Talk:Baltimore classification

Diploid
Although there is some sense in calling class vi viruses 'diploid' it wrongly implies that all the trappings of diploidy (e.g. homozygosity, etc.) apply.Bendž
 * Ť 16:29, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Retroviruses and Pararetroviruses
Current information tells that Retroviruses are a sample for Group VI viruses. So are there other viruses in Group VI that are no Retroviruses? If not, so 'Retroviruses' and 'Group VI viruses' are synomyms and text here as in 'Baltomore groups' template should be modified accordingly. Please nore, that in contrast to the written information, SsRNA-RT virus redirects to Retrovirus as if this was a synonym.

Similar problem for Gruop VII: Current information does not mention the term Pararetrovirus. So is Pararetrovirus a synonym or a sample for Group VII viruses? And is Hepadnaviruses as synony or a sample for Pararetroviruses? Kind regards

--Ernsts (talk) 07:25, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Basic definition is misleading
I am not going to edit anything because I am just beginning to study this subject.

The first paragraph vs. the caption of the first graphic say two different things. Is the Baltimore classification based primarily on method of replication (main text) or mRNA synthesis (essentially, transcription) (caption of first graphic)? My textbook breaks it down in terms of the latter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:9000:AC08:A600:799C:E57B:B62C:99E2 (talk) 02:54, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

August 2020 rewrite, expansion, and reorganization of Baltimore articles
I've rewritten and significantly expanded this article, along with Orthornavirae and Negarnaviricota as part of an effort to update articles related to the Baltimore groups. As part of this, the articles "DNA virus", "RNA virus", as well as the individual group articles (excluding ssRNA-RT) have all been redirected to this article. I've tried to include a lot of the information in the expansions rather than simply removing it. I decided that redirecting the articles would be better than keeping them for several reasons: The main Baltimore article is now highly detailed, as are most of the taxa related to them. Baltimore classification has been partially merged with virus taxonomy and since the ICTV has "official" priority over Baltimore classification, I view it as beneficial to focus efforts on improving the taxa articles that relate to Baltimore groups. Retaining and expanding the other articles would almost certainly be duplicating information from taxa articles. And lastly, the reorganization may make maintaining and updating these articles easier. I do feel like this reorganization may be controversial (and the redirects can always be undone if need be), so comments are appreciated. Velayinosu (talk) 04:11, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
 * DNA virus article was outdated and had become a collection of miscellaneous information. Now, information about DNA viruses can be found here and on the three realm articles.
 * RNA virus and the RNA virus Baltimore groups were similar. Outdated and generally lacking information, except for -ssRNA virus, which now = Negarnaviricota, so two articles aren't needed.
 * Excluding the dsDNA-RT article, the reverse transcribing articles have not been reorganized yet because Retrovirus needs a rewrite in conjunction with significant expansion of Revtraviricetes, which I have not done (yet).


 * RNA virus, DNA virus, and retrovirus should have their own stand alone articles. A redirect to this article is not satisfactory. When you hover over any of these terms having a blurp for the intro to the Baltimore classification article come up is not useful. It is fine to redirect for the lower category -ssRNA, +ssRNA, dsRNA, ssDNA, and dsDNA to either this article or the RNA virus or DNA virus articles. There is the possibility of doing a merge of Orthornavirae with RNA virus, and of Revtraviricetes with retrovirus, although this might be complicated. I'm fine with a redirect from the DNA virus article at the moment because that article was really in bad shape, but eventually a new and rewritten version of that article should be restored. However, I'm not hard fixed on anything and completely flexible for any improvements. --Guest2625 (talk) 22:22, 10 August 2020 (UTC)


