User talk:Plantdrew/Archive 7

Drosera brevifolia picture is wrong
Hey Drew the picture on the D. brevifolia page is acctually D. capillaris. I dont know how to edit it but if you would like an accurate picture please email me at kountrykarnivores@gmail.com and i can provide you with one Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.115.2.216 (talk) 17:11, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

taxoboxes and wikidata
Hello Drew! Happy New Years Eve! I was playing around reptiles and noticed that many of the genera in Gekkonidae need to be moved around.....if any of the auto taxoboxes become empty, do I need to let you or Peter know or can you see them as they are done and can delete accordingly? ......Pvmoutside (talk) 20:04, 31 December 2017 (UTC)


 * Happy New Years to you as well. You're asking about what to do with the taxonomy template when a genus using an automatic taxobox is sunk into synonymy? I don't know of a way to see/find unused taxonomy templates. I assume it's possible to do so somehow; a couple months back somebody was thinking about protecting taxonomy templates, and was able to compile a list of them by number of transclusions. That would be a useful search to figure out. For now, we've been dealing with no longer needed taxonomy templates by placing them in Category:Unnecessary taxonomy templates, and commenting out or blanking the template code. Peter goes through the category every so often and gets them deleted. Plantdrew (talk) 02:32, 1 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't know either how to find templates by transclusion count: it would be useful! Editors do create taxonomy templates in advance of their use, so that currently unused ones are not necessarily wrong. As says, just comment out or blank the code and then add Category:Unnecessary taxonomy templates. It's necessary to blank the existing code or it causes errors elsewhere. This seems the simplest approach since going through the TfD process individually is tedious, and admins often don't understand taxonomy templates and ask questions. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:30, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Plants portal
Why are you removing the plants portal from relevant articles? Abyssal (talk) 12:17, 1 January 2018 (UTC) Abyssal (talk)12:17, 1 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Just to note that I entirely support the removals; they aren't relevant articles – unless you believe that every plant article should have the portal added, which I would strongly oppose. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:28, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Actually, that is my opinion unless there are more specific plant-related portals (e.g. for individual taxonomic families) in use on the article. Abyssal (talk) 13:11, 1 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I'd like to see the consensus for including the portal on all of the roughly 71,500 plant articles. Since a "portal should be associated with a WikiProject" according to Portal guidelines, consensus at WP:PLANTS would seem to be essential. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:54, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with Peter and Plantdrew, seems like a lot of work with maybe better time spent on other things?....Pvmoutside (talk) 20:00, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

Authorities
Hi, hope you had a good New Year. When I am editing lists of species I always, if I remember, ensure that the naming authorities are in small text and I thought this was a standard convention in Wikipedia. Some users, however, disagree and are changing all the naming authorities to normal text. To my eyes, this looks strange. Is there such a formal convention or is it an informal one? For example see the page I created Ceratonereis. Quetzal1964 (talk)  11:44, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I'll be interested to see if Plantdrew knows of somewhere 'official' in which this is documented. It's covered at Manual of Style/Organisms, but this hasn't yet been adopted. Where authorities are formatted automatically, e.g. in taxoboxes or templates like Taxon list, they are always put in small text, so this can be said to be the normal style. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:24, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't know of anything more official than the draft MoS for organisms Peter linked. Small text authorities are also mentioned at the plant article template, but I'm not finding any discussion of small authorities in the ToL archives. I do regard small authorities as the standard convention myself; while I don't often make the effort to add the mark-up for small text when it is absent, I certainly never remove that mark-up when it is present. Plantdrew (talk) 01:57, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you both. There is an editor who is single handedly removing the small text from the authorities in Annelida articles because he doesn't like that style and says Wikipedia "is not a newspaper", whatever that means. I believe he is editing in good faith but also that what he's doing should be reverted. He is an experienced editor but doesn't seem to have a biology background and I do not want to single handedly go on a campaign to revert these edits, especially now it sounds like there is no formal policy. However, I will leave him a message pointing him to the draft Manual of Style.Quetzal1964 (talk)  06:49, 8 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I would also point out that this is the agreed style in taxoboxes. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:46, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for cleaning up the stubs I created recently. I've been working on the flora distribution categories, as you may have seen. Ideally I'd like to create, and at least minimally populate, all the Level 3 categories in the WGSRPD. I'm never sure whether working on categories is a waste of time or not; they seem to attract editors who love to "fiddle" with them. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:27, 11 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, thank you for cleaning after me when I forget to Latinize ranks in taxonomy templates. I think it's worth finishing the set of Level 3 categories, but I have pretty mixed feelings about categories on Wikipedia. They work OK for some defining characteristics that inherently have a hierarchical nature (e.g. membership in a taxon at a particular rank). WGSRPD give us a hiearchy, but the way Wikipedia diffuses (or don't diffuse) renders the categories not so useful to a reader; I think readers would generally expect the contents of a Level 3 category to include all the plants found in that place, not just the plants that were diffused from a higher level (and not diffused to a lower level). Not really much that can be done about it though; we're stuck with how Wikipedia categories work. Plantdrew (talk) 02:40, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree about the diffusing issue. It has several bad consequences. For example, the IUCN uses the lowest levels of the WGSRPD scheme, but combines them differently, making more use of country boundaries, and ending up with different continents (e.g. Oceania rather than Australasia and Pacific). If we didn't diffuse, we could use these lowest levels for plants and animals and categories like "Biota of ..." would always work, whereas now they are too often based on different definitions. I looked at sorting out Category:Biota of North America – the overlaps and inconsistencies could be improved, but it would still not work properly because of the diffusion to different higher levels.
 * One thing I would like to do is to change Category:Flora of North America to Category:Flora of northern America (and ditto for southern America). I remember this being discussed before, with no consensus to change. But it's hopeless to expect new editors to know that "Flora of North America" refers to the different, non-traditional WGSRPD definition, whereas "Fauna of North America" refers to the traditional definition. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:04, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Silky oak (disambiguation)
I don't think that moving the page to Silky oak (disambiguation) was a good idea; a single-non plant meaning could have been handled by a hatnote. However, given that it has been moved, what should be the WP:PLANTS template on the talk page? Peter coxhead (talk) 15:34, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It can always be moved back, but that's a lot of genera to do by hatnote (unless they fit in family, subfamily, or higher taxa somehow). Plus there is an unrelated non-biological page attached.......and since there is a non plant attached to the disambig page, a simple disambig on the talk page is warranted (that is, unless you want to hatnote the family, subfamily, or higher taxa, then the non-biological page).....Pvmoutside (talk) 16:59, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * If there are non-plant meanings, I do class=disambig for the WP:PLANTS banner. A single non-plant meaning does make it a bit of edge case, and a hatnote might have been a better solution. 17:08, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * EDIT CONFLICT Pvmoutside, silky oak is a redirect to Grevillea robusta. So the hatnote could be at that species and would simply link the city and list of plants known as silky oak (rather than enumerating all the other plants in the hatnote itself). Plantdrew (talk) 17:08, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Brassicaceae and Felicia (genus)
Hi Plantdrew, perhaps you may want to look at Brassicaceae and Felicia (genus). I have expanded them substantially and I guess their current quality rating is inadequate. I'm considering whether these two in fact would be candidates for GAN, and would appreciate your opinion. Regards, Dwergenpaartje (talk) 09:19, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Wow, excellent work on both of those. I've upgraded them to B class. I don't really have any experience with GAN, but I think you should try taking the articles there. Plantdrew (talk) 18:40, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Dwergenpaartje (talk) 19:21, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Template:Taxonomy/Argythamnia
I thought of going lower than the family at Template:Taxonomy/Argythamnia, but the sourcing for the tribes and subfamilies of Euphorbiaceae seems poor to me. It definitely needs improving for this quite important family. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:18, 19 January 2018 (UTC)


 * While I haven't been totally consistent, my general rule of thumb for intrafamilial ranks is not to remove (or add) this detail from Wikipedia when it can be confirmed. Confirmation is via GRIN, NCBI and/or APWeb (ideally all three are in agreement). I am somewhat leery of including red-linked intrafamilial ranks (so I didn't go down to subtribe for Argrythamnia), and I will note that GRIN and NCBI don't agree for this genus (NCBI has it as Euphorbiaceae incertae sedis). I have intentions of going through the taxonomy templates for plant subfamilies, tribes, and subtribes and adding references (to APWeb and/or GRIN); I'll probably take that on within a month. Plantdrew (talk) 20:47, 19 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm guilty (and often feel guilty, but time is an issue) of creating taxonomy templates without completing ref, but this is the best approach, I'm sure. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:44, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Verticordia sect. Cooloomia
If Verticordia sect. Cooloomia is monotypic, it shouldn't have an article, surely? Peter coxhead (talk) 11:17, 22 January 2018 (UTC)


 * , probably not, but I didn't want to take them time to merge it. The article on the section is very well developed (as far as articles on sections go, that is) and it would be a bit of a hassle to integrate the information into the species article. There are also 5 other monotypic Verticordia sections with articles; I've put them all in Category:Monotypic plant taxa for now. Plantdrew (talk) 21:43, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Parents in taxonomy templates
I'm increasingly reluctant to use ranks lower than family for genera in taxonomy templates unless there's a really up-to-date reference (no more than 5 years ago at most), since the "churn" in intra-familial classifications seems very high – every new molecular phylogenetic study in some groups contradicts the previous ones. On the other hand, with very large families, it is important to subdivide. I know nothing about the taxonomy of the Asteraceae (I did some work on Pericallis only because I had been scanning some of my old slides in preparation for a talk on the flora of Tenerife); however I note that GRIN ref you used at Template:Taxonomy/Pericallis for the tribe was revised in 2011, which is quite a while ago now. Are we sure this is still ok? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:42, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
 * , the latest studies dealing with intra-familial classification of Asteraceae date from 2008 and 2009 (e.g. APWeb is following this tribal arrangement). However, that paper doesn't list the tribal placement for each genus, so other sources are needed. Aside from GRIN, the Global Compositae Checklist also has Pericallis in Senecioneae (record last updated 2010). I'm not finding anything that suggests that a 2010 database record is likely to be out of date regarding Asteraceae intra-familial classification. Plantdrew (talk) 17:30, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Seems fine then. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:32, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Lists of orchids by genus
Hello Plantdrew - thanks for your work (which helps me almost daily).

Re. the category "Lists of orchids by genus" - this leaves out smaller orchid genera (eg. Genoplesium, Corunastylis, Eriochilus). Should all orchid genera have a separate species list then? Happy to oblige with the ones I'm working on, if so. Gderrin (talk) 22:57, 31 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Separate species lists aren't needed for smaller genera. For very large genera, it is probably better to split the species off into a separate list. I'm not sure exactly where to draw the line between smaller/very large genera; I guess maybe when there are several hundred or more species? I'm not sure about orchids particularly, but I do know we have some articles on large plant genera where there isn't a complete list of species anywhere on Wikipedia (making a List of Eugenia species is on my to do list). There's often a "Selected species" section, and I do make some effort to ensure that all the species that have articles are included in the "Selected species". But in the long run, it would be better to start separate lists of all species for the largest genera and "select" the species that are particularly important (i.e., those that are cultivated, are very well known in the wild) to be listed in the genus article. Plantdrew (talk) 00:57, 1 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Okay - I'm fine with that. Thanks. Gderrin (talk) 01:29, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Henri de Peyerimhoff (entomologist)
I see you rated this article "Start" class: most readers will need more, soon after it was created. See Assessing articles. It would be helpful if you could leave notes on the article's talk page (not here) saying what would be needed to bring it up to C class - useful to the casual reader. The subject is rather obscure. Are you aware of other sources that could have information? A list on the article's talk page would be useful. If there are none the Start rating, which signals to project members that more research will bear fruit, may be misleading. Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 23:42, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
 * , I've re-rated it as C-class. I'm pretty mystified by your comment on my talk page. You created it with the edit summary "stub", and made it slightly longer before I rated it. I've read the article assessment guidelines, and believe that quality ratings are generally applied more conservatively than the wording of the assessment guidelines suggests, and with more emphasis on article length than actual quality. I thought I was being generous (as far as quality ratings usually go) in rating it a Start at the time I rated it. You then managed to add more content and references.


 * I've never seen any suggestion that is the responsibility of people rating new pages to suggest specific areas needing improvement or additional useful references. I understand that it would surely be helpful to article creators if this was done, and am trying to read your comment in light of a request for assistance of this nature (initially I felt pretty attacked). I'm sorry, I'm not able to help with additional references for this individual. If you feel that you've done due diligence and additional references are unlikely to be found, please consider rating your own articles as C (or better) so that nobody is mislead to think that further research will bear fruit. I take the essay User:Grutness/Croughton-London rule of stubs to heart, and certainly consider C-class appropriate even for very short articles on sufficiently obscure subjects. Plantdrew (talk) 00:08, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I did not mean my comment as an attack, although I am concerned that rapid assessments like this may turn off new editors. See Please do not bite the newcomers "It is better to wait a few days to see how a harmless article evolves than to rush to criticise." The first version of most articles is often quite sketchy. I have scraped together everything I could find online on this obscure subject, which is not much. Perhaps there is a promising offline source, a Biographical Dictionary of Alsatian Entomologists or something. If that exists, a note on the article talk page could be useful to someone with access to a library that may hold the source. Thanks, Aymatth2 (talk) 01:35, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The Croughton-London rule of stubs is new to me. I do not fully agree with it. The quality rating says how close the article is to being as good as possible, unrelated to its importance. I would say that if an article presents all available information, like Beornred of Mercia, it is potentially A class however short or important it is. Maybe the Croughton-London rule kicks in when the subject is really obscure but there is a mass of available information. No reasonable reader would want a huge article on a trivial subject. That is not the case with Henri de Peyerimhoff (entomologist). If there were a source of more complete information it would be reasonable to rate the article Start and give a pointer to the source on its talk page. But if this is the best that can be done, it is at least a C. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:42, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * you seem to be treating article assessment as though it assessed the editor. That's not its purpose. It is solely for the use of the Wikiproject in whose template it appears. (Different Wikiprojects can quite reasonably make different assessments; a plant article with both botanical and horticultural interest could quite rightly be rated differently based on the content.) In this case, I'd expect an article about an entomologist to say more about his work than is there now. Did he name any species? Were species named after him? Did he work on any particular family of micromoths? Peter coxhead (talk) 16:03, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Assessment rates the article in terms of importance and quality. Each project may have its own importance scale, but usually they all follow the standard quality scale. Quality includes technical aspects like organization, readability, citations, wikilinks, etc. and completeness. Completeness measures how close the article comes to presenting the available information, so how close it is to being "done" from a project viewpoint. An article may be complete even if it omits information a reader would typically expect. Beornred of Mercia, an article about a king, does not give parents, birth date or death date because this information is not known. From a project viewpoint the article is "done", complete. It is closer to B than to Stub. A reader may wish there were more, but that is all they are going to get. Aymatth2 (talk) 16:49, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't meant to be rude, but your answer seems a bit arrogant to me. How do you know "that is all they are going to get"? Are you a professional historian of this era perhaps? Who knows what may be discovered in the future, or what information is lurking in old paper sources. It's also arguable (though I don't intend to put it forward) that if that's all that is known about this individual, he's not notable. Anyway, we must agree to disagree. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:04, 6 February 2018 (UTC)


 * All that is currently known of Beornred of Mercia comes from one short entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, virtually the only source for English history of that period. New information might emerge in the future, but the article provides all available information. There is a rule somewhere that "all kings are presumed to be notable." With Henri de Peyerimhoff (entomologist), the links to the article could be mined for a partial list of species he named or that were named after him, but that seems like original research. Perhaps there is a database somewhere? The question is whether we have good reason to believe that more could be added to the article. Aymatth2 (talk) 17:34, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Convallaria
An article that you have been involved in editing&mdash;Convallaria&mdash;has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. mettokki (talk) 03:46, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Fish/Truck
Thanks for catching that JarrahTree 21:59, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Fish project tagging has been tedious, but... JarrahTree 22:01, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I've been noticing your efforts in the quality log report lately. I tagged various plant and spider categories for their respective WikiProjects a few years back, but never got around to working on categories for any other groups of organisms. Thank you for working on this. Plantdrew (talk) 22:15, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks for the thanks, hope the errors are as low statistically as the truck item JarrahTree 22:31, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * , regarding bizarre tagging, that editor was exactly who came to my mind. Plantdrew (talk) 22:45, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
 * yup :( JarrahTree 22:53, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Automatic italicization of taxon names
Hi, you may recall that I tried to add automatic italicization of taxon names to Species list and related templates, but took far too simplistic an approach and had to remove it. I've now drafted some Lua code that I think works safely. There's a table of tests at User:Peter coxhead/Test/T3. I've taken a conservative approach and tried only to "fix" botanical connecting terms that are in four 'word' names and are not already italicized. Italicization code needs to be added to the Lua underlying Taxonbar, because when there are multiple from and one links to a botanical infraspecies in Wikidata (as at Syrmatium veatchii) the connecting term is italicized.

Could you please have a look at the table, and add any tests of your own if you think I've missed any? Thanks. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:20, 8 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I've added some tests. Several are errors in formatting connecting terms, so I wouldn't expect them to be supported anyway. Alpha beta subsp. delta exists in the wild, but is being italicized correctly.


