Template talk:Speciesbox/Archive 4

Bold and dagger
What do bold and dagger mean? Callichimaera has the 4 lower taxa bolded and with a dagger symbol. Thanks. – Novem Linguae (talk) 13:37, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The dagger refers to an extinct species or extinct taxon. This is a widespread convention.
 * The bolding is a Wikipedia convention. The subject of a Wikipedia article is bolded in the lede of the article. For monotypic taxa, one article can cover more than one taxon. In this case, the extinct species Callichimaera perplexa is the only member of genus Callichimaera, which is turn is the only member of family Callichimaeridae and superfamily Callichimaeroidea. The article at the genus Callichimaera covers all the taxa so they are all bolded in the taxobox. In other words, information on these taxa will all be found in the current article. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 14:36, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Genus both monotypic and ambiguous
What do you do on an article about a species in a monotypic genus, where the genus name is also used in another kingdom and so the taxonomy subpage for the genus will have to use a disambiguated title? The template documentation describes each of the two scenarios individually (Template:Speciesbox and Template:Speciesbox), but I can't seem to find anything about the intersection. Here's an example article. – Uanfala (talk) 20:36, 13 February 2022 (UTC)
 * If the monotypic genus must be disambiguated "use a binomial as a natural disambiguation" (WP:MONOTYPICFLORA). I think I've see this explained more fully somewhere else, but the advice seems clear enough. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 07:52, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Do you mean that for the article concerned, Template:Taxonomy/Lutzia (plant) needs to be moved to Template:Taxonomy/Lutzia cretica? – Uanfala (talk) 11:35, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Oh, I get it. The name of the taxonomy template doesn't matter. The infobox will display as expected as long as Template:Taxonomy/Lutzia (plant) has link set to the exact title of the article (as here). Well, that should have been obvious enough. – Uanfala (talk) 11:39, 14 February 2022 (UTC)
 * It's one of those things that is obvious when you know how to do it, but not so obvious when first encountering the problem. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 14:54, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Please can we create a new field for Range with is a text field?
Dear all

I would like to propose a new field for Range which is simply a free text field. We have a field for a 'range map' and another for its description but I think this is insufficient for a few reasons. Having both the option of a map and also a text field would allow contributors more freedom in describing the range of a species.


 * 1) Creating a map for species range is quite a difficult and time consuming task, you either need to know how to create an .svg or use Kartographer, which is also quite diffiuclt and has some technical issues currently. This is especially true when a species range doesn't match a political or geographic boundary which can just be coloured in in the map template e.g the Giant panda lives in a specific habitat. Simply writing the range and adding a source is much much easier, it also allows people who can create maps to later convert the list into a map.
 * 2) Whilst the map does have a caption this is often used to broadly describe the map, and doesn't actually accurately describe the range e.g Lion. It requires the reader to have a good understanding of geography and make some guesses, rather than telling people directly.
 * 3) Many people use screen readers and other ways of reading Wikipedia which can't use images.
 * 4) Some species distributions include multiple ranges e.g native, introduced, extinct etc, this can be simpler to do with text than images and could present some usability issues for colurblind people if done with different colurs on a map.

As an example of where this could be used Plants of the World Online has over 100,000 species descriptions, most include a description of the plants range e.g Asparagus Horridus, all licensed under CC BY. POWO is also the recognised source for species range for plant articles so could be used on all of them.

