Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Archive 41

Request for comment: categorizing by year of formal description
Although there have been discussions at this WikiProject and some descendants on how to categorize by year of formal description, they did not result in a set of guidelines to assist editors, and, particularly in recent years, the system has become somewhat of a mess, with extra categories added without consensus (e.g. for "deuterostomes") or for only a few years for groups where there might be consensus. There are also strange extra categories (e.g. Category:Taxa by century), with no clear purpose, rationale or explanation as to how they fit into the overall scheme. I've prepared a draft set of guidelines at User:Peter coxhead/Categorizing by year of formal description.

I am requesting:
 * ideas for changes and improvements to my draft guidelines
 * agreement to move the guidelines resulting from this discussion into the space of this WikiProject.

Comments please. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:47, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

 * It seems is always involved in these messes, and that they never take part in wider discussions. Have anyone ever come through to them? If this continues, and Caftaric keeps ignoring recommendations, maybe some kind of action is needed. FunkMonk (talk) 10:52, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * If we can achieve an agreed set of guidelines with a clear consensus behind them, it will be much easier to resist changes by any editor, including Caftaric. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:59, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Note that was just blocked indefinitely as a sockpuppeteer, so now it might be time to overturn some of their more dubious deeds. FunkMonk (talk) 16:15, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I do think we should not focus on any one editors work on main space or talk page space in relation to this, but rather establish a consistent policy that goes across all the projects that are associated with the tree of life project.
 * One small problem is the increased uncertainty as to the future of portals. The usage of portal tags on main page space in categories, has helped where a category and any main space is all in latin - and there is nothing to identify whether the item is animal vegetable or mineral...
 * However - what Peter is suggesting - a unified across project system of established policy and framework for how the category trees for the projects are created and linked - I believe is something which the projects require. Consistency and established format - is something that should be encouraged. JarrahTree 12:04, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Not sure if these questions are germane in the present discussion but if explicit guidelines are being made it might be nice to be explicit about additional things that might be confusing: namely what to put as the year and when/if these cats should go in redirects instead of the actual article. It also might be worth being explicit this is about dates of publication, not when it was written/submitted for publication/had its preprint appear/etc. I would also appreciate explicit guidelines as to how to categorize by year with nomina nova: by the year the present replacement name was published or by the year the year associated with the earliest scientific name? (And does it matter if the first name was invalid to begin with due to a preexisting senior homonym in the genus, or became invalid later due to a subsequent transfer?)

I'd also appreciate clarity as to where to put the categories. It's my understanding based on past edits I've seen from other editors, that for monospecific genera, the Species-described-in-year cats should not go in the article titled with the genus name (which would also be the article for the species), but rather those categories should go on the redirect with the species name as the title. To give an example from articles I've written following what I understand to be consensus, the article for the monospecific genus Seycellesa does not contain as that would put a genus named in 2008 in that category; rather the category is in the redirect Seycellesa braueri so the  appears in the category. (I wish I could remember / find other examples that I didn't write...) But, it seems that when the title of an article is a common name, then these categories are in the article, even though these categories are about a particular binomen. So for instance Grey wolf has. Also do subspecies get these categories? I see a lot of articles for subspecies with them, e.g., Dog, East African wild dog, Bengal tiger... Thanks for any clarification; hopefully future guidelines can elucidate some of these issues Umimmak (talk) 13:22, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Ummimak raises some points that have long been in needed of clarification; how to deal with monospecific genera, vernacular name titles, nomina nova, and perhaps subspecies. Regarding monospecific genera, general practice seems to be putting the category on the species redirect, which is consistent with the guideline WP:INCOMPATIBLE. Working mostly on plant articles colors my perspective on vernacular name titles and nomina nova. ~400 plant articles (out of ~60,000) use vernacular name titles. For plants, usually both the binomial redirect and the vernacular titled article have the species/year category. I think that's fine for any group where vernacular name titles are rarely used, but am not sure about best practice for birds and mammals. Outside of birds and mammals, I do think the priority should be on categorizing the binomial redirect (per WP:INCOMPATIBLE; vernacular named taxa may have been described by Aristotle, but we're really taking about description under the ICZN/ICNafp), however I don't see much harm in also categorizing a handful of vernacular titled articles. Regarding nomina nova, there's a big difference between the ICZN and ICNafp in terms of how often the year relevant for priority purposes is the year that an organism was first described under the relevant code. The priority year for Arabidopsis thaliana is 1842, but it was first described scientifically as Arabis thaliana in 1753. A. thaliana is in the 1753 category. I don't pay a lot of attention to correcting species/year categories, but my impression is that plants are pretty consistently categorized by year of first description, not the year of the current combination. This leads me to think that animals should also go with year of first description, when the original name has been replaced due to secondary homonymy (though I'm less sure about how to treat taxa that were unavailable from their original description). Pterodontia westwoodi is currently categorized by the date of a replacement name, not the first description. Plantdrew (talk) 15:55, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah that's fair. Like I said I wasn't sure if these issues were part of the relevant discussion. I'm okay focusing just on 's proposal re (sub)categorization of the categories themselves at the moment; I just wanted to raise these while the topic of writing an explanation was at hand in case there was interest in having a more comprehensive guide to these cats. Umimmak (talk) 16:05, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I think that more detailed guidelines are needed, but I also think that most of them have to be discussed in lower level wikiprojects. As notes above, there are important differences between the nomenclature codes, so what may be appropriate for plants and fungi isn't necessarily so for animals, and there are very marked differences in the use of English names as titles. However, if there is anything more that works across all groups of organisms, then it should certainly be added to my draft. I was just trying to set out hopefully noncontroversial guidelines that apply to organisms generally. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:07, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd like to raise some points here about the taxonomic ranks, which alluded to. in 's essay it specifically mentions this is about species.  I feel that is fine, but either the categories need to explicitly state that (i.e. 'Plant species described in 2018') or they need to be diligently patrolled for all the genera and higher taxa that will end up there.  Also, what would be the solution for sorting higher taxa into categories by year of formal description, and how would that differ from what we would want for species? --Nessie (talk) 02:42, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * it's always been clear that only species are to be categorized by year of (formal) description. The same appoach could be extended to those ranks explicitly covered by a nomenclature code and hence where priority exists (i.e. families downwards) but I'm not aware that this has ever been discussed. Above genus, for many groups there aren't good secondary sources, as would be required. This would be a whole new discussion! Let's sort out the existing system for classifying species by year of description first. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:21, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * The restriction of this categorization to species has not been clear to me at all; I thought the main category was "Taxa described in ..." (see for example Category:Taxa described in 2001), and I have been adding higher-level taxa to these categories for fungi. I do not see why this categorization should be restricted to species, and would support a more inclusive scheme. Will watch this discussion. Polyporales (talk) 19:14, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not arguing that there couldn't be complete category hierarchies for other ranks up to family, but the only fully developed systems, e.g. like those for plants, animals, birds or fungi, are only for species because they have some form of "Species described in ..." category as an ancestor. Start at Category:Species described in the 18th century, for example. You can work your way down to Category:Fungi described in 1767, among others. So the fungi must be species, not other ranks. Unfortunately, random additions of categories without the use of an overall structure diagram like those in my draft has produced a muddle, and editors can't be blamed for not being clear how it was supposed to work. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:08, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not arguing that there couldn't be complete category hierarchies for other ranks up to family, but the only fully developed systems, e.g. like those for plants, animals, birds or fungi, are only for species because they have some form of "Species described in ..." category as an ancestor. Start at Category:Species described in the 18th century, for example. You can work your way down to Category:Fungi described in 1767, among others. So the fungi must be species, not other ranks. Unfortunately, random additions of categories without the use of an overall structure diagram like those in my draft has produced a muddle, and editors can't be blamed for not being clear how it was supposed to work. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:08, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