 * 1) I feel like the meaningful information on RNA virus is already included in Orthornavirae, so rather than a merge a simple redirect would be fine (though should it redirect to Ortho or to here? or should Ortho be the redirect?)
 * 2) I might update/expand the retrovirus group of articles later.
 * 3) DNA virus is the only one of the three overarching groups that lacks a taxonomic synonym so it may warrant an article. That discussion can be held on its talk page if we want to talk about what a rewrite would look like.
 * 4) Much of the unmerged content on -ssRNA was written as part of an education assignment that I felt that was too technical or detailed to be included in whole. Some of it is included in Negarnaviricota, just condensed (e.g. the encapsidation section's most important contents are in "Characteristics"). There are for example 8 paragraphs about -ssRNA interactions with host immune responses, which in my opinion is too much detail for that specific subject for a taxon article.
 * 5) I added introductory paragraphs for the three overarching groups as suggested.
 * 6) About the two subphyla, I understand why you undid the redirect. My reasoning was that in general sub- taxa articles are likely to be highly repetitive of their parent taxon. This is why I wrote Negarnaviricota in a way that covers the subphyla as well, that way separate articles wouldn't be needed for them. Velayinosu (talk) 01:50, 12 August 2020 (UTC)


 * You're doing great work in reorganizing these different articles. However, it is important to be thorough in merging the material. The reason for this is that alot of previous editors did alot of work in creating those articles. If you want to do complete rewrites, it's better just to do the ICTV articles (orthornavirae, negarnaviricota, revtraviricetes, and the DNA ones), as you're doing now, and let the old articles remain during a gradual merge. There is no rush. I also think the Baltimore article looks great. The reason the old articles cannot be removed is because of navigation purposes. When someone hovers over the -ssRNA virus, +ssRNA virus, dsRNA virus, RNA virus, and DNA virus links in different articles, you want them to get a brief blurb that gives them a couple sentences about the topic. The Baltimore article redirects do not accomplish this. Also you have to think about google searches and what shows up in the infobox on the side of the search. Without the old articles, wikipedia will lose alot of reader traffic from google.
 * The mergers I'm thinking that should be done are orthornavirae/RNA viruses, negarnaviricota/-ssRNA, and revtraviricetes/retrovirus. The +ssRNA virus article would become an article which summarized postive stranded RNA viruses and directed towards the three articles Kitrinoviricota, Lenarviricota, Pisuviricota. This would be an expanded version of your baltimore article +ssRNA virus section merged with the current +ssRNA virus article. Similarly, the dsRNA virus article would become an article which summarized double stranded RNA viruses and directed towards the two articles duplornaviricota and pisuviricota. This again would be an expanded version of your baltimore article dsRNA section merged with the current dsRNA article. I'm not yet focused on the DNA virus articles but the same would be done for them.
 * All the above merging, however, takes alot of time, and it's important to try and preserve previous editors old work. The merging can be done slowly into the ICTV articles that you have created. And also slowly from your baltimore sections into the old +ssRNA and dsRNA articles. Below there is an example of merging your negarnaviricota article lead with the -ssRNA article lead. This could be used as a format template for the other leads. I think the title of the article should remain negarnaviricota, but it could also be negative stranded RNA viruses. Let me know what you think of this negarnaviricota/-ssRNA lead merge. --Guest2625 (talk) 07:09, 12 August 2020 (UTC)


 * Yes the changes to -ssRNA thus far are fine and you can try that for RNA virus + Orthornavirae too if you want. I'll update dsRNA and +ssRNA and add sections for the phyla as you suggest. Velayinosu (talk) 23:36, 13 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I altered around the Orthornavirae lead, so that now it is about the group members, i.e. RNA viruses. At some point, an administrative merger can be done with the RNA virus article and the new title RNA virus can go with the Orthornavirae article. --Guest2625 (talk) 11:13, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

RNA virus

 * Does this edit by align with WP:COMMONNAME? I am very familiar with ICTV but scientific nomenclature does not always dominate WP page names.  &mdash; soupvector (talk) 04:41, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "RNA virus" is not a name, common or otherwise. Graham Beards (talk) 06:50, 8 September 2020 (UTC)


 * We do keep articles on historically recognized taxa and classification systems, because they and their terminology remain in the literature and are likely to be used in non-specialist publications for years. (See e.g. Category:Historically recognized plant taxa.) So whatever changes are made to accommodate current views should not remove such useful information. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:09, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with this, that taxa are seen as deprecated does not justify deletion, historical taxa are an important part of the history of science. Also I would note that on Google Scholar "RNA virus" brings up about 3,010,000 results, while Orthornavirae only brings up 16 results. Despite the best efforts of the ICTV their classification is not commonly employed by workers in the field. Outside of academia their efforts have had even less sway. -- --Jules (Mrjulesd) 11:31, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

