Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Archive 48

New / expanded taxon articles with highly detailed diagnosis material
I'm sorry for frequently shlepping discussions onto this page, but this one definitely would benefit from some wider input.

has been creating species articles (for annelids) that at this point principally consist of a highly technical morphological description; indeed, a holotype diagnosis. See for example Eunoe campbellica. Since to my understanding these are too detailed, technical, and expansive for our purposes, especially for very short articles, I have removed them. (For the above article, I have tried to provide a short summary instead, but that is probably close to useless, as I don't know what the derived characteristics are.) We have discussed this at Talk:Eunoe campbellica.

Following Sus barbatus' explanations, I am however unsure whether I'm merely obstructing a good thing for the encyclopedia. Quoting what I consider the main block:

The primary goal of me and my colleagues is to increase the reach and accessibility of taxonomic and descriptive information for a wider audience. We recognise that most people don't know how or don't have the time to trawl through the taxonomic literature. Thus, we have collated diagnostic and taxonomic information into a DELTA database which we can use to output (relatively) natural language descriptions for each taxon. Side note at this point: all of the text is created by us from the information in our taxonomic database and so not "copied wholesale from some publication". We aim to take this information and create new taxon articles also with up to date taxonomies, all linked LSIDs, images with main identifying features and as many references as possible.

Now, the text in the "description" section which you are referring to is perhaps not intended to be read as is, but more as a section that will provide people the necessary information when trying to identify an unknown specimen they have found. To that end, we know that Wikipedia articles are often the top hit on a google search so having that string of descriptive terms in the article helps someone find what they're looking for a lot faster - For example, someone is working with a group to survey fauna in a bay and have taken a benthic sample. They are unfamiliar with the finer details of marine annelid taxonomy, but found some animals that they know are polychaetes with scales and so determine that they are in the scale worm family. They take the samples back to the lab and quickly peek at them under the microscope and see a few note-worthy characters. Now, you could scrounge around for that hard-copy publication from decades ago that may or may not have the key in it and may or may not have up-to-date taxonomy or even the taxon you are actually looking for... or perhaps you might just google "polynoidae with tentacular cirri without subdistal inflated region [or whatever character/s you have actually observed]", and there you go, you have a quick and simple method for identifying your unknown specimen and comparing it with others that also have articles on Wikipedia. Moreover you have actual links that you can click on to take to you all of the information available on the internet for that taxon, and we see big, big advantages of linked data for the future of taxonomy.

Additionally, data aggregators such as EOL and the Atlas of Living Australia pull their "descriptive information" straight from Wikipedia, so again, we are trying to use the platform to increase the reach and accessibility of taxonomic information that otherwise is going to be lost in the dark depths of the taxonomic literature.

There's two points here that give me pause:
 * First, in contrast to most diagnosis material of this level of detail, the text is not copied from a published work, but newly formulated from an existing database. This removes what I believe is one of the main reason why we don't usually feature this stuff.
 * Second, what is intended here sounds like the kind of high-effort expert contribution that Wikipedia should welcome with open arms, and I'm not going to be the one who antagonizes such contributors just because "we don't feature this level of detail".

