Template talk:Taxobox/Archive 15

Proposal to add unranked_genus and unranked_genus_authority
Believe it or not, this proposal is totally unrelated to the one above. I would like to add an unranked genus taxon to the template which would output as "(unranked)" between genus and subtribe. This is specifically for my use in updating jumping spider taxonomy which includes numerous unranked taxons between family and genus (thanks to extensive phylogenetic work by Maddison). Kaldari (talk) 05:47, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * "unranked_genus" and "unranked_genus_authority" are already supported. Hesperian 06:00, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, I guess they just aren't in the documentation. Kaldari (talk) 16:11, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks like I'm also going to need unranked_tribe for at least three of the genera I'm revising. Any objections to adding that? Kaldari (talk) 16:32, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, I also need that (a rank between subfamily and tribe) for the Oryzomyini. Ucucha 17:20, 16 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. You can now list an unranked taxon between subfamily and tribe, or in my case, two unranked taxa between subfamily and genus. Have fun! Kaldari (talk) 18:10, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to add another parser function for italicizing titles
I have recently been encountering many articles whose titles are not italicized, simply because a  argument is specified. Could we add something like  to detect and italicize the title if the page name is the same as the binomial/genus name? Of course, this may need refining to encompass other possible situations. Intelligent  sium  00:33, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The name really ought to be removed in those cases. Hesperian 01:05, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes; however, there are many articles that already use a name parameter that is the same as the title; to correct them all would require some kind of bot. Intelligent  sium  20:35, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * If you can describe exactly what the bot should look for, I may be able to write it. Kaldari (talk) 21:31, 21 December 2009 (UTC)


 * (ec) I think you would get false positives there at pages like chinchilla, where the vernacular name is the same as the scientific name. The page title of chinchilla should not be italicized, but your proposal would do that. Ucucha 21:33, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I had no idea that chinchilla's lived predominantly on sofas! Kaldari (talk) 21:36, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
 * They are mountain animals. This one was apparently out of the mountains, so it chose to go to the place that most closely resembled a mountain, which was apparently a sofa. Ucucha (talk) 19:06, 22 December 2009 (UTC)


 * A more complex alternative would be:

(I probably made a mistake somewhere in there). Intelligent  sium  17:58, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * However, it seems there is a very large number of variations to Genus species; for example, |genus = Genus, |binomial = Genus species, etc. I suppose a bot would be the most effective way to fix it, then. Intelligent  sium  18:23, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

I've added documentation to the template page explaining how the italic title stuff works. I think a lot of editors (like me) weren't taking advantage of it simply because they didn't know they could or didn't know how. Can someone look over my documentation and make sure it's accurate? Kaldari (talk) 21:01, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It looks pretty good, though we might want to explain the part about (genus) and (alga) in the title not being italicized (Template:Taxobox name). Ucucha 21:10, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, please add that. I was wondering how those were handled myself. Kaldari (talk) 21:15, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Synonyms_ref?
Could we add a parameter to the taxobox that would enable a reference to be added to the header of the "Synonyms" field, similar to status_ref? I've felt the need for that in my own articles and just saw an article that solved the problem in a way that we should want to avoid.

I included a transclusion of Taxobox/sandbox with this parameter enabled for the taxobox of Oryzomys peninsulae. Any objections to introducing this into the main template? Ucucha 23:59, 21 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Sounds like a good idea to me. Kaldari (talk) 01:37, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, seems reasonable. Hesperian 02:44, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Ucucha 19:54, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

