Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lepidoptera/Archive8

Taxoboxes on Erebidae species
Pages for genera and ranks upward in Erebidae (in the newish sense) have, as far as I can see, been updated to reflect the new sense; but the highly numerous species pages still have taxoboxes and text which reflect the 'old' system of families, such as Arctiidae. I have started updating these, which puts their taxonomy out of sync with the most of the secondary sources, but in an orderly and easily explained way which I think is unproblematic. Anyway, previous updates by other editors down to the level of genus have been done by introducing automatic taxoboxes. I've been replacing old-style taxoboxes in the species articles below those genera with new-style speciesboxes that pick up the taxonomic hierarchy from the genus, mainly because it's the simplest way to get consistency. Nobody has objected so far, but I thought I'd put a note here. William Avery (talk) 11:41, 20 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I seem to have just happened on one of those species pages. The references for Anumeta atrosignata and Anumeta in general all say the family is Noctuidae, and conversely List of noctuid genera:A says Anumeta is a noctuid genus - yet the taxoboxes disagree and say the family is Erebidae. Maybe I missed something, but I didn't see anything on there being a "new sense", I just see automatic species boxes contradicting the given sources. What's going on? Huon (talk) 09:32, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The problem is that the taxonomy is in a state of transition, while the results of studies in molecular phylogenetics are digested. Its not difficult to rustle up a reference that says Anumeta is in Erebidae, such as Fauna Europaea. The research behind the revision is mainly a series of papers by Reza Zahiri, such as the one referenced on the page Toxocampinae, which I notice you have edited in the past. There's further information at Erebidae. William Avery (talk) 21:05, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The article Catocalinae illustrates the mess as well. If you click through to the genera listed there as incertae sedis it's a toss up whether they are now listed in Noctuidae or Erebidae. And List of noctuid genera:A hasn't been updated in any substantial way since it was created in 2007. As for a list of erebid genera, well list of arctiid genera: A-M would make a start. William Avery (talk) 21:33, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey Proposal to Revive Popular Pages
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Ennomomima Toulgoët, 1991
Vincent & Laguerre (2010, 2014) listed Ennomomima as a synonym of Zatrephes, and www.funet.fi has a Zatrephes page that follows suit. Does anyone have any objections to following the funet page as a source, or to the Ennomomima species pages being moved using WP:RMT? William Avery (talk) 20:11, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
 * No objections, and presumably by the long silence here, neither does anyone else. Besides, we follow funet on a lot of articles except where there's strong, recent, sources arguing the opposite, anyway.
 * I've got the page mover userright, so I've added moving the species to my increasingly-long (currently at 43, "Ennomomima" spp. excluded) list of articles needing movement. Feel free to request at RMT if you prefer, though&mdash;it may be a few days until I can get around to moving them. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 21:13, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the ping. I have to admit it had errm... "slipped my mind somewhat". William Avery (talk) 21:48, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * (hope you don't mind the second ping, I'm just not sure to what degree my Lepidoptera category-sorting is flooding your watchlist&mdash;not too much, I hope) You're welcome. With the amount of things that need doing regarding Wikiproject Tree of Life and its many sub-projects, that's no miracle--I certainly find myself looking at articles sometimes and think 'wait, hadn't I decided to go fix this page after [random other gnomish maintenance task three months earlier]?'. It's very easy to get sidetracked by the thousands of other things that also need fixing. On that note, if you don't see some pages start moving by the middle of next week, please feel free to remind me. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 22:30, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Not a problem. There's not shortage of things to do. William Avery (talk) 21:19, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Indeed there is not. Wikiproject Lepidoptera maintenance is a bit like vandal-fighting in that way: no matter how much you do, no matter which day you edit, there's always more to do. On a happy note, Zatrephes itself should now be up-to-date and I've moved-and-cleaned-up the first five species listed on Ennomomima. (Got around to it a bit later than expected, fell ill during the past week for a bit). Should be done in another few hours, after which I can redirect the page to Zatrephes. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 02:00, 18 December 2016 (UTC) &✅. :) AddWittyNameHere (talk) 04:16, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Well done! [[image:Illustration of a blush.png|frameless|upright=0.15]] William Avery (talk) 20:20, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Lophocampa donahuei
Is this really a seperate species? According to funet, http://www.nic.funet.fi/pub/sci/bio/life/insecta/lepidoptera/ditrysia/noctuoidea/arctiidae/arctiinae/lophocampa/#ingens, it appears to be a synonym of Lophocompa ingens. Lepindex doesn't list it at all.

