephant (here), a request to move List of elephant species → Elephantidae has been posted (here). --Una Smith (talk) 01:31, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

NOTICE. Request For Comment: Changes to Naming policies which may affect WikiProject naming conventions.

Following recent changes by some editors to the Wikipedia:Naming conventions policy page, a Request For Comment, (RFC) is now being held. This is to debate the removal of the passage permitting individual WikiProject and other naming conventions to make exceptions to the standard policy of using Common Names as the titles of Wikipedia articles.

This WikiProject is being notified since it operates such a specific naming convention. Editors are invited to comment on the proposed change at this location. Xandar 02:37, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

The above "notification" is a grossly biased misrepresentation of the changes under discussion. The old version of the naming conventions policy tried to lay down binding rules; we don't work that way, so it was necessary also to make explicit exceptions. The new version articulates principles, and allows for consensus to establish how they should be applied. Thus there is no longer any need for exceptions. In fact, making exceptions is nonsense, since there are no rules to make exceptions to. These changes are good for specific conventions. Xandar is trying to induce moral panic in those who stand to gain the most from this. Xandar is only opposed to the new version because he thinks the wording, not the general thrust, weakens his position in a dispute unrelated to this RfC. Don't be fooled. Hesperian 02:47, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Taxobox problem [RESOLVED]

Could someone take a look at Amoeba proteus and try to work out why the ;" | bits are in the taxobox? If possible can someone please check whether this change in the taxonomy top the species is right too? Thanks Smartse (talk) 00:05, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll have a look right now. Seems like I've seen this before, and it was an easy fix. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:06, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

The change you've linked to introduced an invalid kingdom, which upset the taxobox. I've changed it back to a valid kingdom. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:15, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Formal description

I can't find anything on the 'pedia about the process of description of a new taxon, which as I understand it has formal requirements. Is there such an article or section? If not, should there be one? (If there should, I don't know enough to write it.) —JerryFriedman (Talk) 03:01, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I've set up a page. Feel free to add to it if you have anything to contribute. I'll probably be working on it sometime this week but don't have time at the moment to work on it. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:38, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a good start. I may be able to contribute something when the first draft is done (or I may not). —JerryFriedman (Talk) 20:58, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me. If you get into the specifics, someone from WP:PLANTS can help fill in botanical requirements. My only concern is the article title. I'm relatively new to the field, but I've never heard the term "species paper". Is there perhaps a better title? Formal description of taxa? Can't really think of a better one. --Rkitko ^(talk) 21:16, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Description (biology) or Description (taxonomy)? There's already an article about Undescribed taxons. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 08:30, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I also think, that Description (biology) would be the best name. --Snek01 (talk) 09:29, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Maybe was JerryFriedman looking for articles: Biological type, International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. I use type description for such cases Special:WhatLinksHere/Type_description. Socorro springsnail and Viviparus georgianus could be good examples incorporating type description. also commonly named "original description". into the article. Or maybe a short non-English example of type description could be Escargot de Quimper. --Snek01 (talk) 23:15, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

What I'm looking for is some information on valid publication, names, and descriptions of taxa at all levels. Not the full detail, of course. Such an article might say that the person who publishes the first valid description is the one who gets to name the taxon, and maybe discuss naming practices (though that may be too big a topic). The articles you mention don't have this information (that I can find), though it might belong there. I agree that the two snail articles have good examples of descriptions. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 04:02, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

ExploreTree

I made this program to explore the tree of life, thought you might find it interesting: http://exploretree.org . The current tree is manually created, mostly using information I read in Wikipedia. (It can be used with any Newick format file though.) I've also tried generating a tree automatically from NCBI and matching these nodes with Wikipedia pages and taking pages with high traffic stats. It's imperfect (mostly issues with finding the corresponding Wikipedia pages for a NCBI node) but promising http://exploretree.org/autotree/ . Maybe it's possible to scrape the Wikipedia information to build a consensus tree. Anyway, enjoy. -- Madeleine ✉ ✍ 04:06, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Type species position

Please have a look at the most recent proposal at Template talk:Taxobox. This is a change that would, if enacted, change the display sequence of the taxobox. No changes would be needed for previous articles, as the parameters are automatically sorted. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:31, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Expert opinion needed

Background:' The following articles contain empty tables of prehistoric genus of varying types of creatures. A bot has been written by me that can fill them in using data from paleodb.org and Sepkoski. The task is currently stalled due to some concern about my own lack of expert knowledge on the subject.

Needed: I need someone eith "expert" knowledge (defined as a passion for the subject matter & the ability to easily spot blatant errors) to review the potential bot output of any one of the following articles of his or her choosing:

The articles:

• List of prehistoric starfish
• List of prehistoric barnacles
• List of crinoid genera
• List of prehistoric echinoids
• List of edrioasteroids
• List of graptolites
• List of prehistoric sea cucumbers
• List of hyoliths
• List of prehistoric malacostracans
• List of prehistoric brittle stars
• List of prehistoric ostracods
• List of prehistoric chitons
• List of prehistoric stylophorans

Sample page: A sample page is available for viewing here. This is provided to give you an idea about what the output will look like, but shouldn't be viewed as a final product as it (currently) includes at least one error that will be corrected shortly.

What I want: Basically, I want someone to look over an entire table (of their choice) and say either "I don't see any obvious errors" or "there are a few errors such as X,Y,Z." I will then figure out the cause of the errors (if any), fix the code, and re-run to make sure the errors are gone.

Reward: Wikipedia gets a lot of valuable science content. I get this stalled project off my to-do list. You get a "warm fuzzy" for helping improve Wikipedia in a significant way, my gratitude, and a token of my appreciation.

Let me know if interest, ThaddeusB (talk) 03:37, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

A shrew by another name...

See Talk:Shrew (animal)#Requested move. --Una Smith (talk) 05:27, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Popular pages

I've requested a list for this project at [2]. Ysangkok (talk) 12:15, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Gerrus

Wikipedia lacks content on the genus Gerrus; it appears to have been used at least twice for zoological taxa. Information, anyone? --Una Smith (talk) 03:21, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup needed

Hi, The hierarchy of headings at List of invasive species in Australasia looks wrong to my untrained eye. (Surely fish are chordates?) Could somebody please check? Thanks. dramatic (talk) 09:42, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Discussion on common names

Any input from TOL people on this discussion would be greatly appreciated. Ucucha 12:38, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Commons:Category:Kunstformen der Natur (1904)

Hi, I have reviewed and updated the taxonomy on these. I am not 100% sure in some cases (damn radiolaria! Haeckel surely named anything that differed but a little a new species!), but in such cases I usually simply left them indeterminate as to species, and only listed the genus or family.