Third, maybe everyone else is completely down with monograph-style diagnosis sections and I'm just behind the curve. But assuming that is not the case, should we really have polynoidae with tentacular cirri without subdistal inflated region in an article just so that it can be easily googled? Is that a realistic use case, and how does it play with keeping our articles intelligible for the lay person? -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:24, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Even in paleontology articles, which probably have the most technical language among the taxon articles here, there's a huge effort in trying to translate and simplify for example diagnosis. So in this case, it should certainly be summarised, simplified, and explained much bettr. FunkMonk (talk) 16:32, 29 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Just after reading a little bit, WP:NOTJOURNAL and WP:NOTHOWTO policies pop to mind. Wikipedia should not be used as an identification guide for species, and jargon definitely needs to be kept to a minimum. I admire enthusiasm, but some ideas here may not be compatible with the encyclopedia. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:35, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with FunkMonk and Kingofaces43. The material should be presented in a much simpler way with minimum jargon. Sainsf  (t · c)  18:31, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed, per . I can understand and commend the desire of Sus barbatus' group to use Wikipedia to build a unique resource. Wikipedia is a hugely visible platform, and it can be tempting to make Wikipedia many things. But it's an encyclopedia targeted at a general audience. Perhaps this project would be better-suited for Wikispecies? The intended audience there is a scientific one (though I'm not much familiar with the way things work there). Anyone have more insight into their operations? Ajpolino (talk) 18:56, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , Agree with above, we aren't here to provide intricate details to assist in the ID of taxa. Encyclopedia articles are different from field guides. We wouldn't include things like dichotomous keys, either. Wikipedia is written for a general audience; the language in these examples is really technical. Enwebb (talk) 18:58, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * What is the relationship to http://www.delta-intkey.com/? Is it part of the website (like British mosses, ferns, spiders, etc) or is it an independent project using the DELTA software? —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 20:06, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm going to try and answer my question. First, some background:
 * DELTA is a language for describing taxonomy and has been used to construct databases for a number of different groups of organism. A list can be found here.
 * Of particular relevance here is POLiKEY, An information system for polychaete families and higher taxa by Christopher J. Glasby and Kristian Fauchald (2003). This has descriptions and images for 82 polychaete families. It is accessed via a downloadable software program, but the description pages are on the web, accessed via the program or direct link (this is no page linking to them that I can find). An example is Polynoidae.
 * Around the same time Robin Wilson published an interactive key for polychaete genera and Australian species on CD with Christopher Glasby. Robin Wilson is User:Robinswilson and is his colleague at Museums Victoria, where he is Senior Curator of Marine Invertebrates.
 * My understanding is that it is updated material from this CD publication that they wish to incorporate into Wikipedia articles. This is something we should positively embrace, as long as this can be done within Wikipedia guidelines on reliable sources, copyright, neutral point of view, and accessibility, some of which are not immediately obvious to newcomers. We shouldn't be discouraging experts who want to contribute but aren't familiar with Wikipedia guidelines.
 * A few thoughts and/or questions on particular issues:
 * Copyright. They seem willing to make the material available so this shouldn't be a major issue. However, if some of it is published in CD form this may need to be cleared in some way.
 * Sourcing. If they are providing an updated version, then it raises the issue of whether they are adding original material. It really needs to be published elsewhere with appropriate copyright permissions before it can be used on Wikipedia.
 * Accessibility for the lay reader. The text in the articles need to be proper English prose written for a lay reader. The technical descriptions of the type in this version Eunoe campbellica are not really suitable for the main text of a Wikipedia article. One way would be to rewrite it into less technical form as prose text for an informed general reader. Ideally this could link to a reference with the full technical description. An alternative might be to quote the technical description in a side box as ancillary information to the article.
 * Anyway, this is largely my speculation. Hopefully, and  will return and explain more fully what they would like to do and then we can have a constructive discussion on the best way forward. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 09:04, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Some comments:
 * Yes, if copied, there must be publication elsewhere with an absolutely clear and WP-acceptable copyright statement.
 * The text in the articles need to be proper English prose written for a lay reader. Absolutely, and this is why the copied technical descriptions are not acceptable here.
 * An alternative might be to quote the technical description in a side box as ancillary information to the article. Even if this is acceptable under WP policies and guidelines (and I think it isn't: infoboxes and the like should only contain summaries of information in the article), I would oppose it. There are too many infoboxes, navboxes, nav templates, etc. already cluttering up articles. They often don't show up in the mobile version and they cause accessibility problems.
 * Peter coxhead (talk) 10:47, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * (I'm copying over comments made by on the Eunoe campbellica talk page. I hope they will comment here going forward. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:59, 31 May 2020 (UTC))
 * Hi, I would like to be part of this discussion - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robinswilson. Disclosure: I'm a colleague of we are working on this project together.  We take your point that monograph-style content was not inappropriate without glossary term links (we are working on that).  However some detailed information is required otherwise projects and categories like Category:Crustaceans of Australia and Eunoe (animal) are just lists with little value (and incomplete, by the way, and furthermore these pages have insufficient detail to pass muster as encylopedic - we are trying to rectify that).  It comes down to at what level an encyclopedia should be encyclopedic.  A page for every species would seem a minimum, to many of us, this was the vision of E. O. Wilson to which https://eol.org/ was the response.  However in the judgement of many https://eol.org/ is less usable (to scientists AND layfolk).  Nor IMHO does it have guarantee of long term support and stability - the Wikipedia community looks to us like the better bet for longevity and maintenance of our contributions.  If not Wikipedia, where??  Please watch these pages, we will respond with a better attempt.  Your constructive comments most appreciated, they are a good example of why Wikipedia is still our preferred platform.  We want to persevere with providing content in our field of expertise and which is minimally comprehensive, digestible to all, informative directs to primary sources.  Bear with us!  Robin Wilson, Museums Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (talk) 01:45, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I would also like to comment here. In support of what has been written by and further. As an encyclopedia Wikipedia does need to present a more detailed front than say a coffee table book. We should strive for a complete coverage and reasonably detailed analysis. I agree that EoL has its problems. For myself I am currently involved in developing an international means of ratifying checklists. Coming out of workshops through the IUBS. Among the models we looked at did include Wikispecies, as well as COL+ and WORMS. Wikipedia is also good for presenting the information that goes beyond the purpose of Wikispecies. Wikimedia foundation has clearly replaced all hardcopy encyclopedias of the past as the number one goto for technical information that summarises the primary literature. As such I think the more detail the better and it will only encourage more primary workers to get involved if the species are portrayed accurately, balanced with the need to keep it accessable to all. This is a tradeoff, and does require careful writing on the part of scientists who become involved, I myself am a Herpetologist (Taxonoist and Paleontologist), and Curator of a Museum. I appreciate the need for scientists to write to the public and consider their wider aurdience here. I do accept the criticism of science that many workers make the mistake of only writing to their own audience of fellow scientists. We have to be wary of this. Hence defining all terms (scientific jargon) is essential as is writing in a style all can read. Partitioning and formating is also important and I think also the use of other projects to expand on all of this is also a possibility. For example, Wikispecies can be used to layout all the nomenclatural information, cocneptual issues can be written up in Wikiverity as lessons. There are many opportunities within the Wikimedia Foundation to present the science of life very well, and very accurately. Wikimedia's almost garunteed continued funding of all projects is also a big enticement to doing this well here. The editorial style is als a great advantage. I encourage any scientist to get involved and get detailed in this forum. Cheers  Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 20:48, 31 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi many thanks for copying in my comments above and for making me aware of this discussion.  We (  and I) totally accept all those helpful criticisms, our content henceforth will aim to be plain language, concise, diagnostic if possible and supported by new glossary terms but only when their use is unavoidable).  This does not mean it has to be plain vanilla and meaningless; there are ample examples to the contrary: Piano Sonata No. 29 (Beethoven), Quark etc and as beginner wikipedians we will hopefully improve.  However the larger question of where  species pages should live on the web remains unanswered.  Regarding https://eol.org/ folk may be interested to know that they are importing content already from Wikipedia (compare https://eol.org/pages/3090895/articles and Eunoe leiotentaculata for example ).  No incentive to populate EoL first since the content will end up there anyway, and I am told that regional equivalents like  https://dashboard.ala.org.au/ will soon be doing the same. Regarding Wikispecies I find none of the arguments https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikispecies/FAQ for a separate wiki persuasive; also the implementation is amateur - just for one example it shows no awareness of the vast amount of work done by professional taxonomists to make an exhaustive and authoritative database of all marine species at http://www.marinespecies.org/index.php . If Wikispecies is truly for professionals the first step would be to import all those species from http://www.marinespecies.org/index.php as stubs instead of expecting those already overwhelmed professionals to do it all again manually.  On that subject, the avowed refusal of Wikispecies to import species pages from Wikipedia or vice versa again sentences a small overworked community to further hard manual labour.   My conclusion: if taxonomists are to have a place to put their work (re-cast for a non-specialist audience) it has to be in in one place, not two, Wikipedia; and, if Wikipedia wants to be encycopaedic it needs to encourage this wherever possible (by bending the rules on import of species stubs from suitably authoritative sources, for example).  As I said earlier, the very existence of this healthy discussion is very good recommendation to contribute here rather to the numerous alternatives that have less support.  Robin Wilson, Museums Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (talk) 01:17, 1 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Ahh where did you get that Wikispecies is avowed not to import material from Wikipedia and vice-versa. That is not true. Wikimedia foundations consists of some 700 projects and they are all interactive to varying degrees, we have inported species lists from Wikipedias in 70 languages. Much of this is done via Wikidata among other things. We also do import taxa from a variety of sites but this does get difficult when many sites are also importing data from us. Such as EoL and COL. I support your notion of developing to a more encyclopedic standard, but please if your going to criticize wikimedia projects understand them and how they interact with each other, clearly you do not. You cited a conversation about the development of Wikispecies from 2004, 16 years ago. Which is from before it was formed some 13 years ago. Did you even look at wikispecies? Or just go to ancient discussions on Meta that are no longer valid. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 01:52, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * OK I stand corrected. Yes I did look at Wikispecies, both the FAQ and direct links from there, and also searches for the taxa that I know about.  I'm thrilled to know that data can be imported from WoRMS http://www.marinespecies.org/index.php - how do I initiate that process and will import to wikidata and wikipedia happen simultaneously?  My preliminary investigations on wikispecies found that either there was no species page at all on wikispecies or if present species pages there either lacked taxon identified links to WoRMS and elsewhere (I also found a comment against taxaboxes on Wikispecies which made me wonder if wikidata is used differently there?).  So if imports between Wikispecies and Wikipedia are now allowed, how come it isn't happening - do I have to initiate it for the groups I am wanting to edit?  How?  What is the current policy on what data goes on Wikispecies and what on Wikipedia?  I didn't find guidelines on any of this on the FAQ?  Where shoudl I be reading?  If I am confused/misinformed I won't be the only one?  Please continue my education gently but if I find inconsistencies i do want to be able to point them out.  Robin Wilson, Museums Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (talk) 03:14, 1 June 2020 (UTC)