 * Do you want get into six word names (i.e. with both varietas and subspecies)? Or making subg. and sect. unitalicized in three word names? It is unlikely that Species list is used often in these cases, so may not be worth the bother. Plantdrew (talk) 02:58, 9 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree re Species list, but I'd like the Lua module to work elsewhere, so supporting subg. and sect. is worthwhile; thanks, I'll add this. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:21, 10 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Re the other additions (thanks again):
 * I think that "ssp." should be supported and expanded automatically to "subsp." (I always use "ssp." outside of Wikipedia and sometimes forget here)
 * "forma" and other full words (e.g. "subspecies") should clearly be supported
 * variants without full stops – um... I suppose there are no cases where "subsp" or "var", etc. could be part of a real taxon name?
 * "var. purpurea", etc. (i.e. without a binomial) I regard as an error, so not to be supported
 * Peter coxhead (talk) 11:27, 10 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I've now fixed the code so that 3rd word connecting term variants are normalized, e.g. "subspecies", "subsp.", "subsp", "ssp." and "ssp" all get output as "subsp." Peter coxhead (talk) 12:04, 10 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I've now also fixed the code to support the 2nd of three words being a connecting term or "cf." or variants. I need to reorganize the tests into groups. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:33, 10 February 2018 (UTC)


 * There seem to be two options with strings that already have italic markup. At present, if there's italic markup outside the whole string, I do nothing. So  is left alone by the italicizing code, and would appear as "Alpha beta subsp. gamma". The alternative would be to strip off all italic markup and put it back as seems correct. However, this could mess up special cases that have been italicized correctly, remembering that I want this to work not just in Species list. I'm also concerned about the other codes, e.g. "Candidatus" for bacteria and the very different treatment of virus names. Trying to cope with bacterial and virus names defeated the editors who originally automated italic names in manual and then automated taxoboxes, so I'm not going to try! Peter coxhead (talk) 12:13, 10 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Another wrinkle Genus list redirects to Species list. It should be italicizing one word genus entries, but should it be a redirect or an independent template? And I'm being dumb and missing what I need to change to get Linked species list displayed in the See also of Template:Species list/doc] (what's with the comment tags at the ends of each line?); all of these taxon list templates need to get reciprocally linked in their See alsos (this has been a barrier in my making use of them more often). Plantdrew (talk) 03:30, 9 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I haven't forgotten this (yet!) but have got distracted with some other stuff – see below. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:49, 11 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Please have a look at the table I added to the documentation for Species list. The "Genus" aliases are also mentioned now in the See also section. Both "Species list" and "Genus list" really mean "Italic taxon list"; it's arbitrary which of the three is chosen as the template title. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:51, 12 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Looking good, thanks for your work on this. 23:37, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Syrmatium names
I can't work out exactly what is going on with some names in Syrmatium ascribed by IPNI to Greene. Look at this entry for example and click through to this one. Considering only the epithet cytisoides, I would expect to see Syrmatium cytisoides (Benth.) Greene, not just "Greene". It's not the only example: all the pairs with the same epithet in the second list at Acmispon appear to be like this. It seems to have confused other sources into treating the placement in Syrmatium and the placement in Acmispon as separate species, rather than IPNI's synonyms (assuming IPNI is right). The latest Jepson puts all Syrmatium into Acmispon, which would solve the problem here, I guess.

This is more in your area than mine, I think. Can you throw any light on it? Peter coxhead (talk) 13:49, 11 February 2018 (UTC)


 * This seems to be some problem with IPNI's database structure, not anything nomenclatural/taxonomic.


 * I notice that IPNI has GCI derived records for Hosackia combinations lacking a citation for the publication of the description/combination for a several species corresponding to your second list: namely H. cytisoides, H. juncea, H. micrantha, H. decumbens and H. prostrata. And there are a bunch of duplicated GCI entries from several Syrmatium, where one has a publication citation and screws up the combining authority, and the other has the correct authority, but doesn't cite a publication (Syrmatium veatchii is one of these). It seems to me that a missing publication citation may be screwing up IPNI's processing of these records. Plantdrew (talk) 00:45, 13 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, I think you're right now I look at it again. However, it's not just IPNI, it seems. The problem has fed through into other taxonomic databases. I'll compose an e-mail to IPNI when I have time. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:40, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Taxonbars
Happy to be of help.

I hear you on the placement of taxonbars. The trouble is, what I'm doing right now is a simple addition of the template to the bottom of the screen. What you're talking about likely will require some kind of substitution in the main body of the text. I'd prefer a substitution for various reasons, but haven't been able to come up with an effective one. Do you have any suggestions? Meantime, let me do a little bit of musing and see what I can think of. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 21:10, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You're talking something like this, correct? -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 21:11, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I have an idea that I can try out tonight. It's not perfect (if there's a DEFAULTSORT then the taxobox will likely be filled in after it), but it should take care of the rest of the issue. And cosmetically it will be better. That's the best I can think of right now - please let me know if you've got a better idea. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 21:24, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * If you leave the from parameter blank, I will eventually place it correctly on the page, à la WP:GENFIXES, when I add the WD QID.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:35, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Awesome. Let me try a little something tonight that can get us halfway, and that should leave only a few that need to be moved. I'll let you know whether or not my experiment turns into an abject failure. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 21:40, 12 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I think what I'm doing is going to work. Have a look at Anaxyrina and tell me if that'll do the trick. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 01:40, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Could you do this? Thing is, WP:GenFixes doesn't care whether or not there's a preceded empty line b/w Taxonbar & the last bulleted reflist entry, unless it moves there. If you're running AWB, I would actually consider putting Taxonbar at the bottom of the page on purpose, but leave GenFixes on to take care of the proper movement in the same edit (b/c anticipating all the possible text that could/should come after & before it is a lot of work, and has been done already, so no need to reinvent the complicatedly-shaped wheel).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  02:24, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Sure, I'll see what I can do. About to step away for a bit, but I'm going to try a few more before bed and see what I can do. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 02:37, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Did a few more, trying out the new model. Will those work? Or shall I go back to planting it at the bottom? Or something else? The problem with GenFixes is, I don't think they work on a new edit - they only work on what's already there. So to use the tool to put things in proper order I'd basically have to start the set again once I've done. Unless I'm missing something? -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 15:32, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * the module actually fires before genfixes do, so if you put  in your module, genfixes will do the rest!   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:10, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Nice, thanks. I'll give that a try tonight when I'm back by AWB. Thanks for your patience with me...there's a lot about AWB that I've never learned, not being of really technical bent. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 16:28, 13 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I think I've got it, by gadfry. Please let me know if you spot anything I'm doing wrong. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 07:09, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
 * only weird thing I see are 2 empty lines b/w Reflist & Taxonbar, which genfixes will gradually remove in the next few days as a piggyback fix to my QID additions, so nbd.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:20, 14 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Awesome, thanks. I still might take a look tonight, see if I can find out what's causing it, just to learn a bit more about modules. Thanks for your help - I think I can bend this new information to some other purposes as well. :-) -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 18:19, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm still curious though, are you adding the template via the AWB module, by an advanced find & replace rule, or something else? The module should simply be: Let me know if you have any questions or problems. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:21, 16 February 2018 (UTC) You also need to check "Enabled", then click "Make module", in the "Module" window fyi. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:23, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
 * No, I'm using the module. Everything seemed fine last night when I was using it. I'll take a look again tonight to be sure, but right now I'm pretty certain everything is in place as it should be. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 15:15, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Disregard; no problem! AWB diffs, um, differ from browser diffs, and they do some whitespace compression, so that was the inconsistency I was noticing.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:35, 16 February 2018 (UTC)
 * No worries. I definitely can't differentiate between the different definitive diffs, either. Diffidently or otherwise. -- Ser Amantio di Nicolao Che dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 15:39, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Bambusa albolineata
What do you think? Artix Kreiger (talk) 01:20, 14 February 2018 (UTC)


 * , looks pretty good. I caught a couple misspellings of the scientific name, and you had the wrong parameter in the taxobox for the synonym, which prevented the synonym from displaying. Plantdrew (talk) 01:46, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

About Rubus gunnianus
Hi Plantdrew, and yet again thank you for all your help. Could you possibly have a little look at that article? The clever men and women at The Plant List really do know all that there is to be knowed, but I've jumped in and said "none of them know one half as much, as intelligent Mr Shirt58" --Shirt58 (talk) 11:37, 14 February 2018 (UTC)


 * I've spruced it up some. Rubus is apomictic, with hundreds of described microspecies, which some taxonomist lump, while others split. The Plant List has many unresolved Rubus species; it appears that their data source made little effort to resolve the taxonomic complexities in the genus. Rubus gunnianus appears to be a low-hanging fruit (haha) as far as resolving the status of Rubus species goes. Unless there are a bunch of other tiny herbaceous Rubus species described from Tasmania, it should be accepted (and it is accepted by APNI). Plantdrew (talk) 16:50, 14 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Having read up on it a little further, it's one of two Rubus species native to Tasmania, and it's quite different from the other one (which is more typical of the genus). It certainly should be accepted. It's an extremely low hanging fruit that The Plant List failed to harvest. Plantdrew (talk) 23:54, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Penstemon barrettiae EoL discrepancy
Fyi this 's pre-existing 578247 is different from WD's EoL of 1701233. Pinging the originating editor too. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 18:03, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
 * When searching the EoL for Penstemon barrettiae, the only result is the 578247. I was unaware that there was an entry for it on WD. Nedst3r (talk) 21:09, 17 February 2018 (UTC)
 * EoL appears to have a redirect at #1701233 since this leads to #578247. (Which makes, yet again, my point that many of the taxonomic databases do not have unique identifier for a taxon/taxon name.) I've changed the Wikidata item. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:50, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
 * It sounds like having a tracking Category:Taxonbar templates using manual IDs might be useful (I'm using similar wording to Category:Taxonbar templates using multiple Wikidata items since neither of them would be considered errors). Do yall agree?  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:43, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
 * And/or Category:Taxonbar templates with manual IDs desynced from Wikidata Category:Taxonbar templates with manual IDs differing from Wikidata, which may or may not be an error.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:48, 18 February 2018 (UTC)


 * , sure, these seem like potentially useful categories. Plantdrew (talk) 23:53, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

User:Artix Kreiger/Chusquea tonduzii
Question.

I tried to add Taxobar with theplantlist. What did I do wrong? Artix Kreiger (talk) 23:30, 25 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Happened to see this. I fixed User:Artix Kreiger/Chusquea tonduzii – it's good practice to include from anyway, but it's essential when, as for drafts, the Wikidata item doesn't link to our article. The Plant List parameter is plantlist – see the list at Template:Taxonbar. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:24, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Scan results - IUCN statuses on non-IUCN pages
If the article's infobox/title binomial DNE on IUCN (title is used as a last-resort), I then used its WP #Rs, and then IUCN synonyms of those #Rs, if necessary (i.e. if the #R itself failed the IUCN check), to validate IUCN existence. I used IUCN's weblink api as my validation mechanism, as long as it didn't say "species not found". The more #Rs a page has, the more IUCN attempts were made, so generally the more valid the outcome (i.e. if 10 #Rs couldn't be found on IUCN, it's very likely not on IUCN). Infraspeciesbox, Subspeciesbox, infoboxes with text in binomial2, trinomial, subspecies, & subdivision were all excluded from the parent scan, and so are also excluded here.

Per the original discussion/request, now archived, I found ~200 such pages with 1 or more #Rs which have a supposed IUCN status on Wikipedia, but probably don't even exist on IUCN, for manual follow up.

† = 27 pages with persistent HTML errors in at least one of their queries; not sure why yet, but these might be suspect. Sorted by # of #Rs:

• # Libidibia paraguariensis (10 #Rs)

• # Lophius americanus (10 #Rs)

• # Patagonian toothfish (10 #Rs)

• # Paubrasilia (10 #Rs)

• # Penaeus monodon (10 #Rs)

• # Phyllostachys nigra (10 #Rs)

• # Rose fish (10 #Rs)

• #Silaum silaus (10 #Rs)

• # Ostorhinchus cookii† (10 #Rs)

• # Powelliphanta gilliesi† (10 #Rs)

• # Trimeresurus stejnegeri† (10 #Rs)

• #Luzula sylvatica (9 #Rs)

• # Ocotea bullata (9 #Rs)

• # Paraponera clavata (9 #Rs)

• # Ryukyu kingfisher (9 #Rs)

• # Russian tortoise† (9 #Rs)

• # Leucospermum conocarpodendron (8 #Rs)

• # Madagascar hissing cockroach (8 #Rs)

• # Visayan bulbul† (8 #Rs)

• # Mindoro bulbul (7 #Rs)

• # New Caledonian thicketbird (7 #Rs)

• #Olive-flanked ground robin (7 #Rs)

• #Solomons cuckooshrike (7 #Rs)

• #Tropical boubou (7 #Rs)

• # Rufous-fronted babbler† (7 #Rs)

• #Moluccan boobook (6 #Rs)

• #New Zealand fernbird (6 #Rs)

• # New Zealand owlet-nightjar (6 #Rs)

• # Orange roughy (6 #Rs)

• #Pompadour green pigeon (6 #Rs)

• #Red-headed macaw (6 #Rs)

• # Sardinella tawilis (6 #Rs)

• # Solanum pseudoquina (6 #Rs)

• #Western warbling vireo (6 #Rs)

• # Whiteleg shrimp (6 #Rs)

• #Olive tanager† (6 #Rs)

• # Madeiran scops owl (5 #Rs)

• # Photuris pensylvanica (5 #Rs)

• # Red-throated wood rail (5 #Rs)

• # Rinderpest (5 #Rs)

• #Ringed warbling finch (5 #Rs)

• # Ruellia tuberosa (5 #Rs)

• # Ruwenzori duiker (5 #Rs)

• #Sabal causiarum (5 #Rs)

• #Saint Helena dove (5 #Rs)

• # Sphagnum cuspidatum (5 #Rs)

• #White-browed shama (5 #Rs)

• # Melicope saint-johnii† (5 #Rs)

• #Pelophylax kl. grafi† (5 #Rs)

• # Lycaena epixanthe (4 #Rs)

• # Nectomys magdalenae (4 #Rs)

• # New Zealand torpedo (4 #Rs)

• # Quercus deserticola (4 #Rs)

• # Raja stellulata (4 #Rs)

• # San Esteban chuckwalla (4 #Rs)

• # Scissor-billed koa finch (4 #Rs)

• #Senecio cambrensis (4 #Rs)

• # Sphagnum fuscum (4 #Rs)

• #Spot-legged wood turtle (4 #Rs)

• # Starksia y-lineata (4 #Rs)

• #Striated swallow (4 #Rs)

• # São Miguel scops owl (4 #Rs)

• # Tyto pollens (4 #Rs)

• # Viti Levu giant pigeon (4 #Rs)

• #Vitreorana oyampiensis (4 #Rs)

• # Wahlenbergia roxburghii (4 #Rs)

• # White-legged duiker (4 #Rs)

• # Peacock monitor† (4 #Rs)

• #Williams' mud turtle† (4 #Rs)

• #Large-spined bell toad (3 #Rs)

• #Malawi bushbaby (3 #Rs)

• # Mammuthus creticus (3 #Rs)

• # Mountain galaxias (3 #Rs)

• # Palaeoloxodon chaniensis (3 #Rs)

• #Parides chabrias (3 #Rs)

• # Pterocarpus erinaceus (3 #Rs)

• #Ruwenzori vlei rat (3 #Rs)

• #Sierra newt (3 #Rs)

• # Somalian slender mongoose (3 #Rs)

• # Speyeria zerene (3 #Rs)

• # Spotted catbird (3 #Rs)

• # Suaeda vera (3 #Rs)

• # Thismia americana (3 #Rs)

• # Tillandsia cyanea (3 #Rs)

• #Tulista kingiana (3 #Rs)

• #Twist-necked turtle (3 #Rs)

• # Upemba lechwe (3 #Rs)

• # Uvaria rufa (3 #Rs)

• #White-rumped shama (3 #Rs)

• # Wood harrier (3 #Rs)

• # Yellow clown goby (3 #Rs)

• # Mud adder† (3 #Rs)

• #Rhoads's Oldfield mouse† (3 #Rs)

• # Kerilia jerdonii (2 #Rs)

• # Lavender waxbill (2 #Rs)

• # Long-fin bonefish (2 #Rs)

• #Maracaibo wood turtle (2 #Rs)

• # Melicope elleryana (2 #Rs)

• # Molelike mouse (2 #Rs)

• #Mount Elgon vlei rat (2 #Rs)

• #Muenster yellow-toothed cavy (2 #Rs)

• #Muli pika (2 #Rs)

• #Multispine giant stingray (2 #Rs)

• #Nerine masoniorum (2 #Rs)

• #Owenia cepiodora (2 #Rs)

• #Palaeoloxodon mnaidriensis (2 #Rs)

• #Panorpa communis (2 #Rs)

• #Paschalococos (2 #Rs)

• #Peninsular chuckwalla (2 #Rs)

• #Perplexing scrubwren (2 #Rs)

• #Pogogyne abramsii (2 #Rs)

• #Poor cod (2 #Rs)

• #Pterostylis taurus (2 #Rs)

• #Puerto Rican flower bat (2 #Rs)

• #Raja texana (2 #Rs)

• #Red three-striped opossum (2 #Rs)

• #Red-capped tamarin (2 #Rs)

• #Rhodeus suigensis (2 #Rs)

• #Rodrigues bulbul (2 #Rs)

• #Rosa blanda (2 #Rs)

• #Rufous-bellied swallow (2 #Rs)

• #Réunion seahorse (2 #Rs)

• #Sabal domingensis (2 #Rs)

• #Sakhalin myotis (2 #Rs)

• #Sauromalus slevini (2 #Rs)

• #Scarlet minivet (2 #Rs)

• #Sea pony (2 #Rs)

• #Seagrass wrasse (2 #Rs)

• #Serruria aemula (2 #Rs)

• #Solanum abutiloides (2 #Rs)

• #Solanum ferox (2 #Rs)

• #Sorbus decipiens (2 #Rs)

• #Stout-legged wren (2 #Rs)

• #Streaked tuftedcheek (2 #Rs)

• #Streaked xenops (2 #Rs)

• #Sunda warbler (2 #Rs)

• #Tawny grassbird (2 #Rs)

• #Two-toed earless skink (2 #Rs)

• #Udine shrew (2 #Rs)

• #Uzungwe vlei rat (2 #Rs)

• #Vietnamese three-striped box turtle (2 #Rs)

• #Vitex pinnata (2 #Rs)

• #Yellow-bellied flowerpecker (2 #Rs)

• #Lichtenstein's seahorse† (2 #Rs)

• #Nosferatu steindachneri† (2 #Rs)

• #Sinoto's lorikeet† (2 #Rs)

• #Smith's fruit bat† (2 #Rs)

• #Thomas's yellow-shouldered bat† (2 #Rs)

• #Verhoeven's giant tree rat† (2 #Rs)

• #Negev tortoise (2 #Rs)

• #Kaloula nonggangensis (1 #R)

• #Kumara haemanthifolia (1 #R)

• #Labeobarbus osseensis (1 #R)

• #Lecanorchis tabugawaensis (1 #R)

• #Lespesia archippivora (1 #R)

• #Limnonectes bannaensis (1 #R)

• #Lycaena helle (1 #R)

• #Malapterurus tanoensis (1 #R)

• #Mangaia swiftlet (1 #R)

• #Megophrys parallela (1 #R)

• #Miniopterus fuliginosus (1 #R)

• #Monopterus desilvai (1 #R)

• #Napo saki (1 #R)

• #Negro stipple-throated antwren (1 #R)

• #Nesoluma st.-johnianum (1 #R)

• #Niedzwedzkia (1 #R)

• #Nomia aurata (1 #R)