Thus, there are now about a thousand high-quality illustrations (mainly of invertebrates) waiting to be tagged for extraction... :) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:21, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

arrangement of headings on bryozoa

Not sure how active this talk page is at present but here goes...

Essentially, here is the version before I started messing with it. My view is that naming, taxonomy/classification, and evolution are so intertwined they are best treated in one large section divided into current sections (see the current version - they had been split into three segments previously and required some repetition), and as set up now, the subject matter divides nicely into four sections with subsections each. To facilitate understanding, I have placed the Description section above the taxonomy and evolution section. Philcha feels that placing naming down the page is problematic. Anyway, anyone interested please read and place opinions. I figured this was a good place as any as it is a content arrangement discussion (?) Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:35, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't know if you are still looking for feedback, but the current version reads OK to me (not that I really looked into it in much detail, such as reading the other versions or looking at the duplication between sections which might be the result of awkward organization). I'm not having a strong reaction one way or the other. Kingdon (talk) 00:59, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback - Philcha and I have been talking about it constructively :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:28, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

New template: Iucnredlist IUCNextlink

Hi, I noticed that there didn't seem to be a standard template for creating links to a species' page on the IUCN Red List for the External links section which just has the scientific name and the link, so I have created one: Template:Iucnredlist (renamed to Template:IUCNextlink). I have only added it to two articles so far: Rufous Elephant Shrew and Black and Rufous Elephant Shrew. -Paul1337 (talk) 00:48, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Featured Article candidacy

Lundomys is now at FAC (link). Input from TOL regulars would be greatly appreciated. Ucucha 21:24, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

It's been promoted, and Pseudoryzomys is the next FA candidate: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Pseudoryzomys/archive1. Ucucha 21:48, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Red List

The IUCN has decided to change the format of its Red List links, resulting in a massive number of broken links. I submitted a request here to have a bot fix them. Ucucha 12:43, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to add featured picture stars to taxoboxes

There is a proposal at the Village Pump[3] to add featured picture stars to featured pictures in article space (below the featured picture, in its caption box, or image caption box in the case of taxoboxes with featured pictures.

The discussion includes asking the question whether they should be added to all featured pictures in articles including in taxoboxes, added just to featured pictures in caption boxes only and not to featured pictures in taxoboxes, or not added at all. Currently to find out if an image is a featured picture the user has to click on the image and its file page indicates with a star in the upper right hand corner that it is a featured picture.

To join the discussion and express your opinion go to the Village Pump. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 08:32, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Proposals with regard to taxobox

I brought up two proposals at Template talk:Taxobox. One is to add more explanation of how the |synonyms= field in the taxobox should be filled, and the other is to introduce the possibility to note that the classification in a taxobox is "disputed", "obsolete", or "uncertain". Input from other users would be appreciated. Ucucha 03:34, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Tree of life to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of life/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the toolserver tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 01:05, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Distribution map How-to page

FYI, I've created a little tutorial for how to make those nifty species distribution maps that people sometimes add to taxoboxes: Wikipedia:Distribution maps. Enjoy. Kaldari (talk) 23:25, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

That is really handy! Thanks for doing that... and expect to see dist maps in future fungus articles :) Sasata (talk) 23:31, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

G. species dab pages

Folks, there's another (short) discussion on the utility of these kinds of dab pages with one editor creating hundreds of them (Category:Latin name disambiguation pages), many of which contain only red links. Discussion is here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants#G. species dab pages. Previous tangential discussion on this topic was here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of life/Archive23#Redirects on "G. species" disambiguation pages. I don't find them particularly useful or necessary. Thoughts? Rkitko ^(talk) 23:23, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

I don't think they're that useful, but when someone wants to go ahead and make and maintain them, I don't really care either. After all, G. species is a common way to refer to species and people may be searching for it; I see no point in deleting them. (After reviewing the WT:PLANTS discussion, I think I pretty much agree with Kingdon and Una here.) Ucucha 23:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Algae

WikiProject Algae was started as a meeting space on Wikipedia for improving the taxonomic representations of the groups of organisms called algae. Please join other editors at the talk page (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Algae) to discuss a higher level taxonomy for algae to be used on Wikipedia.

The taxonomies used on Wikipedia algae articles are a mixture of ancient to modern random phyla/classes that are often inconsistent from one article to the next (and sometimes within the same sentence of an article). Editors have adopted hypothesized taxonomies from single articles in the literature, taxonomies that have been out of favor for over 100 years, and some taxoboxes use taxonomies from two different sources.

I think that a taxonomy that is supported in tertiary sources (textbooks), with added insight from the technical literature (review articles, well-cited research), could create some order to allow editors with a wide range of knowledge to edit these articles. Please discuss the proposed taxonomy at the project talk page. --68.127.232.132 (talk) 19:36, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Articles on clades

There are situations where these are suitable but perhaps there needs to be some kind of criterion for deciding if a clade is article worthy. Asking this mainly in relation to Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Higher_waterbird but may benefit from a wider discussion. Shyamal (talk) 04:40, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the criterion for deciding whether to include such an article should be a special case of our WP:GNG: did someone write a substantial account of the clade, usually by naming and defining it? "Higher waterbird" seems to fail this, something like Eumuroida does not. Ucucha 13:41, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Leaving that discussion for the AfD vote, I'd like to suggest that place more emphasis on articles about groups that a consensus of scientists accept. As we all know, it's hard to write about a controversially circumscribed taxon. You can't even say things like, "They range in size from X to Y," or "They're found in such and such habitats," unless you say, "As defined here," which is POV or close to it and is confusing to readers who are used to other definitions. Articles about well-defined taxa are much easier to understand (and to write). Of course we need articles about the controversial taxa, and our taxonomic schemes will include many of them, but they can refer to the well-defined clades as much as possible. Taxonomy doesn't work this way, but I think non-specialist readers' minds do.