 * You should discuss Wikispecies on Wikispecies if you wish. Taxobars were requested to be developed further for use on Wikispecies. Each Wiki including all the different language versions of Wikipedia have their own manual of styles. These are developed by consensus. Anyway sort what you want out here. If you want tanything at wikispecies you will need to discuss it there. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 04:32, 1 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Let me take a sidestep here and comment on this: If Wikispecies is truly for professionals the first step would be to import all those species from http://www.marinespecies.org/index.php as stubs instead of expecting those already overwhelmed professionals to do it all again manually. We do have precedents on Wikipedia for the automated generation of taxon stubs using material from online sources. The latest, and highly successful, venture in that direction has been, which produced about 18,000 arthropod stubs, complete with Wikidata and other taxon identifiers (example). I know zip about bot design, but I suspect that a principally WoRMS-sourced bot could fill in a big part of the marine species coverage hole. If it could also draw (concise, summarized, natural language) descriptive material from the DELTA database, that would be downright sexy. Of course someone would have to write, test and shepherd the beast - a mickle detail... but maybe that approach is something you might be interested in. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:10, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * WoRMS is an excellent resource, but I think it should only be used for certain taxa. It also mirrors some other sites incompletely (e.g. Fishbase). It has already being used as source for creation of articles by bot for Gastropods. The bot is run by  which has created over 20,000 snail articles from WoRMS (see here and here). —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 16:41, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Nice, I did not know that (obviously). -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:19, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
 * This is all very promising. I will talk with the authors of those bots and see if a plan can be developed to support the marine annelid project, and will seek feedback here in due course.  I am a taxonomic editor on WoRMS so I am very familiar with that resource (yes, the fish taxonomists contribute elsewhere as do a few others but for very nearly all marine invertebrate phyla WoRMS is the go to resource that all professional taxonomists maintain, accept and use).  Robin Wilson, Museums Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (talk) 00:01, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Hey, this "beast" of a bot is what I had initially envisioned, but I also know squat about bot design and so why I had been going through and creating the articles and inserting the stock information generated from our DELTA database manually. But if we can leverage bots that already exist to achieve this, then awesome! And we can modify some things and write another program in DELTA to output more Wikipedia-appropriate text, so we'll keep heading in that direction.