More on synonyms

 * Please beware that there are three problems in the synonyms field. First, the letter "æ" is now always modified to "ae" following article 27 of the Code (i.e., peninsulae is correct, while peninsulæ is incorrect even if that was the spelling used back in 1897). Secondly, year and authority always follow the specific taxon. Castañeda, 1994, Castañeda, 1994 and Castañeda & Cortés-Calva, 1999 only recommended different ranks of peninsulae (species versus subspecies; in one case also a typo), but the correct authortity+year always remain Thomas, 1897 (art. 50.3). Only if they had actually described a new taxon would the authority+year have changed. Finally, when a specific name is used in combination with a new genus (i.e., is placed in a different genus than it originally was described in), brackets should be used around the authority+year (art. 51.3). I do not know if a similar rules exist in ICBN, ICNB or ICTV as they are not my field of expertise, but it would certainly be strange if wikipedia disregards ICZN rules. 62.107.237.72 (talk) 04:42, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * This is off-topic, but thanks for the comments all the same. Wikipedia follows ICZN, ICBN, etc; but not everyone know the finer points of author citation. Hesperian 04:54, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I was a bit uncertainty about the placement of my comment. If the comment is better suited for the earlier discussion or a new entry, please do feel free to move it. 62.107.237.72 (talk) 05:23, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Here the taxobox is just being used as an example of what referencing might look like. But I note the same problems at Oryzomys peninsulae. You might consider raising these issues at Talk:Oryzomys peninsulae; or just be bold and fix it. Hesperian 05:42, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Again probably the wrong thread, but I'm not seeing a problem here. This is the proper long form synonomy per author instructions in the publication Mammalian Species minus the line by line comments (such as "type locality...", "name combination", "incorrect subsequent spelling", etc.)  You (anon) are correct that the correct authority for peninsulae remains Thomas, 1897 regardless of the name combination, but that's why there is punctuation  separating the name from the author.  Oryzomys palustris peninsulae Thomas, 1897 is correct, but Oryzomys palustris peninsulae: Hershkovitz, 1970 indicates that Hershkovitz, 1970 is the source of the name combination.  --Aranae (talk) 08:49, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Aranae is right here. Also note that I included footnotes in the actual article for the incorrect original spelling peninsulæ and the incorrect subsequent spelling peninsularis, but I omitted these here for conciseness. Ucucha 12:18, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It is increasingly clear that I should have added the comment here despite it being a rather old discussion by now, as a fair percentage of my previous comment related directly to that. Two quotes from the earlier discussion:
 * "Standard taxonomic practice, for animals at least, is to cite as follows:
 * Hesperomys molitor Winge, 1887
 * Lundomys molitor: Voss and Carleton, 1993"
 * and
 * "For new name combinations, which arise for example when a species is moved to another genus or when a species is demoted to subspecies rank, the author and date should be given in the same way but they should be separated clearly from the name combination by using a colon or a dash (–) to emphasize that the entry is a name combination, not a completely new name."
 * While I find it interesting that at least some authorities on mammals (per PDF linked in last comment by Aranae - thanks for that) follow the above, this is not used to any extend in my primary fields; fish or bird species. For other animal groups with which I am less familiar, I will ask our various departments later (post-Christmas) to hear if the above is used among them. Regardless, what remains is that the two above quotes, the latter being part of the text suggested for Template:Taxobox#Synonyms, are correct for mammals (assuming the PDF represents a generally accepted way of doing it in this class; MSW3 which is [was?] the main taxonomic authority used in WP:MAMMAL strictly lists authority+year as described in my earlier comment), but for other groups it is either not used (fish+bird) or it remains unclear if it is used (remaining groups). 62.107.237.72 (talk) 02:26, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * This colon convention seems dodgy to me. It is not part of the ICZN, and evidently it is used only amongst mammalologists. From reading that document fairly closely, it seems to me that the colon is inserted to prevent an informal bibliographic citation from being confused with a formal author citation. e.g.
 * Phyllostomus hastatus caurae J. A. Allen, 1904
 * is the correct author citation under the ICZN. When referring to the later spelling correction applied to that name, it :::::::::might be tempting to cite it as
 * Phyllostomus hastatus caucae J. A. Allen, 1916
 * but this could be confused for an incorrect author citation, so a colon is inserted in show that this is a bibliographic citation:
 * Phyllostomus hastatus caucae: J. A. Allen, 1916
 * The fact remains that these name does have a correct author citation, and the last example above might just as well have been written in longer form as
 * Phyllostomus hastatus caucae J. A. Allen, 1904: J. A. Allen, 1916
 * This line of reasoning suggests that it is improper to put these colon forms into the taxobox. Every one of those synonyms has an actual author citation, so we should use it, rather than omitting the author citation, but then providing a partial bibliographic citation instead.
 * Hesperian 02:42, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * MSW3 uses a short form synonymy that doesn't include name combinations or emended spellings. I think that will be an important thing to take note of when making comparisons.  Full synonymies are actually not that common.  Here's an insect paper that employed colons .  I'm not finding google searches all that productive and I'm not behind a firewall that will allow me to do a more rigorous search.  Another note: in the cases involving a colon, the authority for that particular name is already listed.  --Aranae (talk) 17:42, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Long-form synonymies, where given at all, for mammals do generally use this form. The paper I cite for Oryzomys peninsulae, for example, uses it, as does Gardner's Mammals of South America (2007).
 * Hesperian, I think you have a somewhat atypical example there, as the colon more usually appears with new name combinations, not misspellings. For example, Lundomys molitor was originally Hesperomys molitor Winge, 1887 and the current name combination is Lundomys molitor: Voss and Carleton, 1993 (or if you will, Lundomys molitor (Winge, 1887): Voss and Carleton, 1993, but as Aranae says this is redundant). For plants, I believe one would use Lundomys molitor (Winge) Voss and Carleton. For mammals at least, this usage is common in the literature, and it is also useful, as the synonymy in this form allows one to track the different combinations through time. I am not nearly as familiar with the conventions used for other animal groups than mammals, but there are at least some papers on other groups which do use it (this one on lizards and Aranae's example on insects, for example). This and This paper on birds (same author) are similar, but use a semicolon instead of a colon. Ucucha 18:21, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The point I was making is that the names with author citations, for your example taxon, are "Hesperomys molitor Winge, 1887" and "Lundomys molitor (Winge, 1887)". That is what we should be using in the taxobox. Hesperian 23:30, 23 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Why? I always prefer following the way people do things in the scientific literature over doing something else for some abstract reason. For mammals, this is the way people actually do it. Ucucha 11:25, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm surprised, and not really convinced, that this is widely used in the scientific literature. But I don't really know this field. If it is indeed the case that this is the way mammalologists cite synonyms, then that suffices, and I must withdraw my objection. Hesperian 12:35, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * I went through all relevant papers on Oryzomyini in my files. Recent papers that give full synonymies (Percequillo et al., 2008 on Cerradomys; Carleton and Arroyo-Cabrales, 2009 on Mexican Oryzomys; Carleton et al., 2009 on Oecomys of the concolor group; Voss et al., 2002 on Handleyomys; Voss and Carleton, 1993 on Lundomys; Voss and Myers, 1991 on Pseudoryzomys) all use the colon convention. The only exception is Voss (1991) on Zygodontomys, which gives the authors of new combinations without any punctuation (which I think is against the Code). Some other revisionary papers do not give formal synonymies (Weksler et al., 2006 on several new genera; Voss and Weksler, 2009 on Oryzomys gorgasi; McCain et al., 2008 on Sigmodontomys aphrastus; Weksler and Bonvicino, 2005 on Cerrado Oligoryzomys; Gomez-Laverde et al., 2004 on Scolomys--a couple of these wouldn't have any name combinations to list anyway) or do not list name combinations (Musser et al., 1998 on what is now Hylaeamys, Euryoryzomys, and Transandinomys). Ucucha 13:23, 24 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I stand corrected. Hesperian 06:00, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