On the topic of "columns", I was curious to see what system is currently in place and hope this might be useful to others involved in the discussion. Here's what is already in place for 1758, 1800, 1850, 1900, 1950, 2000, and 2018. You'll note a lack of consistency... I think we can agree that all years should have the same supersets/subsets, yeah? The current system is confusing -- an editor should expect that if a category exists for one year it will exist for all years. To pick one, we have Corals described in 1758 1766, 1786, 1816, 1833, 1834, 1846, 1848, 1849. Should the corresponding category be made for all other years? Or should they be removed? Should an editor feel free to add a new year category if there is already a category for a different year or should year categories only be made by consensus of the relevent wikiprojects? And this is something that'll probably have to be discussed for each category... (I think I would also want to give my two cents and recommend against things like Protostomes described in year since this is not a particularly lay-friendly term.) Anyway, hoping these are representative, illustrative, and useful: Category:Species described in 1758

Animals described in 1758

Amphibians described in 1758

Arachnids described in 1758‎

Spiders described in 1758‎

Birds described in 1758

Corals described in 1758‎

Crustaceans described in 1758‎

Fish described in 1758‎

Insects described in 1758

Beetles described in 1758‎

Butterflies described in 1758‎

Moths described in 1758

Mammals described in 1758‎

Molluscs described in 1758

Plants described in 1758‎ Category:Species described in 1800

Animals described in 1800‎

Amphibians described in 1800‎

Birds described in 1800‎

Fish described in 1800‎

Insects described in 1800‎

Beetles described in 1800‎

Moths described in 1800‎

Mammals described in 1800‎

Molluscs described in 1800‎

Reptiles described in 1800‎

Fungi described in 1800‎

Plants described in 1800‎ Category:Species described in 1850

Animals described in 1850‎

Amphibians described in 1850‎

Birds described in 1850‎

Crustaceans described in 1850‎

Fish described in 1850‎

Insects described in 1850‎

Beetles described in 1850‎

Butterflies described in 1850‎

Moths described in 1850‎

Mammals described in 1850‎

Molluscs described in 1850‎

Gastropods described in 1850‎

Reptiles described in 1850‎

Spiders described in 1850‎

Fungi described in 1850‎

Plants described in 1850‎ Category:Species described in 1900

Animals described in 1900

Birds described in 1900‎

Fish described in 1900‎

Insects described in 1900‎

Beetles described in 1900‎

Lepidoptera described in 1900‎

Butterflies described in 1900‎

Moths described in 1900‎

Mammals described in 1900‎

Molluscs described in 1900‎

Gastropods described in 1900‎

Spiders described in 1900‎

Bacteria described in 1900‎

Fungi described in 1900‎

Plants described in 1900‎ Category:Species described in 1950

Bacteria described in 1950

Eukaryotes described in 1950‎

Animals described in 1950‎

Insects described in 1950‎

Beetles described in 1950‎

Moths described in 1950‎

Molluscs described in 1950‎

Gastropods described in 1950‎

Spiders described in 1950‎

Vertebrates described in 1950‎

Birds described in 1950‎

Fish described in 1950‎

Mammals described in 1950‎

Fungi described in 1950‎

Plants described in 1950‎ Category:Species described in 2000

Archaea described in 2000‎

Bacteria described in 2000‎

Eukaryotes described in 2000‎

Animals described in 2000‎

Insects described in 2000‎

Beetles described in 2000‎

Moths described in 2000‎

Molluscs described in 2000‎

Gastropods described in 2000‎

Spiders described in 2000‎

Vertebrates described in 2000‎

Birds described in 2000‎

Fish described in 2000‎

Mammals described in 2000‎

Reptiles described in 2000‎

Fungi described in 2000‎

Plants described in 2000‎ Category:Species described in 2018

Bacteria described in 2018‎

Eukaryotes described in 2018‎

Animals described in 2018‎

Protostomes described in 2018‎

Arthropods described in 2018‎

Insects described in 2018‎

Beetles described in 2018‎

Moths described in 2018‎

Spiders described in 2018‎

Molluscs described in 2018‎

Vertebrates described in 2018

Fish described in 2018‎

Umimmak (talk) 18:40, 30 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Also just to confirm is the Category:Fossil taxa by century etc a completely different system? Cause I would assume a fossil species is still a spider or a vertebrate or an insect or whatever, but it seems like these categories are systematically excluded from articles about fossil species, and this isn't intuitive to me. E.g. Aphaenogaster mersa does not have Category:Insects described in 1915 but only has Category:Fossil taxa described in 1915; Woolly mammoth does not have Category:Mammals described in 1799 but only has Category:Fossil taxa described in 1799, etc. If these are meant to be completely parallel systems I think it could be better clarified as well. Umimmak (talk) 18:56, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * you've raise a good question, to which I don't have a really good answer. I think that the categories we've been discussing so far are meant for extant species. One issue with extinct taxa is that we tend to concentrate on the genus rather than the species, so a slightly different approach seems justified The scenario I had in mind was that we would try to agree a basic set of guidelines here at the parent ToL WikiProject, but that there would then need to be more detailed guidelines relating to different groups, which could be discussed at the relevant lower level WikiProjects. I think this applies to extinct taxa. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:48, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * So the categories for A. mersa, Woolly mammoth, and other articles for fossil species, will need to be decided by WikiProject Insects, WikiProject Mammals, etc., in collaboration with I guess WikiProject Palaeontology. It just seemed like there was consensus based on articles for fossil species (which do exist; they're not all only discussed at genus-level -- mostly when there are other extant species in the same genus it seems) to only include the Fossil taxa described in YEAR category and not the Species described in YEAR category, and this is unclear from the current draft proposal. And if this is consensus now it should be stated in the overarching guideline.
 * Also, I think it could also be clearer with the Such subdivisions should only be created etc section what to do when there are such subdivision years for some years (e.g. coral as illustrated above). It is a basic tenet that all years should have the same subdivisions, yeah? This seems to be what you're envisioning with when there is a commitment to set up a more-or-less complete set of "Xs described in YEAR" categories, rather than a few random years. -- and I guess it's up to the relevant wikiprojects how to actually divvy them up? So whether the Coral described in YEAR categories get removed altogether or created for every year will need to result from a collaboration of WP:WikiProject Marine life and WP:WikiProject Animals.
 * I guess if all the details seem to either be under the purview for other sub-wikiprojects, then your proposal is completely unobjectionable but also not particularly helpful for an editor looking for guidance. The main points I get from your draft are that nothing articles for nothing above the species group should have such categories (further discussion as to subspecies, articles with common name titles, etc) and people should not create new categories willy-nilly without consensus from relevant wikiprojects, which are both unobjectionable. I suppose you're envisioning the wikiprojects forAnimals, Plants, Fungi, Bacteria, and Paleontology to work out the other minutiae which editors will have questions about, imho this decentralization is less than optimal -- especially since there ideally should be agreement and there probably will end up mostly being agreement. I just know from your draft I still have outstanding questions and ideally this would mostly get ironed out now instead of hoping sub wikiprojects will get around to it eventually. Particularly as the examples above and myriad others would already require multiple wikiprojects' input it made sense to me to hash out as much of the details at the Tree of Life level. Umimmak (talk) 02:01, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * it's clear that differences between the nomenclature codes mean that species named under the ICZN need somewhat different guidelines from those named under the ICNafp. WP:PLANTS already has guidance on categorizing by year of description; I think that some will also be needed at WP:ANIMALS. How much further to go down is up to wikiprojects, in my view: e.g. some groups have "by decade", some don't. This can be left to the lowest level. But, yes, my draft leaves questions unanswered – deliberately, because at this stage I didn't want to get bogged down in complex taxonomic issues, such as when exactly is the "year of first description" when there are replacement names, earlier descriptions attached to unacceptable names, etc. Step by step! Peter coxhead (talk) 07:40, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I think not stepping on the toes of other WikiProjects is good, but as the parent project ToL needs to set up guidelines. The sub projects can modify or abrogate the recommendations, but atleast they will know what most projects will be doing more or less.  I'm sure many projects will just want to match what the rest of the tree is doing, unless they need some sort of special consideration for something particular to their branch.  Specifically, in the case of fossil taxa, as they touch on every other project here and can include extant subtaxa, we should have a dialog with them parallel to this one. --Nessie (talk) 14:29, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * maybe I was being too pessimistic, but I've seen too many discussions like this get bogged down in disagreements about some of the details, with the result that nothing got decided. So my idea is that we would first agree a basic set of guidelines here. Once these guidelines are accepted, we can work on filling in more details, either here or at a lower level as seems most appropriate. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:29, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Related discussion - portals in these categories
Should we have relevant portals in these categories, for example on Category:Plants described in 1997? Also, seems unnecessary in that example category. Ping to who added them both. This RfC seemed the most apropos location for this question but might be a bit off-topic; feel free to move. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 04:26, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