Also, I want to thank for taking an interest in this and starting this discussion. I'll reiterate 's point, the level of community interest and support is what make Wikipedia awesome and our preferred platform for contribution of this material. Thank you for all the comments and ideas, we are taking it on board, and appreciate further constructive input as you think of it and as we continue to build on the project. Sus barbatus (talk) 01:46, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

A number of possibly fake articles
I assume many of you watch the Wikiproject Biology talk page as well, but just in case: an editor from the German WP left a concerning note regarding several articles on enWP that may be fake or just of doubtful provenance. Looks as if there might be something to it. Please check out Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 21:22, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Library: Authentication-based access and the Library Bundle now available!
Cross-posting:

The Wikipedia Library is pleased to announce the implementation of authentication-based access and the Library Bundle! These new features will help improve your research workflow by minimizing the number of individual logins you need to remember, and by providing on-demand access to a set of partners to all qualifying users without the need for manual application and approval. Along with the launch of Bundle/EZProxy, we are happy to announce several major new partnerships are now available, including large multidisciplinary collections from Springer Nature and ProQuest. Check out your Bundle eligibility and the new available collections by logging in at https://wikipedialibrary.wmflabs.org/. Please let me know if you have any questions, and feedback on the new systems can be left at the project page. Samwalton9 (WMF) (talk) 08:40, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Instant access now available to editors with 6 month tenure, 500 edits, no active blocks, and >10 edits in the previous month. Enwebb (talk) 16:16, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Disambiguated category names
Just to note that there are discussions going on at WP:Categories for discussion/Speedy concerning taxonomic categories. The view of "category editors" is that whenever an article title is disambiguated, then the category should be too. Thus because there is an article Dracaena (plant), there should not be Category:Dracaena, but Category:Dracaena (plant). In some cases, this may be the right thing to do, but I think that individual cases should be discussed in a forum where relevant Wikiproject members can participate. Long-standing and hitherto undisputed category names, like Category:Dracaena, should not be changed just for the sake of some blanket desire for tidiness. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:28, 25 June 2020 (UTC) I and other editors have been nominating lots of categories from that list at WP:CFDS, and there is no singling out of taxonomic categories. I have been working alphabetically through the list.
 * It's a great pity that @Peter coxhead chooses to misrepresent what's happening. The situation has been explained to Peter several times, so it's hard to AGF that this sustained misrepresentation is a good faith error.
 * There are not discussions going on at WP:Categories for discussion/Speedy. The speedy page is where categories are listed for renaming if they meet certain strictly defined criteria. If they meet those criteria, the renamings go ahead.  This is a long-established process to allow some basic and consistent principles of category naming to be applied with minimum bureaucracy.
 * This is not a matter of singling out taxonomic categories. The speedy principles apply to all categories, and the current flurry of speedy nominations is result of some analysis I did of some huge lists, part of which was identifying categories named after disambiguation pages: see WT:WikiProject_Categories.
 * These speedy renamings are being applied through WP:C2D, a speedy criterion which is about a decade old. Throughout that decade, hundreds of categories have been renamed every week through C2D. There is nothing new or exceptional about this.
 * The whole point of the speedy process is to provide a streamlined way of applying established naming conventions, to minimise the bureaucratic burden on editors. There are about 2 million categories, and having an individual discussion about every single one of them would take waaay more editorial time that is available: that is why WPCFDS was established in the first place, back in about 2007.
 * Per WP:LOCALCON, WikiProjects don't have authority to override community-wide consensus. If Peter or anyone else wants to open an RFC proposing a change to WP:C2D, then they are free to do so ... but they are not free to demand that their own area of interest be exempt from the standard naming conventions and processes.  Unless and until there is consensus to change the speedy process, it stands ... and it stands for all topics.
 * -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 07:53, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
 * PS It is quite bizarre that Peter coxhead has chosen Dracaena (plant) as a hill to die on; he has courted a block by reverting the actions of admins without even attempting to discuss the matter with them. (I summarised the history at)
 * Just take a look at the disambiguation Dracaena: it's a highly-ambiguous term. If Peter wanted to make a case for some tree-of-life categories having an undisambiguated title when their head article is disambiguated, this is a very poor choice. --  Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 08:45, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I did not ask for the move never to be made, merely for moves of taxonomic categories from titles without disambiguation to titles with disambiguation to be properly discussed. I remain disgusted that the speedy move was made regardless, with discussion regarded as inappropriate. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:15, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
 * @Peter coxhead, in other words, you asked for the whole CFDS process to be set aside for a particular topic area, with absolutely no attempt to justify why that topic area is different to all the others. That's why your objection was overruled.
 * As Ymblanter noted in a reply to you on their talk: if you believe that a category should be moved back to an ambiguous name, then feel free to open a full CFD discussion.  But please do look at Dracaena: are you really  that you think that's a suitable case for having an ambiguous category?
 * And please note that even though you have raised this issue in a least four venues, nobody has supported you. This quixotic quest for ambiguity in scientific topics seems to be yours alone. -- Brown HairedGirl  (talk) • (contribs) 09:42, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Synonym disambiguation
Would somebody please point me to a good example of a page that has one genus name that is a synonym of two or more genera. I've run into several of those and I can't figure out how to format and template them. I've recently created Mecynoptera and Microphisa, but they are wrong. I also feel like there should be references on the page, but I know that disambiguation pages don't have references. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 02:40, 27 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Off the top of my head, maybe see Robertia (disambiguation), written by . Umimmak (talk) 08:00, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Not exactly the same, but I created Plagiolophus once, which is the valid generic name of both a plant and an animal. FunkMonk (talk) 08:57, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks to both of you. Sometimes I draw a blank when I can't find an example to follow. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 21:17, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Help regarding synonyms
On Wikipedia, Colomerus vitis is described as a synonym of Eriophyes vitis and so the former redirects to the latter. On Commons the situation is reversed and Commons:Category:Eriophyes vitis redirects to Commons:Category:Colomerus vitis. I have no idea which is correct. Please could someone who is knowledgable comment at the related Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 29. Thanks, Thryduulf (talk) 19:45, 29 June 2020 (UTC)