IUCN Redlist Category NE
I notice that quite a lot species in wikipedia was "classified" as Least Concern in the Taxobox. But when you look it up to the IUCN website...large number of species are indeed NE (Not Evaluated). Classifying them as LC not only is wrong...but tragically misleading....a NE species may indeed threatened because no assessment has been done on it. Clearly NE does not mean LC. Someone should try to fix the problem of the taxobox...adding one more category NE. --Hkchan123 (talk) 22:00, 27 December 2009 (UTC)
 * If a taxon hasn't been evaluated by the IUCN, then we don't provide an IUCN status at all; either we provide a status under some other status systen in which it has been evaluated, or we omit the status altogether. If people are listing plants as Least Concern when they have not been evaluated as such, that is a problem, but it has nothing to do with this template. Hesperian 04:58, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Adding audio
I propose we add an audio section to the taxobox. There are many animals that make a characteristic noise - birds and mammals spring to mind. I just added the call to Peafowl, for example, and I would expect a great many people to be interested in the sounds of various creatures. -- ke4roh (talk) 02:26, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
 * You may want to use Listen for that. Kaldari (talk) 02:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Indeed. There's no pressing need to include this in the infobox when existing implementations are widely deployed. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:26, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Sections should be reordered by relevance
Sections should be arranged from most relevant to an average person to least.