!Votes

 * Support. My understanding is that the basic issues Peter's proposal seeks to clarify is that a)decade/century categories should be container categories and b)new subcategories require consensus, and if supported, an effort should be made to quickly create subcategories for all years. Plantdrew (talk) 16:55, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * On further thought, I'm not sure why we should have decade container categories; they are barely big enough to be viable (10 entries), and century categories would not be overly large without decades (100 items). Decades are mostly just an extra step to drill down through. Plantdrew (talk) 17:52, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm sympathetic to omitting decade categories – birds don't have them, for example. But I wouldn't want any disagreements about this issue to prevent agreement on the other parts of the draft. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:07, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * For clarity, I added to User:Peter coxhead/Categorizing by year of formal description a diagram showing how I think the categories should be for birds, where decades are omitted. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:28, 27 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Support the generalized notions here with one comment. To me as a professional taxonomist it seems more reasonable to consistently list species names in a category the reflects the original description, in its original combination. Irrespective of what its current combination is. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 04:09, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * This is what WP:WikiProject Plants/Description in year categories says for ICNafp names, with the example of Muscari racemosum Mill. (1768) which is a replacement name for Hyacinthus muscari L. (1753) and is categorized as "described in 1753". I'd be very happy for this to be added to the draft provided it's not controversial to apply the same to ICZN names. If it is, it should be discussed elsewhere (e.g. at WikiProject Animals). Peter coxhead (talk) 08:11, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * This is one thing the ICZN, ICBN and Mycology Codes agree on. Its no problem with anaimals either. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 17:01, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Support - I have no views on the rows (decades etc) but I'd like some restriction on the number of columns. Species/animals/insects/moths seems about right, i.e 4 or 5 columns, no more. I upmerged an 'invertebrate' column (partially implemented) at cfd, 26 Nov 2014, but others have introduced a 'vertebrates' one which in my opinion is a hindrance as it doesn't collect together enough subcats to be worthwhile. Eg in Category:Species described in 2015, Eukaryotes merely collects together 2 subcats and Category:Animals described in 2015 also just has 2 subcats. Oculi (talk) 17:56, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Support — the current situation is a mess, so a scheme is needed, and the suggestion looks good. Decade "rows" are perhaps redundant, but do not do much harm either. Major groups of animals with good coverage warrant their own "column". Thus, I would keep the main vertebrate groups separate, removing the need for "vertebrates". Similarly for few select invertebrate groups. Micromesistius (talk) 18:18, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Support — I think this is enough to start with, and it would be best, if possible, to agree it and and put it in place. Details like which page is to be categorised when the species article is not at an accepted binomial name can follow. William Avery (talk) 13:35, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Support — especially if new decade cats are omitted and existing decade cats CfD'd, with contents upmerged to century container cats.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:44, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Support - just for an agreed consistency across range of subjects/areas is really good JarrahTree 23:03, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Support - Bringing a set of definable criteria and usage of species description year categories into one coherent system would be a valuable improvement to our present state. However, I do agree with Micromesistius that few, if any, readers are actually interested in searching by these categories in the first place. The real value here seems to be to have an agreed upon code that would allow us to delete other arbitrary undefined categories used for descriptions. My real dislike is the use of country names (as opposed to bio-geographic regions) as category names (eg. Birds of Benin). Loopy30 (talk) 11:43, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Generally Support: I've created some animal categories (butterflies, molluscs, crustaceans, etc.), so I generally like the more specific ones. There are however, some years where some categories either lack any or have relatively few members to add. I've been bypassing some years where there are either no members or only 1 or 2 species. My rule of thumb has been 3, but I see other editors have created categories for as little as one species. Is this over categorizing?......Pvmoutside (talk) 15:58, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No. WP:SMALLCAT says "Avoid categories that, by their very definition, will never have more than a few members, unless such categories are part of a large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme"; there's nothing in the definition of "described in year" categories that says they will remain small, and even if one does, the categories are part of a "large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme". The system for a given group should be as complete as possible. There may only be 1 or 2 species now, but the category needs to exist so editors can use it when articles are created for species described in that year. Otherwise it becomes a vicious cycle: the year category doesn't get used because it doesn't exist so it continues not to be used. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:35, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that Peter.....Pvmoutside (talk) 00:49, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose and instead delete all of these categories. This kind of data is better suited for a database (like WikiData), not for categorization. I'm also doubtful that many readers are interested in these categories, since the year of description is of little importance outside of technical nomenclatural discussions. I especially dislike the subdivision into semi-arbitrary taxonomic groups. Within Category:Animals_described_in_1909, some subcategories are by class (insects, amphibians), others by phylum (mollusks), others by subphylum (vertebrates), others by informal group (fish). Sure, we could clean that up, but I don't think we need to spend more time perfecting a categorization system that isn't useful in the first place. Ucucha (talk) 16:28, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I have a lot of sympathy for this view, but feel that a compromise is more likely to be accepted. (Actually, I'm doubtful that the great majority of categories in the English Wikipedia are of any interest to readers.) Peter coxhead (talk) 17:12, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

RfC implementation
It looks like a good time to start implementation? I've been working on a Module:Category described in year, under the general guidance of, to make category creation & maintenance as painless & intuitive as possible, but the module will still require concurrent development alongside 'manual' category tree standardization. The "Fish" tree in that module is the target standard model cat tree, i.e. the "Spiders" & "Plants" trees in that module will migrate away from using intermediate 'decade' cats. Will let this sit for a few days first before taking any action, then I'll point back to this discussion when making changes/CfDs/new cats/etc. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 16:06, 18 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I was hoping some uninvolved editor would formally close the RfC above, but the consensus seems clear, so I agree. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:03, 19 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I was looking for that too, but with over a month after the last comment, and almost 2 months after the start, it doesn't seem likely.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  10:15, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Is WikiProject Tree of Life the 'Dustbin' for taxa excluded from other projects?
Not sure if this has been addressed previously. I couldn't figure out good search terms for the archives. I'm not sure if any guidelines are already established on this, so I didn't make this an RfC. If it doesn't have any established rules though feel free to RfC it.