Let me give an example. We have articles on the following clades, which as far as I know are uncontroversially monophyletic: falcons, caracaras, and allies (Falconidae), hawks, Old World vultures, and eagles, and maybe the Secretary Bird (possibly Accipitridae, depending on what level you put the split from the Secretary Bird at), and New World Vultures (Cathartidae). Then the well-known (to ornithologists and birders) but controversial order Falconiformes can have a much smaller article, saying mostly:

"This order comprises diurnal birds of prey. It has been defined in various ways:

• falcons, caracaras, and allies
• that group plus hawks, Old World vultures, eagles, and the Secretary Bird
• that bigger group plus New World vultures.

In the first case, the remaining birds of prey may be treated as one order, Accipitriformes, or as two, Accipitriformes (hawks, eagles, etc.) and Cathartiformes (New World vultures). These three groups are not always considered each others' closest relatives."

Now you don't have to decide whether the biggest member of the Falconiformes is the Gyrfalcon, the Cinereous Vulture, or the Andean Condor, or whether they all molt their wing feathers in the same order, and the like. Things like the problematic relationships of hawks and eagles with each other can be dealt with in the article on that clade.

I imagine many groups don't have as many consensus clades, but I think that where they exist, it's good to take advantage of them as much as possible. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 06:00, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed that often there is more agreement on the clades than on what to call them (two examples are flowering plant and leptosporangiate fern, both of which appear at various Linnean ranks). Kingdon (talk) 16:41, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Permission to use semiautomation to fill in skimpy taxoboxes.

See the discussion here --Tim1357 (talk) 18:52, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Common and scientific names (again)

Are people here aware of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora)? It rather caught me by surprise. Andrewa (talk) 19:50, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

See also Talk:Ostrich fern#Discussion. Andrewa (talk) 20:03, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The naming convention for plants has been in use for several years. Since plants lack the sort of "formal common names" that birds, for example, have, it's really difficult to use "common names" consistently. Not only do many plants have multiple common names, very many have none. To make matters worse, the same common name is used for quite a few species. It's an unworkable mess. Hence our preference for scientific names. Guettarda (talk) 20:06, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'd have thought exactly the same considerations would apply to birds and butterflies. Andrewa (talk) 20:19, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:BIRD uses a standard list for common names, see WP:BIRD#Taxonomy and references. Don't know about butterflies. It is certainly true that the development of conventions like these depends on the opinions and personalities of the people involved in particular projects. Ucucha 20:25, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Invertebrates are definitely better at scientific names - not sure whether this has been formally discussed though. Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:27, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

It seems stable enough for now. I suspect it will come back again from time to time unless/until a consistent approach eventally prevails, but I could be wrong. Still think it's a bit ironic that the rationale for the proposed move that brought this to my attention appealed to consistency in page names rather than to the detailed convention. If consistency is really the goal, then the stability may be temporary. Andrewa (talk) 22:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

When names are VERY common, then it makes sense to use the common name.Ryoung122 01:17, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Generally, plant common names are only VERY common when they have some cultural significance; e.g. they are edible. The flora naming convention captures this.

The other issue is that a great many common names are vague and ambiguous. Even "Oak", which one would think is fairly clearly defined, is used for countless species that are not members of genus Quercus. E.g. many species of Proteaceae which yield oak-like timber are commonly called "Oak" or variants thereof: Silky Oak, Mystery Oak, Honeysuckle Oak, Red Oak, White Oak, Grey Oak, Beef Oak, Bootlace Oak, Bull Oak, Corkwood Oak, Nut Oak, Briar Oak, Fishtail Oak.... Thus there is a strong argument for naming an article that is specifically about the genus Quercus as Quercus. In this case the commonness of "Oak" has won out over its imprecision, but the argument for "Quercus" is nonetheless quite strong. There are many cases where the argument for precision rightly wins. Hesperian 01:30, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Antelope carcass identification?

Can anyone identify the dead antelope picture here?

The photo is of African hunting dogs sharing an antelope kill in the Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa. Thanks, Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:41, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Plazi.org database import issues

This was brought up at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology#Direct copies of species descriptions from external website but it is more of a taxonomic thing than general biology, so I'm posting a pointer here. One of the Plazi administrators is importing large amounts of text from plazi.org, which presents issues in terms of whether the writing style is right for wikipedia and copyrights (the text, at least in part, does not originate from Plazi). Probably best to reply at the linked page rather than here. Kingdon (talk) 17:17, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

The Global Names Index: Something quite useful for the TOL wikiproject

May I direct you all to have a look at this: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles#The_Global_Names_Index:_A_missing_encyclopedic_list_makers_dream_.28or_nightmare.21.29.3F as I believe the Global names index website would be quite a useful tool indeed for this project (unless it is already known and used in which case, it seems like an incredibly good resource from the few random clicks I made). Kind regards.Calaka (talk) 06:10, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

So as an update, I went ahead and made a page on the missing articles sub page over at: Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Global Names Index for anyone that is interested or would like to modify/point/suggest anything out. I will place the project here at the related wikiproject section as long as no one objects? It is complete in the outset, and only the first 10 sub pages (~20,000 names) or so are present plus the first page of every letter. The remaining subpages will be added with the help of a bot (once a bot is found!) but the letter A would keep people occupied for a while longer yet.Calaka (talk) 11:47, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

It might be better to screen out (or at least unlink) any titles which include authorities. There are many repeated items, due to differences in the presentation of the authority (or lack thereof), and we don't normally include authorities in article titles. Here's an example:

• Abraliopsis felis -- (
  • wp
  • g
  • b
  )
• Abraliopsis felis McGowan & Okutani 1968 -- (
  • wp
  • g
  • b
  )
• Abraliopsis felis McGowan & Okutani, 1968 -- (
  • wp
  • g
  • b
  )
• Abraliopsis felis McGowan and Okutani 1968 -- (
  • wp
  • g
  • b
  )
• Abraliopsis felis McGowan and Okutani, 1968 -- (
  • wp
  • g
  • b
  )
• Abraliopsis felis McGowan/Okutani, 1968 -- (
  • wp
  • g
  • b
  )