 * GBIF (here) has Colomerus vitis (Pagenstecher, 1857) as the correct name senior to other combinations. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 01:11, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

Paper of Relevance to this Project
I am sharing a paper that at the outset will state I am an author on. Please note it is open access and free to download so I am not trying to advertise here. I acknowledge however my part in this paper. I asked the Stewards at Meta for advice before posting due to possible breaches of policy here. As per their recommendations I am posting on talk page only accepting my role in this, and have made a Wikidata item for the paper (Q97057911). The paper also appears on my taxon authority page in Wikispecies (Scott_Thomson).

Stephen T. Garnett, Les Christidis, Stijn Conix, Mark J. Costello, Frank E. Zachos, Olaf S. Ba´nki, Yiming Bao, Saroj K. Barik, John S. Buckeridge, Donald Hobern, Aaron Lien, Narelle Montgomery, Svetlana Nikolaeva, Richard L. Pyle, Scott A. Thomson, Peter Paul van Dijk, Anthony Whalen, Zhi-Qiang Zhang, Kevin R. Thiele. 2020. Principles for creating a single authoritative list of the world’s species. PLoS Biology 18(7): e3000736. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000736, https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000736.

The paper is a peer reviewed article in PLoS Biology, as stated it is free download. The relevance to everyone here is it looks at the formation of Global Lists of Species. It looks at the models in Wikispecies as existing efforts and places Wikispecies beside Catalogue of Life in Figure One for example. Feel free to download this paper and I hope you may find it useful in your work with the Tree of Life project. Cheers Scott Thomson  ( Faendalimas ) talk 21:39, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Synonyms in Wikidata
In an effort to improve Wikidata's coverage of taxon synonyms, I've created a proposal for a new taxon synonym string property. If you're interested, please join the discussion there. Although this isn't directly related to Wikipedia, it may impact how sitelinks are organized as well as the potential for sharing synonym data between Wikidata and Wikipedia infoboxes. Kaldari (talk) 01:08, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

When and where to use the dagger? †
I'm still pretty new here, so forgive me if this has already been clarified somewhere. When I searched the archives on this page and on Project Extinction, I only found discussions about the use of the † and the template in taxoboxes, but not about where else it is appropriate to put the symbol. So, while fixing typos, I came across the Balaenoptera article, which has daggers everywhere. In the taxobox, in the lists of species, and in subheadings. There's other issues too, which I know how to fix, but could someone take a look at the article and see what they think about the †? Or is there someplace else where specific things about formatting are explained? Thank you, and I hope this message isn't in the completely wrong place. TuskDeer (talk) 06:26, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I see nobody has answered this question and I don't really know the answer, but as far as I can see the daggers are correctly positioned and appropriate in the Balaenoptera article. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 08:39, 18 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Forgot to answer you back here until now. Thanks for answering my question! It just looked like there were too many daggers to me, so I wanted to confirm. TuskDeer (talk) 10:49, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree that the use of daggers is appropriate in that article where extant and extinct species are both listed. If the group is totally extinct then I think the daggers are superfluous. I don't think the daggers are needed in the subsection titles under fossil species. Come to that I don't think the subsections are needed at all. There is also the issue of the fossil species being listed twice, under taxonomy and fossil species. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 12:19, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Article changed to have two sections, one on extant species and the other on fossil species, without subsections. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 12:29, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

IUCN and IOC updates
An FYI, the IUCN has recently published an update to their redlist updating the status of various species. I've worked through the 1st page of SHARKS & RAYS. Also the IOC is about to finalize their 10.2 update. A couple of us have begun that update.....Pvmoutside (talk) 20:02, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I note the updates page has July 25 as the date for version 10.2 of the IOC listing. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 19:39, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Annelids Take 2
Following on from "New / expanded taxon articles with highly detailed diagnosis material": is currently producing annelid articles with a shortened but still technical description section. E.g., Eunoe subtruncata. What do people think? In my assessment this is dense but about right - there's a limit to how non-technical one can get in distinguishing these taxa; "it's a worm about yay big, with fewer scales than that other worm" may be more accessible but it's also rather useless. And it's not as if anyone completely new to invertebrate anatomy is even going to look these up. I'd be happy with this level of detail. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:22, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * My feedback is that it would be better for this to be in prose and written as complete sentences. Right now, it reads like a bulleted list without the bullets. "It has 42–45 segments and 15 pairs of elytra. Its prostomium anterior margin is comprised of two rounded lobes." Enwebb (talk) 18:50, 23 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Agree, the telegraphic style ought to be switched out for proper sentences. I've been doing that for a few. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 18:54, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks ! I agree that they still don't read as ideally as they should, but we're getting there with making the output more natural and prose-like. And yes, as mentioned in the previous discussion, we do need at least the minimum characters that allow a taxon to be distinguished from others. I've also been updating, expanding and adding images to the anatomical terms used and linked in the taxon articles, which hopefully makes them more accessible too. Right now I've completed pages for all species of Eunoe (bar two, which are dubious), some with more information than others. I hope we're getting closer to something of an ideal model for this type of taxon information and the workflow behind it. Sus barbatus (talk) 06:59, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