Should WikiProject Tree of Life be the default project for taxa not covered by other WikiProjects?

Taxa articles on enwiki are covered by the following categories and their child projects:
 * WikiProject Animals
 * WikiProject Fungi
 * WikiProject Plants
 * WikiProject Viruses
 * WikiProject Algae

In addition, there are a few projects that are 'polyphyletic' and include any taxa in certain subject areas:
 * WikiProject Micro
 * WikiProject Marine life
 * WikiProject Palaeontology

Many taxa do not fit into the top WikiProjects, like forams or ciliates. Many of those can be covered by one or more of the bottom three WikiProjects. Some, like oomycetes, slime moulds, viroids, and such are 'grandfathered' in with WikiProjects in the top section (whether or not this should be the protocol). But what about taxa that falls through the cracks? Should they be assigned to WikiProject Tree of Life as the backup? Should this also be the case for taxa only covered by one of the three WikiProjects in the bottom section? Does every taxa deserve a WikiProject? --Nessie (talk) 18:53, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Do those groups need a WikiProject? If the answer is "yes", then is a Project composed of "people who care about a different thing (i.e. TOL, and not forams)" going to satisfy that need? I don't know the answers to these questions, but I suspect at least one of them is "no". ErikHaugen (talk &#124; contribs) 20:03, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
 * They don't necessarily need a separate project, but when editors see an article for say an excavate, sometimes they put it in TOL and sometimes not. I just didn't know which is preferred.
 * I'm inclined to say no, but if I were inclined to say yes, I would've already added the ToL banner to these orphaned organisms a few years back when I was actively adding WikiProject banners to organism articles that lacked them. As it stands, ToL is largely a place for meta-discussions, with most ToL bannered articles being related to taxonomy/systematics as a discipline. However, here are some advantages to have a project banner on articles, and there really isn't any other appropriate banner for non-algae/animal/fungus/plant eukaryotes. There are ToL banners on some forams, and a smattering of other things. Plantdrew (talk) 05:11, 15 August 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 15 – 21 August 2018
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:23, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Plant 'described in' decadal categories submitted to CfD
@ Categories for discussion/Log/2018 August 26, per Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 01:03, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Request for comments: Denny the hybrid hominin
This is a request for comments regarding the relevance of Denny (hybrid hominin) as it relates to human interspecies breeding. The link to the discussion is at: Talk:Human evolution. Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 16:38, 26 August 2018 (UTC)

Request for comments: Should the automatic taxobox system be the current recommended practice?
This is continuing discussions elsewhere, such as Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system/Archive 13. Sorry if I'm not posting this correctly, I just want to get this discussion started.

It seems there has not been a good clear discussion in the ToL and its related projects on the adoption of Automated taxobox system over 'manual' taxoboxes like taxobox. Not all taxa can be converted to automatic (there isn't an automatic version of Paraphyletic group, for example, and viruses need a new box too). However, the overwhelming majority can use the automated taxobox system.

Should we officially adopt the automated taxobox system as the standard over the previous manual taxobox system? --Nessie (talk) 14:18, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

Taxobox system discussion

 * Automatic - The system works and allows for easy updates of many articles without needing a bot. If taxonomy templates are set up, novice users can much more easily include boxes for articles, and if not, the system guides them through the process with scarcely more effort than creating a taxobox. --Nessie (talk) 14:18, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
 * So, are you thinking of a guideline that says in essence, "if the required taxonomy can be implemented as an automatic taxobox, then use that in preference of a manual one"? That seems uncontroversial to me. With the caveat that it is possible to get lost in the woods when setting up a new hierarchical template structure, and if someone starts flailing around in there, the damage is somewhat harder to fix than in the manual version (recent exploits with Ornithomimosauria come to mind). But then that possibility is already present, and it's hardly a random-IP-playground type of area anyway. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:13, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is what I'm proposing. Some folks seem resistant, and I'm not clear why, so I think it's good to have an open discussion so any concerns are addressed.  As for the issues like with Ornithomimosauria, I am unfamiliar with the details but I bet it was easier to notice a problem than if it were buried in a number of neglected articles.  Plus a few projects have guidelines such as using WoRMS for the basis of the taxonomy of their project and so forth.--Nessie (talk) 15:29, 11 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm biassed since I spent a month or so converting the automated taxobox system to use Lua to allow sufficiently deep taxonomic hierarchies and then updating the documentation. So naturally I think that automated taxoboxes are a good idea – with the caveat that there will always be a few special cases that are best handled manually. (Viruses would need a new "Virusbox" template to automate their taxonomy correctly.)
 * The claim is often made that automated taxoboxes make it easy to update taxonomies, which is partly true. However, it's important to note that when the parent taxon in a taxonomy template is changed, the relevant taxoboxes will update, but all the articles in which those taxoboxes appear still need to be checked. Otherwise you get the case that the taxobox has "Family: Xidae" but the text says "... is a member of family Yidae". (Ideally the text would also be automated, so that for an article on genus G, you would use wikitext like "G is in the family  ".) Peter coxhead (talk) 16:29, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Ideally the text would also be automated, so that for an article on genus G, you would use wikitext like "G is in the family ". - Ooh, that would be nice. Nothing like this in existence, I gather? -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:42, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Difficult since many fleshed out articles have a sentence more complicated than that, perhaps recognizing past taxonomic history or often in more-studied taxa competing current classifications. If this is done, it should be done with taxa for which there's consensus to follow a particular authority such as WoRMS or the IOC World Bird List, with sentences attributing classifications to these authorities. &mdash;innotata 03:14, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * i think there is something like, but that would require wikidata to be consistent with the taxonomy templates. In any event, it ideally would update the article whenever the wikidata entry naming the parent taxon were updated. --Nessie (talk) 14:58, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Hmm... well, Wikidata... I'd rather not go there :/ Different kettle of fish, and not of the most palatable. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:38, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Ayup, an extremely common issue with Lepidoptera articles, some of which are actually lagging multiple taxonomic revisions behind at least in part. Plus even when the species articles get updated, half the time no one bothers to update genera articles. (Guilty of that myself as well. There's so much Lepidoptera work to be done that it's basically impossible to tackle every issue in an article at the same time or one issue everywhere, much less every issue everywhere. Plus the more authoritative databases are notoriously slow to update (LepIndex/ButMoth) and the other reasonably-reliable databases either don't cover the entirety of Lepidoptera (e.g. Afromoths; anything (super)family-specific; etc.), also deal with slow updates, or build largely upon LepIndex/ButMoth albeit with some of the newer research reflected as well (Markku Savela/"funet"), making it often hard to tell what's the current taxonomic status of any particular taxon. Still leads to some rather contradictory situations, though) Automated text would be nice, though I can foresee some complications where more complex issues are at play. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 17:24, 11 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree with others that the automatic taxobox system is what we should be using. On the topic, is there anyway to set higher ranks as bold in a to represent monotypic taxa? It's rather annoying seeing the genus name displayed as a link in every article on a monotypic dinosaur genus, in addition to the occasional monotypic family like Psittacosauridae.  Luso titan  (Talk | Contributions) 17:00, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure where you seeing monotypic genera linked, but the solution is to use pipes in link in the taxonomy template. See e.g. Template:Taxonomy/Psittacosauridae where it has "|link=Psittacosaurus|Psittacosauridae". By making the link before the pipe the title of the article, it will display in bold and won't be a clickable link.Plantdrew (talk) 17:45, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I random example of where I'm seeing this would be Saurophaganax. Since it just redirects the link doesn't actually work, but it displays when ideally it would be bold as if we were using the .  Luso titan  (Talk | Contributions) 18:25, 11 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Absolutely agree with Peter. It shouldn't be hard to say yes, this should be done where possible. There is the problem of child taxa article texts not being updated, but that could already happen in the manual system when parent taxa articles are updated comprehensively but child taxa articles are not. &mdash;innotata 03:14, 12 July 2018 (UTC)