• #Northern death adder (1 #R)

• #Northern snapping turtle (1 #R)

• #Oebalus pugnax (1 #R)

• #Oreobambos (1 #R)

• #Ornate skink (1 #R)

• #Oval electric ray (1 #R)

• #Paracanthocobitis abutwebi (1 #R)

• #Paracanthocobitis adelaideae (1 #R)

• #Paracanthocobitis canicula (1 #R)

• #Paracanthocobitis linypha (1 #R)

• #Paracanthocobitis maekhlongensis (1 #R)

• #Paracanthocobitis mandalayensis (1 #R)

• #Paralithodes platypus (1 #R)

• #Parnassius acco (1 #R)

• #Partula protea (1 #R)

• #Perritos de sandia (1 #R)

• #Pitted stingray (1 #R)

• #Poecilotheria ornata (1 #R)

• #Poecilotheria smithi (1 #R)

• #Poecilotheria subfusca (1 #R)

• #Poekilocerus pictus (1 #R)

• #Polylepis crista-galli (1 #R)

• #Polyscias maraisiana (1 #R)

• #Potamonautes isimangaliso (1 #R)

• #Protocheirodon (1 #R)

• #Ranitomeya rubrocephala (1 #R)

• #Rosa azerbaidshanica (1 #R)

• #Roystonea borinquena (1 #R)

• #Sailfin sculpin (1 #R)

• #Samwell Cave cricket (1 #R)

• #Scinax x-signatus (1 #R)

• #Senecio cadiscus (1 #R)

• #Seriola dorsalis (1 #R)

• #Seven-banded wrasse (1 #R)

• #Shinyrayed pocketbook (1 #R)

• #Siamese mud carp (1 #R)

• #Simandoa conserfariam (1 #R)

• #Sphagnum novo-caledoniae (1 #R)

• #Squalius pyrenaicus (1 #R)

• #Sterculia apetala (1 #R)

• #Tetronarce macneilli (1 #R)

• #Vachellia natalitia (1 #R)

• #Vachellia nubica (1 #R)

• #Vanda falcata (1 #R)

• #Vespula atropilosa (1 #R)

• #West African black turtle (1 #R)

• #Zombia (1 #R)

• # Pseudophilautus bambaradeniyai† (1 #R)

• # Pseudophilautus dayawansai† (1 #R)

• # Pseudophilautus jagathgunawardanai† (1 #R)

• # Pseudophilautus karunarathnai† (1 #R)

• # Pseudophilautus newtonjayawardanei† (1 #R)

• # Pseudophilautus puranappu† (1 #R)

• # Pseudophilautus schneideri† (1 #R)

• # Pseudophilautus sirilwijesundarai† (1 #R)

Let me know if/when you want the other 200 :)  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:26, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
 * FYI, I took a look at a couple.....sierra newt, for example, has an IUCN ref and is classified as LC, but the IUCN ref is not inline.....Pvmoutside (talk) 15:16, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * thanks for taking a look. If you resolve the issues with any of these, please strike them out (if you're interested in collaborating on this extensively, I'll probably move the results to a sub page where we can work through them together). Before Tom ran the search, I was expecting that most of cases where a species had an IUCN status on Wikipedia, but wasn't actually listed in IUCN would be the result of people creating the page with a copy-pasted taxobox and failing to remove the IUCN status (that is a situation I've encountered a bunch). But now that I have the results, I'm seeing all kinds of different problems, and many of which can't be simply resolved by removing a mistaken IUCN status. With Sierra newt, the problem is pretty minor; IUCN spells it Taricha sierra, and Wikipedia/AmphibaWeb/ASW spell it Taricha sierrae. It could certainly use a note about the spelling, and an inline citation for IUCN status, but there's nothing actually wrong with the IUCN status in this case. Plantdrew (talk) 18:32, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Known issue: some #Rs don't show up via the API. For the case of Libidibia paraguariensis, the happens to be the exact one that shows up on IUCN... I've brought this up at mw:API talk:Main page, and I struck the entry in the list.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:07, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
 * - issue only affected pages listed as having 10 #Rs, and the only remaining non-struck #R = 10 is still not on IUCN.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:51, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've found a few in the list above with <10 #Rs that have a straightforward IUCN match. Melicope saint-johnii and Starksia y-lineata are the two I remember (perhaps theres a hyphen/endash mismatch between Wikipedia and IUCN?), but there have been some others as well. There are also ones with "status = EX" and "status_system = " on the list (I've been removing the status_system parameter entirely for these, but don't know if that will keep them out of your search). Of the first 100 that I haven't struck yet, I have a good idea WHY (almost all of them) display an IUCN status, but the appropriate fixes aren't super simple. Plantdrew (talk) 01:12, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Full dedicated scan
This seems to be going well! Y'all might have noticed there aren't any pages starting before "L". I think that's just when I started keeping track of these (it was a while ago...). With my code now more robust, I'm making a dedicated scan of all ~50,000 pages under, which I think will be much more useful than the remaining lower-probability 200 that I didn't post here. Will take a few days due to throttling & vetting. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 00:41, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I had indeed noticed that (although there are a couple starting with "K") Plantdrew (talk) 01:12, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• # Chinese high-fin banded shark (23 #Rs)

• # Eastern long-necked turtle (18 #Rs)

• # Madagascan cuckooshrike (15 #Rs)

• # Asian giant hornet (14 #Rs)

• # Common cicadabird (14 #Rs)

• # Cotula mexicana (13 #Rs)

• # Annobón paradise flycatcher (12 #Rs)

• # Haast's eagle (12 #Rs)

• # Hooded crow (12 #Rs)

• # Eryx johnii (11 #Rs)

• # Diospyros discolor (10 #Rs)

• # Ovine rinderpest (10 #Rs)

• # Blue grenadier (9 #Rs)

• # Ocellaris clownfish (9 #Rs)

• # African reed warbler (8 #Rs)

• # Bombus sylvarum (8 #Rs)

• # Colias philodice (8 #Rs)

• # Dendrophylax lindenii (8 #Rs)

• # Indian prawn (8 #Rs)

• # Phengaris alcon (8 #Rs)

• # African helmeted turtle (7 #Rs)

• # Aloiampelos commixta (7 #Rs)

• # Amomum tsao-ko (7 #Rs)

• # Ancistrocheirus (7 #Rs)

• # Astroloba rubriflora (7 #Rs)

• # Black-eared hemispingus (7 #Rs)

• # Curtisia (7 #Rs)

• # Grey-cheeked tit-babbler (7 #Rs)

• # Pieris rapae (7 #Rs)

• # Cape bushbuck (6 #Rs)

• # Early bumblebee (6 #Rs)

• # Elephantopus scaber (6 #Rs)

• # Erica ventricosa (6 #Rs)

• # Hammerhead shark (6 #Rs)

• # Masai giraffe (6 #Rs)

• # Reticulated giraffe (6 #Rs)

• # White-lipped mud turtle (6 #Rs)

• # Antarctic toothfish (5 #Rs)

• # Black-capped hemispingus (5 #Rs)

• # Brahmaea europaea (5 #Rs)

• # Broken-belted bumblebee (5 #Rs)

• # Chaetodon falcula (5 #Rs)

• # Chlamydia trachomatis (5 #Rs)

• # Free State pygmy mouse (5 #Rs)

• # Haliichthys taeniophorus (5 #Rs)

• # Thorntail stingray (5 #Rs)

• # Vespula vulgaris (5 #Rs)

• # Agathis australis (4 #Rs)

• # Agrotis melanoneura (4 #Rs)

• # Agrotis tephrias (4 #Rs)

• # Aristaloe (4 #Rs)

• # Ascension night heron (4 #Rs)

• # Balearic shrew (4 #Rs)

• # Blepsias cirrhosus (4 #Rs)

• # Blue-black grosbeak (4 #Rs)

• # Boomslang (4 #Rs)

• # Chelemys delfini (4 #Rs)

• # Cyphostemma mappia (4 #Rs)

• # Eastern Australian sawshark (4 #Rs)

• # Erica urna-viridis (4 #Rs)

• # Erica verticillata (4 #Rs)

• # Euclea crispa (4 #Rs)

• # European stonechat (4 #Rs)

• # Gonialoe variegata (4 #Rs)

• # Gray-cheeked flying squirrel (4 #Rs)

• # Hosea lobbii (4 #Rs)

• # Isla De La Juventud tree hutia (4 #Rs)

• # Italian edible frog (4 #Rs)

• # Juglans hindsii (4 #Rs)

• # Kalinowski's chat-tyrant (4 #Rs)

• # Migratory locust (4 #Rs)

• # Oryzomys peninsulae (4 #Rs)

• # Paratrygon (4 #Rs)

• # Phengaris rebeli (4 #Rs)

• # Abies borisii-regis (3 #Rs)

• # Aloiampelos decumbens (3 #Rs)

• # Astyanax jordani (3 #Rs)

• # Auckland Islands shore plover (3 #Rs)

• # Balkan pond turtle (3 #Rs)

• # Capperia trichodactyla (3 #Rs)

• # Cat flea (3 #Rs)

• # Central leaf-eared mouse (3 #Rs)

• # Chelodina expansa (3 #Rs)

• # Coppery brushtail possum (3 #Rs)

• # Cream-bellied munia (3 #Rs)

• # Damara canary (3 #Rs)

• # Dasyatis ushiei (3 #Rs)

• # Desert locust (3 #Rs)

• # Dichapetalum cymosum (3 #Rs)

• # Dracula wallisii (3 #Rs)

• # Dryobalanops aromatica (3 #Rs)

• # Eurasian baskettail (3 #Rs)

• # Flores cave rat (3 #Rs)

• # Gazella erlangeri (3 #Rs)

• # Great Maui crake (3 #Rs)

• # Greater hairy-winged bat (3 #Rs)

• # Ismene amancaes (3 #Rs)

• # Jamaican red macaw (3 #Rs)

• # Miahuatlán cotton rat (3 #Rs)

• # Pethia cumingii (3 #Rs)

• # Senegalia caffra (3 #Rs)

• # Vermilion flycatcher (3 #Rs)

• # Afroalpine vlei rat (2 #Rs)

• # Agrotis microreas (2 #Rs)

• # Agrotis panoplias (2 #Rs)

• # Amblyodipsas microphthalma (2 #Rs)

• # American three-toed woodpecker (2 #Rs)

• # Argiagrion leoninum (2 #Rs)

• # Arrow flying squirrel (2 #Rs)

• # Arrow loach (2 #Rs)

• # Ashambu laughingthrush (2 #Rs)

• # Baloghia marmorata (2 #Rs)

• # Banded pitta (2 #Rs)

• # Bangweulu tsessebe (2 #Rs)

• # Bennu heron (2 #Rs)

• # Black pika (2 #Rs)

• # Black-spotted ridge-tailed monitor (2 #Rs)

• # Boiga multomaculata (2 #Rs)

• # Bombus balteatus (2 #Rs)

• # Bombus ruderarius (2 #Rs)

• # Bornean spiderhunter (2 #Rs)

• # Brown-banded carder bee (2 #Rs)

• # Chaetopelma olivaceum (2 #Rs)

• # Chestnut-winged babbler (2 #Rs)

• # Chinese false-eyed turtle (2 #Rs)

• # Cinnamomum cebuense (2 #Rs)

• # Colombian wood turtle (2 #Rs)

• # Cuban bullfinch (2 #Rs)

• # Des Murs's wiretail (2 #Rs)

• # Encephalartos friderici-guilielmi (2 #Rs)

• # Erica capensis (2 #Rs)

• # Erica pyramidalis (2 #Rs)

• # Forest bug (2 #Rs)

• # Frerea (2 #Rs)

• # Gaoligong pika (2 #Rs)

• # Gorgeous barb (2 #Rs)

• # Greenland halibut (2 #Rs)

• # Gymnocalycium baldianum (2 #Rs)

• # Heliotropium indicum (2 #Rs)

• # High-billed crow (2 #Rs)

• # Hobomok skipper (2 #Rs)

• # Hylomyscus endorobae (2 #Rs)

• # Lecomtella (2 #Rs)

• # Oligocentria pinalensis (2 #Rs)

• # Opuntia echios (2 #Rs)

• # Perizoma albulata (2 #Rs)

• # Polistes dominula (2 #Rs)

• # Pyrus cordata (2 #Rs)

• # Quercus john-tuckeri (2 #Rs)

• # Red-billed oxpecker (2 #Rs)

• # Red-toothed shrew (2 #Rs)

• # Réunion Island ornate day gecko (2 #Rs)

• # Rodrigues day gecko (2 #Rs)

• # Stichocotyle (2 #Rs)

• # Tansy beetle (2 #Rs)

• # Triboniophorus aff. graeffei (2 #Rs)

• # Aciagrion fragilis (1 #R)

• # Aerides odorata (1 #R)

• # African keeled mud turtle (1 #R)

• # Afrocanthium pseudoverticillatum (1 #R)

• # Agriocnemis splendidissima (1 #R)

• # Agrotis cremata (1 #R)

• # Aloe purpurea (1 #R)

• # Aloiampelos juddii (1 #R)

• # Amamiichthys (1 #R)

• # Aplocheilus parvus (1 #R)

• # Aquarius remigis (1 #R)

• # Archiargiolestes pusillissimus (1 #R)

• # Archiargiolestes pusillus (1 #R)

• # Archimantis latistyla (1 #R)

• # Babelomurex wormaldi (1 #R)

• # Babiana stricta (1 #R)

• # Balanophyllia europaea (1 #R)

• # Banahaw tree mouse (1 #R)

• # Betadevario ramachandrani (1 #R)

• # Bleasdalea bleasdalei (1 #R)

• # Blepsias bilobus (1 #R)

• # Bombus armeniacus (1 #R)

• # Bombus rupestris (1 #R)

• # Boswellia dioscoridis (1 #R)

• # Bulimulus sp. nov. 'josevillani' (1 #R)

• # Cambaroides sachalinensis (1 #R)

• # Cambaroides wladiwostokensis (1 #R)

• # Central African mud turtle (1 #R)

• # Chalcides ocellatus (1 #R)

• # Chamaecyparis taiwanensis (1 #R)

• # Chelodina burrungandjii (1 #R)

• # Chelodina steindachneri (1 #R)

• # Chiapas swordtail (1 #R)

• # Chrysis ignita (1 #R)

• # Chrysopelea taprobanica (1 #R)

• # Cratoxylum sumatranum (1 #R)

• # Ctenobrycon spilurus (1 #R)

• # Djokoiskandarus (1 #R)

• # Durio testudinarum (1 #R)

• # Elseya albagula (1 #R)

• # Episynlestes albicauda (1 #R)

• # Erica jasminiflora (1 #R)

• # Eriosemopsis (1 #R)

• # Euphorbia cap-saintemariensis (1 #R)

• # Euphorbia caput-aureum (1 #R)

• # Fejervarya frithii (1 #R)

• # Georgimarinus barbatus (1 #R)

• # Giant ghost-faced bat (1 #R)

• # Glacicavicola bathysciodes (1 #R)

• # Grand Cayman bullfinch (1 #R)

• # Gymneleotris seminuda (1 #R)

• # Haworthiopsis pungens (1 #R)

• # Heuglin's wheatear (1 #R)

• # Hieracium snowdoniense (1 #R)

• # Hyrcanogobius bergi (1 #R)

• # Ixora euosmia (1 #R)

• # Kinyongia ulugurensis (1 #R)

• # Livistona speciosa (1 #R)

• # Mangifera austro-indica (1 #R)

• # Nepenthes burkei (1 #R)

• # Niau kingfisher (1 #R)

• # Nososticta solitaria (1 #R)

• # Oedodera marmorata (1 #R)

• # Oryzomys nelsoni (1 #R)

• # Pacific halibut (1 #R)

• # Pandanus conglomeratus (1 #R)

• # Paracercion malayanum (1 #R)

• # Partula fusca (1 #R)

• # Prionotes (1 #R)

• # Quercus cornelius-mulleri (1 #R)

• # Senegalia ataxacantha (1 #R)

• # Sepia ivanovi (1 #R)

• # Sepia peterseni (1 #R)

• # Tulipa sprengeri (1 #R)

• # Viburnum stellato-tomentosum (1 #R)

• # Xenotilapia nasus (1 #R)

• # Xiphophorus montezumae (1 #R)

• # Zyxomma multinervorum (1 #R)

It might be worth noting that both Guppy & Erica turgida showed up on the list but, since the scan takes a while, have since had their erroneous IUCN cat removed. Also, the HTML error was eliminated (the IUCN API doesn't take kindly to apostrophes, even when url-encoded, so #Rs containing them were not used). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 17:55, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

William Oakes
I have probably got a lot wrong even though William Oakes is a stub - I seem to recall having problems with correct botanical naming, for example, when I wrote John Horsefield. I've no idea if the guy is even a minor figure in world botany but he does appear to have had a significant local impact. I am probably not going to be able to develop the article much further because my knowledge of the topic area is, well, about on a par with what is apocryphally used to feed mushrooms. However, I have kept it on my watchlist because I am interested to learn from any mistakes I may have made. Thanks for doing the VIAF etc. - Sitush (talk) 01:57, 10 March 2018 (UTC) Well, it was not a VIAF but you know what I mean. - Sitush (talk) 01:59, 10 March 2018 (UTC)


 * , well I've now added Authority control with the VIAF link since you mentioned it. Biography articles aren't my forte; I don't really know where to look for information about people. If a person worked as a botanist I know where to look to confirm that they existed, their birth/death year and their standard abbreviation, but that's about it. Thanks for writing the article. It's a fine beginning with no problems as far as I can tell. Plantdrew (talk) 02:17, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