My opinions on relevance:
 * The section Conservation status is only relevant information if is it abnormal, that is, threatened. For an example see Fennec_Fox. Most animals are not threatened, and when reading an article on an animal people will assume so, it would only be information if broke that assumption. Therefore I suggest conditionally either moving it lower or collapsing it.
 * Sections like Scientific classification, Binomial name, Phyla etc. (e.g. X-ray_fish, Animal) which only contain jargon are only relevant to scientists. I suggest collapsing them by default and lowering them to the bottom if they are not already. However, if new sections can be added which avoid jargon, e.g. a classification section which uses common names like Animals instead of Animalia, Mammals instead of Mammalia, etc., they should be positioned near the top.
 * The Natural region sections which show a map where the animals live in the wild is quite informative at a quick glance, it should be near the top rather than near the bottom (e.g. Tiger, Fennec_Fox). Ljcrabs (talk) 12:32, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't agree with any of these proposals. People should omit the conservation status from the taxobox if the conservation status is not interesting enough to warrant inclusion. The scientific classification is the most important part of the taxobox, and what you call "jargon" is in fact the scientific classification. The distribution section is nowhere near as important, and the fact that it carries a map is an argument for pushing it down the page, so that the box doesn't end up being dominated by two consecutive images. Hesperian 13:12, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * If the taxonomy were de-emphasized, it would hardly be a taxobox any more.--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:24, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * (Sarcasm) Yes, let's remove taxonomy from taxoboxes. Even better, delete taxoboxes and taxonomy from wikipedia. We could eliminate 1000s of wikipedia articles by collapsing articles into a few choice common names: bug, cat, dog, cow-like, big-land-animal, big-water-animal (croc, manitees, whales, sharks), small furry thing (platypus, tarantula, raccoon, kitten, rat), flower, tree, wet-plant (moss, Victoria, seagrasses, lichens), flying-thing (bats, flies, birds, seeds, pollen).
 * Seriously, that's what the taxobox gives: the taxonomy with its jargon. If you're a high school student and you need to know what genus and family the rose is in, it takes you 20 seconds on wikipedia to find this information. If you eliminate that, then where do students go to find this information? Even scientists use wikipedia as a starting point, just like students do, and naturalists and fishermen and reporters and politicians.
 * A general encyclopedia is written so that diverse readers can find the information they want, and these readers are not all the same as you. If you don't find taxoboxes useful, then you can simply ignore them. -- IP69.226.103.13 |  Talk about me.  21:31, 5 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree that jargon is useful for some people and should remain. I only recommended collapsing it so it's not shown by default to everyone.
 * In reply to "A general encyclopedia is written so that diverse readers can find the information they want, and these readers are not all the same as you". I completely agree, and I should have emphasized that these are my opinions of what the average person might find relevant, not my personal preferences. If we were doing this properly, we would do usability testing with a diverse set of people and ask them for their opinions directly, but without this resource we can only guesstimate. Above are my guesstimates.
 * In reply to "If you don't find taxoboxes useful, then you can simply ignore them", people can't simply ignore them. It takes time and mental effort to skip over the section. Admittedly this is in the milliseconds but multiply that by how many people view an article with a taxobox, and how many times, and you get significance. Apply the same ideas of usability across the whole of Wikipedia and you get a much more satisfying experience. That's my motivation for these seemingly counterproductive changes: introducing a little bit of inconvenience for a few is better than keeping a lot of inconvenience (in my opinion) for most. Ljcrabs (talk) 05:24, 7 January 2010 (UTC)


 * This argument makes no sense at all. Useful information should be hidden if some people don't understand it? That's not done anywhere in any article on Wikipedia and for good reason, which is that this is an encyclopedia and its purpose is to present facts. The whole point is to give people information they might not already know. Would you have parts of the infobox for helium, most of which is much more esoteric than the stuff in the taxobox, collapsed? -- Yzx (talk) 05:43, 7 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The article includes text about the organism; and the taxobox is a list of primary facts. I teach. My students use wikipedia taxoboxes as starting points for taxonomic information about organisms. It's the most useful aspect of wikipedia to my students. It's not 100% accurate; sometimes it's laughable. However, it's a fast and easy place to start, a lot quicker than a google or database search if the information is available.


 * My professional colleagues also use it for the same purpose: fastest access to species name, authority and order. Then, armed with this information, go to research the literature.


 * Do you see that if you collapse it, while it saves you milliseconds, it costs seconds to the reader who has to uncollapse it?


 * Do you have others who agree with you that wikipedia taxoboxes interfere with reading the articles? I teach and write, so I've discussed wikipedia as a resource, both casually and professionally, and I've even written about it. However, because I work with scientists, I'm not hanging around groups who find taxonomies inconvenient, so maybe your viewing is typical for some audience, and might be looked at. -- IP69.226.103.13 |  Talk about me.  05:57, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Documentation
I just went through the documentation and edited it in various places to remove out-of-date information and improve the text. Some points I was unsure about or that require more work: Ucucha 22:20, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The conservation status section apparently uses out-of-date IUCN status codes.
 * The type species section says "When the type species of a genus (or larger grouping) is known ...". Under the ICZN, no category higher than a genus can have a type species (although it can have a type genus); is this different under the ICBN?
 * "Ideally, it [the type species parameter] should only be used if the genus' original description can be verified first-hand." This seems a bad idea, because for mammals (and presumably for other groups), there are taxonomic compendia that list the type species and should be reliable sources enough to use in lieu of a first-hand examination of the original description. In addition, the type species of many older genera is a complex matter because it was designated later; in these cases, the type species should be cited to a suitable taxonomic reference and examining the original description won't be of much use. I would prefer to strike out this sentence completely.
 * Several parameters remain entirely undocumented.