 * I'd be inclined to agree (and to have the "member" function in text so it updates also), but would like to see much more explicit citation of taxobox data; if the auto method makes it harder for IPs to randomly tweak taxoboxes without citing sources, then I'm all in favour. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:12, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Support recommending usage of the automatic taxobox system over manual taxoboxes. The automatic taxobox system has been at least somewhat operational since 2011, but had issues that generated errors in many articles. There were some discussions about wide-spread adoption of automatic taxoboxes between 2011 and 2016 that attracted opposition. Further development of the automatic taxobox system and adoption in articles was low during the 2011-2016 period. In late 2016 and early 2017, substantially overhauled to automatic taxobox system to resolve the previous issues. There has already been a substantial effort since them to convert articles to use the automatic taxobox system.  In early of September 2016, automatic taxoboxes were used in ~28,000 articles; at the beginning of July 2018, they were used in ~143,000 articles, or 37% of the ~386,000 articles that use either manual/automatic taxoboxes. In at least half of the Tree of Life subprojects, the majority of articles are already using the automatic taxobox system (see Wikipedia_talk:Automated taxobox system). The reason the overall figure of automatic taxobox system is at 37% and not yet over 50% is the massive amount of edits needed to get the articles for plants, Lepidoptera, and (non-Lepidoptera) insects over that threshold, but progress is being made on those fronts. Automatic taxoboxes are the new normal. Automatic taxoboxes are objectively superior to manual taxoboxes, and adoption should be recommended at TOL (I'm running out of words for this evening, but will expand on automatic taxobox superiority if anybody cares to ask) Plantdrew (talk) 03:30, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. I can think of no reason why the automatic taxobox system should not be the recommended approach. In a few cases the manual taxobox might be useful, but in some cases this is because an appropriate template hasn't been created for the automatic taxobox system (e.g. viruses). The problem of articles being left behind the automatic taxobox changes isn't fixed by having an manual taxobox, it just leaves the article self-consistently out of date. You could argue that the change in the automatic taxobox will flag the change and need to update the article.  Jts1882 &#124; talk 09:41, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Support the use of the automatic taxobox system over manual taxoboxes where possible. These substitutions result in less code and easier visibility when editing, and more automatic features (bold, italics, etc) to the article infobox when viewed. Additionally, it helps with standardization (eg. image width), and taxonomic hierarchies can be updated over multiple article infoboxes with minimal effort. Loopy30 (talk) 14:36, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Support recommending automatic taxobox system for the reasons above, especially consistency. Bob Webster (talk) 14:01, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Support, with the knowledge that some stuff will still need to be done manually, including the main-prose updates if something changes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:25, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Support, as summarised immediately heretofore by SMcCandlish et al. JonRichfield (talk) 04:43, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Support: as 'strongly recommended' rather than obligatory - with thanks to all who have helped develop and stabilise the system. Roy Bateman (talk) 14:52, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Support as preferred, (strongly) recommended form. Would not support making the automatic taxobox system mandatory. In regards to article-vs-taxobox consistency: would it be possible for a bot to keep a list of all changes to taxonomy templates where either the 'rank' or the 'parent' parameters were changed? It would make it easier to check if, alongside an update to the taxonomy template, every relevant article was updated. Right now, it pretty much relies on already being aware of a taxonomic revision; happening to catch the edit to the taxonomy template; or coming across an article where prose and/or categories conflict with the automatic taxobox/speciesbox. (Of course, it wouldn't help find articles where the taxonomy template was created with taxonomy that differs from what (some of) the involved articles state (e.g. a large portion of erebid moths converted to speciesboxes&mdash;still plenty of stuff around saying so-and-so is a moth of the family Arctiidae including at least some articles converted to the automatic system), but finding some of the stuff reliably still beats only being able to find the issue either by already being aware of the issue or by sheer luck)  AddWitty  NameHere  10:40, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Not to volunteer someone else, but has made many similar maintenance (and very useful) categories for Taxonbar, and may have some advice and/or expertise that could be applied to the automated taxoboxes and keeping track of inconsistencies. --Nessie (talk) 16:07, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * , I'll have to take a closer look at the taxobox system (a la WP:Automated taxobox system) since I'm only vaguely familiar with it. There are already 9 tracking categories listed on the help page, but I'm not familiar with them either, and how or whether or not they do a good job of catching all/most of the exceptions that may arise. The 2 tracking cats proposed by aren't really implementable, unfortunately. Templates/modules aren't able to look for discrepancies in the article body. To do so, the body would have to be passed to the module, i.e. contained in the template call, which would be more trouble than it's worth for everyone. For the other issue, keeping track/checking to see if a parent taxobox template has been changed would require (I think, given my naïve understanding of the system) duplicating or keeping a record of past parents, similar to the form and function of the from parameter introduced to the  template. I'll keep this issue in mind though when familiarizing myself with the auto taxobox system to see if there's an easier way.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  08:48, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree that NessieVL's suggestions, although they would be useful, are difficult or impossible to implement without extensive and burdensome changes to the text. (E.g. if the text of the article contained something like, if the taxonomy template for Felis led to a family other than Felidae, an error could be flagged.) The current tracking categories work well for badly set up taxonomy templates or taxoboxes – I monitor them regularly, as does, I think, . Peter coxhead (talk) 15:11, 29 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Support much I could add or say has been said above by others in support of this. We already use these extensively on turtle and reptile pages where I tend to edit. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 02:13, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose I think this'll make it hard for the novice editor to fix taxoboxes or maybe just the average reader who stumbles upon an error, because automatic taxoboxes require an editor pretty familiar with Wiki markup, so if ever the taxonomy of a species changes an experienced editor will have to go in and change it, and certainly we can't keep track of every tiny creature that might have a reevaluation as effectively as the passing reader can. Also I've never figured out how automatic taxoboxes work or how to edit them  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 03:12, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Can I respectfully suggest you do try to learn how they work and how to edit them. See WP:Automated taxobox system. There's actually far less wiki markup in an article with an automated taxobox than one with a manual taxobox. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:03, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * An automatic taxobox means less markup on the actual article, but it’s confusing if you have to change a parameter to someone unfamiliar with Wikipedia, it’s not just a straightforward hit-the-little-edit-button-and-do-it. It makes it harder for non-editors reading smaller articles, that us active editors can’t shadow over, to help out if there’s some change in taxonomy  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 17:20, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Speaking of, can someone who understands automatic taxoboxes fix the one on Echidna? It wikilinks Tachyglossa but that redirects back to Echidna  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 18:43, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ AddWitty  NameHere  18:49, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Speaking of, should we have a volunteer list of folks, or like a page/section for taxonomy template requests? or maybe a maintenance category of genera and higher taxa articles that lack a corresponding taxonomy template? In any event, feel free to hit me up on my talk page if you want a template made.  --Nessie (talk) 19:15, 17 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Weak support Theoretically I support this proposal but I am not very happy with it. As the creator of a great many species articles, the first thing I do is look for another species article that I can use as a template for mine. If it has got an automatic taxobox, that's fine and I can adapt it for my new article. If its got a manual taxobox, I don't want to start mucking around setting up automatic genus, family and even higher taxoboxes, I want to write my article and use the easiest taxobox available. Novice editors are likely to be even more mystified and might be put off creating their species level article altogether. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 08:22, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Most of the time the higher taxonomy templates already exist so it should be easier to use speciesbox than looking around for a similar taxobox to copy. Your concern is justified in taxon areas where the automatic taxobox hasn't been taken up. When you need to make a three or four taxonomy templates to set up a species box it is off-putting, but the proposal isn't to make the automatic taxobox mandatory. Wider use of the automatic taxobox will make the problem less common.
 * One solution might be to setup a request subpage similar to that for cladograms (WikiProject Tree of Life/Cladogram requests).  Jts1882 &#124; talk 08:49, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Editors can always ask at WT:Autotaxobox. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:59, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * this sounds like a lot of extra steps and a lot more work than would be saved by putting automatic taxoboxes everywhere. When I started and saw automatic taxoboxes everywhere, I couldn’t figure out how to fix them (because Cetacea had been demoted to infraorder and it needed fixing in places), so I just ended up replacing it with manual taxoboxes and waiting for somebody else to fix the other ones. I tried reading up on automatic taxoboxes but I still never figured them out  User:Dunkleosteus77 &#124;push to talk 17:29, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily a lot more work. If the automatic taxobox system had been in place back then, it would have saved a massload of work surrounding the entire Noctuidae/Erebidae revision, for example. (As things stand, it's still not all up-to-date, even just as far as taxoboxes go.) I suspect it will on average save a lot of work in the highly speciose orders with frequent taxonomical revisions. I imagine the pay-off might be a bit less when it comes to the less speciose areas and the taxonomically stable areas of the ToL, though. AddWitty  NameHere  19:15, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * One thing we could do is include an HTML comment with the auto-taxobox in the article about where to get more info. Maybe point this as a "noob summary" page (and create one for this purpose).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:22, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Weak oppose On the same basis as User:Dunkleosteus77. Implementing automatic taxoboxes will make it difficult for an editor unfamiliar with them to fix mistakes, while manual taxoboxes are very intuitive. It's a weak oppose though because I suspect both Dunkleosteus77 and I are biased against the taxoboxes considering neither of us know how they work or how to edit them. Pagliaccious (talk) 17:12, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Support, as a recommendation. I have only positive experiences with them and see them as indispensable, but am also against too strong rules that could stifle editing. Micromesistius (talk) 18:18, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. It seems a bit more concise than the manual taxobox. If I had more knowhow beyond just AWB for automation on Wikipedia, I would have done this for most insect articles already. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:41, 16 July 2018 (UTC)