User talk:Artix Kreiger/Archive 2
Hey Plantdrew,

I had submitted a few entries and several were published. Wanted to let you know. Artix Kreiger (talk) 03:28, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for letting me know. I'll keep an eye out for more publications of your drafts. Plantdrew (talk) 16:45, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Historically recognized monogeneric plant families
Looking at Category:Monogeneric plant families, which you helpfully added to the Frankeniaceae redirect, I noticed quite a few articles which would appear to need merging and replacing with redirects to the genus article. I don't recall a discussion on whether the policy on monogeneric families applies to historically recognized families, like Alangiaceae. I'd be interested in your comments on this. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:21, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not aware of any previous discussion regarding historically recognized monogeneric families. I think deal with them on a case by case basis. There may be previous circumscriptions that weren't monotypic. Based on what's currently in the Alangiaceae article, I'd merge it with the genus, but Watson & Dallwitz include Metteniusa in Alangiaceae; I guess that is based on morphology, not DNA? It's certainly quite a different view than APGIV has. And an order Alangiales has been published; I do wonder what had been included there.Plantdrew (talk) 16:56, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think case by case is sound advice. Re Watson & Dallwitz, unfortunately this website doesn't seem to be kept up to date; e.g. for Frankeniaceae, by 2003 even Kubitzki (usually a conservative splitter in my experience) had only 2 genera in the family, but Watson & Dallwitz still show 4. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:17, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I have no idea where Watson & Dallwitz get their circumscriptions, but they do mention APGIV synonymies for Alangiaceae, and APGIV ordinal placement for Frankeniaceae. It is being kept up to date in some fashion, it's just not clear what system they are following. At any rate, a polygeneric circumscription of Alangiaceae seems to be quite rare (Airy Shaw 1966 proposed including Metteniusa, but Cronquist and Takhtajan reject this). Probably fine just to merge to the genus. Plantdrew (talk) 18:40, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * My impression is that they have just added bits to the end of these articles without updating circumscriptions. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:26, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Rate of decription
Hi Plantdrew, I am quite happy to take your word that species are being described faster than they are being added to WP. I had my doubts about the validity of Chris Troutman's objection, but the RfC is now closed in favour of a trial anyway. I hope it goes well as I find it much less hassle to add a little bit to an existing stub than to create the article from scratch. My interests include marine ecology, and recording sightings, and often check what is available on Wikipedia and find nothing, but don't have the time to create an article, but maybe do have the time to upload a photo and add a few sentences from my references. Cheers, &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter (Southwood) (talk): 16:05, 12 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Whoops, looks like I got the last comment in before the RfC closed; I'd intended to comment some more on common name issues. I don't buy Chris Troutman's objections in terms of bot-created stubs making it impossible for human editors to get an internal award that very few care about. I do agree that it is easier for human editors to add information to a well-crafted stub than it is for them to create the stub in the first place (especially so for people who don't have much experience editing Wikipedia). Plantdrew (talk) 18:10, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Policy mentioned in an edit
Hiya 😊 You recently reverted an edit to Violin plot, with the reason "Remove xkcd spam per WP:xkcd". However, as you can see, WP:xkcd is redlinked. Is there another name for it that perhaps WP:xkcd should redirect to? Xmoogle (talk) 02:54, 15 March 2018 (UTC)


 * oops, that should have been WP:XKCD. Plantdrew (talk) 03:00, 15 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Didn't realise that'd be case sensitive! But it does seem like maybe WP:xkcd should also be a redirect, given the webcomic's proper title is lowercase. I might "be bold" and add one in later 😊 And thanks! Xmoogle (talk) 09:08, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Help : review article
Hi Let me introduce myself. I am Felix and I’m a novice in Wikipedia ! I wrote an article recently, it’s a biography of a french-american journalist : Laura Haim. Now, I’m waiting for validation from wikipedian reviewer. Would you be able to help me? I have no idea how long it could take… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Laura_Haim Many thanks for your help. Best

Felix — Preceding unsigned comment added by Billybon (talk • contribs) 17:03, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!
Thank you. Plantdrew (talk) 02:33, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

ennuigi
should we nominate ennuigi for deletion?- 🐦Do☭torWho42 ( ⭐ ) 06:06, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Species box or taxobox
Hi Plantdrew, some plant articles have species box and some have taxobox templates. I'm presently creating a few plant stubs. What would be appropriate to use? Thanks in advance. AshLin (talk) 10:22, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Merge discussion
Since a year ago you participated in a rename discussion at Talk:Mandarin orange (fruit) you may want to participate in a merge discussion regarding the same pages at Talk:Mandarin orange. Agricolae (talk) 18:35, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

How to bump things to a Start
Hello Drew, I had made some changes (I admit not the best changes) to Dorymyrmex insanus, which is currently a stub, and I was wondering how to boost it to a Start. :D thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacob4111 (talk • contribs) 07:16, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

A question
Is there a reason I have to force italics on Podonephelium subaequilaterum? -- QEDK ( 後  ☕  桜 ) 18:25, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 * there's coding in taxobox that usually automatically inserts italic title when the target of the taxobox is a genus or species, so the manual italicization isn't strictly needed. On the other hand, it does no harm. Using Speciesbox is, in my view, a better solution and definitely doesn't need italics to be forced. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:04, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Yep, that I know, but why does it fail in this case I don't understand. -- QEDK ( 後  ☕  桜 ) 17:39, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Nvm, just saw your edit. Thanks a lot! -- QEDK ( 後  ☕  桜 ) 17:40, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Question about "new" species
The article Mesoleptus hibernica claims that M. hibernica is a new species "discovered" in 2008. The only references are news reports such as BBC and Wales Online. None of the major databases (ITIS, BugGuide, GBIF, EoL, and iNaturalist) include it. All results from a Google search were news reports from the original 2008 announcement, with nothing since. The species name is not mentioned in any books or scholarly articles. This review of wasp genera states "One of the Mesoleptus specimens reared by Dr. Williams in Ireland might represent a new species, but this needs to be assured in the future when more specimens are available for the study." So basically, he called it a new species, but in the 10 years since, nobody has really agreed with him.

There are enough of what I'd call "layman's sources" like BBC and so on that I think it might qualify for a GNG pass, but I don't know that those are really reliable enough to be worth using in a scientific article. Do you have any suggestions about what to do in this case? Should we even have an article while the "species" is still in this kind of limbo state? &spades;PMC&spades; (talk) 22:15, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Macroelongatoolithus
I see that you corrected my removal of the italic title there, but I've done further research and the issue is that the name of the article Macroelongatoolithus does not match the taxon in the oobox. That is what puts the article into Category:Pages with disallowed DISPLAYTITLE modifications. I know nothing about the Taxon vs. Article info, so I'm reaching out to you who apparently does.Naraht (talk) 20:00, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Similarly, for Sauropus (ichnogenus), except for that for ichnobox, it may be the name field. If you do a preview, you will see what it is trying to match to the titleNaraht (talk) 20:06, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

New Page Review Newsletter No.10
Hello, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages! ACTRIAL:
 * ACTRIAL's six month experiment restricting new page creation to (auto)confirmed users ended on 14 March. As expected, a greatly increased number of unsuitable articles and candidates for deletion are showing up in the feed again, and the backlog has since increased already by ~30%. Please consider reviewing a few extra articles each day.

Paid editing
 * Now that ACTRIAL is inoperative pending discussion, please be sure to look for tell-tale signs of undisclosed paid editing. Contact the creator if appropriate, and submit the issue to WP:COIN if necessary.

Subject-specific notability guidelines
 * The box at the right contains each of the subject-specific notability guidelines, please review any that are relevant BEFORE nominating an article for deletion.
 * Reviewers are requested to familiarise themselves with the new version of the notability guidelines for organisations and companies. A further discussion is currently taking  place at: Can a subject specific guideline invalidate the General Notability Guideline?

Nominate competent users for Autopatrolled
 * While patrolling articles, if you find an editor that is particularly competent at creating quality new articles, and that user has created more than 25 articles (rather than stubs), consider nominating them for the 'Autopatrolled' user right HERE.

News To opt-out of future mailings, go here. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:06, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The next issue Wikipedia's newspaper The Signpost has now been published after a long delay. There are some articles in it, including ACTRIAL wrap-up that will be of special interest to New Page Reviewers. Don't hesitate to contribute to the comments sections. The Signpost is one of the best ways to stay up date with news and new developments - please consider subscribing to it. All editors of Wikipedia and associated projects are welcome to submit articles on any topic for consideration by the The Signpost's editorial team for the next issue.

A question
Please could you provide me with guidance on how to create a speciesbox for a monotypic genus, in this case Nemanthias? Thanks. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 20:01, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi Cwmhiraeth, you could use Caribisis as an example. 'Cheers, Loopy30 (talk) 21:40, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I have done it now. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:12, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Several Leucospermum species may need evaluation of their quality rating
Hi Plantdrew, Perhaps you could have a look at Leucospermum conocarpodendron, Leucospermum cordifolium, Leucospermum hamatum, Leucospermum prostratum, Leucospermum reflexum and Leucospermum truncatum. Thank you in advance! Dwergenpaartje (talk) 23:36, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Engvar
Hi! Why are you going round changing the spellings called by Template:Infobox sheep breed? I suggest that MOS:RETAIN applies there as elsewhere. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 16:03, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Different spellings of parameter names show up in different rows of the Template Parameter report. While Infobox sheep breed does support both spellings for wool and face tint, I don't really see the point in having many variant parameter names in infobox templates. I guess I'm just OCD about it, but it's messy. Should all infobox template have support added for all possible ENGVAR permutations of the parameter names? There is a (currently unused in any article) color in the template, but no colour. Plantdrew (talk) 16:15, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, that sort of makes sense; but if the way the data is reported isn't how you want it to be, why not fix the reporting (or ask someone else to)? The point of having both American and international spellings available in animal breed infoboxes is to be able to match the language variant used in the articles; many other infoboxes allow the same choice, and yes, I think all should do so. There is no color parameter in the sheep breed infobox – as you can see from the template code – so I didn't introduce an alternative spelling for it, nor ask for that alternative to be created in Infobox animal breed. It looks as if we need a hair colour field, though, for hair sheep and most goats. Regards, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 20:03, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Ham Wall
You appear to have removed the Wikiproject Birds tag from this article, presumably in error given your editorial experience, but just in case, please note that this reserve is managed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, primarily to create habitat for the Bittern, and is nationally known for its breeding herons and egrets.

The bird project doesn't only curate bird species, we include other bird-related articles, including ornithologists and nature reserves, several of which have reached FA under the project's banner.

If you do not think that this RSPB reserve has anything to do with birds, or if you think the project should not cover RSPB or other reserves managed primarily for birds, please discuss at the project talk page, thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me?  06:25, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

My bad. RSPB management of the area certainly seems like a valid reason in tag the article for WikiProject Birds.Plantdrew (talk) 21:14, 15 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the help? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bubblesorg (talk • contribs) 03:07, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Umm...
Where exactly is the consensus to remove sister links from dozens of articles? G M G talk  20:38, 23 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Where exactly was the consensus to add it in the first place? It was used in ~100 out of 360,000 articles with taxoboxes; far from widespread adoption. Taxon articles usually have equivalents on Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata (all of which are automatically linked on the left hand sidebar). Many taxon articles have additional links to sister project through templates Wikispecies and Commonscat; these are still redundant to the sidebar, but are far more commonly used than Sister project links. Most of the instances of Sister project links I removed didn't have links to irrelevant sister projects supressed; what is the point of linking to a search on Wikiversity or Wikisource? In the few instances that Wikiversity had anything relevant, it was less developed than the main en.wiki article. Plantdrew (talk) 20:47, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The consensus to include them was that they were long standing on articles that hundreds of editors had contributed to. If you think some of the links are less than helpful, that's not a reason to run scorched earth through a hundred articles, and being redundant with the sidebar generated from wikidata has never been a valid reason to remove sister links from the external links section. If you wan't to make a bold change, then by all means do so. If you want to make a mass removal of information across scores of high profile article, then you need to get consensus for it.  G M G  talk  21:12, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Minor edits
If you're going to edit a ton of articles that don't actually change what the article looks like from the readers' perspective (your "taxobox cleanup" edits mostly just change spacing, parameter order, parameter names, etc in the infoboxes and only affect the code not how the article looks), is there a way you can mark these edits as minor? Thanks Umimmak (talk) 00:08, 25 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I'll try to get in the habit of marking them as minor. Plantdrew (talk) 01:40, 25 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you; it would be greatly appreciated. Umimmak (talk) 03:33, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Protanthea simplex
I have made a complete hash of trying to move Protanthea simplex to Protanthea because it is a monotypic taxon. The very first move I made in the round robin change was wrong and each move I tried to make after that made things worse. Can you help sort it out? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:56, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Don't worry! When I stepped back and thought about the problem a bit more, I realised what needed to be done, and it's OK now, although the article's history is a bit of a mess. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 12:38, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Year of first description
@Plantdrew, I don't want to get into a detailed discussion of what is meant by "year of first description" in the current WT:TOL thread, where I had hoped for a consensus to start some overall guidelines on categorizing organisms by year of formal description. (However, it looks at present as though there won't be enough participants to give any real strength to guidelines.)

The issue of what year to use is tricky. Consider Gibbaranea bituberculata. Its taxonomic history is given in the World Spider Catalog entry: Currently it's categorized under Category:Spiders described in 1802, because what the "described in YEAR" categories seem to mean is "first given a usable name [="legitimate name" or "available name", depending on the code] under the appropriate nomenclature code in YEAR". They don't mean "first scientifically described in YEAR" as most readers (and editors?) would be likely to interpret "described"; Gibbaranea bituberculata was first identified as a distinct taxon and described scientifically in 1774.
 * Lepechin, 1774 used Aranea abdomine bicorni, but this was an unavailable trinomen
 * Martini & Goeze, 1778 used Aranea bicornuta, but this is a nomen oblitum
 * Gmelin, 1789 used Aranea bicornis, but this is another nomen oblitum
 * Finally Walckenaer, 1802 used Aranea bituberculata, the first available name under the ICZN
 * Archer, 1951 transferred the species to Gibbaranea as Gibbaranea bituberculata

For ICZN names, the current practice amounts to the rule: use the year in the authority after the name, whether or not there are parentheses and whether or not this is a replacement name. For ICNafp names, it's more difficult, but there is advice available at WP:WikiProject Plants/Description in year categories (e.g. the example of Muscari racemosum), whereas I can find none for animals.

At some stage, if this system of categories is to have any meaningful use, we will need to clarify precisely how to handle cases like Gibbaranea bituberculata and so define precisely what the categories mean. But I see that as a task for the future. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:18, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
 * , yes of course the year described is the year the species is formally recognised in nomenclature, per whatever code. Should we list the Green Sea Turtle as Chelonia mydas Aristotle c. 350B.C.? He named it, Linnaeus copied it. The common prey items of our species have probably had some sort of name for 100000 years maybe more. Formal description is by definition when a species meets the code and a name is assigned. Any name that does not meet the codes never actually existed in science, hence names that are unavailable for whatever (using ICZN definition of unavailable here) reason can be reused even for other species. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 16:52, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * one problem is with the title of the categories. Formal description is by definition when a species meets the code and a name is assigned – I think you mean "species name" not "species". It isn't quite so simple. A taxon can be given a scientific description/diagnosis and a name which turns out not to be acceptable, e.g. because it's a homonym. Later someone else realizes the name issue needs to be fixed, and without adding to or changing the description publishes an acceptable name, referring to the earlier description/diagnosis. Any taxonomic discussion of the taxon has to refer to the first description/diagnosis, regardless of the problem with the name. So "description/diagnosis" and "acceptable naming" aren't always simultaneous.
 * Plantdrew highlighted the issue of replacement names, which illustrates this point. For plants, WikiProject Plants/Description in year categories says to use the earliest date, giving the example of Hyacinthus muscari L. (1753), which can't be transferred to Muscari as Muscari muscari under the ICNafp, hence Muscari racemosum Mill. (1768) is needed as a replacement name. Muscari racemosum is put into Category:Plants described in 1753.
 * Should this be followed for animals? The sequence Bulimus cinereus Mortillet, 1851 (junior homonym) → Bulimus psarolenus Bourguignat, 1859 (nom. nov.) → Solatopupa psarolena (Bourguignat, 1859) is discussed at Nomen novum. Solatopupa psarolena is currently in Category:Gastropods described in 1859 not Category:Gastropods described in 1851. Is this right? Peter coxhead (talk) 09:06, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * In Zoology a species is described formally when it meets the code, as diagnosis is a part of this if any part of the description is unavailable it all is. So a statement of when a species is described in zoology is when it is acceptably named, so the gastropod should be in 1859, not 1851. The Mata mata was first described in 1741, but it was formally named in 1792. The different codes do not always agree. Where they dont we have to accept it. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 14:59, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * um... So a statement of when a species is described in zoology is when it is acceptably named – that's not quite what Art. 13.1 says. Unlike other names, a replacement name does not have to be accompanied by a "description or diagnosis" or a reference to one (see 13.1.13); its description is the one published with the name that is being replaced. Hence I would argue that so long as the categories are called "described in", the right date to use for ICZN replacement names is the same as for ICNafp names, i.e. the date of the name being replaced. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:41, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I guess I should chime in since this is my talk page. I basically don't do any work categorizing taxa by year because this of the issues here. The ICZN and ICNafp both have situations where names are "available" from their earliest description, but where subsequent placement requires a replacement name; the details differ under the codes, but it is an issue for both. Simplest solution, if we were starting over would just be to go with the year given in references for the name in question; that is, the year a replacement name was published, or the year of a subsequent combination in botany. Those years are easy to find in sources. Finding the year of "first description" requires digging deeper, and isn't always adequately presented in our articles (there's nothing currently in Muscari racemosum that indicates ANY year of description, although the 1753 date can be found if the sources are examined). Plantdrew (talk) 20:08, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I have a lot of sympathy with your view; it's the simplest and most straightforward approach. (I'm not quite sure why I decided to try to clarify this categorization system after years of regarding it as a waste of time. I'm beginning to revert to my former position!) The name of the category is a large part of the problem; if it were, say, "Scientific names published in year", it would be much clearer. But we're stuck with a naming system that doesn't make it clear what the criteria are for the date, doesn't make it clear that only species are to be included, and doesn't make it clear whether articles at English names should be included or only their scientific name redirects. Sigh... Peter coxhead (talk) 20:52, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * That can be solved relatively painlessly by creating a template like Taxa described in year header, Taxa by year header, etc., to put at the top of each of the categories that describes their function and these restrictions. Once created, I can help place it on all required cats.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:14, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I see two problems: firstly, we'd have to agree on how the categories should be used in order to write the header, and I'm doubtful there will be a consensus; secondly, editors don't often look at category descriptions when they add categories. But if we could reach agreement, it would be a good idea. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:24, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Peter, I agree that "described in" in the category names is a big part of the problem. "Decribed in" is probably of more interest to the general public (assuming Wikipedia eventually covers all species with a year category on each article, it would be quite interesting to look at rate of species description by year). "Published in" would be more useful to people with some taxonomy background (I'm assuming "published in" aligns more closely with the year relevant for priority purposes). Plantdrew (talk) 21:28, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * , I've made some very carefully created sortkey instructions regarding minor planet categorization a few years back (partially for my own sake, so I could keep track...), and I have to say it's worth the effort - yes, there'll be people who ignore the instructions (either by accident or on purpose), but the # of editors who see discrepancies and fix them vastly outweighs the former over time. And the good part is that if consensus does change, mass-updating all the cats is no big deal.
 * What is the top-most cat that would/could get such a template? (for naming consideration purposes)  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:13, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * well, if there is enough support for my proposal at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life, which it looks to me as if there is, then the top level should become Category:Species by year of formal description. At present, there's a bit of a mess at that level, with some groups leading up to categories with names including "by century of" and some to "Taxa by ...". Peter coxhead (talk) 07:20, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * or perhaps Category in year header, to intuitively compliment the existing Category in year.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  11:12, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

