User:SMcCandlish/Taxobox sandbox

A simple way forward on common names of species
The "lower-case or capitalize common names of species (maybe only birds)" dispute that has been ongoing is rather pointless. Not because it doesn't matter (it does matter for WP:LOCALCONSENSUS reasons, for WP:NABOBS reasons, and others), but because the solution is obvious and, it just hasn't been applied to bird articles much or at all.

To invent a complex example to illustrate all the principles, this article's title would be Northeastern boobook, referred to in running prose as northeastern boobook, the same way we'd do snow leopard, and it illustrates a case where the IOC name is not the WP:COMMONNAME for Wikipedia article titling purposes, having different capitalization, hyphenation and a varying name component:
 * Complex example:

 The northeastern boobook (Ninox examplea),[1] also called the Wellington ground owl,[2] Tasmanian walking morepork,[3] and formally named the North-eastern Morepork [sic] by the IOC),[4] is a small owl found throughout New Zealand, Tasmania and across most of mainland Australia. This bird is the loudest owl in Australia and is the continent's most widely distributed owl that cannot fly.

In the German spoken by the population of Austrian immigrants in the area, it is named Vandernv&ouml;gel. The bird, in common with other closely related species, has almost 20 alternative common names, most of which, e.g. boobook, morepork, mopoke, and ruru, are onomatopoeic, as they emulate the bird's distinctive two-pitched call.

Two subspecies, the fast-running boobook and the Tasmanian crawling morepork, both became extinct during the 21th century.

end of example

In simpler cases without so many names to cover, but a difference between the IOC name and the WP:COMMONNAME, this will suffice:
 * Simpler case, where the WP&#58;COMMONNAME is not the IOC formal vernacular name:

The northeastern boobook (Ninox examplea),[1] formally named the North-Eastern Morepork [sic] by the IOC),[2] is a small owl...

In cases without any conflict with the IOC name this would be simpler yet:
 * Simplest case:

The northeastern boobook (Ninox examplea),[1]is a small owl...

[... skipping to References section ...]
 * . IOC formally capitalises the name as Northeastern Boobook.

This should actually be done even after the infobox change (see below) because per WP:INFOBOX, information is not supposed to be in an infobox but not the main article body. While this principle is very frequently violated for no reason, we don't need to make that situation worse.


 * New parameter to be added to


 * formal_vernacular           = North-eastern Morepork
 * formal_vernacular_authority = IOC

, in the sandbox version of the taxobox used in the longer example above.

It adds a line near the top of the infobox, under the common name given at the top. This line provides the formalized, published vernacular name when such a thing exists. For birds, it would accoding to the consensus at WP:BIRDS last I looked, be the (capitalized) IOC name. For birds, this should use an embedded template to actually link to the entry at the IOC World Bird List where it appears, e.g., since most bird articles on WP anyway (even very well-developed ones, an unacceptable situation even aside from this lengthy style debate.  Any other biological field in which a standard should be cited can do something similar if necessary (remember.

See talk page for rationale, details, and discussion.