Thanks very much

John Cummings (talk) 17:41, 14 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Very good points those; I especially agree with #1 - it would be nice to be able to note range without having to create a map. How about just de-coupling the map legend from the map, i.e. enabling use of this field even in absence of map? -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:19, 14 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I feel like there are probably a few advantages to a new field rather than reusing an existing one (but I'm no oppose to reusing it at all):
 * For something like Lion both a description of the range and a legend for the map are probably needed, if you reuse the map caption for a list of countries you loose the colour coding of the map.
 * I don't know if renaming the field would cause issues with the existing use of the field.
 * Having a separate field which just lists the areas could possibly in future allow people to easily make maps from the list.
 * Thanks
 * John Cummings (talk) 18:31, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Were there questions not adequately addressed when you asked this question last? I thought the conversation at WikiProject Tree of Life was pretty simple regarding why ranges are best covered in prose and not as basic maps.  What is being asked for seems like a very simple duplication of the information that should already be in the articles as prose.-- Kev  min  § 19:49, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi, yes I understand your point, this is about alternatives to maps. Range has been established as important enought to be included in infoboxes as well as in the body of the text, what I'm asking is for an alternative easier way of providing that information which could if someone has the time be turned into a map. Thanks, John Cummings (talk) 20:06, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I get where your coming from, but what you are asking for is repeating what needs to be present in the prose section before addition to the taxobox. Remember taxoboxes are (supposed) to be only a summary of the information already in the prose section, and thus making a freeform writing section for range in the taxobox would be redundant. Most taxoboxes do not have a map anyways as most taxa do not have a well defined range described in reliable sources.-- Kev  min  § 20:10, 14 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Do we really want something like the taxobox to the right? It uses the diversity parameter (so ignore the heading) to list the countries listed in the IUCN assessment. The infobox is to give an at a glance summary of certain information in the article. If the species is only present in a few countries then it can be stated prominently in the lede. If the list is too long for the lede, I don't think it's suitable for the taxobox and is best covered in a distribution section.
 * Perhaps this is not what is intended, but we have to consider how the field would be used?—  Jts1882 &#124; talk 08:38, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The distribution is a highly relevant and I'm surprised a text field doesn't exist yet. Simply importing lists of countries obviously won't work in the infobox (or elsewhere for that matter). Just use a succinct phrase, like throughout temperate Eurasia, or Atlantic coast of Europe, or Lower Himalayas, or Pontic mountains, or scattered locations in the Mediterranean, or (for the lion) Africa and India. – Uanfala (talk) 15:22, 15 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks {u|Jts1882}} and I wonder how many species would have a long list vs a short list? I guess there are a few solutions for longer lists, as suggested a summary of the area could work, or it could be a collapsed field once it gets to a certain length (possibly also using a smaller font). As long as we provided a bit of guidance on what to do once it got past say 10 areas I don't see it being an issue. There are similar long lists for synonyms regularly in infoboxes currently. John Cummings (talk) 14:02, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with this but aside. For longer lists you could use standard country abbreviations, eg USA AUS etc and make those a wikilink to the country page for those that cannot figure that out. Alternatively if a species is found throughout Europe for example, rather than list every country just say Europe. A degree of sense should be able to contain the length for the more cosmopolitian species. How you going to deal with Oceanic species though? Out of curiosity. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 18:50, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * It's important to note that there are quite different conventions for describing ranges in different taxonomic groups. For plants, we use the WGSRPD, as do almost all the major taxonomic databases, and there's detailed guidance on how to use it at WikiProject Plants/World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. The units in the WGSRPD are sometimes political countries, but often not. There are standard three letter codes for Level 3 units, e.g. "FRA" for what the WGSRPD calls "France" but this means "mainland France" not "political France" – it does not include "COR", Corsica, for example. There's no such system for animals (although some sources do use the WGSRPD) and even the top-level units are different in the English Wikipedia: compare Category:Fauna by continent with Category:Flora by continent.
 * I continue to oppose adding ranges as text in taxoboxes. Their primary purpose is to show taxonomy (classification), not distribution. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:21, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Hi I understand your point, I am opposed to it on Wikispecies as well as we are about nomenclature. Another point, and in a way why no such mechanism ever found favor in animals, is because it acts as a marker post for smuggling. This gets to the point where type localities are sometimes being suppressed in descriptions of highly desirable species. I will suggest if nothing else and however you deal with it, keep out the type localities and stay vague on distribution, no exact points. Cheers  Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 21:43, 17 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm still unconvinced, although a text field with a limited length might be acceptable. However, I think it would be better if we looked at ways of making the maps. For instance the IUCN allow down load of distributions as shapes (I forget the file format) that can be used in some map making software. There are some Wikimedia SVG maps where country shapes are assigned classes using a two-letter country code, which can then be changed using CSS. It might be possible to make maps using the POWO (or IUCN) country lists with the appropriate codes. I made a simple interactive programme a few years ago which allows a world map to have selected countries coloured in with CSS (see here). Could this be helpful? —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 11:02, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * as I noted above, PoWO uses the WGSRPD system, although not as clearly as WCSP does, so for plants the starting point needs to be the maps in Brummitt (2001). A significant number of country names used in the WGSRPD do not correspond to political countries (e.g. France, Ecuador, Yemen, the US). Peter coxhead (talk) 17:23, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Finding basemaps with the proper encoding is difficult. There are newer ones with updated borders and one with country subdivisions (albeit not labelled conveniently), plus maps for Europe and Africa. I was just trying to find simple ways of constructing the maps given a country list. These maps listing countries are problematic anyway, as the distributions don't follow the boundaries.
 * A grand survey of one POWO page find that Verbascum yemense has Yemen as the geographical unit. This is north and south combined (unlike the WGSRPD), but with Socotra separated (like the WGSRPD). Could these WGSRPD system units be in an SVG map somewhere?
 * Another possibility is the POWO maps themselves. What is the license for the POWO distribution map? The Kew backbone distributions is CC BY 3.0. Would a copy-paste of their interactive map be usable? The permissions is not something I've followed closely. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 18:32, 18 March 2022 (UTC)
 * An excellent plan. While range maps do present the information in an easy-to read graphic model, they are time-consuming to make. While a list of specific countries where a species is present could be long and confusing, and easier enclosed in the body of the article, I would agree with @Uanfala's suggestion of more general terms. Edward-Woodrow (talk) 22:28, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