 *  ** Very important caveat : **   I just want to give a word of caution (because other groups of editors at WikiProjects have been caught up by this issue recently) that per WP:Advice pages, a WikiProject's local volunteers are not allowed to create a "default consensus" approach and then attempt to apply it to all articles they believe are within their purview, even if they are very conservative about deciding what articles qualify.  Such editors must still seek WP:LOCALCONSENSUS for any challenged edits, just as they would if this discussion never took place and cannot attempt to put forward the consensus here as the start-point for a discussion.  Alternatively, if the editors here wish to create a standard which truly will have the effect of a default consensus, they would need to host said discussion in a central community discussion space like WP:VPP, to be endorsed or rejected by a broad community consensus.


 * Now, this caution may be less necessary here than it normally is for two reasons: 1) I see a lot of editors here being appropriately careful in their wording, suggesting that they already favour a "yeah, makes sense, but let's maintain some flexability and not consider this a hard and fast rule" approach, and 2) Editors working in ToL/taxonomic areas are kind of an isolated community, so a large proportion of the editors who do this work regularly are likely to see this (or at least, a larger proportion than is typical with other WikiProject members/number of editors working in the associated field generally), meaning that more of the affected editors will be aware of this discussion and thus there will be less incidents of friction and working at cross purposes.  But I think the warning is useful all the same: if editors here come to a consensus but then find that they are having a hard time bringing outliers on board, don't try to override differing opinion on individual articles with a link to this thread.  Either engage in a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS discussion (without WP:CANVASSING for others here that you know agree with you on the issue) or else reboot this discussion at VPP, where the consensus be given a stronger effect that could be applied to a large swatch of articles.  Snow let's rap 01:44, 21 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Support. It looks like automated taxoboxes will on balance reduce work and improve consistency. They should be the recommended method, the default, the standard (as in the RfC); but not obligatory. Maproom (talk) 07:04, 22 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Gastropods/Archive_6. I will copy my text from there:


 * I am strong opponent of automatic taxobox (as everybody knows here). The automatic taxobox has the only (theoretical) advantage: the change of all subtaxa is needed to be done only once (at the right place). What will happen, when the editor does not know the right place? There are also difficulties and disadvantages: The complete classification for one species is not on the single place, but it is on as many subpages as there is number of its ranks. Therefore you can not track changes. For example you can not take a look, how the classification of the certain species was like a year ago, because you would have take a look into the history of those about 10 pages all at once. It is prone to errors (to intentional and unintentional). You can not use the same referencing way; you can not add the same certain reference (for the Wikipedia article) into the superior taxon (because it is in different subtemplate).