My newbie question: do we delete this entry? Added it as a synonym to L. ingens? I'm still unsure of the process in these cases.
 * Add it as a synonym to ingens and turn it into a redirect. I already did in this case. You are doing great work by the way. Keep it up! Ruigeroeland (talk) 10:42, 22 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello,

Your post was not signed (doesn't matter, damned complicated wikipedia.....) - and I just guess that you are user:ThorbyTech Thanks for cropping the images from those historical Schaus plates. Regards Tonton I&#39;m so tired (talk) 14:55, 30 December 2016 (UTC) user:Tonton Bernardo

Newbie question
Balacra compsa From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Balacra vitreata)

In genus list for Balacra, Balacra vitreata redirects to Balacra compsa. From what I can tell Balacra vitreata is not really a synonym at all, but a variant of a Rothschild synonym. Any input would be appreciated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ThorbyTech (talk • contribs) 06:58, 16 November 2016 (UTC)


 * AfroMoths is the only source cited in the Balacra compsa article, and Afromoths does treat B. vitreata as a synonym. On the other hand, LepIndex lists B. vitreata as a valid species. I don't know whether LepIndex or AfroMoths is a better source in this case. Google Scholar shows a snippet of text from a 2013 review article that suggests that some people treat B. vitreata as a synonym; I can't view the full article, but the preview text ends at a point where it appears to be introducing the views of people who treat B. vitreata as valid. Plantdrew (talk) 15:45, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. I will let it be for now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ThorbyTech (talk • contribs) 05:36, 17 November 2016 (UTC)


 * for African moths, the better source is afromoths. Lepindex is bax, for quite many years, sometimes for a decade or two. I think they are still at Poole's classification.

For species from other continents they are sometimes the only source, so no way to get around them/ Regds I&#39;m so tired (talk) 15:01, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Colotis eucharis and Colotis aurora
It seems Colotis eucharis needs to merged with Colotis aurora. See http://www.ifoundbutterflies.org/sp/690/Colotis-aurora J e e  04:08, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * hello

Seems quite logical and well researched, I'll make a redirect to Colotis aurora regards I&#39;m so tired (talk) 14:01, 8 January 2017 (UTC) User:Tonton_Bernardo

Caleta caleta and Caleta decidia
Both are same and it seems the preferred name now is Caleta decidia. J e e 08:22, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

WikiJournal of Science promotion
T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 10:38, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Article exposure
Neopalpa is linked from Neopalpa donaldtrumpi. The latter will get homepage exposure including a photo in a few hours. The former article isn't in good shape. It would be good if members of this project could give Neopalpa some attention.  Schwede 66  18:58, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
 * lol

A pest species ? Tonton_Bernardo I&#39;m so tired (talk) 05:37, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Chilades contracta and Chilades parrhasius
Both are same and the preferred name now seems Chilades parrhasius. J e e 09:15, 13 January 2017 (UTC)


 * preferred names don't exist

Hello Jkadavoor, Thanks for your efforts on those butterflies. Preferred names do not exist. If there is a synonyms, there's a rather simple rule: the earlier description (= the first name given) preveals before later descriptions. It'q also called senior synonym - and all others (later) made descriptions become therefore junior synonyms. That 's just some of the bureaucracy... hehe.

For the first species mentioned above:  that's a little bit more difficult: both were described in the same year and same author (probably in the same publication): so it would be needed to look up his publication to see, which one was described first.

The second species complex is easier:  Fabricius did it a lot of time earlier.But for both complex there's no sources for such synomysation (maybe you now a publication? ) Should be take up first in some other databases, for citation. Best regards I&#39;m so tired (talk) 05:51, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Neopalpa donaldtrumpi rfc
As a note there is a rather contested RFC happening at Talk:Neopalpa donaldtrumpi on what details of the type description should be included in the article. Further opinions are needed to give clarity on how to proceed.-- Kev min  § 06:33, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * so much attention ?

So much attention on 100mg of biological matter? I'd prefer to give half of this to the 50.000 species that are completely missing or the 250.000 moths species stubs. rgds I&#39;m so tired (talk) 02:59, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * PS

as ps: as there's a population of that moth in Baja California - I'd be ready to make a 4-years study on genetical degeneration of this species due to an eventual construction of a wall and isolation of populations. I'd suggest publication of the results 3 months before 2020 elections. I&#39;m so tired (talk) 03:10, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Proposed merges
The articles Lepidopterist and Aurelian (entomology) seem like virtually identical subjects, and I propose they be merged. Furthermore, there has been a proposed merger of Lepidopterist and Lepidopterology since 2014. Is there serious objection to all three being merged into the single article Lepidopterology, which can discuss the history of the science as well as prominent lepidopterists? --Animalparty! (talk) 03:37, 18 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes to triple merge. Lepidopterology could do with some love & material; what is covered in the other two should really be treated here. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs)
 * Definite merge. Incidentally, "heterocerist" is an English word (at least in Japan), but nobody seems to call themselves a "rhopalocerist". William Avery (talk) 20:40, 26 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I have boldly redirected both Lepidopterist and Aurelian (entomology) to Lepidopterology. There was some poorly referenced content on Aurelian (entomology) regarding British Aurelian societies that might eventually be worth incorporating into an expanded article on the discipline, but didn't feel it was compelling to add it at this time. --Animalparty! (talk) 01:39, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Notice to participants at this page about adminship
Many participants here create a lot of content, may have to evaluate whether or not a subject is notable, decide if content complies with BLP policy, and much more. Well, these are just some of the skills considered at Requests for adminship.