A 2-article genus category
I used to add categories for all genera, but my edits were previously reverted when the genus was very small. So now for really small genera (e.g. less than 5-10 species), I've categorized them in the parent category instead. What's the consensus here for a group like this or this one? Thanks! —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 16:15, 8 August 2020 (UTC)


 * I originally did the same when I started editing plant articles, but like you, was reverted ('corrected') by other editors. So I wrote up some guidance for plant articles at WikiProject Plants/Categorization, and checked that this had consensus at the time. (Please don't shoot the messenger – I've been criticized in the past for creating this guidance to suit myself, but I've never said that this would be my personal preference. It was simply the consensus among WP:PLANT editors at the time, which I wrote up to help myself and other editors understand what to do.)
 * WP:SMALLCAT can be used to argue either way, but to create genus categories for small genera, we would need show a broad consensus among ToL wikiprojects that "such categories are part of a large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme". The question then would be why stop at genera? Why not have a category for every level in the taxonomic hierarchy, regardless of its size? (This I would definitely oppose, because it would be impossible to maintain.) Peter coxhead (talk) 09:34, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Author or editor?
Another editor and I have been discussing whether people who prepare taxonomic databases should be credited in references as authors or editors. Should it be:



or



I'm wondering if there should be a general rule for this type of reference. Thanks for your input. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 03:04, 23 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I know this is dry as unbuttered toast, but I'm not sure which is right. This would affect a lot of references. Is there another place I should get input? Thank you, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 01:22, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
 * , I've had this page on my watchlist since your ping. I've not responded because I've had nothing to add to our previous conversation; I wanted to see what others' thoughts on the matter were before adding my own here. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 04:57, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Generally I follow what the taxonomic database suggests for the citation. Where attribution to someone is suggested this is usually as editor(s), e.g. Fishbase, Catalog of Fishes, Reptile database, IOC, Avibase. Many don't suggest an author, e.g. POWO, WFO, Fossilworks and WoRMS (generally). Some others suggest authors for particular entries, e.g. the IUCN lists assessors as authors. One where there is a site-wide author is ASW6 where Darrell Frost does seem to be author and editor. Algaebase also lists site-wide authors. WoRMS perhaps provides some guidance, as it hosts/mirrors other databases. Sometimes it has a plain entry with just WoRMS as author (e.g. Gastropoda), other times it cites a component database (e.g. Helix), but when it has a Fishbase entry it lists their editors in the suggested citation (e.g. Salmo) or the authors for Algaebase (e.g. Chara acicularis. Both the latter follow the suggested citation style of the database in question. I think this is good practice. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 06:13, 14 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Where the database makes it clear which they think they are, like you said, I'd follow their suggestion. Many databases don't specify though. What to do then? I've posted a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lepidoptera to see if anyone there has any input. Thanks, SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 05:04, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I would say neither if its not clear. For the site you quote, Markku Savela is listed as webmaster. I assume he is author of the website (the work in citation template parlance), but authors for a taxonomic database tends to imply the person making taxonomic decisions, so editor is probably better if one must to be added. He also warns against citing the website for taxonomy, so I'd omit his name from the citation. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 10:46, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Need help assessing some edits
was reported at WP:ANI (two threads: Archive 1043 and current thread) for making massive unsourced changes to taxonomical information at various articles. This user also went on to create a small sock farm, which resulted in the user being blocked. The problem is that most of the editors who have reviewed these edits don't have the technical knowledge to evaluate whether they are valid (a case of an overzealous, but otherwise well-meaning, editor) or bogus (a case of rapid-fire vandalism). Can anyone in this WikiProject take a look at a sample of the edits of, and  to assess their validity. A small sample should suffice to know whether these edits are worth keeping or not. WikiDan61 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 12:05, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It looks a lot has already been reverted. None of Quilt1's edits are the lastest edits. Most of Pillow6's remaining latest edits are useful refinements of categorization (these can be spotted in their edit history as a series of edits to different articles that all result in the same change in character count). Pillow4 also did some useful category refinement, but most of their other live edits were adding inappropriate display_parents values to taxoboxes. The Pillow accounts also have some live edits where they made a series of edits to the same article. These appear to be aimed at updating the classification presented in the article. None of the edits I looked at added a source for a different classification; but some edits REMOVED statements about classification that had been sourced.


