Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Botanist template


 * Note that this template is only a suggestion and not all botanist biographies will contain all these sections.

This article describes what would be an "ideal" article about a botanist. Such an article will be divided into sections like those suggested and described below. Ideally, all of these sections can be filled with relevant information. In many, maybe even most cases, this is not possible. A well-made GA usually should have sections entitled as in this guide (see, for example, Carl Linnaeus).

Because this is a biography, it also needs to adhere to the guidelines of Wikiproject biography.

Before you start:
 * 1) You may find it easier to create the article in your own user space at your leisure first and then move it to the article name you have chosen once you are satisfied with it. Still will prevent anyone trying to delete your half finished article. To do this use the Article Wizard. If you are planning to write about John Smith, create the page User:Your username/John Smith and then save it. Write something like "creating stub" in the edit summary.
 * 2) It is a good idea to search both Wikipedia and the web to make sure there is not already a biography under a different form of the name, and to see if there is a biography on one of the other language versions of biography, you can use as a guide. If another language version already exists, place a template on your page to access that easily. For instance if you are writing about John Smith, and there is a biography of John Smith on the French Wikipedia but not the English, place the template  at the top of your page and save it. This will create a box with links to the French version as well as a Google translation.
 * 3) Identify sources, such as
 * Harvard Botanist Index e.g.
 * Tropicos Person Search e.g. (note: there are links to other databases there)

Infobox
The appropriate infobox for a botanist article would be Infobox scientist (see, for example Arthur Cronquist, shown here, but would include image where possible).

Use one of the birth-death templates, to calculate age.
 * 1) For a living person, inserting Birth year and age with birth date, into birth-date = returns birthdate and current age (see, for example Paula Rudall)
 * 2) If birth date is known in full use Birth date and age (see, for example Peter Goldblatt)
 * 3) Similarly if the person has died, a template Such as Death date and age inserted into death_date= displays age at death (see, for example William Herbert)

Lead
The first section of a Wikipedia article is not usually a section per se, but a leader (lead) that briefly summarizes the article, and should follow the article layout.

Normally this would start with something like these examples: Paula J Rudall (born 1954) is a British botanist, who is head of the Department of Comparative Plant and Fungal Biology at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Peter Goldblatt (born 1943) is a South African botanist, working principally in the United States. Rolf Martin Theodor Dahlgren (1932–1987) was a Swedish-Danish botanist, professor at the University of Copenhagen from 1973 to his death.
 * Paula Rudall:
 * Peter Goldblatt:
 * Rolf Dahlgren:

Life
Include details of parents, birth, early life, education, marriage, and death where applicable

Career
Include details of positions held, scope of work and important publications. In some cases some aspects of their work may be of sufficient importance to justify a subsection (see, for example Charles Darwin, a Featured article, where clearly his theory of evolution justifies separate consideration)

Awards
List any known awards

Selected publications
These may be copious. If a Curriculum vitae (CV) is available online, link to it. Try to be selective, using works referred to on this page or elsewhere on Wikipedia. If a work is important enough, it has probably been mentioned in the text. In some cases such as Linnaeus, some of the publications are sufficiently important to justify a subsection of their own, or even a subpage. In this case Systema naturae is considered sufficiently important to justify both a subsection and subpage.

Use Cite format so that reference to the work in the wikitext can be linked to this section. Use Refbegin and Refend to bookend this section, which reduces the text to the same font size as used in the Reference section (for instance see William T. Stearn). Where the output is extensive, consider using a daughter subpage, e.g. Charles Darwin bibliography to include texts not referenced on the mother page.

Legacy
Is anything named after this author? Institutions, buildings, chairs, awards? Are any plants named after this author?

It is likely you are creating this page because the author has described plants that bear or have born their name as a botanical authority. Consider providing some examples. You might want to express this as follows:

Yojiro Kimura is the authority for 58 taxa, such as Hypericum hayatae Y.Kimura

The citation used here will generate a list of plants named by this author, from which you can select a few examples. In this particular example H. hayatae is now considered a synonym of Hypericum nagasawae Hayata

Another potentially useful tool is Plantlist, used as, for instance {Plantlist|Ravenna}}, where Ravenna is the standard abbreviation for Pierfelice Ravenna, and which generates output of the form: "List of plant names with authority Ravenna", International Plant Names Index (see this botanist, for example, using Bibliography). For details of usage, see the above template documentation.

Botanist template
A special botanist template has been designed to be inserted at this point. When used as follows, where, for example the standard abbreviation is R. Dahlgren, it does three things: 1. Creates a box, inside which it writes: The standard author abbreviation R.Dahlgren is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name

2. Adds a citation at the end of the line, creating the following footnote:
 * n. "Author Query for 'R.Dahlgren'". International Plant Names Index
 * Which links to the author's page on the International Plant Names Index

1. Adds the category Botanists with author abbreviations to the page

Citation
The guidelines set out in the Plant Template (see above) should be followed with one exception. Works by the author should appear in Publications, but works about the author should be listed in the Bibliography.

Control templates

 * 1) Add a DEFAULTSORT sort template as  e.g.
 * 2) Add the undefined template to link to other data sets which include this author

Stub
If you are only making a stub for now, add a stub template. E.g.  which will place an icon on the page as fiollows. Consult Botanist stubs for a list of available stubs.

Publish
You are now ready to publish! Use the Move tab at the top of the page, and choose (Article) and remove the prefix Username/ so that the article name now reads John Smith, rather than username/John Smith. In the "Reason" box you can use something like "Ready to publish". Go to "Move page", and then check that your new page exists.

Links

 * 1) Make sure author is included in List of botanists by author abbreviation, that their entry there links to your page, and that where applicable, the author abbreviation also links to that page. For instance Robert Brown is represented by the abbreviation R.Br. The entry for R.Br. Robert Brown on List of botanists by author abbreviation should link to the Robert Brown page, but also a redirect for R.Br. should be created to link to the author page.
 * 2) See if there is a disambiguation page for your author, and if so add them to that page. For instance Robert Brown is listed on Robert Brown, and Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link (abbreviation Link) is listed under Link (surname).

Talk page templates
Go to the article's Talk page and add the project and rating templates:

1.  Determine if the person is living, and whether this is a stub or a start class:

2.  Do the same for the Plant project.

3. In one of the examples used above (Rolf Dahlgren), the author was Swedish, so add a nationality template

4. And in the example given here of Paula Rudall, since we are trying to encourage a better gender balance on Wikipedia, add a woman scientist template to help keep track of entries

Languages
If you have identified articles about this author in other language version of Wikipedia, check in the right-hand side bar, as to whether they appear there. If not, add them by using the Edit links button, choosing a language (e.g. es for Spanish - espanol), and entering the page name for that author in that language. Usually you will only need to do that once since all the other languages should be linked.

Categories
Add some appropriate categories, such as Swedish botanists, Uppsala university faculty etc.

Final touches
If you have access to editing and cleaning tools such as AWB, use them now to clean up.

Model articles

 * Charles Darwin
 * G. Ledyard Stebbins
 * Barbara McClintock
 * Georg Forster