Only the first of those red links is a potentially useful link, although knowing the author and year might help someone looking to write an article. If you're going to import more names using a bot, then it shouldn't be too hard to have it only link potential article titles comprising one or two words (with exceptions for subgenera in brackets, and modifiers like "cf.", and anything else I haven't thought of). Otherwise, it creates an enormous and probably wasteful task making redirects for all our existing articles from possible representations of authorities. --Stemonitis (talk) 12:08, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more! The difficulty lied in being able to extract the names that are useful (i.e. a genus or specie) and removing the things that were not needed (as you said any authority and any "number" or year of publication) with the help of a bot. It should just be pointed out I guess that when creating the species Abraliposis felis from the Global names index, to also check the other links with the same name as they might lead to different/additional sources. But yeah, Raul was able to make a program to easily extract all the names and has them placed as a list (from which I manually copy/pasted 10 subpages worth of letter for A pages and the first letter of B, but I guess when the bot is made to add the rest of the names, to exclude listing the above additional links. I just don't know what a bot can and can't do. Manually removing the additional names would be tedious and so what I have been doing thus far is just removing the names with the author/year once I create the genus and place the species in a separate list for future potential addition. Anyhow, if someone replies on the bot request page, I will make an update here of what are the possibilities.Calaka (talk) 12:40, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

What do brackets mean in taxonomy names?

I came across Aaida (A.) cossyphoides and Aaida (Granulasida) mater and after a lot of surveying about I managed to find Aaida being a synonym for the genus Asida (genus). Now I am confused as to what the words in brackets mean (I think A. is short for Asida) but what do they actually signify when related to a species? I seem to notice about 12 different names in parenthesis after the Asida ([4]). Are they perhaps a sub genus? If so, then shouldn't there just be an article called Granulasida mater for example? If they are a subgenus, does this apply for every taxonomy naming?Calaka (talk) 09:55, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

This is the zoological convention for indicating subgenus. Aaida (Granulasida) mater belongs to genus Aaida and subgenus Granulasida. It is still correct to refer to this species as Aaida mater, and that should be the title when an article is created for it. Hesperian 09:59, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah excellent! Thanks for the info.Calaka (talk) 10:50, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Apodasmia

The Apodasmia genus is not only for moths. There is also a New Zealand plant called Apodasmia similis. It seems that Apodasmia should be a disambiguation page. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 06:54, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Done. - UtherSRG (talk) 15:11, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Tree of life on Wikipedia vs. Wikispecies...

So surely this has been discussed multiple times (not able to find much though), both here, village pump, meta, etc but I thought I start up the talk again just for my understanding if nothing more. I thought I ask/make the discussion over at the meta forum/policy page but I figured here would be a good place to start.
So I read the faq/did a bit of reading and I will answer a response to each of their reasoning:

• The primary reason that Wikispecies is not part of Wikipedia is that the two reference works serve different purposes and audiences. - Why would Wikipedia not be used by experts though? Surely they would find an article on a species on Wikipedia as useful (if not more useful) than the one on Wikispecies. Assuming the wikipedia article has a completed/near completed taxobox and has the same references as in wikispecies.
• The needs of a general-purpose, general-audience encyclopedia differ from those of a professional reference work. Again I am not seeing this. Wikispecies also adds on to the many many websites out there that just list the taxonomy of the species and nothing more. The good thing about Wikipedia is that it will list that and more (assuming there is access to the original publications, which I know from personal experience in this and out of Wiki is not always the case).
• Furthermore, much of Wikispecies is language-independent, so placing it in the English Wikipedia (for example) would be inappropriate. I know it is only done in English but would that stop non-English speaking people to type the name into Wikipedia (scientific name) to then see its taxonomic details? Since the layout of wikispecies is in English someone that would be unable to work their way around the Wikipedia layout (i.e. search button, not knowing what "go" or "search" means etc.) would have just as much difficulty working their way through the wikispecies layout.
• Wikispecies also has different software requirements from those of Wikipedia.- I am not a tech expert but I do not see any differences in software requirements? It is just words...text... something I am sure Wikipedia can handle... But again I am no tech expert so I would really like to be pointed out on this if there is more to it.
• The project is not intended to reduce the scope of Wikipedia, or take the place of the in-depth biology articles therein. - That is fair enough, but it seems like doing two of the same things when it can be done on one (and in this case, the one where potentially more people would find via a Google search or come to first).

I am not sure of the activity of Wikispecies is, but looking at their recent changes it seems that stuff are still happening which is good. But I would think it would be even better if some of the users over at wikispecies come over and add more species/etc. over to Wikipedia, or if they would think they would not be appropriate in writing a short article (as opposed to just a table/taxobox) then they can post/paste their info on a subpage/test page for others to then make into articles. Having said that I guess there might even be people that do both work here and over at wikispecies. I guess in the end though, I personally think all work would be better done here rather than there. Would love to here any thoughts/comments by anyone.Calaka (talk) 09:25, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

Although on a positive note on wikispecies I do like the "vernacular name" section which Wikipedia does not have (it has the languages of course but not always). I do not know if such a thing would be added on Wikipedia.Calaka (talk) 09:28, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

• • • I always try to look stuff up on Wikispecies when I am adding/modifying something on Wikipedia. And I always post a link from pedia to species. It is kind of annoying having two places to look, but they often have different info. Most commonly Wikispecies will have all the taxa, but no description of any of them. Until all the taxa (and taxonomers) are on Wikipedia, you can't get rid of Wikispecies. Nessie (talk) 17:32, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I would personally like it if it would be possible to get rid of the taxobox in wikipedia, and use the wikispecies tree to navigate (on wikipedia) instead. This would get rid of the double work and would benefit both projects, since people would go to wikispecies to add taxo info and people on wikispecies would be more inclined to write some text on a species for wikipedia or update species pages when taxonomy changes. I would not now if this would be possible at all though, there might be some serious technical difficulties. Ruigeroeland (talk) 09:01, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Proposed merger of Phenetics with Linnean taxonomy

A merger between the articles Phenetics with Linnean taxonomy has been proposed here. Since the subject is of importance to this WikiProject (Phenetics and Biological classification fall under this WikiProject), may I request comments from the WikiProject members on this issue. AshLin (talk) 06:08, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Categorization of species by where they're found

Am I supposed to add location categories for non-native species? E.g. for the wasp Polistes chinensis should I add Category:Hymenoptera of New Zealand? Richard001 (talk) 23:47, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

I have always understood that the intention of the geographic categories was to encompass the natural range, not the invasive / introduced range. Chamois, for instance, isn't listed as one of the Category:Mammals of New Zealand, even though it has been introduced there. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:31, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