I oppose adding ranges as text – we could easily end up with list of countries as in the Panthera leo example above – which I don't find useful. The ranges of some species are difficult to summarise in a few words. Instead we should add maps. - Aa77zz (talk) 15:10, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Fetch image from Wikidata
It'll be great to fetch image from Wikidata image property (if available) if image parameter value is empty or not specified. Bot could cleanup image parameter values if they are same as in Wikidata. EugeneZelenko (talk) 23:52, 20 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Some language editions of Wikipedia already do this (albeit with Taxobox, rather than Speciesbox). Images on Wikidata may be misidentified, but that's also true of images on English Wikipedia. I'm not necessarily opposed to fetching images via Wikidata, but I think I am opposed to "bot could cleanup image parameter values if they are same as in Wikidata", if I'm understanding it correctly. Images on Wikidata items for species should have a reference that asserts that the image is what it is claimed to be. Often that reference is (some language edition of) Wikipedia. I don't think a bot should be removing image parameter values from Wikipedia, when those values may represent the reference on Wikidata (Wikispecies went this route with vernacular names, which I think was a mistake; Wikispecies used to list vernacular names locally, and is a reference for (some) vernacular names on Wikipedia, but Wikispecies is now fetching vernacular names from Wikidata and has deleted local values; references to Wikispecies for vernacular names are no longer supported by Wikispecies). Plantdrew (talk)