The title is supposed to be "RNA virus" but the content of the article is supposed to be what is currently the content of "Orthornavirae". I'm not sure what the appropriate way to address this is. Velayinosu (talk) 01:32, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The content should match the title, i.e. it should be about the ICTV taxon Orthornavirae. The term "RNA virus" should be explained elsewhere. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:08, 9 September 2020 (UTC)


 * The best way to deal with these two articles, which are essentially on the same thing, (RNA virus being the object and Orthornavirae being the taxon container) is to do a merger. The merger would be of the content of the Orthornavirae article into the RNA virus article. The final title of the article would be RNA virus and would have the structure of all other virus group articles. --Guest2625 (talk) 05:58, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I disagree. We have used the ICTV taxa for article titles and taxoboxes. As I noted above, the Baltimore system and names like "RNA virus" should be discussed, but should not replace the use of the ICTV classification. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:47, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with the two articles as they are named now. However, having two articles "RNA virus" and "Orthornaviriae" which cover essentially the same material is not ideal. How do you feel about the current structure of the Astrovirus article? Currently the article has the common name "Astrovirus" the lead discusses the group of viruses called "Astroviruses", and the virusbox has the heading "Astroviridae". --Guest2625 (talk) 13:08, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Negarnaviricota
Negative stranded RNA viruses (-ssRNA viruses) are a group of related viruses that have negative-sense, single-stranded genomes made of ribonucleic acid. They have genomes that act as complementary strands from which messenger RNA (mRNA) is synthesized by the viral enzyme RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp). During replication of the viral genome, RdRp synthesizes a positive sense antigenome that it uses as a template to create genomic -ssRNA. -ssRNA viruses also share a number of other characteristics: most contain a viral envelope that surrounds the capsid, which encases the viral genome, -ssRNA virus genomes are usually linear, and it is common for their genome to be segmented.

Negative stranded RNA viruses constitute the phylum Negarnaviricota, in the kingdom Orthornavirae and realm Riboviria. They are descended from a common ancestor that was a double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) virus, and they are considered to be a sister clade of reoviruses, which are dsRNA viruses. Within the phylum, there are two major branches that form two subphyla: Haploviricotina, whose members are mostly non-segmented and which encode an RdRp that synthesizes caps on mRNA, and Polyploviricotina, whose members are segmented and which encode an RdRp that snatches caps from host mRNAs. A total of six classes in the phylum are recognized.

-ssRNA viruses are closely associated with arthropods and can be informally divided between those that are reliant on arthropods for transmission and those that are descended from arthropod viruses but can now replicate in vertebrates without the aid of arthropods. Prominent arthropod-borne -ssRNA viruses include the Rift Valley fever virus and the tomato spotted wilt virus. Notable vertebrate -ssRNA viruses include the ebola virus, hantaviruses, influenza viruses, the Lassa fever virus, and the rabies virus. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guest2625 (talk • contribs) 07:08, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

What's wrong with WP:MERGE discussions?
The current situation is:
 * There has been an attempt to merge Orthornavirae to RNA virus
 * There has been an attempt to merge DNA virus to this page

Now neither of these took place with a WP:MERGE discussion, just ad hoc declarations that they should be merged. Now my question is: why is process being abandoned? There is nothing very obvious about either of these. To get rid of the Orthornavirae article seems a very retrograde approach. Also, in my mind, we should have some sort of article discussing the meaning of "DNA virus", it could be much reduced, but its needed as a vast number of sources and textbooks divide viruses on the basis of their genome. Even the ICTV divide viruses on the basis of their genomes, see

Now I don't mind these articles being merged if proper process is carried out, and there is consensus for these changes. The current redirect wars are getting us nowhere, and process being abandoned is really not helping. Process is important. Jules (Mrjulesd) 08:14, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Are the megavirales missing?
The megavirales seem to be missing. It contains humdingers like Pandoravirus and Pithovirus.

There is a T101 in your kitchen (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 14:18, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

I evaluated the article titled "Baltimore Classification". A link to the evaluation can be found here: . How do the "pathways" that each Baltimore group takes differ? In what ways are the pathways to synthesize mRNA different for each group? Slolamingsnailmail (talk) 19:43, 21 September 2022 (UTC) Slolamingsnailmail