So, please consider taking a look at and watchlisting this page:


 * Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll

You could be very helpful in evaluating potential candidates, and even finding out if you would be a suitable RfA candidate.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 01:07, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * lol, I'll vote for User:Ruigeroeland

I&#39;m so tired (talk) 01:02, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Ruigeroeland, now I 'pink'pinged you - may I suggest you (don't know where to to this, maybe you'll better suggest yourself. Regards

(talk holy, I&#39;m so tired I&#39;m so tired (talk) 08:12, 29 March 2017 (UTC) PS: just inscribed you here: Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll - I would appreciate feedback of other 'lepidopterists' !
 * Oh dear.. Thanks.. Not sure if I will be up for that though.. Seems to be quite time-consuming to be an admin. I prefer just working on Wikipedia content, and not be involved with all kinds of conflicts between users.. Anyway..: we'll see what happens. Thanks for the vote of confidence though! Ruigeroeland (talk) 10:21, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Indian Geometridae - List of moths of India (Geometridae)
Many lists and sites concerning Asian moths are rather uncomplete.

Having set up a page on List of moths of India (Geometridae) - based on a recent publication from 2016 - I think that there might be some species found that are not yet listed in the respective genera pages.

Have fun Tonton I&#39;m so tired (talk) 06:42, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Problem sadly isn't limited to Indian or even just all Asian moths or even all genera including some Asian moths. Lots and lots of our genera articles lack valid species, have valid species listed but under an outdated name, have species listed under both the valid name and one or more synonyms, still include species that have long since been moved to other genera, etc. But yes, Asian moths are certainly not in the best state among those. Since you have created a nice up-to-date list there (that should hopefully be mostly complete), I'll see about checking the genera articles and updating them where necessary or create them where absent over the next couple of days/weeks. I'm also involved in several other large-scale editing tasks right now, though (redirect-categorization of Lepidoptera redirects; setting up a Butterfly counterpart to the Moths by year of formal description categorization tree; adding taxon-author categories where appropriate and adding missing wikilinks to taxon-authors and synonym-authors listed in articles and infoboxes; converting the deprecated redr-templates to rcat shell; categorizing species-articles with at least broad location categories where no locationcat is present yet in advance of sorting out that part of the categorization tree and occasionally moving monotypic moth genera from species title to genus title (or genus to article if genus title is parenthetically disambiguated) per WP:MONOTYPICFAUNA) so I'm not exactly running out of work to do anytime soon and updating genera pages will be done somewhat sporadically in between those other tasks. EDIT:Forgot to sign, so ping will also have failed. Re-ping: AddWittyNameHere (talk) 07:08, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Hello Add Witty, without name (and all others)

Yes, a lot is missing - therefore I appreciate this work of [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295907994_Checklist_of_Indian_Geometridae Gunathilagaraj Kandasamy (2016). Checklist of Indian Geometridae with FBI number.docx. - Tamil Nadu Agricultural University] - Gunathilagaraj, K. so much. Fortunately some Indian scientists have recently 'attacked' their moths. Unfortunately this is not the case everywhere.

I have recently checked on some families in South America - holy godness, what a mess.

But also this wikipedia taxonomic database started once with a whole mess of synonyms and outdated data. Slowly its becoming quite performing. Best regards to all of you & good continuation. User:Tonton_Bernardo I&#39;m so tired (talk) 08:07, 29 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Aye, we're starting to slowly get somewhere. It's mostly a lack of hands and lots of outdated data. And different (real-world) authors following different revisions and disagreements on what are or aren't synonyms (and what's valid) in some of the families certainly doesn't help. Nor does the fact that many of the available databases themselves are outdated. The more visible families that didn't go through huge revisions the past decade-and-a-half seem to be getting somewhere, but the less visible stuff...some of it is lucky to get one edit every two-three years if that, and every now and then I come across articles where I'm the first to edit this decade, and that's not because those articles are so complete and perfect that there is nothing left to do. (And some of the really huge revisions *cough*Noctuidae/Erebidae*cough* are such massive tasks that it'd really require multiple people working together for a long time to have any chance of getting something done there.) I haven't yet gotten around to doing much in regards to what you said--been having some internet troubles the past week, but those seem to now be resolved. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 16:33, 1 April 2017 (UTC)

