Template talk:ITIS

Proposed changes
I propose making the following changes to this template. If there is no objection, or if there is consensus, I will move these changes into the active template on July 7, three days from today. The new code is in the sandbox and test cases are on the test cases page. I will do any clean up work that might be necessary. Thanks. – droll  &#91;chat&#93;  21:46, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Upgrade code.
 * 2) Depricate the  showITIS  parameter. The brief display option will never show "Integrated Taxonomic Information System." showITIS is currently used on only 2 pages and those cases are in the brief format.
 * 3) Remove (TSN 12345) from the text displayed. Having the number displayed is not reader friendly, IMHO. The number will be displayed as a tooltip. I'm not sure about the tooltip thing and suggestions are welcome.
 * 4) The brief output format will change from TNS 12345 to ITIS. The tooltip will be available.
 * 5) Provide a synonyms for  ID . The parameter name  tsn  is easier to type and TSN means Taxonomic serial number. Also  id  will be available as a synonym for conformity with other citation templates.

Italics
Italics should should not be automatically added by the template (and I have removed them). The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, not all taxa should be italicised; ITIS can be used to refer to families and above just as much as it can for genera and below. Secondly, many articles, quite reasonably, use explicit italicisation, which produces ill-formatting if the template also tries to italicise the text. For example, should produce: and not: --Stemonitis (talk) 09:06, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Good point. I was wondering about this when I was cleaning up the template. It seemed to me that either the names should be italicize of the shouldn't. It would seem strange if mice get italicized and elefants don't. Do you know if there is some criteria for this sort of thing. I do some looking around and see what I can find but if you know then we can change the template.   – droll   &#91;chat&#93;  18:47, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


 * There is a strong – almost universal – tradition that taxa around the ranks of genus (including supergenus, subgenus, etc.) and below (species, subspecies, varieties) are italicised, but taxa around the rank of family (including subfamily, tribe, etc.) and above are not italicised. The ICBN, at least, suggests italicising all formal names, but almost nobody does this. The rank can be found from the taxobox, or from the ITIS page, and some names are easy, because the endings for certain ranks are standardised (albeit differently in the different codes), but there are enough awkward cases to mean that there is no foolproof way to tell from the text of the template what rank a taxon is at. That is why the template cannot be altered to automatically italicise taxa, and why the italics must be added manually on a case-by-case basis. --Stemonitis (talk) 19:10, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


 * A "quick fix" would be to create two new templates,  and   or similar, where the former produce a taxon name in normal text, and the latter a taxon name in italics. The downside would of course be that the articles that use the presently available template would have to be manually edited to reflect the change... –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 16:46, 24 August 2010 (UTC).


 * I think that having two templates will just add confusion. My opinion is that names that required italicization should be italicized using wiki markup as the example on the documentation page now shows. I don't think that splitting it is going to help. Note that this is a problem for all templates of this sort. – droll  &#91;chat&#93;  19:42, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Changed documentation
Please look over the template documentation. I'm hoping this will clarify the issues discussed above. As always, please fix errors. – droll  &#91;chat&#93;  20:15, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Requesting interwiki compatibility (WikipediaBioReferences support)
I'm not sure if administrators will still maintain this, but this template really should be updated to be compatible with ITIS template formats on other wikis, the same format the WikipediaBioReferences utility uses. See (fr:Utilisateur:Liné1/WikipediaBioReferences). Take a look at the template tag format on commons:Template:ITIS, species:Template:ITIS, fr:Modèle:ITIS, and others. The format is:



But this en:wikipedia template requires:



This breaks compatibility with many other wikis. I should be able to copy ITIS template tags from other wikis and paste them into en:wikipedia and have them work, but right now I get an error:
 * Error: You must specify the id when using.

So far I have imported/translated the following WikipediaBioReferences/commons compatible templates: Template:GISD, Template:EFloras, Template:CatalogueofLife species, Template:Tropicos and I am very frustrated that the en:wikipedia ITIS tag is not compatible across wikiprojects. I hope it can be updated to support an absence of the "id=" characters, while also not breaking currently used ITIS tags.--MCEllis (talk) 20:02, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Has ITIS changed its search function ?
There seems to be a problem with the template, or at least with ITIS. In my case I went to https://www.itis.gov/ and searched for "Amphiprion nigripes" which brings up the web page with the url  and TSN  615201. When I put the detail into the template



it takes me to https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=615201 which gives the error message "The specified URL cannot be found." Find bruce (talk) 08:52, 12 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Appears to have been a temporary glitch with ITIS as the search now correctly resolves Find bruce (talk) 20:16, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

Please use HTTPS for ITIS link
The purpose of this edit is to provide increased privacy and security for users by having the template generate an HTTPS link for ITIS instead of the current HTTP link. For example, the URL  generates a 302 Found redirect to. Though the ITIS site may change in the future, it would seem that changing the template to generate an HTTPS link should be all right at this time. In the template, please change both instances of  (there are two instances) to    instead. Thanks. --Elegie (talk) 06:54, 14 May 2017 (UTC)
 * ✅ -- John of Reading (talk) 07:06, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 14 July 2018
Please add  in  on the template page to allow the citation style to be changed. Medicago lupulina needs this template to use Citation Style 2. — Eru·tuon 04:06, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I made all cite web parameters available. —&thinsp;JJMC89&thinsp; (T·C) 19:56, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Template-protected edit request on 11 November 2021


Hello! Please implement a change from the sandbox at revision #1054619037:

This removes the plain link for transclusions without, and instead uses the same Template:Cite web call with default title "Report" (because all titles begin with "ITIS - Report:"). This allows for an actual CS1 template, so other parameters can be added (like ), even without. This also removes the unused parameter, an alias of. See testcases for the change. Tol (talk &#124; contribs) @ 05:52, 11 November 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ * Pppery * it has begun... 15:37, 11 November 2021 (UTC)