I get your points, jhowever, in zoology a species is described and linked to a name when it fulfls all the requirements of the code. Some of that can be by reference to earlier works, ie in replacement names, however it is only when the code is saticfied that the species is described. Sorry I cannot agree that the date of the replacement name is superceded by the first mention of the species. The name is available when it meets the code, the species is described when it has a valid name. Art 13 is referring to a previous reference yes, but this does make is valid until all requirements are met. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 01:17, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * we'll have to agree to disagree in the end, I think, but let me pose one more question to you. It concerns secondary homonyms. As the example at ICZN Art. 59.4 shows, renamed secondary homonyms are cited with the date of publication of the name: Aus niger Smith, 1950 becomes Bus ater Jones, 1970, if transferred to Bus, to avoid the clash with Bus niger Dupont, 1940. Aus niger and Bus ater are two names with different publication dates, but they are one species. The species was first described and named under the ICZN in 1950. If there were an article at Bus ater, in what year should it be categorized? Ultimately under Category:Species described in 1950 or Category:Species described in 1970? Peter coxhead (talk) 07:20, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Australasian Virtual Herbarium
Any chance while you are at it of removing the now (I think) false banners on Australasian Virtual Herbarium, stating that the article reads like self-advertisement, does not satisfy guidelines and is inadequately referenced. That might have been true when true when it was first created & when its sole reference was AVH, but I believe it is no longer true. MargaretRDonald (talk) 20:58, 2 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Done. The sentence "Of the 8 million and upwards specimens available (as of 1 May 2018) more than five million specimens have been databased" could use some clarification. 8 million is, I gather, the total holdings, including specimens not yet databased (and thus not yet "available" in AVH). But it's not clear if 8 million is all holdings in AU/NZ institutions, or only in those institutions participating in AVH. 5 million specimens databased is mentioned here, but that is as of 12/08/14. Plantdrew (talk) 21:17, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Nice point, and one which is not clarified on the AVH website. I think the 8 million is all holdings in participating AU/NZ institutions, and from the participating institutions I listed, which could change tomorrow. I will change the as of date....  Thanks for drawing attention to their press releases.   MargaretRDonald (talk) 22:57, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata proposed change to P1420 "taxon synonym"
Hello. This message is to mention that there is a proposed change to the Wikidata property "taxon synonym" to use strings instead of separate items. Perhaps you would like to comment. Strobilomyces (talk) 20:56, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.11 25 May 2018
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Stubs to review
Hey thanks for helping clean up all the plant stubs / taxobox change I made. :) Here are two more new ones it'd be good for you to check and make sure are correct:


 * 1) Sansevieria suffruticosa
 * 2) Sansevieria masoniana

Steven Walling &bull; talk   20:20, 30 May 2018 (UTC)


 * , thanks for creating plant articles. I made a couple edits to the Sansevieria articles. You should usually omit name in taxoboxes (both manual and automatic). Taxoboxes have some capacity to sense whether the article title should be italicized; when name is non-blank, it overrides the italics sensing. And if the name parameter is omitted, then you want need to have Italic title either. The name parameter can be used to display a common name, but it's not needed when the article title is a scientific name and displaying a common name at the top of the taxobox isn't desired. Plantdrew (talk) 16:23, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the tips! Much appreciated. Steven Walling &bull; talk   21:15, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Aerides leeana vs. Aerides leeanum
Thought you might be interested in cleaning these up along with their WD counterparts (linked to Aerides leeana currently) &  (linked to Aerides leeanum currently). ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:13, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

When Automatic taxobox doesn’t recognize the name
What do you do with something like Inticetus, that the taxobox doesn’t recognize? This is way out of the bounds of my knowledge (I’m into rocks, myself), so I’m not sure how to go about getting it fixed. NotARabbit (talk) 03:37, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
 * You need to create a template. Click on "fix", and the page Template:Taxonomy/Inticetus will be created and you fill in the blanks.Once its created follow the link back to the original page, often the new Taxobox is up  but you my have to click on "edit" and then "publish" to make the taxobox show the changes.Quetzal1964 (talk)   05:21, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but I wouldn’t have the first clue as to what to put in there. I just ran across this in a search for something else. NotARabbit (talk) 05:29, 15 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I have completed the templates so you can see what you would have been able to do. There was also more information than required in the Automatic Taxobox as once the templates are completed they autofill the higher level taxonomy into an Automatic Taxobox.Quetzal1964 (talk)  05:40, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

NPP Backlog Elimination Drive
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Trees portal
Hello Plantdrew,

Thanks for your work - agree with your removing the Trees portal thing and other stuff (esp. on the Melaleuca pages I'm interested in). Curious about why you removed the external links to Commons and Wikispecies tho'. I've put similar links on hundreds of other plant pages. Should they come off? Gderrin (talk) 03:54, 18 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Just to say that I too agree with removing the trees portal. (I have a view on the links to Commons and Wikispecies, but will let Plantdrew reply first.) Peter coxhead (talk) 10:18, 18 June 2018 (UTC)


 * , in my view, the Commons and Wikispecies external link templates are redundant to the links to these resources that show up in the sidebar on the left side of the screen (and which are served by Wikidata). The sidebar links are always present and always in the same place. The Commons/Wikispecies templates are often absent, even when there is a corresponding page on the other project (en.Wiki has ~388,000 articles on taxa, but only around ~50,000 article are using a Wikispecies link template). When present, Commons/Wikispecies templates are not consistently placed; they may be right after the taxobox, under See also, External links, or References (and when under References they may be before or after the actual list of references).


 * I haven't really made a habit of removing Commons/Wikispecies templates prior to yesterday, and I don't see myself making the effort to edit articles solely to remove these templates (I've just been removing them when I had another reason to edit, e.g. Portal Trees). I do think Wikispecies templates may have some utility in the case of monotypic taxa, as only one Wikidata item can be linked to the en.wiki article, but multiple Wikidata items may be relevant (however, I haven't really seen Wikispecies templates being used in this way). The other somewhat useful aspect of Commons/Wikispecies templates is that they do show up in mobile view, while the left hand side bar does not.


 * I suppose the next step really ought to be taking the Wikispecies template to a deletion discussion. Plantdrew (talk) 16:40, 18 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that. Not exactly sure what you mean by "links to these resources that show up in the sidebar on the left side of the screen". Maybe those links (templates?) are useful to dummies like me. I tend to learn like a monkey and have simply copied what the prodigious Orchi does on orchid pages. Gderrin (talk) 21:48, 18 June 2018 (UTC)  AHA! Found the Wikispecies thingy in the sidebar. Now I know what you mean. Gderrin (talk) 21:52, 18 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks again - have learned much today. Gderrin (talk) 07:09, 19 June 2018 (UTC)


 * I would support taking the Wikispecies template to a deletion discussion; it's redundant now. Commons is slightly different as there's an issue over whether to link to a page on Commons (which often doesn't exist) or to a category. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:06, 19 June 2018 (UTC)


 * FYI I made a suggestion at Template talk:Taxonbar to automatically display the Wikispecies link next to Wikidata (if it exists or is forced via wikispecies). Was thinking about doing this soon per WP:SILENT consensus. I completed the preliminary portion about a week ago, which is to spell out 'Wikidata' in the taxonbar.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:08, 19 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Did you turn this on briefly and then turn it back off? I swear I saw a Wikispecies link in the taxonbar a couple days ago. Including Wikispecies in the taxonbar seems redundant to the link in the left hand sidebar, but if a taxonbar link to Wikispecies could help convince people that the Wikispecies link template could be deleted, I'd support the taxonbar link. Plantdrew (talk) 18:33, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Nope, automatic-Wikispecies has been live continuously since Saturday, June 23rd. Yes, it is technically redundant, but so is the Wikidata link on 1-line Taxonbars, and having all related links within a mouse-swipe of each other is rather convenient. We can still vote on it though.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:58, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I am in favor of some Wikispecies link at the bottom of the page, and indifferent (all other things being equal) to whether or not that happens via Wikispecies or Taxonbar, but it's already been done via Taxonbar so... I suspect Wikispecies is still useful on non-taxonomic articles though, e.g. articles where Taxonbar would/should not be placed?  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:33, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I can't say I'm very familiar with our articles on non-taxon subjects that would be covered by Wikispecies, but I don't think I've ever seen a Wikispecies template on any of these articles. Wikispecies covers museums/specimen repositories (e.g. species:AMNH), journals/publications (e.g. species:ISSN 0040-0262) and taxonomists (e.g. species:Carolus Linnaeus). I'm not sure that adding the Wikispecies template to these articles on en.wiki is very useful. We do have a number of articles on "folk taxa" such as herring, but Wikispecies doesn't have corresponding articles unless it was at one time treated as a scientific taxon (worm/vermes/species:vermes). Plantdrew (talk) 00:34, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Plantdrew - are you able to tell me why the Wikispecies and Commons links in the sidebar are often not present? In particular, most Eremophila pages and many Melaleuca (eg. M. orbicularis, M. minutifolia and M. pauciflora). The orchids seem to be mostly okay except where Australian authorities take a different view from WCSP (eg. Diuris dendrobioides.) If something needs fixing, I'm happy to help if I am able. Gderrin (talk) 11:46, 27 June 2018 (UTC)


 * , Wikidata contains all of the interwiki links for all pages (other languages, Wikispecies, commons, etc.). If Wikidata doesn't have a link, then it won't display on the Wikipedia page; just like if an obscure language wiki doesn't have a sister page, it won't show up in the en.wiki sidebar either.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:01, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
 * for example, the Wikidata item for Melaleuca orbicularis didn't have a statement for the Wikimedia Commons category, until I added one in this edit. The Commons category now shows up in the sidebar. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:57, 27 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Could be a number of reasons. As Peter and Tom mentioned, it could be because no link to Commons/Species was set on Wikidata. Or it could be because then English Wikipedia article was recently created and hasn't been linked to Wikidata itself. Or it could be because Commons/Species don't have a relevant page that could be linked. For Eremophila, Wikispecies only has articles for 17 species, and Commons has categories for 139 species. While there are certainly a bunch of Eremophila categories on Commons that aren't yet linked to Wikidata, there are a bunch of cases where the English Wikipedia has an article on an Eremophila species that doesn't yet have a page/category on Wikispecies or Commons. Plantdrew (talk) 18:29, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you - all three. Bit busy writing Wikipedia pages to edit Wikdata or Wikispecies, so in the meantime, I'll just add or leave the old links. Gderrin (talk) 21:51, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Tree distribution categories
In addition to the trees portal, I wish we could get rid of the tree distribution categories. What counts as a tree is in some cases disputed. The system used (see Category:Trees by continent) is not actually consistent with the WGSRPD system used for flora generally, particularly at the top level, so it makes navigating flora distribution categories problematic. Sigh... Peter coxhead (talk) 12:48, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I'm not a fan of the tree categories, and they do include things that I'd call shrubs rather than trees. Plantdrew (talk) 18:30, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Fagraea berteroana
Hi Plantdrew. I did the move, but the only source listed in the article that is visible online (the Whistler paper) spells the name as 'berteriana'. This may suggest that a further source ought to be added. Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 01:25, 4 July 2018 (UTC)


 * you could use any of the reliable databases linked from the taxonbar. ITIS here has perhaps the clearest statement. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:30, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I updated the article about the spelling issue. Anyone may improve this further. EdJohnston (talk) 16:30, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for moving and adding a note about the spelling. Plantdrew (talk) 15:52, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Vachellia farnesiana var. farnesiana
An article that you have been involved in editing&mdash;Vachellia farnesiana var. farnesiana&mdash;has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. 86.83.56.115 (talk) 10:08, 4 July 2018 (UTC) Cheers, Leo

Slimy cusk eel
I noted that you reversed my move of Brosmophyciops pautzkei to its vernacular name. I was moving it to comply with WP:MONOTYPICFAUNA. I think the use of the generic name for extant monotypic taxa is not the best way to entitle articles about those taxa. If a vernacular name is available, and attested, then surely it is better to use that, as Slimy cusk eel was in this case. If you were not use the vernacular name then the article title should be Brosmophyciops. If you look at my edits I will retain the binomial as the title if there is no available vernacular name for an existing article but have started to follow the policy when creating a new article about species in monotypic genera.Quetzal1964 (talk)  06:00, 6 July 2018 (UTC)
 * , it was Gigemag76 who moved B. pautzkei to "slimy cuskeel", not you. They moved many articles on obscure species to poorly attested vernacular names; sometimes the names they used didn't appear anywhere outside of Wikipedia. And when a species did have multiple attested vernacular names, they made no effort to determine which vernacular name was most commonly used (or whether there were additional vernacular names not yet listed in Wikipedia). They were eventually banned for these moves. I reversed Gigemag76's move as they hadn't looked for additional vernacular names (e.g. free-tailed reef brotula). At FishBase, "slimy cuskeel" is attested to two different field guides; that is rather weak sourcing. More widely used vernacular names are usually attributed to FAO or AFS on FishBase.
 * I don't have extended pagemover rights, so I wasn't able to move it to the genus title (after Gigemag76's move, a bot fixed the double redirect from the genus). Monotypic genera should indeed be at the genus title, but this practice is frequently not followed for fishes. Plantdrew (talk) 19:11, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks. http://fishesofaustralia.net.au/Home/species/4598 gives the vernacular name of slimy cusk. Quetzal1964 (talk)  19:16, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

Please don't dablink Trigonidium
Hi. Trigonidium is the type genus of a massive subfamily. PLEASE do not convert it into a dablink. Thanks. Dyanega (talk) 21:06, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

It does seem to me that the orchid genus name is much better known, at least as shown by searches, than the cricket, so making "Trigonidium" the title of the orchid article with a hatnote for the cricket at "Trigonidium (cricket)" could be justified. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:28, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * The first step I take when I come across a genus name that's shared between codes is to put it into a search engine and see if what the search engine thinks I'm looking for. In this case, it's the orchid, hands down. That doesn't surprise me much, as the orchid has entered cultivation, and there are more orchid enthusiasts than there are people interested in Hawaiian insects (if it the plant genus were a moss instead of an orchid, I'd expect the insects would be of more interest). Species count is (and thus the number of links that would need to be made to a disambiguated title) is one thing to consider, but it's not the only thing.


 * You moved the page by copy-pasting content on the orchid to the new title. That is a bad practice, as it splits the page history, which is necessary for copyright attribution (see WP:CPMOVE. I think you should have been able to move the article directly to Trigonidium (orchid). If you were prevented from doing so, you could have asked to have it moved at Requested_moves/Technical_requests. Another downside of copy-paste moves is that it can break interwiki links. There are articles on the orchid genus in 11 other languages as well as Wikispecies and Commons. By copy-pasting, you created a situation where the English article on the insect genus was linked to articles on the orchid in other languages.Plantdrew (talk) 21:35, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Many times when I've tried to move pages, I am told I cannot do so because a page by that name already exists - 9 times out of 10, it's a pre-existing redirect, as in this case. I would be happy to learn that there is an easy fix to this particular roadblock, as I have always simply overwritten the redirect. Wikispecies and Commons do not have pages for the "naked" genus name, they both list "Trigonidium (Orchidaceae)". As for the argument regarding species counts, all of the species listed under the orchid genus were redlinks, so there was no evidence that anyone was interested in them. I'd sooner give a non-dablinked genus article to one with 160 species than one with 18, when both are essentially all redlinks. Without googling, everything else did appear equal, so I saw no reason to give the orchids priority. Dyanega (talk) 21:50, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Wikispecies does have a page at the "naked" genus name, but it's a disambiguation page. I've set up the same situation here; both plant and insect genera have a disambiguated title, and Trigonidium is now a disambiguation page. I also set up Template:Taxonomy/Trigonidium to be used in the automatic taxobox system for the insect genus. I think there's a stronger argument to be made that the more speciose genus should get the "naked" genus name when it comes to taxonomy templates. Plantdrew (talk) 21:59, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Dyanega (talk) 22:32, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I suspect that the editors who work at WP:AT wouldn't find the "speciosity" argument convincing as compared to the normal criteria for article titles, but I won't argue. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:31, 20 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Peter, you had previously said that you didn't think it was necessary to disambiguate all taxonomy templates. I don't remember the genus in question at the time, but it was exactly this situation. An inter-code "homonym" where neither the plant nor the animal genus was the primary topic (the base title was a dab page), but the taxonomy template for one of them didn't have a disambiguator. Plantdrew (talk) 13:17, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah, my comment wasn't clear then. It's the article that I don't think needs to be disambiguated, based on WP:AT, given the frequency that searches find the orchid, as per my first post above. Personally, I'm happy with the situation as it is, but I know from experience that there's pressure to choose one of the uses of an ambiguous term as "primary". Peter coxhead (talk) 17:22, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Morus
Im having a bit of trouble with Morus in speciesboxes and automatic taxoboxes. I cant remember how to make both work when you have both a plant and an animal with the same genus name. Morus is the genus name for gannet as well as the plant…..Pvmoutside (talk) 04:49, 24 July 2018 (UTC)


 * , I have created Template:Taxonomy/Morus (bird) to solve this. If a taxon name is shared across multiple taxonomic codes, automatic taxoboxes will generally need to call a disambiguated taxonomy template. Using taxon in a speciesbox will not work when the genus name needs disambiguation. You will need to use genus )with a parenthetical dab term and species in these cases rather than taxon. From what I've noticed you are already using species/genus rather than taxon for species level automatic taxoboxes, so it's mostly a matter of setting up the appropriate taxonomy templates for ambiguous genera rather than changing automatic taxobox parameters to get everything working. Plantdrew (talk) 05:22, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

"Automatic axobox"
I was amazed that actually worked at Recluse spider before you corrected it, and surprised to see that I must have known this at one time since I added the R template to the redirect! Good catch. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:06, 24 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if it's worth keeping redirects for misspelled templates, but I guess they're not really harmful. Links to misspellings in main space show up in Database reports/Linked misspellings, but not links outside of main space. My single most frequent template error is changing to  (I try to highlight just "Taxo" and replace it with "Species", but sometimes I end up highlighting the whole line);  is itself a template, so it produces some ugly code. Plantdrew (talk) 22:26, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

An iridescent dancing eight-legged critter shaped barnstar for you!