Proposed speedy moves of Platyptiliini categories
I have proposed moving the following categories to correct the spelling.
 * Category:Platyptilini -> Category:Platyptiliini
 * Category:Platyptilini stubs -> Category:Platyptiliini stubs
 * See WP:CFDS. William Avery (talk) 19:57, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Automatic taxoboxes
Hello, WP Lepidoptera. Over at WP Insects, we're having a discussion about recommending insect pages be moved from traditional taxoboxes to automatic taxoboxes and speciesboxes. We'd value your input on our discussion page! M. A. Broussard (talk) 02:24, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Extant Lepidoptera families template
Where should the template Lepidoptera be used? Right now it seems to be used somewhat randomly. It seems clear that it should be used in all the articles which are linked in the template. Should it also be used other clades' articles such as genus and species or other Lepidoptera articles? Should it be used in all Lepidoptera articles as a default? What do people think? Thanks, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   15:51, 7 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Taxonomy navboxes like this seem to be a fad from an earlier era of Wikipedia and aren't created much today. I don't like them at all. I think they offer little benefit to the typical reader (and they're not even displayed for mobile users), and are a major detriment to editors; they provide yet another area where the handful of Wikignomes working on organisms have to struggle to keep everything up to date taxonomically, and they mess up any tasks that involve looking at incoming links. If navboxes are used, they should only appear in articles that are included in the navbox itself (or articles which should be included in the navbox; since navboxes are often out of date taxonomically). Plantdrew (talk) 01:59, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
 * My thinking matches with yours. If there's no objection, after a couple of days I will begin removing that template from the articles that are not linked from within it. Thanks, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   23:48, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Popular pages report
We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, will post at /Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of. We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:
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Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:15, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Laertes or Epistrophus
There is a merge proposal related to Morpho laertes and Morpho epistrophus, with discussion at Talk:Morpho epistrophus. There is a dispute as to the relevant authority to determine a direction of merge, so opinions would be welcome. Klbrain (talk) 20:02, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Insects of New Zealand edit-a-thon, 3 September 2017
Members of this wikiproject might be interested in participating, remotely or in person, in an upcoming edit-a-thon. With the support of the University of Auckland, I'll be helping run an all-day workshop centred on the 52 species depicted on the Insects of New Zealand playing cards. It'll be 10:00 am – 4:00 pm NZST on the Tāmaki campus, free to attend, with lunch and refreshments supplied. We have 7 signed up so far, mostly postgraduate students new to Wikipedia, so we could use experienced editors. If anybody else wants to join in please go to the #NZInsectCards project page for more details, including the list of species, and to register. Remote participants from all around the world are welcome! Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 03:45, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

Welcome students of WashU
Wikipedia has about a million rules, but you don't need to know them in order to start. My suggestion is to find good articles about moths and butterflies and try to do what they do. Of course you can't copy them, but you can use them as a guide. I trust that your professor is giving you good advice. If you have any questions, feel free to ask here, in the Teahouse or at the Help desk. Enjoy! SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨  22:01, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Category:Butterflies described in 1758
Anyone out there know why the above category states it should be empty on the talk page? Moths and beetles have their own category pages for the description year, and I know butterflies are pretty popular (dragonflies also). The Insects category looks pretty unwieldy now, so by adding a couple of categories, I think things will be a little tighter.....Pvmoutside (talk) 16:34, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Linking to Afromoths
I'm thinking of putting the text below into the Online resources section of the project page.

Does that make sense? Anything I should add or take out? Thanks, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   06:34, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Tamsica floricolans or Tamsica floricolens
Could someone who actually knows what they are doing from a taxonomic point of view check to see if the correct spelling of this moth is Tamsica floricolans or Tamsica floricolens. I renamed the article based on, but it could be in error there. There's a card at LepIndex, but I can't make sense of that. Suggestions? SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨  02:36, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
 * There seems to have been an attempt in 1888 to modify the spelling here. Plantdrew (talk) 03:36, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Suggestions for subdividing Category:Spilomelinae stubs
I'm trying to think of a good structure of subcategories to subdivide Category:Spilomelinae stubs into more manageable groups of around 200, but the best I could think of was alphabetical categories by genus. Do people have any better ideas?
 * 1) GenusASpilomelinae-stub - 217 stubs
 * 2) GenusB-CisSpilomelinae-stub - 188 stubs
 * 3) GenusCna-DiaSpilomelinae-stub - 214 stubs
 * 4) GenusDic-FSpilomelinae-stub - 189 stubs
 * 5) GenusGad-LinSpilomelinae-stub - 200 stubs
 * 6) GenusLio-MimSpilomelinae-stub - 217 stubs
 * 7) GenusMuk-PanSpilomelinae-stub - 189 stubs
 * 8) GenusPar-PoliSpilomelinae-stub - 184 stubs
 * 9) GenusPoly-PseSpilomelinae-stub - 189 stubs
 * 10) GenusPyc-SatSpilomelinae-stub - 201 stubs
 * 11) GenusSca-SylSpilomelinae-stub - 290 stubs
 * 12) GenusSym-ZSpilomelinae-stub - 191 stubs

Cross-posted at Talk:WikiProject Stub sorting

-Furicorn (talk) 05:48, 4 October 2017 (UTC)


 * , I concur as a member of WikiProject Lepidoptera. In the absence of any dissent, you may like to proceed. AshLin (talk) 15:08, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

MONA numbers
On pages like List of moths of North America (MONA 4618-5509), several species have a MONA number with a letter following it,

For example:


 * 4710 W - Scoparia normalis
 * 4973.1 E - Ecpyrrhoerrhoe puralis
 * 6326 B - Macaria aemulataria

What do those letters indicate? There is nothing on this on the pages. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:14, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I see that those were present in the earliest live version of the page. I'll ping who put that together in March 2011.