 * Keep the categorization edits. Revert Pillow4's display_parents. I'm inclined to see their other edits reverted as perhaps good-faith, but unsourced. Plantdrew (talk) 02:56, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you for taking the time to look into this. WikiDan61 ChatMe!ReadMe!! 11:42, 13 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I would hesitate to keep of their edits. Unhelpful categorisation edits by IPs, clearly the same person (the easiest examples to find as I just reverted them): removing Amniote from Category:Mammalia, removing an article about a mare from Category:Individual mares, and removing an article about a racehorse who was euthanised from Category:Animal deaths by euthanasia.  has reviewed some of their work, and I've asked them to join this discussion. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 06:11, 15 August 2020 (UTC)
 * As an example, what about Artiofabula? I asked them to source it but obviously that never happened. Looks legit to me, but weird sub-order tribes really aren't my area. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 00:11, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * It is pretty accurate, apart from using a single superfamily for the river dolphins. I've added new river dolphin superfamilies and some references for the cetacean taxonomy and for the definition of the clade. It still needs a good taxonomic reference for the artiodactyls generally, which comes back to the lack of a clear replacement for MSW3, and for the phylogeny (Meredith et al., 2011, would do but I'm looking for a more artiodactyla focused study. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 13:52, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Watch User:Pillowquilt2 with some edits in draft. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 15:25, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

List of species redirects to delete
I was going to just nominate one and start the process, but I'll draft it up here as a start and to make sure I'm not missing anything.

Redirects for deletion:

Reliable and maintained sources listing these taxa as accepted: Achillea ochroleuca, Achillea setacea, Achillea tenuifolia

Per WP:TOL, WP:PLANTS, other TOL subprojects, and WP:RED, we don't create redirects from accepted species to places like a list of species or the parent taxon - except in cases like being the only member of a monotypic genus. General consensus in many discussions (couldn't find one - is there an actual policy that points to species/other taxa as inherently notable? or just accepted practice?) is that all accepted species are notable, and so should remain as redlinks. Most recently, see the RFD for the redirect Achillea ambrosiaca where the consensus was to delete the redirect, as well as Exophthalmus vittatus (also deleted) where said "I'd be perfectly happy to see all such species to genus redirects deleted".

It looks like neither PROD nor CSD options are available for this type of situation, and that these must all go through RFD, right? If folks want to help check through places like Category:Taxon redirects with possibilities and Template:R from species to genus, I'm happy for other uncontroversially accepted taxa to be added to the nomination. Though as noted on the Achillea ambrosiaca RFD, it would be great to somehow automate this process... —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 22:17, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Long ago there was a discussion that reached the consensus that species and higher taxa (but certainly not lower) are not only automatically notable, they are so notable that they must merely pass WP:V, not WP:GNG to have an article. And proving that one does not pass WP:V is on the person nominating the article for deletion. Abductive  (reasoning) 22:23, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I think that oversimplifies the position on supraspecific taxa. Accepted taxa at the principle ranks (genus, family, order, ...) are notable. But I think that accepted taxa at intermediate ranks have to be treated on an individual basis. (Out of mild curiosity how many subgenera have articles?) Lavateraguy (talk) 18:19, 27 August 2020 (UTC)


 * (ec) (couldn't find one - is there an actual policy that points to species/other taxa as inherently notable? or just accepted practice?) - that's a good point, BTW. I am only aware of WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES, which is not a guideline or policy in itself but states "All species that have a correct name (botany) or valid name (zoology) are inherently notable." I have always assumed that there is something more definite in the background, and it would be nice to have that to point to on occasion... -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:26, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Ah thanks! I knew I had seen something like that somewhere. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 22:38, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
 * This is not followed at the paleontology project, though, where, unless very notable and with enough literature to warrant separation, species are treated at the genus article. FunkMonk (talk) 02:32, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Because fossil species often turn out to fail WP:V—as an example, flowers and fruit rarely are found fossilized together, making descriptions, to be kind, weak. Abductive  (reasoning) 05:13, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, species of any kind have a pretty strict publication process (see ICZN), so it's not the sourcing that's the issue, rather the fact that very little can be said about a fossil species that doesn't apply to the genus as a whole. Exceptions are recently extinct species, such as mammoths, where we know almost as much about them as we do living species. But also the fact that it is extremely difficult to be certain whether a given fossil represents a new species or just an individual of an already described, similar fossil species. We can't observe their colour or behavior, so it's practically impossible. FunkMonk (talk) 13:08, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * The sourcing is still primary, and we hear all the time about how what was thought to be a juvenile turns out to be a related dwarf species, or the other way around. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with treating them at the genus level, its the best thing to do. Abductive  (reasoning) 14:32, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I did mean extant species in my original post but forgot to specify. :) —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 20:22, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, RFD is the deletion process that should be used for these (and SPECIESOUTCOMES is the most authoritative statement about Wikipedia's practices with regards to notability of taxa). It's going to take a lot of RFDs to get through them going three at a time. I started the plants with possibilities category in 2014. My impetus was seeing Panax ginseng redirecting to ginseng, and wanting some way to flag that the species was worthy of an article in it's own right. At first it was redirects from fairly high profile plants, and I had visions that I'd shift from wikignoming to content creation, starting with the plants with possibilities. But I just kept on wikignoming, and other editors added possibilities category for animals and other taxa, and we filled the possibilities categories with obscure species redirects that nobody is very interested in writing about. At this point, the possibilities categories just need to be purged (there are a few titles/redirects that are high profile, but not many).