There are a few categories for introduced ranges, like Category:Naturalized flora of Alabama (and other subcategories of Category:Introduced species), which seems sensible, but I wouldn't combine natives and non-natives in the same "type of organism of place" category. Kingdon (talk) 11:01, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Missing taxoboxes

Propionibacterium and its descendants need taxoboxes. -Craig Pemberton 15:05, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

 Done by Snek01. Heds (talk) 07:40, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

NCBI Taxonomy IDs

Over on the Taxobox I've raised the issue of adding NCBI Taxonomy IDs to the Taxobox. I'd welcome any thoughts on the arguments I've put forward. --Roderic D. M. Page 10:28, 20 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdmpage (talk • contribs)

Hamamelididae

Comments about Hamamelididae are welcome at Talk:Haplology#Hamamel(id)idae. -- Wavelength (talk) 17:20, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

IUCN red list

(Crossposted to Commons Village pump) Hi. I have gotten authorization from the IUCN red list to generate distribution maps from their spatial data. See details at Commons:Commons:IUCN red list (in draft). Only the .png or .svg files generated from the data will be released with a creative commons license, not the original data. I am currently looking for volunteers to help produce the maps, upload them, and complete the source information. There are about 25,000 maps. Help from anyone with programming knowledge to extract the source data from the metadata of the shapefiles, would be highly appreciated. GoEThe (talk) 11:06, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Please do verify them for accuracy before conversion though, especially for species that are spread across biogeographic zones - Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Birds#IUCN_map_reliability Shyamal (talk) 12:57, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

If you're going to do this (I too am a bit concerned about reliability), wouldn't it be possible to create a bot to make the maps? Ucucha 15:40, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

There might be a way to script something up in order to produce the maps from Arc GIS or other software, but I am not aware of any. A problem with that will be that the maps have to be cropped when the distribution is very limited (I was thinking of an inset for those cases where you can't really understand where in the world it is distributed). As for reliability, and as I said in the bird project talkpage, IUCN is a reliable source and it will be mentioned in the description page. In other maps I have seen around, sources are not mentioned, or maps are collated from several sources, making it original research by synthesis. I don't know what is more problematic. Of course the files will be licensed in CC, so changes, additions, fixes are possible. But I think it is very important to cite the sources to the change and add those to the image descriptions. And of course if there is a high quality, well sourced map, better than the ones from IUCN, they should be used in the articles. I will not replace necessarily the existing maps. There is an added advantage of using these maps, though, their look will be standardized, and quality should be similar among them. GoEThe (talk) 16:09, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Template:ITIS

The template {{ITIS}} has not received any attention in a long time and and If there is no objection or if there is a consensus I would like to upgraded it so that the code is similar many other citation templates. The visible changes are be very minor. The only visible change is that the TNS number is displayed outside the external link (i.e. I follows the pointy arrow thing). The internals changed considerably. You can check the code in the template sandbox and compare the output on the template test cases page.

The sandbox version currently includes the following changes:

1. The new code transcludes {{cite web}} and so the output style can evolve with that of cite web.
2. The code is easier to maintain for those who regularly work with citation templates, IMHO.
3. The sandbox version has better error handling.
4. The ID now has and alias. You can use id instead. This is really minor but might save some user frustration.

If the sandbox version becomes active, there are few other changes I would like to make and I'll discuss them here before doing anything.  –droll [chat] 03:10, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Template:IUCN2010

I moved the following discussion from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds as the proposal includes all projects that use this template.  –droll [chat] 03:18, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm currently working on an upgrade for {{IUCN2010}}. You can see a comparison between the current and sandbox versions at Template:IUCN2010/testcases. The output of the sandbox version conforms with that of {{cite web}} as that is a generally accepted format (although no standard exists). The outputs are nearly identical. The current template complains if any parameter value is not supplied. The sandbox version is capable of some error checking and I'd like some input on what parameter values are required and which should be optional. I expect they are all required with the possible exception of the downloaded date (I assume downloaded is synonymous with accessdate).

The Willow Flycatcher page on IUCN is here. I'm wondering if the version mentioned in the template refers to 2010.2 or ver 3.1. I've noticed some confusion on different pages. I can do some error checking on this in the template and put pages with the wrong information in a tracking category.  –droll [chat] 20:19, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Can you scrape the IUCN webpages and put the citations on bird wiki articles correct. Probably thousands of these citations on bird pages have not been updated since the IUCN pages migrated about a year or two ago. Snowman (talk) 21:35, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I can easily identify articles that use the older templates using AWB but updating them robotically is beyond my capability. I think it can be done and if there is support for the idea I know of some folks who might help out.  –droll [chat] 22:15, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

I'll look into see what interest I drum up.  –droll [chat] 03:18, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Would be easier for editors to just remember {{iucn|id=xxxxxx}} - that would make it less of a problem when another update is made, in any case IUCN site maintains only the latest version. Shyamal (talk) 03:30, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Template:IUCN already exists. In my opinion using that template would make it more difficult to identity out of date data because, the way I understand it, the id number can change. I don't know enough about the site to be able to say when this happens. I assume id numbers change when the version changes or some of the data changes. I emailed IUCN and asked if there is a web interface that uses binomial names. I forgot to ask about trinomials. I'm hoping my inquiry will help us to access the site in a fashion that is more robust than the current method. Using binomials and trinomials would not be a permanent solution since taxonomy is always evolving.

I'm not a regular contributor to this project. I'm more interested in template maintenance and mountains. I have been a birder for the last 30 years.  –droll [chat] 07:16, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Featured list candidate

I nominated list of parasites of the marsh rice rat as a featured list candidate here, but it isn't attracting many reviews. Any comments from fellow TOL members would be welcome. Ucucha 16:28, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Templates for external links

Using templates for external links is generally very good idea, but there are currently more templates for adding links to external websites.