 * What I think is the latest version of the list that this is based on is here and it doesn't have them. The list here that I think was the basis for those lists doesn't have them. Not much help, but some ideas anyway. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   00:20, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Category discussion
Members of this project are invited to take part in a discussion about the geographical categorization of moths. DexDor(talk) 11:44, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Dead links to Afromoths
In trying to fix dead links to Afromoths and I've got some I can't figure out. I've made some notes at Talk:Metarbelodes obliquilinea, Talk:Hellinsia tripunctatus and Talk:Mesoptila festiva. I would appreciate help from someone with fresh eyes and more experience than I have. Thank you. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨  04:56, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

New phylogeny of the butterflies
A new phylogeny of the butterflies has been provided in the following paper :

"Marianne Espeland, Jesse Breinholt, Keith R. Willmott, Andrew D. Warren, Roger Vila, Emmanuel F.A. Toussaint, Sarah C. Maunsell, Kwaku Aduse-Poku, Gerard Talavera, Rod Eastwood, Marta A. Jarzyna, Robert Guralnick, David J. Lohman, Naomi E. Pierce, Akito Y. Kawahara. A Comprehensive and Dated Phylogenomic Analysis of Butterflies. Current Biology, 2018; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.01.061"

Any comments on how to work this into the phylogeny section of Lepidoptera? AshLin (talk) 18:29, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

RfC on categorizing by year of formal description
Please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life for a discussion on possible guidelines for categorizing by year of formal description of a species. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:55, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

LepIndex
Does anyone know what's up with LepIndex? The small sample of links I've checked today, like http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/research/projects/lepindex/search/detail.dsml?UserID=&UserName=&TaxonNo=31468.0&SCIENTIFIC_NAME_on_card=rubrilatera&listPageURL=list.dsml%3fSCIENTIFIC_NAME_on_cardqtype%3dstarts%2bwith%26sort%3dSCIENTIFIC%255fNAME%255fon%255fcard%26SCIENTIFIC_NAME_on_card%3dboettgeri%26recLimit%3d30&searchPageURL=index.dsml%3fsort%3dSCIENTIFIC%255fNAME%255fon%255fcard%26SCIENTIFIC_NAME_on_cardqtype%3dstarts%2bwith%26SCIENTIFIC_NAME_on_card%3dboettgeri%26recLimit%3d30 for example, now return a 404 error. Using their search function for the same species brings me to a page with a different format for the URL, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/data/lepindex/detail/?taxonno=31468&&snoc=rubrilatera&search_type=starts&sort=snoc&indexed_from=1&page_no=1&page_size=30&path=search in this case. I fear there are tens of thousands of such links in Wikipedia which may no longer work.

Taxonbar links have the same result.

The LepIndex homepage now says "Database last updated January 2018". However their How to cite page still has a 2003 date.

Thanks, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   03:35, 14 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I don't know, either. Probably best if you ask NHM direct?  Tony Holkham   (Talk)  07:05, 14 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I've sent an email to a person at the Natural History Museum whom I've communicated with in the past about some errors I've found in LepIndex. I've also put a note on the Wikidata discussion page for LepIndex ID. It seems that it might be possible for a bot to pull out what was in the format "TaxonNo=31468.0" and turn that into a template that could replace old links, but I don't know anything about how that works. Still looking for ideas. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   21:43, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Seems like http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/data/lepindex/detail/?taxonno=31468 works - so have made a slight correction to the template LepIndex and it seems like it works now. And yes, it should be possible to programmatically truncate old ids at the decimal point and use them without having to edit many pages. Shyamal (talk) 03:28, 15 April 2018 (UTC)
 * - have added the truncation option - so old taxon ids should work. Shyamal (talk) 13:43, 16 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Since LepIndex maintenance has been incomplete, I have preferred using Markku Savela's taxonomy website to cross check & further understanding/research. AshLin (talk) 14:22, 16 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The person I emailed at the NHM forwarded my email to some other people who he thought might know more about what's going on, but I haven't heard anything from them. I've just been on Markku Savela's site and many of his pages have links to LepIndex which no longer work, so this is not just effecting Wikipedia. The work that 's done with the template and on Wikidata seems to be going in the right direction, but we don't know if the changes at LepIndex are permanent or if there might be more changes coming. It also seems to be dependent on changes of the LepIndex ID that need to take place in Wikidata and I don't know what's going on there. Also there are thousands of regular references to LepIndex, not using the template, that no longer work. I think it might be possible to go after those with AWB, but that's going to be time consuming and I'm reluctant to start when we don't know if this is a permanent change. Still looking for ideas. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   20:59, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Fixing links in references
I've been playing with this using AWB, but I know just enough about programming to be dangerous and I'd appreciate if someone else would look this over. I've done several dozen of these and they seem to work.