 * It's a pleasure. Thank you for the nifty barnstar. Plantdrew (talk) 13:34, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

Cornus unalaschkensis
Hi Plantdrew;

I'm not convinced that the move to Cornus × unalaschkensis was a good idea. The regional floras, e.g., WTU Herbarium and e-flora-BC treat it as Cornus unalaschkensis, as do the national FNA and GRIN. Shouldn't Wikipedia be consistent with these sources that most would consider reliable? Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:51, 27 July 2018 (UTC)


 * . E-Flora BC says it is a hybrid, and GRIN says it is probably a hybrid, although neither includes the hybrid sign. When I moved it, Cornus was inconsistent; in the species list it was given as Cornus × unalaschkensis, but there was a caption on an image that omitted the hybrid sign. My motivation in moving was to make it consistent with the species list in the genus article, but it can be moved back. Plantdrew (talk) 01:51, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Newtonia (bird)
another one for you...….Newtonia is both a plant and a bird genus..….Pvmoutside (talk) 21:56, 29 July 2018 (UTC)


 * , there two links you can click that take you into creating a taxonomy template (when previewing, or after saving). The first link is in the "Automatic taxobox help" box. The second link is the automatic taxobox itself; it shows as "Unrecognized taxon (fix)" where "(fix)" is a link taking you into creating the taxonomic template. When you have a disambiguated taxonomy template, use the second link to create it. The first link tries to create a taxonomic template with no disambiguator, but the second link can handle disambiguators. Plantdrew (talk) 01:58, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

An issue that follows from this is what should be displayed when a taxonomy template is missing. I've long thought that the text produced by Automatic taxobox/floating intro is confusing – it attempts to explain, but is insufficient for a beginner, and unnecessary for an experienced user. I think that it would be better to have a message that highlights the "fix" link more prominently, and links to some part of the documentation of the system in lieu of an explanation. Views? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:46, 30 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Actually, the fact that the two links go to different places to create the taxonomy template is a bug (which I hadn't noticed before since I always used the "Fix" link). The link at "Click here" doesn't fix the space in a 'genus' name like "Newtonia (bird)" in the URL, so the URL is wrong. I'll correct this. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:58, 30 July 2018 (UTC)


 * ✅ If, for example, you go to Newtonia (bird), edit the taxobox to change "Newtonia (bird)" to "Newtonia (animal)", the two links now both open the correct partially filled taxonomy template. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:05, 30 July 2018 (UTC)


 * There's a revised version of the help text that would be displayed when a taxonomy template doesn't exist at Template:Automatic taxobox/floating intro/sandbox. Comments, please. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:58, 30 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks Peter. I don't have suggestions for the help text at the moment. What you have in the sandbox looks good. Plantdrew (talk) 15:35, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Automatic taxobox
Hello Plantdrew, I was surprised to see that the automatic taxobox for Acanthastrea was working fine without any entry under taxon. Is this a mistake or should we omit this line in automatic taxoboxes for brevity? 'Cheers, Loopy30 (talk) 12:27, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * , automatic taxoboxes will look for a taxonomy template with the same name as the page title if taxon is not specified. I understand it takes more processing if taxon is omitted, and the parameter must be specified when the article title is not the taxon name (e.g. when a vernacular name is the title). I think it is good practice to always specify taxon even when the automatic taxobox is technically able to function without it. Plantdrew (talk) 15:02, 30 July 2018 (UTC)


 * as Plantdrew says, automated taxoboxes (including Speciesbox) will try to pick up the taxon name from the page name, but it's not good practice to rely on this, for several reasons, including the problems that arise if the page is moved (e.g. to the English name, or to a disambiguated title when the taxonomy template isn't disambiguated). Peter coxhead (talk) 15:59, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree with both of you, thanks. I just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed something new. The possibility of the taxobox breaking if the page name changes (which will certainly happen in some cases) is enough rationale in itself. Still plodding through the cnidarians..., 'Cheers again, Loopy30 (talk) 16:05, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

GBIF
Why (or how) is GBIF so much more likely to list more synonyms than the other databases? Abductive (reasoning) 08:15, 9 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Any particular examples of taxa where you're noticing lots of synonyms in GBIF, or examples of other databases with fewer synonyms than GBIF? GBIF scrapes everything it can get it hands on. One aspect is that GBIF includes typos/misspellings on specimen labels; provided a human takes the time to review them, misspellings will get linked to the proper spelling. Another aspect is that other databases that are nominally comprehensive aren't actually so. TROPICOS aims to be comprehensive, but is missing many species and synonyms from parts of the world such as Europe and Australia, where Missouri Botanical Garden doesn't have active research programs. POWO aims to be comprehensive, but is still largely based on the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (key word "Selected"). GBIF takes all the bits and pieces from semi-comprehensive databases and stitches them together. Plantdrew (talk) 05:17, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It's systemic to GBIF. Perhaps I should phrase it a different way: What is the consensus on WP Plants for proper sourcing for synonyms, especially if the databases disagree? Abductive  (reasoning) 05:26, 10 August 2018 (UTC)
 * , I wouldn't consider GBIF particularly reliable, but I'm not sure if this has directly discussed at WP Plants. If GBIF says something is accepted that other databases treat as a synonym (or vice versa), I'd go with the other databases. If GBIF lists a synonym (that's not an obvious typo) that other databases don't mention at all, I'm willing to believe that GBIF has uncovered an obscurity that perhaps should be included in a synonym list. Plantdrew (talk) 05:43, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Correct template to use for a hybrid
Hello,

I would be grateful if you could advise please if Hybridbox is the (most) correct template to be used for Ulmus × hollandica, eg.

Currently we have infobox cultivar which is not really correct except for cultivars of U. × hollandica.

Thank you, Tom_elmtalk 11:43, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Hybridbox is meant for animal hybrids where there isn't a nothospecies name. For plant hybrids you would just use Speciesbox as per Template:Speciesbox. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:43, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I have changed the Ulmus × hollandica page now.

Keesingia (redirects) listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Keesingia (redirects). Since you had some involvement with the Keesingia (redirects) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. — Godsy (TALK CONT ) 09:05, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

the lions
Hi Plantdrew. Since you recently updated the WikiProject assessment of the Northern lion, you are perhaps one of the most resourceful persons in regards to solving a mistake that I just came across: the taxon identifiers at the very bottom of this article link to North East Congo lion at wikidata, and to Panthera leo azandica at eol and MSW3. I suppose this is due to the many redirects and renaming that this page received recently? Another issue is that the name Northern lion has to date not been used in ANY publication for this subspecies. On the other hand, Panthera leo leo is redirected to Barbary lion. Southern lion, another name not used in the literature, is linked to Transvaal lion at wikidata, whereas Panthera leo melanochaita redirects to Cape lion, which is also the name used at wikidata. Isn't this quite a hodgepodge? -- BhagyaMani (talk) 14:56, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

, it is indeed quite a hodgepodge. I'm not sure what the best solution is. Both Central African lion and Northern lion have a taxonbar that links to Wikidata item d:Q3893464 (North East Congo lion/Panthera leo azandica). Central African lion is the English Wikipedia article linked to that Wikidata item. Northern lion and Central African lion both list P. l. azandica as a synonym in the taxobox. I'm inclined to remove the taxonbar from Northen lion, as Central African lion appears to be closer to the concept embodied by P. l. azandica. But it's tough mapping these concepts when Wikipedia and Wikidata use a mixture of common and scientific names, and some of the scientific names are deprecated. Plantdrew (talk) 16:23, 24 August 2018 (UTC)

Spinifex
I see that you were involved in setting up the titles of the article and disambiguation pages relating to "spinifex". I understand the logic of using "Spinifex (genus)" in this case rather than the expected "Spinifex (plant)" on the grounds that the English name "spinifex" is used for Spinifex but more often for Triodia.

However, this clearly wasn't working as intended; many if not most of the links concerned with "spinifex" either ended up, directly or indirectly, at the disambiguation page or at the wrong genus (in particular most wikilinks given as spinifex appear to mean the spinifex found in arid areas, i.e. Triodia spp.) In some cases it seems to me clear that editors familiar with the usual naming policy expected "Spinifex (plant)" to go to the genus Spinifex.

So I've changed to the usual naming system and am trying to fix all the "spinifex" links manually. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:09, 3 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't remember how I had it set up. I would've thought I'd had left "Spinifex (plant)" pointing to the disambiguation page, as I usually have done in the rare cases where I think another plant related meaning of the term merits breaking with the usual pattern and using (genus) as a disambiguator.


 * If you want to make more moves away from (genus), see User:Plantdrew/Moveprep. Some of them are moves I can't make myself, some of them I'm not completely sure that (plant) is the best disambiguator. Plantdrew (talk) 02:13, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Portal trimming
Hi there Plantdrew. I've noticed that you've started trimming portals from many articles. While obviously irrelevant should be removed, and less relevant portals could arguably be removed, can you please take care not to remove obviously relevant portals – such as removing Portal:Forestry from Forestry. If you have any issues with specific portals, or portals in general, you are welcome to discuss them at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals. Cheers - Evad37 &#91;talk] 03:16, 4 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Just, in passing, to say that I would certainly remove Portal:Forestry from Forestry, on the grounds of duplication/nonredundancy if nothing else. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:49, 4 September 2018 (UTC)


 * It might be wise to discuss and obtain consensus before carrying out further bulk edits to remove portal boxes. Edit summaries such as "taxobox cleanup" and "removed unmaintained Portal Trees" are simply incorrect.  That portal has improved significantly with 18 edits this year, three in the last month.  It could remain useful and current even without ongoing maintenance, as it's not the fastest moving area of study.  Of course, you would be very welcome to enhance the portal yourself. Certes (talk) 10:21, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Category:Taxonomy templates with qualified names
I wouldn't myself put Category:Taxonomy templates with qualified names in Category:Automatic taxobox cleanup, since as far as I can see the templates are as they should be. Did you have a particular reason or example in mind? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:23, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I guess I meant to put it in Category:Taxobox cleanup, which has a bunch of subcategories that seem more for tracking than for error correction (I mean, it's worth checking them for errors now and then, but they're going to have a bunch of errorless permanent members), Plantdrew (talk) 03:16, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

September 2018
Hello, I'm Dreamy Jazz. I noticed that you recently removed content from Category:Individual trees in Australia without adequately explaining why. In the future, it would be helpful to others if you described your changes to Wikipedia with an accurate edit summary. If this was a mistake, don't worry; the removed content has been restored. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page. Please explain why you are removing the links to portals in categories in your WP:EDITSUMMARY. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 talk to me &#124; my contributions 15:42, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

RfD notification
Hi Plantdrew, there are several redirects related to plant taxonomy for discussion today. Your input on these is always appreciated. --BDD (talk) 14:24, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

"good faith" list article created on rodents
I posted this on wikiproject rodents, but it seems to be very quiet there.

List_of_largest_rodents was created by an editor who has experienced some difficulties with correct sourcing and imaging of articles. Please check it for accuracy and policy conformity. If you know any experts in the field of rodents it would be great if you could notify them. Thanks. Edaham (talk) 04:19, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

Petscan searches
Hello Plantdrew, could you help explain to me why this search for articles in the class Anthozoa brings up an apparently random list that includes a mammal (Insular flying fox), a plant (Glochidion comitum), a bird (Blue-crowned lorikeet), and a mollusc (Mitra testacea), among others? Decreasing the depth from 9 to 6 reduced the list from 30 down to 10, but there are still oddities like Clarion snake eel included. Even decreasing the depth down to 1 leaves two entries, one of which is not a cnidarian. Puzzled, Loopy30 (talk) 18:51, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
 * One immediate problem is that Category:Anthozoa has the subcategory Category:Coral reefs. If you follow this latter category down you get to individual islands which have then their flora and fauna as subcategories. The underlying problem is that much of the category system is broken beyond repair, given the editor time that would be required to fix it. Articles and (sub)categories are put into categories on the basis of any old connection between them, whereas to put A into category B should require "A is a B" or "A is part of B" or the like. Result: many if not most category searches don't work as they should. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:11, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Plants
Since your name has plants, we have new info about how plants work, can you add info in the article that plants glow when being attacked. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.148.251.72 (talk) 09:50, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.13 18 September 2018
Hello, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

The New Page Feed currently has 2700 unreviewed articles, up from just 500 at the start of July. For a while we were falling behind by an average of about 40 articles per day, but we have stabilised more recently. Please review some articles from the back of the queue if you can (Sort by: 'Oldest' at Special:NewPagesFeed), as we are very close to having articles older than one month.


 * Project news
 * The New Page Feed now has a new "Articles for Creation" option which will show drafts instead of articles in the feed, this shouldn't impact NPP activities and is part of the WMF's AfC Improvement Project.
 * As part of this project, the feed will have some larger updates to functionality next month. Specifically, ORES predictions will be built in, which will automatically flag articles for potential issues such as vandalism or spam. Copyright violation detection will also be added to the new page feed. See the projects's talk page for more info.


 * There are a number of coordination tasks for New Page Patrol that could use some help from experienced reviewers. See New pages patrol/Coordination for more info to see if you can help out.


 * Other
 * A new summary page of reliable sources has been created; Identifying reliable sources/Perennial sources, which summarizes existing RfCs or RSN discussions about regularly used sources.


 * Moving to Draft and Page Mover
 * Some unsuitable new articles can be best reviewed by moving them to the draft space, but reviewers need to do this carefully and sparingly. It is most useful for topics that look like they might have promise, but where the article as written would be unlikely to survive AfD. If the article can be easily fixed, or if the only issue is a lack of sourcing that is easily accessible, tagging or adding sources yourself is preferable. If sources do not appear to be available and the topic does not appear to be notable, tagging for deletion is preferable (PROD/AfD/CSD as appropriate). See additional guidance at WP:DRAFTIFY.
 * If the user moves the draft back to mainspace, or recreates it in mainspace, please do not re-draftify the article (although swapping it to maintain the page history may be advisable in the case of copy-paste moves). AfC is optional except for editors with a clear conflict of interest.
 * Articles that have been created in contravention of our paid-editing-requirements or written from a blatant NPOV perspective, or by authors with a clear COI might also be draftified at discretion.
 * The best tool for draftification is User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js(info). Kindly adapt the text in the dialogue-pop-up as necessary (the default can also be changed like this). Note that if you do not have the Page Mover userright, the redirect from main will be automatically tagged as CSD R2, but in some cases it might be better to make this a redirect to a different page instead.
 * The Page Mover userright can be useful for New Page Reviewers; occasionally page swapping is needed during NPR activities, and it helps avoid excessive R2 nominations which must be processed by admins. Note that the Page Mover userright has higher requirements than the NPR userright, and is generally given to users active at Requested Moves. Only reviewers who are very experienced and are also very active reviewers are likely to be granted it solely for NPP activities.

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subspeciesbox
Hi Plantdrew. Since you put so much effort into designing the template subspeciesbox and adding it to hundreds of pages, I figure you are one of the most knowledgeable wikipedians regarding classification. Therefore I have another question and would appreciate your comment: is it justified to keep this template in wiki pages on populations that are no longer considered as distinct subspecies? Like West African lion, Bengal tiger, Siberian tiger, South China tiger, Bali tiger and a few more on tiger populations; whereas this template is not used in South American jaguar, which is neither considered a subspecies any longer. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 08:01, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 6
An automated process has detected that you recently added links to disambiguation pages.
 * Scleropages jardinii ([//dispenser.info.tm/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dablinks.py/Scleropages_jardinii check to confirm] | [//dispenser.info.tm/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py/Scleropages_jardinii?client=notify fix with Dab solver])
 * added a link pointing to Australian arowana
 * Southern saratoga ([//dispenser.info.tm/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dablinks.py/Southern_saratoga check to confirm] | [//dispenser.info.tm/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py/Southern_saratoga?client=notify fix with Dab solver])
 * added a link pointing to Australian arowana

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 09:35, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

Portals on category pages
Just to applaud your work in removing these, especially since I'm aware that portal fans disagree. If portals belong anywhere, it's only on very "top level" articles about a topic. (I have the same reaction and response to the proliferation of templates like Araneae on species articles.) Peter coxhead (talk) 10:00, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Extremely bizarre why you think flora categories should be any different from other categories, seems like a very major case of WP:OWN. Tim! (talk) 17:18, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think they should be any different from other categories of this kind (I can't speak for Plantdrew). Placing maintained portals on the major articles on a topic is one thing; adding them to categories and "lower level" articles another.
 * More generally, it's not a case of WP:OWN, but being realistic – unless a portal is maintained long term by members of the appropriate WikiProject, who will monitor changes in the topic's articles, it will quickly become out of date. This is especially true for biological topics, where the taxonomy tends to change quite fast. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:25, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Acacia speciesboxes
Thanks for picking up those few acacias whose taxoboxes I had managed to miss. What's your secret to finding them? Only species v through z left to do now... Hughesdarren (talk) 05:46, 8 October 2018 (UTC)

Authority lookup
Hey, dumb question: how do you find what the authority is for a given species? Does looking at taxon author (wikidata:Property:P405) work? I can make sure to add this to new plant stubs in the future. Steven Walling &bull; talk   05:48, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
 * please don't rely on Wikidata! Use one of the reliable taxonomic databases for plants, such as Plants of the World Online, Tropicos, or the International Plant Names Index. Always give an explicit reference to a reliable secondary source for the authority. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:10, 11 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Please see a section of the talk page of the Wikidata taxonomy tutorial for the procedure (in my opinion) for how to derive the taxon author string from Wikidata, according to the data structure defined in the tutorial. But as Peter Coxhead implies, the information is typically not present in Wikidata, except for a limited number of examples. Strobilomyces (talk) 20:56, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
 * however, even if the information is in Wikidata, it doesn't really help, because all information in Wikipedia should be sourced, and since Wikidata isn't an acceptable source, you need to look a source anyway, so why go to Wikidata at all? Peter coxhead (talk) 15:40, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 13
An automated process has detected that you recently added links to disambiguation pages.
 * Lilieae ([//dispenser.info.tm/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dablinks.py/Lilieae check to confirm] | [//dispenser.info.tm/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py/Lilieae?client=notify fix with Dab solver])
 * added a link pointing to Amana
 * Scleropages jardinii ([//dispenser.info.tm/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dablinks.py/Scleropages_jardinii check to confirm] | [//dispenser.info.tm/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py/Scleropages_jardinii?client=notify fix with Dab solver])
 * added a link pointing to Australian arowana

(Opt-out instructions.) --DPL bot (talk) 09:18, 13 October 2018 (UTC)

Hakea lissosperma
Hi, Could you cast your eyes over the taxonomy section please? I added the first paragraph but left the second. Have I missed something or should the second be removed? Hughesdarren (talk) 05:35, 15 October 2018 (UTC) The wording of the entire article is also quite unusual, I can give it a bit of a tidy up once you check out the taxo section if you want. Hughesdarren (talk) 05:37, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Gderrin has jumped in and sorted out the taxo section and started some other edits, we should be able to take care of it from now. Thanks anyway! Hughesdarren (talk) 06:14, 15 October 2018 (UTC)

taxon parameter in Speciesbox
When you change taxon in a Speciesbox to genus + species as part of other changes, I'm willing to ignore it. I'm not happy to, as I prefer to use taxon because this is the same as Automatic taxobox, and I think it's easier for less experienced editors to use the same parameter. But I don't think you should just make this change, which is unnecessary. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:57, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.14 21 October 2018
Hello, thank you for your work reviewing New Pages!