Permission to semi-automatically fill some taxoboxes.
I was wondering if it would be OK for me to add some information to some Taxoboxes if they are missing parameters. I wrote some code that does this. It only adds parameters below 'superfamily' (to avoid cluttering the template) and adds subdivisions if there is not already a section somewhere else in the article. Also, it only adds the  parameter if there are less then 15 subdivisions, as to not clutter the template. Id like some sort of !vote or at least some idea that this is in the best intrest of the project. Thanks, --Tim1357 (talk) 18:48, 23 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Out of curiosity wht areas are you looking to work in, and what source will be used for the taxa expansions?--Kevmin (talk) 18:56, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Please be more specific in your proposal. Could you give an example of an edit that would be made by this code? Ucucha 20:45, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course. I forgot to mention that the information is pulled from the wikispecies database. The script can work with any article that has both a Taxobox and a corresponding Wikispecies page.
 * Here are a list of example edits.
 * Adding superfamily;putting parameters in correct order.
 * Adding subdivision species
 * Adding subdivison familia
 * Tim1357 (talk) 22:37, 23 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry but I don't quite understand what this code will do. Will it automatically insert information from Wikispecies on all organism articles? If so then I'm leery of having that much information be added without it being vetted by an editor, since Wikispecies isn't an official taxonomic database and so has the potential to be inaccurate/out of date. I wouldn't be opposed to a more limited implementation in which it would be given a list of articles to work on. -- Yzx (talk) 23:51, 23 January 2010 (UTC)


 * In the case of your second example, the edit was completely unnecessary and in fact only makes the taxobox larger. Soesilarishius only has one species and already had the binomial parameter. Addition of subdivision duplicates that information. Also, in the first example edit, addition of the superfamily is arguably unnecessary (see TX, where it suggests that minor ranks far removed from the article rank should not be included). --Rkitko (talk) 00:24, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, the second edit is certainly unnecessary and the first probably is too. I think your code should need some more tweaks before it can be used in full. Ucucha 02:15, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

No, I'm opposed. Unless the bot is clever enough to recognise when different classification systems are in use, this is a recipe for disaster. The last thing we need is a bot that fills in APG-II blanks with a Cronquist taxonomy. <—— That is number one on my list of a gazillian objections. Hesperian 03:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Wspecies uses APG 2 and on so no need to worry about Cronquist. But agree that bot filling can be vary tricky at best.--Kevmin (talk) 06:36, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose, at least as currently proposed. Wikispecies is not a very good taxonomic database. That particular objection might be helped if it were feasible to use GRIN or something a little more reliable, but past experience has been that this sort of thing is harder than it looks. As for sample edit #1, superfamily should not in general be in a taxobox (although it is the kind of thing which could vary from one order/class/kingdom to another, and I'm not sure how an algorithm could substitute for human judgment, talk page discussion, etc). Kingdon (talk) 07:33, 26 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Though this seems like a good idea in theory, some of the issues raised above are concerning. While Wikispecies receives relatively little vandalism, there is always a chance, as with any wiki, that the information is out of date or inaccurate. I can also foresee cases wherein a bit more sophistication is necessary. There is also the issue of differing classification systems, and without an accepted standard across Wikipedia, such a script might cause more work in terms of fixing mixed taxoboxes. I agree that the bot/script needs more work before implementation. Intelligent  sium  23:58, 28 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose. In my experience Wikipedia has more up to date and accurate taxonomy than WikiSpecies (ironically). Also note that in some areas (entomology, arachnology) older taxonomies are actually more complicated than newer ones, due to migration away from classical taxonomy to cladistics. In the family Salticidae, for example, all use of tribes has been abandoned since the 1990s in favor of numerous levels of unranked clades between family and genus, most of which are never listed in taxonomies. So in those cases, the simpler taxonomy is actually more accurate and up to date. Kaldari (talk) 00:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)