A search for gives over 7,000 results all of which look like links to LepIndex,
 * insource:"www.nhm.ac.uk" insource:"taxonno" -insource:" http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/data/lepindex/detail/?taxonno= "

replacing
 * http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/data/lepindex/search/detail.dsml?UserID=&UserName=&TaxonNo=
 * http://www.nhm.ac.uk/jdsml/research-curation/research/projects/lepindex/detail.dsml?TaxonNo=
 * http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/data/lepindex/search/detail.dsml?TaxonNo=
 * http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/research/projects/lepindex/search/detail.dsml?TaxonNo=
 * http://www.nhm.ac.uk/jdsml/research-curation/research/projects/lepindex/detail.dsml?UserID=&UserName=&TaxonNo=
 * http://internt.nhm.ac.uk/jdsml/research-curation/projects/lepindex/detail.dsml?TaxonNo=
 * http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/research/projects/lepindex/search/detail.dsml?UserID=&UserName=&TaxonNo=
 * and others as found,

with
 * http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/data/lepindex/detail/?taxonno=

and changing the number following "taxonno=" to remove the ".0" and deleting the rest of the url seems to solve the problem.

Could this be automated, or should I just slog through? Or am I doing something wrong? Some of the links go to the wrong species now, but I think (based on Internet Archive) that they have been wrong for years and are going to the same place they used to. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨  00:41, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I think replacing the links with the template would be better since any future changes could be handled at one central location. Shyamal (talk) 04:34, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Excellent idea. That will work well where the reference is just in the form "LepIndex", but some are formatted like a regular reference such as "" Also in looking at these, maybe ten percent of the links don't go to a page with the same name as the article title. For instance a page may have links to the wrong species, a synonym of the species or genus, a species in a genus article, or who knows what. Maybe I could go through and do the simple ones that way and do the more complicated ones separately.I'd love to keep it simple, but I don't want to lose information which may be helpful. Does the template have any undocumented parameters such as a way to put in a different name than the page name?I've done 400 so far and I'm thinking about ways to further automate it if I can figure out the regex. I'll think more tomorrow. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   05:22, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the formatting of the LepIndex template to yield something like all other citations is entirely desirable - I did leave a message on this on the talk page of the template for  - unfortunately, using the citation templates (and LUA ) is not something I have had enough experience with to be able to handle. Shyamal (talk) 05:34, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Make LepIndex a wrapper for cite web, you mean? I can do that, if there are no objections. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:49, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you mean by "a wrapper", but if that means that the parameters in would be available in , that sounds like a winner. I'd also love to see it look more like a normal reference. I'll comment with specifics on the talk page for the template. Thanks for your help.  SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   18:55, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Have gone ahead and made the LepIndex template into a wrapper for Cite web Shyamal (talk) 11:39, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Update
I've done about the first 1100 of these, converting them to use the template. There are now 6,183 to go that I've identified. This will take a while.

I'd be happy to share the work. I've developed an AWB script that saves a lot of effort, but is not foolproof. I'd be happy to share that. It averages me about a minute each.

I change from wikitext to the template, check the existing "taxonno" without the ".0" against the LepIndex database and the article title, specify the name used at LepIndex as needed, and make corrections in Wikipedia as needed. If anybody sees any mistakes I make, please point them out. I hate to make mistakes, but with this many I'm sure I'll make some.

I'm looking forward to the updating of the template as we've discussed here and at Template talk:LepIndex. After that is done, I may go back and make the references more template compliant, and may fill in more information in the template going forward, making the template as good as the best of the old references and much more adaptable.

I've heard nothing substantive from the Natural History Museum. I don't know what's going on at Wikidata re. links through Taxonbar. Any ideas?