, there are 3650 unreviewed articles and the backlog now stretches back 51 days.
 * Backlog


 * Community Wishlist Proposal
 * There is currently an ongoing discussion regarding the drafting of a Community Wishlist Proposal for the purpose of requesting bug fixes and missing/useful features to be added to the New Page Feed and Curation Toolbar.
 * Please join the conversation as we only have until 29 October to draft this proposal!


 * Project updates
 * ORES predictions are now built-in to the feed. These automatically predict the class of an article as well as whether it may be spam, vandalism, or an attack page, and can be filtered by these criteria now allowing reviewers to better target articles that they prefer to review.
 * There are now tools being tested to automatically detect copyright violations in the feed. This detector may not be accurate all the time, though, so it shouldn't be relied on 100% and will only start working on new revisions to pages, not older pages in the backlog.


 * New scripts
 * User:Enterprisey/cv-revdel.js(info) — A new script created for quickly placing copyvio-revdel on a page.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)  20:49, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

regex
For multiple spaces try the following. The second should pick up tabs, returns,linefeeds, etc.  Jts1882 &#124; talk 16:37, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

hastemplate:"Speciesbox" insource:/image_width[ ]+=[ ]+[0-9]/ prefix: : hastemplate:"Speciesbox" insource:/image_width[ \t\r\n\v\f]+=[ \t\r\n\v\f]+[0-9]/ prefix: :

Adeliini
I assume you saw the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Insects. I intended my edits as a stop-gap, pending more input from others. I think there's enough evidence that Adeliini is the correct name for the beetle tribe, so maybe Adeliini (beetle) should be moved to Adeliini, with the disambiguation dealt with by a hatnote. Your comments would be very welcome. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:19, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Megabat
so I'm done with rodent taxoboxes, and I thought I'd move to bats......a couple of issues came right up, so I though I'd ask you first for your opinion. The first issue is on the classification itself. It looks like the this higher taxa is in process of a change, but still being studied? My preference is to keep it until more consensus occurs to change it, creating a taxobox for megabats, and leaving the other option alone for now. The other question concerns linking. I thought we link the lowest taxa if there are no links to add between two taxa. For example, we use a speciesbox if a genus has only one species and then add a link to the genus and species so separate links do not occur for either. In megabats, the current article states only one family (Pteropodidae) currently links to the article. Should the article be moved to Pteropodidae (or something related) or left as is linking tbe lower taxa to the higher one?....Pvmoutside (talk) 18:25, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I hsve absolutely no expertise in this matter, and haven't looked at the sources, but I happened to attend a lecture on bat evolution a week or so ago where the lecturer, who did have expert knowledge, took it for granted that the traditional megabat/microbat classification was discredited. Some of the refs in the Megabat article look dated. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:09, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The traditional micro/mega-bat division has been challenged for a while and is no longer used. However the familiy Pteropodidae (megabats) is still recognised, it is the microbats that don't make a monophyleetic group. Most recent analyses group Pteropodidae as sister to Rhinopomatoidea, one superfamily of microbats, together making up Yinpterochiroptera (Pteropodiformes), which is sister to the remaining microbats in Yangochiroptera (see cladogram at top of List of fruit bats). I looked at recent work on the subfamilies of Pteropodidae about a year and proposed an update to the table in List of fruit bats but there was reluctance to make changes at the time. My summary of the megabat subfamilies, tribes and genera based on recent works is in the talk page (see Talk:List_of_fruit_bats.  Jts1882 &#124; talk 07:53, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, the evidence for Yinpterochiroptera and Yangochiroptera (dreadful names!) was considered to be strong enough for this to be the consensus in the academic lecture I attended, so I think the articles should be updated as you previously suggested. But this isn't my area of interest, so enough from me. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:17, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The names come from an earlier division of microbats into yino- and yango-chiroptera. The rearrangement means they've added the -ptero- to indicate inclusion of Pteropus. A bad name got worse. I hope that there is movement towards Pteropodiformes and Vespertilioniformes but the yin/yang naming seems well established.   Jts1882 &#124; talk 12:09, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Congrats on finishing up the rodents. Sorry it took me a couple days to get around to looking at the bat literature (although I'm not quite sure why you're asking me; Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mammals/Bats Task Force is more directly relevant and TOL and MAMMALS have more watchers). My impression is that the mega/micro distinction is pretty much defunct. Recent results on Google Scholar still favor Megachiroptera and Microchiroptera, but the results for Yinpteroochiroptera and Yangochiroptera are much more taxonomically focused, while mega/micro tend to be ecological (or a widely cited computer science paper that studied bat vocalization). Yinpterochiroptera and Yangochiroptera are favored on Scholar over Pteropodiformes and Vespertilioniformes, but there might be some momentum towards the later. I haven't found a full text copy of the Hutcheon and Kirsch paper where the -iformes names were proposed. It looks like taxonomy templates were created in 2010 for most bat families, using the -iformes suborders.

Personally I would not do Mega/Micro in automatic taxoboxes, but I'm not sure about Yin/Yang vs. -iformes (which is a reason I've stayed away from doing any automatic taxoboxes for bats). Of course, it's only ~20 edits needed to switch families between any of the suborder systems when all the taxonomy templates are in place, so perhaps not a big deal which is chosen for now.

Megabat should be moved to Pteropodidae; the content and history there is mostly relevant to the family. I'm not so sure what should happen to the Megabat title. It (and microbat) could perhaps be redirected to the taxonomy section in the bat article. Or an article could be kept about megabats as a historically recognized taxon (in which case, I'd favor Megachiroptera as the title; we disagree about use of vernacular vs. scientific names as titles on Wikipedia, but the current situation is awful; the most widely used vernacular name for Pteropodidae is "fruit bat", not "megabat"). Plantdrew (talk) 02:19, 14 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Finally had a chance to read Peter and your info on Megabats. I agree Yin and yang classification looks more current. I kept the english name megabat because the classification at the yin suborder refers to it (and its an easier change). I added a family auto taxobox to it.  Thanks for the note on tbe bat taskforce.  I'll leave them a note also.....Pvmoutside (talk) 17:29, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Category:Arecaceae subtribes
Hi, I notice that you created Category:Arecaceae subtribes. I have a couple of questions: Peter coxhead (talk) 11:27, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Do you still think that categories for ranks like subtribes are useful? Only Arecaceae and Orchidaceae seem to have them if you look at Category:Plant subtribes.
 * The names of the "palm" categories are confused; some categories use "Arecaceae" and some "palm" in their title. (See my comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants.) My inclination is to standardize on "Arecaceae", but I would have liked some discussion on this. What is your view?


 * I don't remember what I was thinking when I created the Arecaceae subtribes category. It looks like it was around the time when I was creating taxonomy templates for plant subtribe/tribes/subfamilies, so I'm not sure why I singled out Arecaceae and no other families for a subcat. It can be deleted. I'm not sure if you're also suggesting deleting Category:Plant subtribes. I think that should probably be kept.


 * I favor using scientific names for all categories. I think the only plant exceptions are Category:Orchids, Category:Cacti and the palms. I'm pretty sure all the temperate tree genera that use vernacular names for article titles (pine, oak, etc.) have the category at the scientific name. If I'm putting categories on a new taxon article that lacks them, I just use Hot-Cat and work my way up the taxobox hierarchy until I find a category that already exists. I'm pretty sure editors who aren't particularly interested in taxonomy, but who work on categorization will quickly figure out to take a similar approach. If vernacular names are used for categories there's suddenly a lot of guesswork about what the category name might be, since the vernacular names aren't shown in the taxobox. I understand there being some value in matching the category name to the main article's title, but since we're not doing that already for tree genera, we might as well make plant categories consistently at scientific names.Plantdrew (talk) 20:23, 14 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Well, if we are keeping Category:Plant subtribes, it probably makes sense to leave Category:Arecaceae subtribes, at least for now.
 * It would certainly be simpler and easier for everyone if we had a consistent approach in which all angiosperm taxonomic categories were at the name used in the APG system, regardless of the title of the corresponding article. (Non-angiosperms are tricker, given the current lack of consensus in some groups.) I think this would be consistent with Categorization, but I also know that the people who frequent WP:CfD have in the past emphasized "corresponding to the name of a Wikipedia article" in the second bullet point, without equal emphasis on "normally" or on the last bullet point – a point which supports your reference to the taxobox as a guide to choosing a taxonomic category.
 * I'll leave it a little longer, I think, but if there's no dissent at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants, I will change it to "Category:Arecaceae". If you agree, it would be useful to say so there. This change will deal with the particular problem that until APG IV, Arecaceae was the only family in Arecales, so "palms" was treated sometimes as one and sometimes as the other, hence some of the current confusion. (I'd like to make the same kind of change to orchids and cacti, but that may be more difficult, since there's less motivation.) Peter coxhead (talk) 23:04, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Category:Roses is one more at a vernacular name. Plantdrew (talk) 00:24, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Sigh... Peter coxhead (talk) 10:09, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Also Category:Liverworts vs. Marchantiophyta Peter coxhead (talk) 17:58, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Didn't think about that one, but it's consistent with the other two bryophyte groups, and I'm not sure Category:Musci would be more appropriate than Category:Mosses. Plantdrew (talk) 18:14, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The main issue for me is consistency between the article title, the category title, and the rank category title, because inconsistencies are what make correct categorization more difficult. Moss, Category:Mosses, Category:Moss genera – o.k. Marchantiophyta, Category:Liverworts, Category:Liverwort genera – no. I'd accept moving Marchantiophyta to Liverwort.
 * Anyway, there are enough irritating, unnecessary and totally muddled categories created by Caftaric/NotWith/other sockpuppets which I think it's more important to try to sort out, although it's tedious and frustrating. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:55, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Phycodrys rubens
Phycodrys rubens. The illustration of this species is, I'm fairly sure, not Phycodrys rubens. I think it is Phyllophora crispa (Hudson) Dixon. It's a rather crummy specimen I'll grant you but not Phycodrys rubens!Osborne 21:53, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

You may be interested in: http://www.algaebase.org Osborne 16:37, 16 November 2018 (UTC)


 * , I know about Algaebase. Reconstructing the history of taxonomic splits from a list of synonyms requires some inference. The entry for Phyllophora crispa shows Phyllophora rubens var. nervosa as a synonym. OK, that explains why an image labelled as Phyllophora rubens might represent Phyllophora crispa. A bigger problem is that Algaebase is internally inconsistent. It accepts Phyllophora with the type Phyllophora rubens (basionym Fucus rubens L.) It also accepts Phycodrys with type Phycodrys sinuosa (synonym of Phycodrys rubens] (basionym Fucus rubens L.). And the record for Phyllophora rubens treats it as a synonym of Phycodrys rubens. So Phyllophora is an accepted genus according to Algaebase, but the type species is not recognized by Algaebase as a member of that genus. That's a problem (also, Algaebase has Phyllophora and Phycodrys in different families and orders). If you have any insights that could straighten this out, I'd love to be hear them. Plantdrew (talk) 17:12, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

I have just re-read your note showing some images of P. rubens - some show Phyllophora crispa (my identification!) f you wish please tell me how I best identify which to you. I will then leave it up to you as to how and whether and which should be incorporated. I don't know how to insert a photo! Osborne 15:17, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Template tweaked
I'm very keen to have the explicit link to WikiProject Plants/Categorization included in the explanation of all the "taxa by rank" categories, which was the main point of using a template.

I've tweaked the wording, which I agree wasn't ideal; the template now allows no subcategories to be specified. Have a look at Category:Asterales families and see if you are happier. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:52, 15 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Yes, that is an improvement. Plantdrew (talk) 23:41, 15 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Still not perfect though. In the case of Asterales families wording should more strongly discourage subcategories (there aren't any widely recognized ranks between order and family that could be used to break down an order-families category). Plantdrew (talk) 00:02, 16 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Sorry, been travelling without internet access. See Category:Lamiales families now. Not had time to fix doc for the new subcategories parameter yet. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:45, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.15 16 November 2018
Hello ,
 * Community Wishlist Survey – NPP needs you – Vote NOW
 * Community Wishlist Voting takes place 16 to 30 November for the Page Curation and New Pages Feed improvements, and other software requests. The NPP community is hoping for a good turnout in support of the requests to Santa for the tools we need. This is very important as we have been asking the Foundation for these upgrades for 4 years.


 * If this proposal does not make it into the top ten, it is likely that the tools will be given no support at all for the foreseeable future. So please put in a vote today.


 * We are counting on significant support not only from our own ranks, but from everyone who is concerned with maintaining a Wikipedia that is free of vandalism, promotion, flagrant financial exploitation and other pollution.


 * With all 650 reviewers voting for these urgently needed improvements, our requests would be unlikely to fail. See also The Signpost Special report: 'NPP: This could be heaven or this could be hell for new users – and for the reviewers', and if you are not sure what the wish list is all about, take a sneak peek at an article in this month's upcoming issue of The Signpost which unfortunately due to staff holidays and an impending US holiday will probably not be published until after voting has closed.

Go here to remove your name if you wish to opt-out of future mailings. —  Insertcleverphrasehere (or here) 18:37, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Atropa belladonna subsp. caucasica
Dear Plantdrew You seem, on past evidence, to be an experienced, constructive and kindly-disposed editor : I wonder if you can help. A while back I added a detailed section ( researched as thoroughly as I was able ) to the page for Atropa belladonna concerning the subspecies A. belladonna ssp. caucasica (Kreyer) Avet. and created the pages for Georgij Karlovich Kreyer and Vandika Ervandovna Avetisyan with which I linked it re. their author abbreviations. For reasons which are not clear to me, another editor deleted my contribution to the A. belladonna page. I reinstated it, as I could see nothing wrong with it, whereupon he banished it to some arbitrational netherworld, where it appears to have languished ever since. I am not au fait with the intricacies of Wiki disputes and was wondering if you’d be kind enough to cast a friendly eye on the proceedings and tell me whether there’s anything I can do to speed up the recovery of this piece of work. I enjoy writing for Wikipedia and always try to be helpful and constructive in my contributions, yet, time and again, I am distressed to encounter editors (naming no names) who seem to take a positive delight in deleting great swathes of others’ work with scant justification. In one instance, re. the page on Mount Etna, an editor deleted my section on the Arthurian folklore of the volcano on the grounds that he did not like folklore and thought the page should be restricted to science-related aspects of Etna. This, surely, is mere vandalism motivated by whim, if the page in question be adequately referenced.

yours in some perplexity

Flobbadob.

Dockrillia/Dendrobium
Hello Plantdrew,

Thanks for your enormous volume of work. I am trying to clean up and expand articles on the Australian dendrobiums. WCSP lists Dockrillia and several other genera as synonyms of Dendrobium, so I have cleaned up the Dockrillia page but am stuck with changing some of the species names. Moving D. cucumerina, D. pugioniforme and D.striolata worked okay but I'm unable to move Dockrillia wassellii. Worse - I have moved Dockrillia linguiformis to Dendrobium linguiformis but I should have moved it to Dendrobium linguiforme and can't now fix my blunder! Any help would be greatly appreciated.Gderrin (talk) 00:22, 22 November 2018 (UTC)


 * , I don't have any move privileges beyond what you have. and  are active plant editors with extended mover rights who should be able to help. To get the spelling/gender fixed for Dendrobium linguiforme, take it to WP:RM/TR (or ask one of the aforementioned editors, but fixing a mistake you made when moving is exactly the kind of thing that technical move requests are intended for). Plantdrew (talk) 04:58, 22 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for that. I appreciate your advice. Gderrin (talk) 05:06, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi Geoff, I've had a crack at moving it but when I do wikipedia resolutely insists that there is a page: Dendrobium lingiforme or the name is malformed???!! I'll have another go later. I am forever making booboos like this, and have had no trouble moving things in the past. MargaretRDonald (talk) 05:18, 22 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks . I've asked Peter Coxhead but it would be great if you could fix it. Gderrin (talk) 05:26, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I redirected the redirect of Dockrilla linguiformis to Dendrobium linguiforme, hoping to get a red article, but no! Dendrobium linguiforme is currently a redirect to Dendrobium linguiformis. So the whole thing is marvellously circular and it would be fantastic if we could delete Dendrobium linguiforme and then do the redirects.... But I do not have article deletion rights, so you will need to find someone who has... Perhaps Peter Coxhead has article deletion rights?MargaretRDonald (talk) 05:34, 22 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for trying. Sorry for being trying! Gderrin (talk) 06:18, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * You can make a speedy deletion request (WP:G6) for Dendrobium linguiforme as it is covered by Deleting redirects or other pages blocking page moves. I've never done this, but I think it just requires adding a template to the page, possibly Db-move, with a short explanation. <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;">  Jts1882 &#124; talk 07:31, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been travelling, so slow to respond. Dendrobium linguiforme now fixed. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:19, 22 November 2018 (UTC) Dendrobium wassellii also now fixed (made a bit of a mess of sorting out the Wikidata entries, but I think they are ok now, although moved in the 'wrong' way). Peter coxhead (talk) 14:19, 22 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks you for your work fixing this and for cleaning up the changes associated with the moves. Very much appreciated. And thanks to the other people for their advice. Gderrin (talk) 19:42, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Automatic italic title
Re your edit at Selaginella, it's clear that the logic behind adding Italic title to articles based on the taxobox is still not correct. Setting the taxobox name should be irrelevant – what should matter is whether the article title (minus any disambiguation) matches the target taxon in the taxobox. It's still on my "to do" list, but I'm more concerned with Virusbox at present. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:19, 29 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm in the habit of removing the italic title template when there is no name parameter (or removing both the name parameter and the template when the parameter value is the scientific name). I tend to leave italic title in place when the name parameter has a vernacular name (even with speciesboxes, where name doesn't break the italics). But the former situation is far more common than the latter, so by force of habit I sometimes accidentally remove an italic title template that is necessary (and readd it if I notice I've screwed up the italics).