 * As with any kind of data retrieval from Wikidata, this needs great caution. Wikidata has many fewer active editors than we do. Because it scrapes data from what I have found to be highly unreliable language wikipedias (VI springs to mind), it frequently has out-of-date taxonomy and wrong taxon names. I absolutely agree with that under no circumstances should Wikidata information be allowed to over-ride any information here. If images were retrieved in the way suggested, the articles should be put in a tracking category so that editors here can check them. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:39, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with the above comments. I'll add that Wikidata items are on taxon names (despite what the instance statements say) and can simultaneously cover different concepts using that name.
 * A tracking category may be the way to go, but instead of importing the image from Wikidata. If there is no image in the taxobox AND Wikidata has an image THEN add a category, say Category:Taxoboxes without images with potential image on Wikidata. It would need people willing to monitor the category to be useful. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 13:07, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
 * That seems a good idea. The only difficulty I see is that if the image wasn't then used here for some good reason, the article would still appear in the tracking category. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:39, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I suppose we could have a parameter to indicate the wikidata image has been checked and is unsuitable, although a clear short parameter name might be difficult to find. The whole thing becomes rather convoluted if its not just a simple use Wikidata image or not. I think people do make an effort to find an image for species, so I'd guess there are not a huge number of missing images where Wikidata has images. I admit I could be completely wrong on this, though. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 17:16, 22 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree with you. I'm not sure how feasible it would be but it would be interesting to take one of the smaller subcategories of Category:Wikipedia requested images of biota and try to determine how many images would be available on Wikidata. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:20, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The requested images categories are a mess. Images get added, but nobody updates the talk page to remove the request for an image, so there may be a lot of false positives, or a talk page gets created without a request for an image (and no image is in the article), leading to false negatives. I've been chipping away at false positives in Category:Wikipedia requested images of plants (using Imagechecker to find them), but there are still more than 2500 plant articles that Imagechecker thinks have images that have a talk page requesting an image (in some cases, the image is a map, or the wood of a tree, or just very poor quality; I've left the request for an image in place in those situations). Category:Bivalve articles needing images should be pretty clear of false positives, as I went through it recently. Plantdrew (talk) 16:55, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah, I hadn't realized how inaccurate the categories were (e.g. the Imagechecker tool says 2,518 plant article talk pages are probably incorrectly tagged). Peter coxhead (talk) 11:18, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Fixing speciesbox
Hi, it appears that using "taxon" parameter in speciesbox is causing issues with the "scientific classification" section. Specifically it is parsing clades and other nonstandard parent-level taxa and displaying a "missing taxonomy template" message in the box. My workaround is to replace the taxon parameter with separate genus and species parameters on species pages with errors. Could there be a better solution? 108.18.207.147 (talk) 13:43, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Not able to fix this genus taxon page because automatic taxobox does not take a genus parameter: Ameiurus. 108.18.207.147 (talk) 13:53, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I checked your recent edit history and couldn't find a diff where the speciesbox was broken. Can you please post a WP:DIFF? – Novem Linguae (talk) 14:02, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, I was looking at bullhead catfish, Ameiurus nebulosus, Ameiurus melas, etc. I fixed the speciesbox for Ameiurus natalis, but the error itself will not show now in prior page versions.  The genus page, Ameiurus, currently gives me an error message due to the presence of the clade Clupeocephala, but I should not change the parameter on that page due to differences between Automatic taxobox and speciesbox. 108.18.207.147 (talk) 14:16, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Diff: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yellow_bullhead&diff=prev&oldid=1163368391 108.18.207.147 (talk) 14:17, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the diff. The |taxon= version and the |genus= |species= version of the speciesbox look identical to me. Can you elaborate a bit further on what you think is broken? – Novem Linguae (talk) 14:20, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think something is wrong with rank "clade" because it is not in the typical hierarchy (Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species), but I am not exactly sure. 108.18.207.147 (talk) 14:28, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Looks like taxon parameter had an unusual space character. I delete the space and replaced it with a plain one. The module splits the taxon name on the space to get the genus and species. So it was look for a taxonomy template with the name "Ameiurus#nebulosus" where is some sort of space. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 14:54, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * No that was not the problem. My edits don't show up in the edit history so were treated as null edits and that was what fixed them. I also fixed White bullhead with a null edit. I assume it some to do with the parent in the taxonomy template for taxonomy/Otocephala being changed to Clupeocphala yesterday and a caching problem. A null edit or any other edit (e.g. changing taxon to genus + species) should fix the issue. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 15:05, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It appears that this edit of taxonomy/Otocephala at 15:57 on 3 July 2023, changing the parent from "Otocephala" to "Clupeocephala", created the error. The template taxonomy/Clupeocephala did not exist at the time and that was why there was a fix error message on the Clupeocephala line of the taxonomy hierarchy in the taxobox. The template was created three minutes later at 16.00 on 3 July (see history). Bizarrely the first edit propagated in those three minutes so it showed up as an error in the live taxoboxes and persisted even though the required template had been created. I suppose there was no way for the template creation to be associated with those pages that needed it because it had never been used there before. It needed an edit on the page after the template had been created to trigger the propagation of template/module changes. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 07:46, 5 July 2023 (UTC)