Thank you, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   22:34, 23 April 2018 (UTC)


 * - I'd be happy to put some time in, but the changes to be made would have to be very simple (and I mean that), otherwise I would be more of a hindrance (I thought each species would be looked up in LepIndex and the url pasted into the link on the WP page to replace the wrong one, but I am probably misunderstanding the concept of templates).  Tony Holkham   (Talk)  08:27, 24 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Honestly it's pretty complicated. If a person were comfortable with taxonomy of Lepidoptera, AWB, regex, templates and Wikipedia reference formats, I think they could pick it up pretty quick, but without all of those I think it would be pretty hard. Are you registered to use AWB? If you think it sounds like fun, let me know and I can show you what I'm doing. Thanks, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   20:37, 24 April 2018 (UTC)


 * It does rather look beyond me. I had to look up what AWB was! Good luck with it.  Tony Holkham   (Talk)  20:44, 24 April 2018 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't expect much from Wikidata right now. The editor who is most likely to take care of the issue there (Succu) has been blocked for a month. Plantdrew (talk) 00:11, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
 * But I notice Succubot has been updating the Lepindex refs. See here William Avery (talk) 11:55, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Update 2
I've gone through and fixed all the broken species and genera links I could find. I've also gone through and fixed links to the search page that no longer worked.

There were several articles where I couldn't figure out what was originally intended or perhaps LepIndex has changed since they were created. I have not fixed: Copromorphoidea, Stiriinae and Ratardinae.

I don't know what's gone on at Wikidata, but the Taxonbars of articles I've looked at recently seem to be working.

I'm not aware of anything else that needs to be done, but I could have missed whole categories of things. If anyone knows of any other links to LepIndex that aren't working as they should, let me know and I'll try and fix them.

Thanks, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨   04:14, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Propose stub category for Pyrausta
I'm not actually a member of this project; for many years, I've been making it my project here to tidy up categories. I recently set up a category for the genus Pyrausta; the category is a subcategory for the huge subfamily Pyraustinae. Pyraustinae also has a huge stub category, with a note that it might be good to set up subcategories. I propose to set up--and populate--a stub category for the genus Pyrausta; I estimate it would contain almost 300 articles--removing the same number of articles from the Pyraustinae subcategory. But it's come to my attention that not every project necessarily wants large categories subcategorised. So I thought I'd run it up the flagpole here, and see who salutes. Uporządnicki (talk) 13:19, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't be a problem as far as I know. I've requested similar categories a few times and have had no complaints about it. It's mainly that with a rather limited number of active editors in the project, years and years of backlog on many different issues, about 101,000 different articles (and probably around four times as many non-article mainspace pages such as redirects even if redirs aren't formally tagged under our banner) and over 1550 different categories, subdivision of stub-categories containing a couple hundred articles just isn't exactly high up on the priority list of anyone. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 17:40, 1 June 2018 (UTC)

Post-Caftaric category straightening-out/clean-up.
User:Caftaric has been indeffed as block-evading sock. They were incredibly active in single-handedly categorizing pages, creating categories, and related matters without discussion within the Lepidoptera area and frankly speaking created a mess. I've fixed boldly fixed some of the most blatant issues regarding the placement of those categories, but I doubt it's a good idea for me to equally single-handedly start undoing their work.

Some of their creations are valid enough (extending various of the 'taxa by rank' structures down into Lepidoptera, for example), others (especially everything related to higher taxonomical division of Lepidoptera) have resulted in a multilayer-hell partially divorcing the existing-and-widely-applied moth structure from its categorization trees.

(Look for example at . Okay, nice, there's, with one monotypic subcategory and a Geometridae subcategory. Reasonable. On the other hand, not so reasonable is that there also exists, for example, , four layers down the mess, and in no way connected to , even though Megalopygidae certainly are moths. Same with various other (super)family specific moth genera categories: they exist, but they're in the other tree only.)

At this point, there's a handful of options I can think of:


 * 1) Abandoning the moth/butterfly division in most of the tree in favour of a pure taxonomical division;
 * 2) 'Doubling up on categorization on relevant articles, such as placing e.g. Aithorape in both'' Category:Moth genera and Category:Megalopygidae genera;
 * 3) Keeping as many of their categories as reasonably possible while slotting them into the moth/butterfly structure, manually re-categorizing those articles necessary and emptying-out-then-CfDing those categories incompatible with a moth/butterfly division due to containing both (e.g. Glossata, Heteroneura, etc.) as well as the limited number of categories that might otherwise be deemed non-feasible (small categories not part of a consistent structure);
 * 4) '''Resorting as many of the articles out of Caftaric-created categories as possible while keeping only those categories that are sensible non-taxonomical extensions of an existing categorization structure (keeping stuff like "Lepidoptera/Butterflies/Moths described in [year]" categories and "Lepidoptera/Butterfly/Moth [taxon rank]" categories while removing pretty much everything else)
 * 5) Dumping the entirety of Lepidoptera-related categories at CfD

In my opinion, 1 and 2 are only theoretically feasible due to the sheer amount of categories and articles involved. 5 is almost certain to overwhelm CfD and beyond that will either result in discussing which categories to keep anyway or if they're all removed result in a massive amount of articles needing to be recategorized. Of the remaining options, 3 and 4, my preference is for 3 as this appears to me to be the sole solution that might actually be manageable before the end of this decade. However, I welcome other opinions. Due to the low activity of this WikiProject and the fact most of our editors are active in the wider Tree of Life anyway, I'll be cross-posting a notice to the WP:WikiProject Tree of Life. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 20:23, 18 June 2018 (UTC)