 * I can not use automatic taxobox even if I would like to: it is difficult to use and I can not verify the classification, because automatic taxobox has no complex history. That is serious problem when the taxonomy (of gastropods) is extremely difficult and when we have no relatively simple, uncontroversial resource for classification of ALL gastropods (marine, non-marine, fossil). --Snek01 (talk) 11:32, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I respect editors' right to object to the use of the automated taxobox system, but I think it is important to be clear as to the advantages and disadvantages. It's only partially correct to say that the complete classification for one species is not on the single place, but it is on as many subpages as there is number of its ranks.: the complete classification for a genus is visible at the taxonomy template for that genus; it can however only be changed by editing the taxonomy templates for the relevant ancestral ranks.
 * The issue of article history is a real one. I have often wished that the Wikimedia software treated templates differently: if you look at an old version of a page, you do not see the output of templates as they were at that time, but as they are now; it would be more informative if the historical version of the template were used if it has changed. So, for any given species, I agree that it's much easier to see changes in its taxobox taxonomy when a manual taxobox is used. This must be balanced against the need to look individually at the taxoboxes of all the species in a genus (a) to ensure that the taxonomy is consistent and (b) to see all their potentially different histories.
 * I don't understand what you mean by you can not add the same certain reference – can you expand on this?
 * I don't agree that you can not verify the classification. If the taxonomy templates are set up correctly (and I agree that they aren't always), each should have one or more references for the placement of the taxon in its parent taxon.
 * If the alternative to an automated taxobox is the grossly malformed one currently at [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Helix_(gastropod)&oldid=826038053 Helix (gastropod)], then for me there's no contest! Peter coxhead (talk) 16:16, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comment. As of references. Lets imagine, for example, that I want to add a reference to the Gastropoda article directly to the taxobox, that the Gastropoda class belongs to the Mollusca phyllym. I do not know how to add the reference directly after the word Mollusca and moreover I want to use the same reference in the text of the Gastropoda article too. - You do not know how do I verify clasification. I verify classification in its complexity based on the history of the article. I am verifying the clasification of all ranks at once directly in the article history. For example I want to see if there are any changes in the classification of the certain species and what was the classification about a year ago. I believe that it is against the verifiability rule on the Wikipedia. Moreover the text of the article and the taxobox should be consistent. When I am not able to track changes of the taxobox, then it is for me as an editor deadly difficult to keep the article content consistent with the taxobox. Personally for me, all information within automatic taxobox are not trustable and therefore such informations are useless for me. --Snek01 (talk) 18:19, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * well, I suspect we're unlikely to agree, but I will respond to your points just once more.
 * I think it would be useful to be able to add a single reference to any taxobox, manual or automated, to support the immediate placement of the 'target' taxon – not higher than that, because the classification above that level is covered in other articles and needs to be consistent with them. Just as there's a parameter synonyms_ref, there could be a parameter taxon_ref. I'll look into how feasible that is. At one time I think it was intended that the reference in the taxonomy template would be included in the taxobox, but that runs into problems, one of which is the requirement that all references in an article are in a consistent style. But maybe if there were just a link that went to the taxonomy template it would be ok. (I seem to remember that once suggested something like this.)
 * I see no evidence that articles with manual taxoboxes are less consistent than ones with automated taxoboxes: I'd be interested to see any examples you've come across. In my experience, it's much more common for the taxobox and the lead to be updated, but parts of the body left alone, regardless of the kind of taxobox.
 * An important point is that you seem to be ignoring MOS:INFOBOX: "the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article". An infobox does not need to have references for information that is contained in the article, anymore than the lead section does. The purpose of a taxobox is to summarize and aid in navigation. In the latter regard, it's like categories or navigation templates, which not only don't require references, they can't have them. So WP:VERIFY isn't directly applicable.
 * Peter coxhead (talk) 19:28, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Peter, all of those people, that added 143293 automatic taxoboxes to the Wikipedia and THEN they are asking if they are allowed officially adopt the automated taxobox they are violating Wikipedia rules ad absurdum. It is apparent, that such people do not want to see arguing of others. No, you can not adopt automatic taxobox. --Snek01 (talk) 19:58, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * That is FALSE Snek01. There is absolutely no policy violation, as has already been pointed out, infoboxes should NEVER contain information or references that are not present in the body of the text. How exactly are people who use automatic taxobox violating policy, other then an argument from WP:IDONTLIKEIT-- Kev  min  § 07:57, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
 * The question is whether they should be recommended not adopted – as the statistics show, they are widely adopted, and will continue to be. But they can be improved, perhaps. We can't do anything about the history of individual articles, as I explained above, but we might be able to improve referencing. Anyway, my last word in this thread. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:50, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
 * And "infoboxes should NEVER contain information or references that are not present in the body of the text" is a bit of an overstatement. Taxobox and several other "speciality" infoboxes do in fact do so, in the form of tabular data we do not include in the body, e.g. the organism's entire phylogenetic tree. A lot of medical ones provide OMIM and other database codes, and the cat and dog breed ones provide links to breed standard (which may not all be cited – or need to be cited – in the body). I.e., it's "data" stuff, versus normal content.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:57, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

Automating the output of a taxon's 'ancestor' at a given rank
Just as a demonstration, I've created a sandbox function which retrieves an 'ancestor' taxon by its rank from the taxonomy template hierarchy. If it would be useful (and used), it could easily be tidied so that it's called from a normal template and English rank names allowed. Examples: You could then write something like, which would then automatically update along with the autotaxobox if the family of Felis were ever changed.

I suspect this is a step too far, but I thought I'd show that it's possible. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:34, 15 July 2018 (UTC)


 * It's a useful option to have and does ensure consistency with the article and taxobox system. One issue is the referencing. Any change in classification would need to be sourced (especially if as controversial as moving Felis out of Felidae!!!). One way would be to add the taxonomy template reference. If that is missing, then it would be adding an unsourced change to the article. <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 14:44, 15 July 2018 (UTC)


 * This is really nice. If we don't end up using this directly in articles, could it still be used for maintenance categories?  Something like:  Category:Taxa articles that do not mention the family listed in the taxonomy template and Category:Taxa articles with parent taxa mismatch between Wikidata and Taxonomy template?  Then editors could know which pages need to be looked at, atleast.  --Nessie (talk) 16:15, 15 July 2018 (UTC)


 * My gut feeling is "no(t yet)" for mainspace, but as Nessie says, there are probably a lot of ways it could be incredibly useful for maintenance purposes. Reasons I'd be hesitant to use it in prose include
 * One of the ways controversial or outright wrong changes to taxonomy templates can be found is by seeing a disconnect between prose and taxobox. (I know outright vandalism to taxonomy templates is pretty rare because editing them requires (auto)confirmed status to update/template editor to update high-use taxonomy templates; and taxonomy pages are not very visible and thus aren't likely targets unless someone already knows of their existence. Taxonomy warriors and editors unknowingly working from outdated taxonomy certainly exist though, and misunderstandings of taxonomic revisions can also happen) If/when we get a better way to track changes to taxonomy templates, such as a bot-maintained list or category, this issue won't be as pressing (but would remain a concern, as it'd essentially reduce "people who may find and correct such errors" to "people actively looking for them"+"people highly familiar with the subject matter") The same would happen in regards to categories, which would not be updated alongside the prose. It means people would still need to manually go over each relevant article to update those, but with prose out of the way, people are more likely to forget//other people are less likely to notice the issue until someone happens to do category maintenance on the relevant categories which may well be months or years later. (At least, that's the way those things tend to play out in Lepidoptera. Not sure if the same happens in the less speciose areas?)
 * The more of an article that is populated by use of templates and other somewhat-confusing-to-the-unfamiliar means, the harder it becomes for editors not particularly familiar with Wikipedia, not particularly familiar with templates or not particularly familiar with source rather than visual editing (or on a device that makes source editing impractical) to edit "our" (as in, articles under the banner of, not as in "owned by", ToL or its subprojects) articles and correct issues. Considering the relatively small crowd of taxonomy-related editors compared to the huge number of taxonomy-related articles (about one in 15 articles uses a taxobox of some flavour), the last thing we need is scaring off editors new to the area (or Wikipedia entirely) or unfamiliar/uncomfortable with the more technical side of editing who would otherwise be willing to lend a hand.
 * AddWitty NameHere  19:40, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Like others have said above this would be very useful for maintenance (perhaps slim the category names down a touch) but I would be very hesitant to include it in text, especially because it does not seem to be worth the work simply to automate a single phrase in an article. The cost-benefit doesn't seem to be a very good use of time. IJReid { {T - C - D - R} } 20:09, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I am cautiously positive. This could be a useful aid for maintenance, at least in situations where changes are forthcoming, but time is not (yet) ripe for implementing them in Wikipedia. I'm thinking from the perspective of amphibians where the family-level taxonomy has been quite fluid, and still is—I wish this functionality would have existed when Polbot auto-created masses of amphibian articles. This applies more generally to large-scale stub creation, overwhelming our capacity to maintain articles updated. The downside is ac certain lack of transparency. Micromesistius (talk) 18:08, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Fluid family-level taxonomy seems like a reason to implement this, not a reason not to. Plantdrew (talk) 18:34, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
 * A lot of the arguments against the automatic taxobox seem to fall on the fact that it is not universally implemented. A contrarian opinion would be that this is a reason to make it mandatory. Get rid of the discrepancies. However, no one is pushing this position. The proposal is that the automatic taxobox is the recommended approach, while leaving individual editors free to continuing using the manual taxobox. <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 19:29, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Change from Anobiidae to Ptinidae?
I think the beetle family Anobiidae should be replaced by Ptinidae according to Bouchard (2011). This is effectively a name change, because all the subfamilies will remain the same. I'll be happy to do this, but I thought I should check here first to see if there are any objections... Bob Webster (talk) 20:21, 27 August 2018 (UTC)