 * Yesterday I discovered a way to break italic titles in articles with speciesbox, which I had thought was impossible (given the need for italic_title=no in hippopotamus and asparagus). If the speciesbox of an article with a binomial title has taxon with the genus name and species with the species name, the title is unitalicized (obviously this is because the value in taxon doesn't match the binomial title). It's a pretty rare occurrence; usually speciesboxes either use genus+species or taxon, rather than mixing the two systems. Plantdrew (talk) 16:48, 29 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The logic doesn't test for genus AND species. <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 20:39, 29 November 2018 (UTC)


 * , did you test that somewhere other than my user page? It's not going to italicize here since I'm not named Panthera or Canis lupus, and italics are working in taxon+genus tests I just tried. Or are you demonstrating broken logic with regards to the mismatch between the different genera specified in your example? By the way, thanks for your advice on white space searches with regex. It was very helpful. Plantdrew (talk) 20:56, 29 November 2018 (UTC)


 * the problem demonstrated by is the failure to flag up duplicated information in the parameters. The template fails the other way too – Test2 has |taxon=Canis lupus |species=leo . So there should be a test for the presence of taxon and (genus or species), which constitutes an error. Peter coxhead (talk) 01:18, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
 * . Yes, I was just demonstrating that the logic failed when there is dupilicate information and thought that might have an effect on what was checked in deciding the italicisation. Incidentally, the genus/species takes precedence over the taxon whereas the documentation says the taxon takes precedence (which might prevent those hybrid taxoboxes).
 * I've noticed these things as part of my attempt to emulate the taxobox system in a Lua module, which is now running paraphyletic group. A benefit of the module is ease of parameter checking and aliasing. It should be possible to set categories for automatic taxoboxes with all the unnecessary manual taxobox rank parameters. It's just a thought for the future as its early days in the development and would be a major change if taken up. <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 07:02, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I think I've agreed with you before that the entire taxobox system, manual as well as automated, needs to be converted to Lua, but it's a major task. The template language is particularly unsuited to text processing and complex logic checks; it rapidly becomes essentially unreadable. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:45, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

✅. Speciesbox has now been fixed so that taxon always has priority over genus and species, so the taxoboxes here are now ok. (Italicizing the title still needs work.)

Question: should an error message be produced if both taxon and genus or species is present? Or should the page just be placed in an error-tracking category? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:14, 30 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Are there any error messages produced by speciesbox currently (aside from missing taxonomy templates)? I'm inclined to go with a tracking category, especially if no other error messages are produced. Would it flag parameters with no values, or would it only flag articles where the parameters have values (I regularly come across speciesboxes made by less experienced editors that have taxon, genus and species, with one set of the parameters left blank)?


 * I haven't yet figured out a good way to search for taxoboxes that have parameter values that are dependent on another parameter with a blank value (e.g., no image specified, but values in image_caption or any of the other image parameters). I'm guessing if you can set up a tracking category for taxon/genus+species parameter conflicts, it might be possible to do something for image parameters? Plantdrew (talk) 17:39, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
 * That is where Lua becomes really useful. You can check for empty parameters and aliases before the main processing separately rather than having to do every thing in a linear order, which makes the template code very hard to follow. If an automatic taxobox has family, order or other rank parameters, these could set an appropriate category. After finding a valid taxon parameter, it could flag species and genus if they were also set, as well as setting them to nil to avoid unexpected behaviour. You could also check for any image_# parameters without image and same for status and range maps. I'd quite like to test this but didn't want to set up a tracking category page without more planning. <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;">  Jts1882 &#124; talk 18:02, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
 * . I've being experimenting with some parameter tracking categories in my sandbox module (Module:Sandbox/Jts1882/Biota Infobox; function at the end of the file). The prototype function checks for three things:


 * 1) Any occurences of image_# (for # =caption, alt or upright) without the corresponding image parameter. Also checks image2 values. Additional checks can easily be added for range maps etc.
 * 2) Checks for cases where the taxon parameter is set along with genus or species. I see below that Peter coxhead  has already done this with more explicit tracking categories.
 * 3) It checks for any of the manual taxobox rank parameters above genus. I.e. it sets a tracking category if it finds class, order, etc.
 * The function is tested in one of my test pages for Felidae. It can be called with  added at the end of the automatic taxobox or speciesbox. I haven't actually created any categories so they appear redlinked at the bottom of test pages. <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;">  Jts1882 &#124; talk 16:21, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * that looks a very useful approach. When we've cleaned up the current crop of Speciesbox problems, I'd like to get back to you to discuss converting much more of the taxobox system to Lua, but I'm rather busy here and in real life right now. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:26, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Parameters in Speciesbox
It seems to me that quite a few of the parameters in Speciesbox were just copied from Automatic taxobox when it was set up, such as trinomial – we have Subspeciesbox and Infraspeciesbox for that, and all the extra binomial parameters, like binomial2 – surely they aren't going to be used in a species article? Simplifying Speciesbox will make eventual conversion to Lua easier.

you look at a lot of taxoboxes, what do you think? Are these parameters ever needed? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:24, 30 November 2018 (UTC)


 * There are parameters in the code for Speciesbox and Automatic taxobox that are totally unused. image_caption_align isn't used anywhere. trend is used in some articles, but doesn't produce any visible output (I eliminate trend when I come across it). There's no point to trinomial in auto taxoboxes, and it isn't used anywhere. binomial2 is only used in 11 manual taxoboxes, and I don't think it's worth the effort to get the automatic taxobox system to support it properly (in automatic taxoboxes, binomial2 doesn't produce a link to the genus, but Bryde's whale only covers 2 of the 15 species in the genus, so genus should be linked). Manual taxoboxes can handle the rare cases where binomial2 is relevant (and it isn't relevant at all for articles using speciesbox). I'd support taking all of these out of the code. I'm not sure how far you want to go. There are a whole bunch of parameters for specifying fossil range, but fossil_range is the only one being used. You can view parameter usage for Speciesbox here and Automatic taxobox here. Plantdrew (talk) 18:01, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Mindanao pygmy fruit bat
Im stumped..... species name is not showing up in speciesbox.... Same with Spotted-winged fruit bat....you guys do something with monotypic genera?....Pvmoutside (talk) 14:47, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Hi, I removed the name parameter and added the full binomial to the taxon parameter and it works now. Loopy30 (talk) 15:05, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * See three threads above on my talk page. It was never necessary to use taxon+species parameters for monotypic genera. Genus+species or taxon (with the binomial) both worked fine for monotypic genera. Taxon+species was breaking italic title sensing in a small number of cases (i.e. where page had binomial title; most of these instance were my mistakes when converting to automatic taxoboxes; since you're mostly working on articles with vernacular titles it wouldn't have shown up when you used taxon+species). However with further testing, it appears the recent changes may have broken a large number of other articles. Speciesboxes were able to pick up the genus and species from a binomial title even when nothing was specified for genus+species or taxon parameters. That no longer works. I have no idea how many articles don't use any of those parameters. . I'm pretty sure that specifying only species or only genus worked previously (or at least appeared to work) because the code was capable of picking up the missing values from the title. There are 72914 Speciesbox articles using genus and 69270 using species, so may be ~3650 or more articles with now broken Speciesboxes. I'm not sure how to find articles that may be affected; I suspect they're mostly going to be palaeontological taxa that were using Speciesbox prior to 2016 (most of the Automatic taxoboxes with taxon unspecified are pre-2016 palaeontological taxa)., maybe the logic should be rolled back to what it was previously, with just a tracking category for taxon+species? Or a tracking category for neither taxon nor species specified (but that will take some effort to get fixed)? Plantdrew (talk) 17:32, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * 122,039 Speciesboxes have either taxon or genus, out of 122,894 Speciesboxes; so maybe 850 article that were pulling values from the title. Plantdrew (talk) 17:51, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I will help fix individual pages if a bot cannot be created to do the work, but would need a search parameter that can bring up the affected pages. Loopy30 (talk) 17:56, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, me too. Some could perhaps be found with a regex search, but that is proving beyond my skills. I did turn up a bunch of Polypodium fern species using genus and taxon that should have worked under the old logic, but are now displaying as cnidarians (it doesn't help that the plant is at the undisambiguated title, but uses a disambiguated taxonomy template) Plantdrew (talk) 18:21, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I got distracted by the problems with the revised Virusbox (which was using some very old and now obsolete underlying code); I had meant to check the effects of the change to Speciesbox more thoroughly. I suggest that I first try to implement a tracking category, so we can see the size of the problem. Then if appropriate the change can be undone until the parameters can be fixed. Change has been undone. One problem was just my error – the failure to use the page name when no relevant parameters are present. This is fixed in the sandbox. The other problems are caused by bad parameters. There are four new categories in Category:Taxobox cleanup to track these. It takes up to a week sometimes for categories generated by templates to fill up. When we're sure the taxoboxes have been fixed, I can re-do the main change. Peter coxhead (talk) 01:17, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * So far there have been surprisingly few articles turning up in these categories; I've fixed those that did appear. Peter coxhead (talk) 03:03, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry to hear you had a bad day. I was already working through the taxon+(genus/species) category when I saw you'd added a warning. Dummy edits cleared out most of the entries and I went ahead and did all the Polypodium. Plantdrew (talk) 03:10, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I saw you were doing the Polypodium. Category:Taxoboxes with no color is still polluted from the original change to Speciesbox, but is clearing slowly. Otherwise, the error tracking seems to be ok. (I think I'm too old to multi-task now!) Peter coxhead (talk) 03:14, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It's getting to be pretty late at night for you, isn't it? That can't be helping with the multi-tasking. Plantdrew (talk) 03:20, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Responded by e-mail. Peter coxhead (talk) 03:38, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm really surprised by the number of taxoboxes with taxon giving only the genus accompanied by species; cleaning up may take some time. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:44, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
 * It appears that name breaks title italics when none of the taxon parameters are specified. Plantdrew (talk) 00:31, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I noticed this; I'll work on the italicization once we can put back the updated Speciesbox version, i.e. when the error-tracking categories clear. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:53, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Speciesbox clean up
I was too optimistic about the number of articles remaining to clean up; overnight a large number appeared in Category:Speciesboxes with genus parameter without species parameter. Most seem to have been created by one editor (I suspect using a bot). I've left a note at User talk:Thine Antique Pen. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:16, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I knew there were several thousand more instances of genus than of species. It is discouraging to have so many show up at once, rather than trickling in a hundred at a time. Unfortunately, I'm about to have pretty limited internet access until after the New Year. I hope a bot can clean these up. Plantdrew (talk) 16:30, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Just to note that the ever-helpful ran a bot that fixed those that hadn't already been fixed. I've reduced the error-tracking categories to the single Category:Speciesboxes with incorrect parameters specifying the taxon. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:46, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Synonyms of varieties
Hello Plantdrew,

As you've probably noticed, I'm in the process of cleaning up Dendrobium. I have a problem and hope you might be able to suggest a solution. David Jones separated Dendrobium into a lot of other genera but the change has not been accepted by WCSP. Some of the species described by Jones are now treated as synonyms of Dendrobium varieties. (For example, Vappodes phalaenopsis is now Dendrobium bigibbum var. superbum.) Creating a redirect (eg. from V. phalaenopsis) does not show a reader the old name on the target page. D. biggibum var. superbum has 20 synonyms!! This is just one example of many. Gderrin (talk) 22:11, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

You're asking how to best display the synonyms? If a synonym is sufficiently important (e.g., because it enshrined in legislation as a floral emblem), it could certainly be mentioned in the body of the article. Lengthy synonym lists (in taxoboxes or elsewhere) can be set to be collapsed by default. I've seen a few monotypic genera with separate lists of synonyms for the species and the genus in the taxobox (unfortunately, no examples are coming to mind, so I can't point you in the direction of some markup to copy). Maybe you could combine these approaches and set up separate collapsed lists of synonyms for each variety? Plantdrew (talk) 22:27, 4 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Okay - thanks for that. Could get messy for articles like Dendrobium bigibbum, Dendrobium tetragonum and Dendrobium speciosum but I'll have a go. (Maybe after Bulbophyllum spp.). Gderrin (talk) 22:38, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
 * For an example of a monotypic genus article with synonyms for both the genus and species, you could use the syn list in the taxobox of Sombre greenbul as an example. 'Cheers, Loopy30 (talk) 23:05, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Automatic italic title again
The original point you made at above got sidetracked by the problems with Speciesbox parameters – and I've got diverted by cleaning up Virusbox and the associated taxonomy templates, etc. (When Bob the Wikipedian revived Virusbox, he didn't take into account the changes to the underlying code to use Lua.)

Working on Virusbox has been quite instructive in many ways, because it started out as an old piece of code, and so freer from the continual patching the rest of the taxoboxes have been subject to, making it easier to see the underlying logic.

One problem is that automatically italicizing the page title and automatically italicizing the taxobox name have been treated together. So in most taxobox templates, when name is provided, neither the taxobox name nor the page title are considered for automatic italicization. I think these should be quite separate issues. I'm trying out this at Virusbox, where the situation is simpler because there's only one automated taxobox template. I'll then return to Speciesbox, Automatic taxobox, etc.

However, I'm now very wary that any fixes may cause problems when parameters haven't been used as expected. We've only so far checked on odd parameter uses at Speciesbox, and the mess there really surprised me (although I think you were more aware of it). Peter coxhead (talk) 10:52, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

best wishes for the season
Best wishes for the season, and I have a few questions...


 * In the backlog of beetle categories - I noted that you have added beetle and insect projects tags - was there a reason?
 * In the world of fungi/lichen - has there ever in your time has there ever been an effort to seperate lichen in any way?
 * In the world of biota/australia ( an endless catchup there... ) is there anything in your experience of another country having its own internal biota project? (I hadnt looked, thought I'd ask considering your edit range reach)

Anyways have a safe and enjoyable season, and trust your 2019 is a good one for you. cheers JarrahTree 03:59, 9 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Happy holidays to you too. I know I've irritated you with some of my edits; I hope you've forgiven me (or at least aren't hating me too much at present).


 * Beetle articles are usually tagged with both beetle and insect projects. That may not the case for beetle categories, but last I was aware, many beetle categories weren't even tagged for any WikiProject. I've generally tagged beetle categories for both projects when I've been tagging them at all. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Insects/Archive 3 for some background for the state of affairs with beetle article tagging. I can explain further if you'd like, but basically, WikiProject Beetles has never been very successful or active, so I think the Insects project tag is more useful generally, although Beetles is certainly more specific.


 * Fungi/lichens separation. Are you asking about WikiProjects? There's never been an effort to set up a WikiProject specifically for lichens.


 * Country specific biota projects. The only other one is WikiProject Biota of Great Britain and Ireland, but it's far behind Australian biota in tagging appropriate articles. Plantdrew (talk) 04:15, 11 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Hey nothing to even think of forgiveness in editing and nothing to do with hate, waste of time, much more important in trying to get the place to make more sense in the face of some very very weird edit patterns, (I am sure I got into that as well...)

I think I'll defer to double tagging for beetles, and as usual for fungi - when I try to fathom material about lichen it sends my remaining neurons into overdrive.... I am sure I have more questions, enough for the moment, and thanks again.

Thanks for your reply - there is still (unfortunately or fortunately depending on the glass of milk being half empty or half full I suppose) a large amount of catching up to do... JarrahTree 05:13, 11 December 2018 (UTC)


 * grrr - then there is a really weird area - not helped by previous tagging - chiton/molluscs - I would put gastropods and marine life (as a double), but i find other ways - your opinion very much appreciated from your side of the pacific (assumed) JarrahTree 11:56, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Taxobox issues
As you keep an eye on problem taxoboxes, I thought I'd update you on some actions/effects. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:57, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
 * You may have seen that I separated off the categories in Category:Taxobox cleanup that didn't relate to actual errors, but some other kind of issue. It makes it easier to see errors. Category:Taxobox tracking isn't a good title, but I couldn't think of another. (Why do we have Category:Articles using diversity taxobox‎? What's the issue with diversity? It's widely used in spider taxoboxes.)
 * I tightened up the checking of taxonomy templates, and found that there were some with no parent parameter (mostly ichnotaxa). Previously any taxonomy template with an empty parent was assumed to be the top level, and terminated searching up the taxonomic hierarchy with no error message, so neither the taxonomy template nor an article using it threw an error. Now only Life, Ichnos and Veterovata can be the top level. So you might come across new errors.
 * Automatic italicization is still causing problems in some taxoboxes (sigh...), including ichnoboxes.
 * I'd assumed the "diversity" category was something you'd set up. Not sure what the point of it is, but diversity isn't something I've looked into at all so far. You called me out for putting Category:Taxonomy templates with qualified names in Taxobox cleanup (I do agree it doesn't really belong there); is it appropriate for Taxobox tracking? Plantdrew (talk) 04:33, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Automatic italicization
I'm working on automatic italicization of taxobox names, and page titles where there are taxoboxes. I think it's better to start from the beginning and develop some carefully tested new templates that can replace all the muddled current code in taxoboxes (some of which is mine). If you have time, please look at User:Peter coxhead/Test/T0, and add any more tests you can think of. I'm sure there are cases I've forgotten. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:26, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I will take a stab at it, but I've only got internet access for a couple hours a day for the next ten days, and when I do have access, it is dreadfully slow. Not sure I can do much right now.Plantdrew (talk) 04:40, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Repeated removal of taxobox
I see you have been involved with the repeated removals of taxoboxes by user:Dals093838, starting back in February 2016: Heliamphora. He has been reverted repeatedly (by you, others and most recently me) and I see you specifically asked him to stop in the edit comments. The pattern has now continued for years and he has posted comments like "Even if ihave to edit this page 10,000 time. I will never stop", making it clear that he isn't going to stop. He has been doing the same in Heliamphora ceracea and Sarraceniaceae, but not as obsessively as Heliamphora. I'm not sure how to deal with it. His photo is also of a lower quality than the one in the taxobox. 62.107.211.90 (talk) 18:04, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Seems a clear case for WP:ANI. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:01, 13 December 2018 (UTC)