1. Separate templates for each source.
   • {{wikisourcepar}}
   • {{FloraBase}}
   • {{Flora of Australia Online}}
   • {{APNI}}
   • {{SPRAT}}
   • {{MycoBank}}
   • {{IndexFungorum}}
   • {{NCBI}}
   • {{ITIS}}
   • {{eol}}
   • {{WRMS}}
   • and so on.
2. Taxon template. This is duplicate with previous ones, but at least uses the same design. (I would suggest to delete this template.)
   • {{Taxon}}
3. This is of duplicate of all the previous ones, but uses a new design and additionally shows numbers so called "identifiers", which can be considered as redundant. (I would suggest to delete this template.)
   • {{TaxonIds}}

As a project, we should strategically decide, which templates are recommended. If separate ones or cumulative ones, and why. Also templates should be optimally visually compatible with each other and compatible with External links guidelines Wikipedia:External links as much as possible. --Snek01 (talk) 17:11, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Separate or cumulative

Personally I see these issues for cumulative templates:

• There is not enough adaptability in cumulative templates. Separate templates can be added in any order which is the best for the certain article. There can be added any additional comments and so on.
• Special page "What links here" in the Toolbox in the left menu provide a list of links, where the certain template is used. This is quite problematic with cumulative templates. We should retain this feature as a standard and simply used tool of wikipedia. --Snek01 (talk) 17:11, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I prefer the cumulative:

• It makes it easy to find the respective template (since there is only one)
• What links to add is consolidated in one place, which makes it clearer what sites to link to (but then this might differ from page to page)
• It will unify the order of the links, which I think is positive, but I do agree that there might be minus also. (I also think it would be possible to reorder the links within a cumulative template, but not sure, have to think about that, have not done any template coding for a while, and it would make the template much more complicated to use so it is probably not a good idea)
• Comments to the links could be added as extra optional parameters, that is just template coding

• Not sure I understand the issue with what links here?

--Stefan ^talk 01:02, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

• There is Category:Biology external link templates.
• When an editor would want to get external links to APNI, then he/she will use Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:APNI, but in cumulative template this would get no usable results.
• Adding comments to links as an extra optional parameters is more difficult and uneasy for wide public "encyclopedia, that anyone can edit". Cumulative template will always be more difficult to edit than a separate one. In biology there are always changes and there are always many cases (synonyms, duplicite records, monotypic taxons, different names in different sources... Imagine the situation when a new species will be discovered in monotypic taxon.), that disallow practical and easy use of one cumulative template on one page. Separate templates are used for a longer time on wikipedia and if there is not a better universal and easy solution (and no confirmative evidence for it), that we do not need to change it. --Snek01 (talk) 11:38, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

• It is easier to check a page that is FA or good, see what they link to and use the same template, than have to try to figure out what category that have what templates ....
• If you really want to know which pages LINKS to URL you should use Special:Linksearch, not what links here for a template, if you want to know what pages uses a template, then use what links here. Do not see what you are trying to do that can not be done with a cumulative template.
• Using templates is not easy, and "anyone" can not do it. Cumulative templates is more difficult, templates are more difficult than links, still we agree that templates are better than links. Templates are more consistent than links, cumulative templates are more consistent than separate templates. It all is more a matter of personal taste.
• The {{Taxon}} template is made for adding as many links as it can with the arguments given, i.e. it tries to use the name to search for the links. But for pages that can not be searched, e.g. EOL it uses a separate argument, that argument is optional, so if you do not give it, it will not display the link.
• Just because things have been in one way does not mean they should continue, templates did not exists, templates got bigger, more complicated, things evolve. --Stefan ^talk 09:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

Separate templates can be and are used either as inline references or as external links. Cumulative templates are not possible to use as inline references. So cumulative template(s) are duplicite always. Guideline Wikipedia:External links clearly explains this: "Links to these source sites are not "external links" for the purposes of this guideline, and should not normally be duplicated in an external links section." --Snek01 (talk) 17:19, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Cumulative template would be only theoretically acceptable for such links, that are not intended for changing into references. I know only one of such database. It is NCBI. Do you know any other database, that fulfill these conditions? Every other database has informations as text, that should be added directly into text of the wikipedia article. Every information that has been added as inline references should be optimally removed from External links per WP:NOTLINK. --Snek01 (talk) 11:41, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Table explanation:

• = advantage
• = disadvantage

	cumulative	separate
easy manual adding of external links	very easy or easy (easier)	easy or normal
easy adding of external links by Bots	normal/easy	normal/easy
danger of adding and keeping of redundant links per WP:NOTLINK, per Wikipedia:External links#Important points to remember and per Wikipedia:External links#References and citation		no
easiness of modifying and direct moving external links into inline references per Wikipedia:External links#References and citation
easy adaptability and adding additional informations like "briefly summarize the website's contents" per Wikipedia:External links#External links section
danger of misunderstanding or edit wars when the same thing can be done by various functionally the same ways	or no when used as only solution, but separate templates are used anyway in inline references	no, if used as as only solution
machine-readable (and maybe even machine-checkable)
provides a framework of links to check when writing or editing the article

Table made by --Snek01 (talk) 10:24, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
Table edited by Jay L09 (talk) 13:13, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

This table ignores what seems to me like the main point. Most of the identifiers we propose to add would not be suitable as references. It is very useful to have an NCBI taxonomy link, for instance, but it could never be used as a reference, because it is an identifier which is used to connect different data items, rather than directly providing information. The existing guidelines were written without considering the possibility of interfacing with other databases in this way, and so do not apply in this case. Linking using {{TaxonIds}} does not preclude adding a separate external link to a useful site (for example, WoRMS often provides extra information that we could not legitimately reproduce), to which all the existing guidelines would apply as usual. --Stemonitis (talk) 11:19, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

This table is trying to generally compare cumulative and separate templates for external links. This table compares both of cumulative templates mentioned above with separate ones. There maybe is/was some support for adding identifiers into external links also, but there is lacking evidence, that it is needed or useful. If there will appear the need of adding identifiers into external links, then it can be applied in cumulative as well in separate ones. Follow the section #Identifiers bellow. --Snek01 (talk) 13:45, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

The table is trying to justify the unjustifiable position put forward by Snek01 (talk) that the cumulative reference approach is not acceptable. Snek01 (talk) refuses to accept the cumulative approach, and has launched an edit war to prove that it is not used by deleting all instances of its use (sometimes deleting information which Snek01 (talk) does not restore using the individual approach). But this does not mean that the cumulative approach causes edit wars, only that Snek01 (talk) does.     Jay L09 (talk) 13:13, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Arguments for and against separate or cumulative templates

I think this is the most important part of this discussion, so I'm creating a new section to organize the discussion into points. I tried copying the salient points from the above discussion down here; apologies if I misunderstand or misattribute arguments. -- Gaurav (talk) 17:51, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