 * Did you ask at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Beetles? --Nessie (talk) 00:37, 28 August 2018 (UTC)


 * No, I'll do that. Thanks! Bob Webster (talk) 04:48, 28 August 2018 (UTC)


 * It's done now. Bob Webster (talk) 05:02, 3 September 2018 (UTC)


 * But the article has lost its edit history. Anobiidae should have been moved Ptinidae rather than copy and pasted. This would have moved the page history to the new title and left a redirect. Now the history is on the redirect page. <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 06:41, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * What's the best way to fix this? Bob Webster (talk) 18:35, 3 September 2018 (UTC)


 * , see WP:HISTMERGE. Short answer is to put at the top of Ptinidae. Plantdrew (talk) 20:02, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

RfC being planned
Please see WP:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard. Jytdog (talk) 23:45, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

RfD - Sea squirt et al.
@ Redirects for discussion/Log/2018 September 17. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 13:35, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Category reason explanation
Hello, may I ask what is the reason of the category Category:Taxonomy articles created by Polbot? It is not clear to me from the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Archive 39. I wish if I could understand how is this category used. Thank you. --Snek01 (talk) 17:02, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Whether it's still useful, I'm not sure, but articles created by this bot had some common potential issues (e.g. small categories were created that needed upmerging). So it was useful to have a tracking category during clean up. It might be complete now. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:47, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Grouping articles created via bot is useful in and of itself. Additionally, Polbot created a vast number of non-taxonomic articles, making separating out the relevant ones a tedious task that many, including myself, would not want to repeat.
 * I do not have any plans to run through them again in the near future (completing the transfer of templates to CS1|2 comes to mind, but that wouldn't happen any time soon), but that is no indication as to future problems, systematic irregularities, standardization changes, etc., that may or may not exist/need to be performed.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:24, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
 * So the reason of existence of this category is Tom's unproved claiming that "Grouping articles created via bot is useful". And this category is not used anyhow. Thank you for cluttering up 30 thousands of articles with useless category. --Snek01 (talk) 21:58, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
 * who said the category wasn't used? Categories have different uses: directly, by readers researching topics (not relevant for this category); immediate maintenance, by editors looking at articles in a category that may be problematic; indirect maintenance, as a component of a Petscan search when narrowing down articles with particular problems. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:14, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks Peter for reply, but your answer was not useful for me at all. I said, that because Tom to my direct question answered nothing concrete. So if anybody could answer the following questions as simple as possible, that would be great. How was the category used in the past (since its start in March 2018)? How is the category used now? (By the way, I am on your side. I think, that bots should be used much more often on Wikipedia. But this category seems not good to me. If I will see something good in this, I could propose more categories like this for the better Wikipedia.) --Snek01 (talk) 10:23, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * This was a requirement for the recent stub creation BRFA for Qbugbot (i.e. Category:Articles created by Qbugbot). The difference being that Polbot did not go through the same approval process (either b/c it didn't exist at the time or the bot ignored doing so, not sure), and therefore did not adopt community standards such as this. Since you don't like it, you might consider hiding hidden categories via your preferences.
 * Off the top of my head, I used this category to aid in the partial transfer of templates to CS1|2, due to Polbot's systematic referencing style. Other editors might have used it as well, but point is moot; even if completely unused (not the case here)/finished use (which it's not; technically it's still in use until the  transfer is complete)/etc., there's no good reason to remove it.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:40, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * that category was not created March 2018. It has been around since 2007, when I started editing Wikipedia. It was assigned to each article that the Polbot bot created, because until that point editors were creating individual articles about various taxa; Polbot created tens of thousands of missing articles using (I believe) the IUCN website (if I remember correctly). I think the Polbot category was designed to let us editors quickly know whether a bot or a human had created the article — and to allow us to quickly check what articles might need further work without having to slog through individual article history pages. MeegsC (talk) 14:46, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks for comment, but you, MeegsC, are not telling the truth. Lets taken a look at the first article in the category https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aba_roundleaf_bat&oldid=148149698 It was created by the Polbot but it has not been assigned in 2007 to any category indicating, that it was created by a Bot. --Snek01 (talk) 15:18, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah. I guess I'm just remembering the hidden comment at the top of all of the articles. I certainly don't appreciate you accusing me of lying though; you seem to be unnecessarily confrontational over this! : / MeegsC (talk) 08:20, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree.
 * , feigned civility followed by attacking other editors that oppose your view 1) is not appropriate for a discussion, 2) will not move editors to your side, 3) will turn potential participants away from the discussion/interacting with you. Consider WP:STICK, look for more fertile editing ground, and possibly modifying your preferences for hidden categories.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:04, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Tom for your reply. Could you let me to know, where is exactly written that creating the Category:Taxonomy articles created by Polbot is a requirement for the Qbugbot 2, please? (I did not found it.) I appreciate your effort improving the IUCN references. But was it really necessary to include the category into so many articles? Can not it be done without creating of such categories in the future? Can it be done in similar cases with other ways in the future? Moreover, you claimed on the category description that it should never be removed. It is a maintenance category for the clean up. (I do not make a difference between "tracking" and "maintenance"). Couldn't it be possible to deal with that after the complete cleanup? Imagine the situation, that number or many of those articles became featured articles. Will it still be useful? For example, what is this category inside the featured article Red-backed fairywren for? Shouln't we try to get rid off as much of maintenance categories for easier editing? Or does it mean that every new or old Bot creating articles will have its own category forever? --Snek01 (talk) 15:18, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Tom, did you really used this category for improving the IUCN template? I think, that you were improving the template in the January 2018. And THEN you added the category in March 2018. Could you provide an evidence, that you edited format of the IUCN template after the adding the category into the article? Just to be sure that we have a fair discussion. --Snek01 (talk) 15:51, 16 September 2018 (UTC)


 * I can only speak about plant and spider articles. Initially, Polbot generated articles contained HTML comments like . When the Wikimedia software was extended to allow searches using , it was possible to find these articles for maintenance. However, the comments have routinely been removed as articles were manually edited, not always appropriately in my view, with the result that Polbot articles that may have needed attention couldn't be found. As I said above, I think a tracking category is useful, although there's a case for not using it for GA and FA articles, perhaps. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:20, 16 September 2018 (UTC)

Please remember to assume good faith. You seem to be accusing several editors of lying. I read your response to MeegsC as implying that they had lied. If you meant that they were mistaken, you could have worded your response better. No good can come of that. - Donald Albury 00:41, 17 September 2018 (UTC) edited - Donald Albury 20:22, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

I am sorry I was not sensitive enough to cultural differences. I am sorry of misunderstanding due to language barriers. I wish if we could overcome it in the future. I do apology. --Snek01 (talk) 21:41, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Apology accepted Snek01! I know English isn't your first language, and some of these things can be pretty subtle. :) MeegsC (talk) 08:51, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Spiders 'described in' decadal categories submitted to CfD
@ Categories for discussion/Log/2018 September 22, per Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 12:44, 22 September 2018 (UTC)

Navseasoncats or Category in year for category navigation?
Option 1: Navseasoncats example here, showing 5 before and 5 after. Option 2: Category in year example here, showing 4 before and 4 after, but this can be altered to 5/5 if that is a major deciding factor. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 14:52, 24 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Option 1, as it looks cleaner to me.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:11, 24 September 2018 (UTC)