Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fishes/Categories

Regional and national categories
Instead of creating a category "Fish of Central and South America", why not add an individual article to both "Fish of Central America" and "Fish of South America" categories? Otherwise we'll end up with an unmanagable number of categories to wade through to find fish of South America, like "Fish of South America and the Carribean", "Fish of North and South America", etc. The same goes with the individual countries. If a fish is found in the entire Amazon basin, it could also be listed in the "Fauna of Peru", "Fauna of Brazil", and "Fauna of Colombia" categories, as appropriate, without affecting any of the other category lists. And although it's outside the scope of my personal interests, I think that marine fish would need categories like "Fish of the Pacific Ocean", "Fish of the Indian Ocean", and/or perhaps something more specific, like "Fish of the Gulf of Thailand".

I've just thrown together an example on the page, with some additional comments buried in the wikitext on the page. Neil916 15:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * difficult subject - I've not done anything yet - still thinking about it - not in disagreement though.HappyVR 17:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Top section
I also rewrote the top section which clarifies how to add articles to the appropriate sections. One point that is worth discussing is whether or not higher taxa articles should be included in the regional sections and fauna by nation sections. I included it because many of the higher taxa articles have been created, and include such information as "this family contains only one genus and one species and it is found in Sri Lanka", but no species articles have been created. It's kind of a grey area, because once someone else comes along and creates the genus and species articles, that nation category would be cluttered up by three articles for essentially the same fish.

After thinking about it as I type it out, perhaps it would be appropriate to include higher taxa in geographic categories only if no articles exist for the lower taxa. Once lower taxa articles are created, the higher taxa should be removed from the geographic category. Sound good? Neil916 16:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes that's right. (second paragraph) I think. We definately need some guidlines anyway - note siluriformes is a category in ray finned fish - I've change the instructions slightly - the basic jist of which is - article has taxonomic categories of the same or next higher rank - but no higher and not lower - like the branches of a tree.HappyVR 17:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I haven't tried adding any geography categories yet - but the instructions seem right.HappyVR 17:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Work in progress
Should this page be tagged as a work in progress in case a new WikiProject Fish user comes along and sees it in the current state and launches major revisions based upon our proposals listed here? Only to find that it may dramatically change a week from now? Neil916 16:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC) yes.HappyVR 17:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

bit confused
Re adding categories to above species articles - I assume that a genus of family siluriformes should be in the category siluriformes? and not in any higher categories.

But specifically the article siluriformes should be in the category ray finned fish (and of course category:siluriformes - though it should already be linked in the introductory sentence of that category page) - if this is right it must be the wording that is confusing me.HappyVR 20:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Ignore the above if the actual current situation of categories ray finned fish and siluriformes is correct - in which case the way I'm reading the instructions is wrong.HappyVR 20:25, 26 June 2006 (UTC)


 * No, I think you misread it. The article specifically says don't add it to ray-finned fishes.  An article, whether it's a species article or higer taxa, should only be in one taxonomic category; the most specific.  This is to avoid the situation that Wikipedia had a year or so ago (according to Kerripaul on my talk page) where there was one category "FISH" with 500 or so jumbled articles.  He's the guy who apparently created most of the fish taxonomy category structure as it is today.  Neil916 21:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Category by region
I've added Category:deep sea fish tentatively - don't want to start using this category until somebody can confirm that there is not a better term.

Also 'fish of the caribbean', 'fish of the south china sea' - should these cats. exist?HappyVR 19:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Which redudant category should be merged to the other?
Category:Sturgeons and Category:Acipenseridae are redundant and should be merged. Which fits convention and should survive, which doesn't and should go? One is the common English name for the family, one is the scientific name for the family. GRBerry 15:57, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Categorization of genera by region
WP:FishCat currently says "Add higher taxa [e.g. genus] to a geographic region category only if all species in that taxa are natively found within one geographic region." - i.e. that higher taxa should be categorized differently to species. There are currently some articles that follow this rule (e.g. Garra) and some that don't (e.g. Rutilus).

What is the reason for this rule? (which was added by this edit) Should it apply to monotypic genera? Should it apply to extinct genera? (many of the articles currently not following this rule are for extinct genera) Should it apply at all? If it applies for fish then should it apply to other genera articles?

Unless there's a good reason for the rule I suggest removing it for simplification and consistency with other animal categorization. If not removed then it should be clarified (e.g. re monotypic genera). DexDor(talk) 06:42, 6 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Higher taxa of organisms (not just fish) generally don't have geographic categories. I would remove the advice that geographic categories should routinely be added to higher taxa. Monotypic genera can have geographic categories (I'd prefer to have the categories on the species redirect, but that isn't the usual practice). Fossil higher taxa could have geographic categories as well, but the categories should be broad (continents, not countries). Plantdrew (talk) 22:03, 6 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks, but is there a reason for categorizing genera articles by region differently to species articles?
 * Plant categorization says "Higher taxa are included only if endemic (for example, a genus endemic to Western Australia could have the genus article itself included in that category)." (i.e. as per fish) so perhaps that is the general rule to follow. I was hoping the rules wouldn't be this complex. DexDor(talk) 12:27, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what you mean by categorizing higher taxa articles differently to species articles. Are you referring to not putting higer taxa in geographic categories (as I suggested), or only putting higher taxa in a single geographic category, while putting species (potentially) in multiple categories (as the categorization guidance now reads)? Or is there another aspect of different categorization practices for species and higher taxa? Plantdrew (talk) 22:42, 7 February 2020 (UTC)


 * I've underlined the bit of your comment about the difference I'm querying the reason for. I'm writing an advice page and it would be useful to explain the reason behind the rules (where it's not obvious). DexDor(talk) 07:06, 8 February 2020 (UTC)


 * , I have no idea what the reason for this difference is. I guess since higher taxa will have wider distributions than species, it's intended to help keep the number of geographical categories down. But it doesn't make much sense to me. Why should a species that occurs in Colombia and Panama have geographic categories, but not a genus with the same distribution (assuming higher taxa are categorized geographically in the first place). There are a few threads starting with Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fishes/Archive_1 where categorization is discussed, but there's nothing specific about how to categorize geographically. The current wording was added in . I don't think the geographic categorization of fishes has ever really been discussed.


 * This is a pretty obscure advice page. WGSRPD has come up repeatedly on the Plants and Tree of Life talk pages, so taxonomy editors are somewhat aware of it, but there are hardly any talk mentions of this page. And if people aren't aware the page exists they may not be following it. I wasn't aware of it and had a discussion with the most active fish editor about a point of taxonomic categorization that is actually addressed (User_talk:Plantdrew/Archive_8).


 * I don't bother with geographic categorization much; I hadn't noticed that advice for plants also suggested including geographic categories on higher taxa, albeit in a limited way. Since I don't see geographic categories on higher taxa much, I thought, if anything, they were discouraged.


 * Frankly, Wikipedia categories are a very poor way to model distributions of organisms, and that's why I don't bother adding them myself. What would be useful to me is a category for all the fishes/plants found within e.g. a particular US state. But there's no practical way to categorize by every subnational division where a species occurs. With WGSPRD categories, plants in my state will be spread across a hierarchy of progressively larger units, and there's no guarantee that all taxa in the larger units occur in my state (since a plant that occurs in 44 states would be properly placed in Flora of the United States even though it doesn't occur in 4 of the continental states). Plantdrew (talk) 02:10, 11 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I agree. DexDor(talk) 12:32, 11 February 2020 (UTC)