 * Moth/butterfly division works well for "by location" categories (but I wouldn't split locations any further, e.g. no Category:Plume moths of Africa). Moth/butterfly is OK for "described in year", although I think it is rather pointless to subdivide "described in year" beyond Lepidoptera (none of the Lepidoptera in year categories would be especially large anyway). Butterfly/moth doesn't map well to taxonomic/"taxon rank" categories and I wouldn't work too hard to shove taxonomic categories into butterflies/moths. Looking at the category tree, a shining example of where Caftaric went way off the rails is Category:Macrolepidoptera genera, which is in Category:Ditrysia genera, which is in Category:Heteroneura genera, which is in Category:Glossata genera, which is in Category:Lepidoptera genera. Sheesh. Ditrysia is three levels down, and still includes 98% of Lepidoptera species. There's no point to a series of categories which shaves off a tiny fraction of the whole with each step down, but this was Caftaric's modus operandi across many sections of the tree of life. There are 120ish lepidopteran families, which could well have "FAMILYidae genera" as direct subcategories of of "Lepidoptera genera" without overwhelming it; the categories between Lepidoptera genera and the family genera are useless. I haven't used it myself, but I've seen some edits on en.wiki using the Cat-a-lot gadget, which could be helpful if you're looking into large scale recategorizations. Plantdrew (talk) 02:10, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The main reason for the subdivision in the "in year" categories is that the moth half of the tree is by far older than the Lepidoptera/Butterfly side of the tree. Creating the missing half is easier and less disruptive than renaming when that'd have involved edits to tens of thousands of moth species articles. But yeah, while not harmful, not the most useful division either. For the most part, locations haven't been split further by taxonomy, with exception of South America. I don't particularly care either way on that issue, though. It's not necessary but not quite harmful either. If I were to tackle a location-cat issue, the country subcats are far more problematic.
 * You are right that taxonomic categorization and butterfly/moth doesn't mesh particularly well, though complications are pretty much limited to higher-level taxa. For everything superfamily and below, it's not particularly hard to combine taxonomically-valid categorization with moth/butterfly categorization.
 * Yes, the useless layers for taxons in ranks between Order and Superfamily (or in cases of one-family superfamilies, Family) is exactly the type of stuff I feel should be resolved. I'd personally also keep the Moth genera/Butterfly genera "in between" rank, in part because the majority of articles have been tagged with those rather than a more specific subcategory and in part because it significantly eases the combining of the taxonomical- and moth/butterfly categorization structures. (My opinion on keeping them might chance once I eventually get around to diffusing their contents; for now at least they serve a purpose, though) Everything else there is basically junk as far as usefulness goes.
 * They've made a similar mess of the Lepidoptera stub-categorization tree (though I might try to handle that through the Stub Sorting project alongside their non-Lepidoptera stub-template/category messes if I ever get around to it), every other Lepidoptera by-taxon-rank category and the generic Lepidoptera taxonomy tree. Some of their other Lepidoptera efforts aren't exactly useful either but don't do much harm. (Though there's a few bottom-end cats I'll eventually dump at CfD for being far too small&mdash;low priority though)
 * Provided I get no feedback suggesting other solutions or disagreeing with the solution I'd prefer, my intention/preference is to just reshuffle the lower-level categories back to where they were pre-Caftaric/would have been had someone not Caftaric created them; manually recategorize the loose articles in the higher-level categories they created; and once empty, list those at CfD.
 * Should be able to wrap that up in at most 2-3 days from getting the okay (or not getting the "no don't do that" after waiting sufficient time for folks to say so if they want to&mdash;depends on if enough people even show up here to form anything remotely resembling an explicit rather than implied consensus). Reshuffling the low-end categories is only a couple dozen edits and recategorizing the articles stuck loosely in Caftaric-created high-end categories is a couple hundred, I think. (Regarding Cat-a-lot: I personally use HotCat, which works well-enough for my purposes, including larger-scale (re-)categorization. A quick glance at Cat-a-lot showed no functions I'd use that HotCat doesn't also provide, but I'll look at it a bit more in-depth later) AddWittyNameHere (talk) 03:28, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Request for comment on recommending usage of automatic taxoboxes
There is an RfC regarding recommending usage of automatic taxoboxes at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life. Inviting anybody who watches this page to contribute their thoughts to that thread.

WikiProject Lepidoptera is currently using automatic taxoboxes in 26.3% of project tagged articles that have any form of taxobox. Plantdrew (talk) 01:25, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

'Lepidoptera described in YYYY' categories submitted to CfD
@ Categories for discussion/Log/2018 October 12, per Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life & Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Insects. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 22:08, 12 October 2018 (UTC)