The original conversation was very messy (im partially to blame), after Gauravs fix, it much better, but the signatures was not copied correctly so it was confusing as to who said what, I have tried to put the correct signature on each statement, I hope I have not made any mistakes, and if I did SORRY, please help me fix it!!!! --Stefan ^talk 04:53, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Arguments for separate templates

• There is not enough adaptability in cumulative templates. Separate templates can be added in any order which is the best for the certain article. There can be added any additional comments and so on.
  • The {{Taxon}} template is made for adding as many links as it can with the arguments given, i.e. it tries to use the name to search for the links. But for pages that can not be searched, e.g. EOL it uses a separate argument, that argument is optional, so if you do not give it, it will not display the link. --Stefan ^talk 09:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Comments to the links could be added as extra optional parameters, that is just template coding --Stefan ^talk 09:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
    • Adding comments to links as an extra optional parameters is more difficult and uneasy for wide public "encyclopedia, that anyone can edit". Cumulative template will always be more difficult to edit than a separate one. In biology there are always changes and there are always many cases (synonyms, duplicite records, monotypic taxons, different names in different sources... Imagine the situation when a new species will be discovered in monotypic taxon.), that disallow practical and easy use of one cumulative template on one page. Separate templates are used for a longer time on wikipedia and if there is not a better universal and easy solution (and no confirmative evidence for it), that we do not need to change it. --Snek01 (talk) 11:38, 24 June 2010 (UTC)
    • Separate templates can be and are used either as inline references or as external links. Cumulative templates are not possible to use as inline references. So cumulative template(s) are duplicite always. Guideline Wikipedia:External links clearly explains this: "Links to these source sites are not "external links" for the purposes of this guideline, and should not normally be duplicated in an external links section." --Snek01 (talk) 17:19, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
      • Using templates is not easy, and "anyone" can not do it. Cumulative templates is more difficult, templates are more difficult than links, still we agree that templates are better than links. Templates are more consistent than links, cumulative templates are more consistent than separate templates. It all is more a matter of personal taste.
      • Just because things have been in one way does not mean they should continue, templates did not exists, templates got bigger, more complicated, things evolve. --Stefan ^talk 09:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
• There is Category:Biology external link templates.
  • Yes, and nobody's suggesting getting rid of them. In the previous discussion, there was a worry expressed that the list of databases allowed would become unmanagebly large. It was decided to keep only the most common databases on {{TaxonIds}} and to allow other databases to be linked individually, either in the 'others' field of {{TaxonIds}} or directly in the external links page.

Arguments against separate templates

• Consistent naming: It's a powerful feature to ensure that all relevant names are at a prospective editor's fingertips. With cumulative templates, that consists of one template name and one documentation page containing a list of all possible database values. With separate template, each template name might use a different name or inconsistent capitalization (why is it {{eol}} and not {{ncbi}}? {{Flora of Australia Online}} vs {{APNI}}?). Thus, every time an editor wants to add a template for a database, he has to search for it or hunt through Category:Biology external link templates for the right one. With a cumulative template, once they've found the one template necessary, they can check back on its page for details about adding links to any of the common databases.
  • This could be made easier with a single page containing a list of alternative templates, along with (say) an external website which quickly generated a codeblock of all the common database identifiers for a particular taxon.
• Consistent usage: Separate templates have different usages. For instance, it's {{APNI|name=abc|id=xyz}}, but {{ITIS|ID=xyz|taxon=abc}} and {{WRMS|xyz|abc}}. This again increases the load on the editor to remember different templates and their own peculiarities. With a single, unified, template, this point becomes moot.

Arguments for a cumulative template

• It makes it easy to find the respective template (since there is only one) --Stefan ^talk 09:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
• It is easier to check a page that is FA or good, see what they link to and use the same template, than have to try to figure out what category that have what templates .... --Stefan ^talk 09:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Not everybody will be willing to put in that much of an effort in (I, for one, am likely to just check out a taxon I can remember easily - Canidae, say - and copy the database identification tags off that). -- Gaurav (talk) 17:51, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
    • The minimal effort put into using a cumulative template will be much more substantial than the minimal effort put into an individual template. --Nessie (talk) 04:08, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
• What links to add is consolidated in one place, which makes it clearer what sites to link to (but then this might differ from page to page) --Nessie (talk) 04:08, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
• A list of which links to seek is consolidated in one place, leading to a more disciplined approach to the adding of links.     Jay L09 (talk) 13:21, 1 July 2010 (UTC)
• It will unify the order of the links, which I think is positive, but I do agree that there might be minus also. (I also think it would be possible to reorder the links within a cumulative template, but not sure, have to think about that, have not done any template coding for a while, and it would make the template much more complicated to use so it is probably not a good idea) --Stefan ^talk 9:02 am, 24 June 2010, last Thursday (4 days ago) (UTC+8)
• You can use the cumulative template as a separate template if you would like to. --Nessie (talk) 04:08, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
• It more readily supports these external sites with open information. Until I recently discovered the Taxon template, I did not know about many of these sources of information, and have added to the information on Wikipedia because of it. --Nessie (talk) 04:08, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Arguments against a cumulative template

• Special page "What links here" in the Toolbox in the left menu provide a list of links, where the certain template is used. This is quite problematic with cumulative templates. We should retain this feature as a standard and simply used tool of wikipedia. --Snek01 (talk) 17:11, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
  • When an editor would want to get external links to APNI, then he/she will use Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:APNI, but in cumulative template this would get no usable results. --Snek01 (talk) 7:38 pm, 24 June 2010, last Thursday (4 days ago) (UTC+8)
    • If you really want to know which pages LINKS to URL you should use Special:Linksearch, not what links here for a template, if you want to know what pages uses a template, then use what links here. Do not see what you are trying to do that can not be done with a cumulative template. --Stefan ^talk 09:50, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
  • Actually, I've got a clever solution for this :-D. Gimme a sec while I try it out in the TaxonIds sandbox. -- Gaurav (talk) 17:51, 26 June 2010 (UTC)
    • Hmm, never mind. I'm a bit busy right now, trying to make sure {{TaxonIds}} stays around so that this discussion can go on. My idea was to insert a [[Category|Taxa with NCBI identifiers|9608 Canidae]] into the text when an 'ncbi' argument was provided to {{TaxonIds}}. This makes mapping from NCBI to Wikipedia trivial to set up and maintain (you only need to extract the NCBI ids from the category page), as well as making it very easy to find pages which only contain NCBI taxonids. Naturally, this will be turned on and off on a per-field basis (a page will only belong to the "Taxa with NCBI identifiers" category if the 'ncbi' argument was provided to {{TaxonIds}}), the "Taxa with NCBI identifiers" category will be a hidden category, and this will only require creating one category for every piece of information in TaxonIds: seven at the moment. -- Gaurav (talk) 19:26, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Identifiers

