Template talk:Subspeciesbox

Not suitable for botanical articles
This template does not seem suitable for botanical articles, since it produces a "trinomial" as used in the Zoological Code, and does not show the rank (i.e. "subsp.") as required in the Botanical Code. It might be possible to fix this and allow wider use (e.g. with varieties and forms, both of which can be found in plant taxoboxes) by having a parameter which specified whether or not an abbreviation like "subsp.", "var." or "f." was shown. At present I've not been able to use the template with plants. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:22, 10 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Infraspeciesbox now handles botanical names below species level. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:24, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Extinction
The template doesn't handle extinction correctly. If the genus is marked as extinct in its taxonomy template, then the species and subspecies are marked as extinct, as they should be. But there was no way of showing that the subspecies alone is exinct, or that the species (and hence the subspecies) is extinct but not the genus. I'm working on correcting this. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:32, 10 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Supplying yes (or true) will now place a † in the correct place for an extinct subspecies, whose genus is not extinct. No fix yet for an extinct species whose genus is not extinct. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:05, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

subspecies status
I've been looking at the pages on Felidae species and subspecies and noted that there is considerable flux in the recognised subspecies. There are articles on subspecies that are no longer recognised, but no way of indicating this in the subspecies box. How about a subspecies status parameter that could either flag current or historical status (similar to the extinct parameter) or add a brief note? Jts1882 (talk) 16:51, 17 June 2017 (UTC)
 * If reliable sources no longer recognize the subspecies, then there shouldn't be an article. If it's a historically recognized subspecies, then we normally don't have a taxobox. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:43, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Name parameter with unspecified value behaves differently from absent name parameter
I just noticed at orange-bellied trogon that when name isn't present, the top of the infobox shows the scientific name. When name is present, but no value is specified, the page title is shown. That's weird and un-intuitive; I wouldn't expect a parameter with no value to have any effect at all (and in the past I've probably removed several blank name parameters from subspeciesbox without noticing what that did). It's the opposite of the logic in Speciesbox/Automatic taxobox, where the article title is displayed by default unless overrriden by name. (I think at this point Infraspeciesbox behaves the same with respect to name as Speciesbox/Automatic taxobox in spite of the complication of italics with connecting terms) Plantdrew (talk) 02:53, 7 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Code for subspeciesbox:

| name =


 * If name isn't set it passes the trinomial as name to taxobox/core, which overrides the taxobox/core use of PAGENAME:


 * So subspeciesbox needs to handle PAGENAME in the passed name if it is to override the trinomial. But if it does it then needs to handle potential disambiguators with all that entails. This way the taxobox always sets the name. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 08:31, 7 December 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm rather occupied at present with trying to update a long checklist of Diptera species for a local nature reserve, so I haven't been around Wikipedia much.
 * It's clear that Subspeciesbox hasn't been updated as recently as Infraspeciesbox. Looking at it quickly, the problem seems to arise from using rather than  to test for a value of name, so it should be easy to fix. If no-one else does, I'll look at it as soon as I can. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:51, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
 * If I understand correctly, I've made your suggested change in Subspeciesbox/sandbox. An empty name parameter in orange-bellied trogon now makes no difference, showing the trinomial both when name is absent or empty. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 15:16, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Change to handling of default taxobox name
There was an inconsistency in how Speciesbox and Subspeciesbox set the name of the taxobox by default (i.e. when name was absent). I've revised Subspeciesbox to follow Speciesbox, i.e. to use the page name as the default (previously it used the trinomial). This means that at Dingo, for example, it's no longer necessary to put Dingo. Most articles using Subspeciesbox will not have changed taxoboxes, because editors have usually specified the name parameter when the article is not at the scientific name. This is now redundant, but does no harm. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:28, 23 January 2022 (UTC)