Personally I see the worst issue in adding numbers in the texts of links, because organisms have never been named by numbers and these numbers are redundant and they try to give the impression, that they mean more than they really are. In the whole large discussion Template talk:Taxobox#NCBI Taxonomy IDs nobody provided an evidence, that identifiers have to be as a text part of the link. In words of policies: it is against the content wikipedia policies Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. In simple words, those numbers are redundant, misleading, not useful and not used neither by biologists nor by any other field of human knowledge! --Snek01 (talk) 17:11, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree that this is the crux of the matter. I suspect Snek01 wouldn't even be pursuing this issue except for his/her disdain for non-Linnaean identifiers. I find Snek01's position to be extremist, and much of the rest of his/her arguments to be smokescreen for this one. I don't see any point in discussing the rest of the issues until there is a consensus on this one. And at this point, Snek01 seems to be alone.--Curtis Clark (talk) 13:40, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree that, AFAIK, there is no real reason to display the actual identifier. Indeed, this might become impractical to do if anybody ever starts using GUIDs to identify taxa in their database :). The main reason we put that in at all was because the box looked ugly without it. It also avoids repetition of the taxon name over and over (which actually would be redundant!) in the external links section. Of course, these are aesthetical points. The numbers themselves are unnecessary and (by themselves) useless, but they are not redundant (the information they represent is not available elsewhere in the article) nor misleading (they are identifiers, after all; they're not likely to be mistaken for anything else). I'm also pretty sure somebody brought up examples in the last discussion about cases where these numbers are being used by biologists. -- Gaurav (talk) 18:09, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

There is one case where these numbers are not important: if the information contained in the taxon identifier template (whether separate, {{taxon}} or {{TaxonIds}}) is not machine readable, then the only way to map Wikipedia information to other database will be by spotting the numbers themselves in the output. In most cases this will be relatively straightforward (such as by reading the link generated by one of the separate templates), but - if not - it might be useful for the template to display it in a way that will be easy for machines to pick up. If you disagree with the whole idea of Wikipedia making it easier to link itself in to other database, that's a whole other discussion :). -- Gaurav (talk) 18:09, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

I was just trying to put my thoughts into words, but Gaurav beat me to it. I agree entirely with Gaurav's response here. Repeating the taxon name introduces much more redundancy than anything produced by Template:TaxonIds. --Stemonitis (talk) 18:12, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

There were no examples about general using of identifiers in zoology/botany. So instead of a random aesthetical solution, the appearance should be based on Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Even for title/name of the link there are guidelines. --Snek01 (talk) 18:01, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

But if the purpose would be the only (cited by Gaurav) "idea of Wikipedia making it easier to link itself in to other database[s]", then I would recommend to use Wikipedia:Metadata for this purpose. I am not sure if adding such metadata is within purpose of wikipedia, but I have no general disagreement with solution, that would be exactly the same as for example {{Persondata}}. --Snek01 (talk) 18:34, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

How easy would it be to maintain a "hidden" template like {{Persondata}}? The downside as I see it is that unless this information is visible, if it's found to be incorrect. Also, as pointed out earlier, it's possible that some people might like actually want to click through to those pages, unlike {{Persondata}}, which is really just for tagging/annotating biographies. Whichever solution we do above, though, we should make sure it's machine-readable (and maybe even machine-checkable!) and then list it as part of Wikipedia:Metadata. Incidentally, I'd never seen that page before - thanks for pointing it out, Snek01! -- Gaurav (talk) 17:01, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Snek01 (talk) continues to obfuscate the discussion by spurious references to policies such as Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Although I will agree that I, too, am bothered by various series of pages which prominently list the editor's identifier (sometimes a serial number, sometimes an abbreviation, etc.) the current displaying of such identifiers hardly seems to justify deleting the TaxonIds template. At the risk of duplicating previous comments (I don't quite understand all of the template-related jargon), might I suggest that some other symbol (not the identifier, not the taxon name) be used for clicking on the link? On the other hand, sometimes the name of the taxon might be a good idea, such as when different authors do not agree on the correct name for a given taxon; perhaps some additional parameters, such as itis_name, could be used to replace a simple symbol with an alternate name. — Jay L09 (talk) 19:13, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

The numbers, that are not wanted, can be replaced by normal human readable words:

An example

NCBI Taxonomy         10090
ITIS                  180366
Encyclopedia of Life  328450
uBio NameBank         2481174

can be changed to like this:

NCBI                  genetics
ITIS                  taxonomy
Encyclopedia of Life  data
uBio NameBank         data

The similar way is used in {{Planetbox reference}} that is used in infoboxes about planets, example: 2M1207b current version. --Snek01 (talk) 13:16, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

Unified style

Other issue deals with {{TaxonIds}}. This is duplicite but also completely visually different from other templates. This difference is against standardization of external links. Links provided be these templates are normal links, that does not differ from any other links so they do not need to be in a special box. They also do not need to be unreasonably in small style. --Snek01 (talk) 17:11, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

The unreasonable small style can always be changed. Let's approach this template like a stub article: improve it, don't simply delete it (for whatever made-up reasons we can imagine) because it isn't good enough yet! — Jay L09 (talk) 13:24, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Amount of uses

There is also need to discuss in what extent these links should be used. There is possible to use them by Bots, but then it is danger, that some of these links will be redundant. Guideline Wikipedia:External links clearly states, that "External links in an article can be helpful to the reader, but they should be kept minimal, ...". From this point of view, the only links to NCBI can be added non-controversially, because they provide genetical infomations, that are usually not completely covered by wikipedia. But, for example, adding all links to Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) can be bad, because many records on EOL does not provide nothing more that the name of the species. Potentially roboticaly adding of any links should be discussed at certain specialized descendant wikiprojects. --Snek01 (talk) 17:11, 20 June 2010 (UTC)