I've added possibility categories to redirects as I've come across them, but I haven't made an effort to go systematically through edits of editors I know are responsible for a large number of taxon redirects. User:Galactikapedia created well over 6,000 redirects from lower taxa to higher taxa (some have since been converted to articles, largely by Qbugbot). User:Stemonitis had a history of converting substubs to redirects (especially crustaceans created by Polbot (see redirects to Orconectes), but also some insects (List of Tachinidae genera) and plants (List of Carex species). Galactikapedia has expressed remorse for their actions on their talk page, but we are still stuck with their redirects. Perhaps a special CSD (as was done with Neelix's redirects) would be appropriate for Galactikapedia's redirects? Plantdrew (talk) 02:27, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes please. Abductive  (reasoning) 05:14, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I mentioned it on the Plant Project talk page, but using custom CSS to highlight redirects (see WP:Visualizing redirects) makes it easy to pick out the six redirected species in the list on Achillea. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 07:58, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Yep, having a different color displayed from redirects links is how I found the Achillea species above and tagged them as possibilities. They were created by User:Joseph Laferriere, who is the most prolific creator of redirects for synonyms of plant taxa. He had a bad habit of copying synonym lists from TPL, without removing names flagged as illegitimate, so a few of his redirects represent junior homonyms (to be fair, in this case, TPL hadn't flagged A. ochroleuca and A. setacea as illegitimate). The vast majority of Josephs redirects are good, but can be difficult to find the bad ones. Whenever I come across a bad one, I've redirected it to the next higher taxon, added a possibilities template, and a note in hidden text with the authority for the senior homonym. Plantdrew (talk) 21:38, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
 * "Perhaps a special CSD (as was done with Neelix's redirects) would be appropriate for Galactikapedia's redirects?" & link for reference - that sounds like a reasonable option to me, but maybe it could be less specific since the issue spans beyond any single person's editing habits. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 18:54, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
 * One particularly prolific creator of many (tens?) of thousands of redirects from subspecies and species to their parent taxa is User:Wilhelmina Will. This practice has continued as recently as July 2020. Loopy30 (talk) 12:40, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Potential deletion of WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES
Welp, heads up that our collective decades of effort may soon be up for discussion and erased. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 15:35, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * I undid the change. There are almost half a million articles with taxoboxes, the majority of which will be on species. A strong consensus is needed to change such long standing guidance. Let there be a proper RfC. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:58, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The people advocating do it on Wikispecies don't seem to know what Wikispecies is about or intended to be. The Schefflera simplex article selected as a "bad" example, even in stub form, goes beyond the information Wikispecies will ever contain as it has distribution data and a historical note. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that everyone can edit, while Wikispecies is not. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 16:11, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * May be good to finally have a big discussion about this, and get something more solid than WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES out of it. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:52, 28 September 2020 (UTC)
 * Agreed. WP:N has a side box with a list of "Subject-specific guidelines" which provide criteria for presumed notability. I don't know what process got these guidelines accepted but don't see why it shouldn't be possible for species guidelines. The process of describing a species and its being accepted by various authorities pretty much provided the coverage in primary and secondary sources that is required for notability and verificability. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 17:15, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Updates to Ichnobox and Oobox
Ichnobox and Oobox have been updated. They should now handle automatic italicization of page titles and taxobox names in the same way as other automated taxboxes. See Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system/Archive 4 for more information. I have tested the changes, but if you notice any issues, please report them there. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:59, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Change to colour of Ichnoboxes
I'd like to make a small change to the colour of Ichnoboxes; comments please at Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:56, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Speciesbox support for ranks between species and genus
At present, Speciesbox allows only one rank, subgenus, to be directly specified (i.e. not via a taxonomy template). All other such ranks need a taxonomy template to work with Speciesbox. Please see Template talk:Speciesbox for a request for comment relating to this. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:17, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Mass cleanup edits?
There is large, and still growing, number of Taxonbar pages (~13.6k) in. I'd like to take this opportunity to both fix the CS1 error as well as piggyback what would otherwise be mostly trivial/inconsequential edits to these pages' wikitexts. These edits would be done via AWB manually, "slowly" (as opposed to in a large, fast burst from a WP:BRFA), over at least dozens of days. While "slow", it may be (and has been) undesirable to those who monitor their watchlist frequently. My desire here is to gauge what sort of consensus (or lack thereof) exists here for a run like this, and possibly what sort of daily limit would be acceptable.

The piggybacked edits would include:
 * 1) Standardizing ~62 template redirects from Automatic taxobox–Wikispecies-inline to their canonical titles
 * 2) Moving Italic title, Use dmy dates/etc., Use American English/etc., Good article/etc., etc. to their correct locations
 * 3) Removing duplicates (sometimes there is one at the top & at the bottom of a page)
 * 4) Ending infoboxes with " " on a new line, followed by a blank line, then the article prose
 * 5) Removing certain infobox parameter/values like &lt;any text&gt; & &lt;null&gt;, now handled differently or elsewhere
 * 6) Correctly ordering &sect;See also, &sect;References, &sect;External links (a non-trivial edit by itself, but not scanned for due to the long processing time it requires per page)
 * 7) Removing Clear after Default sort/categories, or if redundantly adjacent to full-width navboxes like Taxonbar
 * 8) Replace   with Reflist
 * 9) De-lint by self-closing HTML tags: ,  ,
 * 10) Capitalize IUCN (none required at this time)
 * 11) Strip single-portal  s
 * 12) Correct Taxonbar placement
 * 13) Correct stub-template & navbar placement
 * 14) Remove empty &sect;External links, including those with only an empty bullet
 * 15) Remove commas preceding Jr./Sr. per WP:JR/SR
 * 16) Start infoboxes on a separate line
 * 17) Empty line before navbar block (new)

I'm open to adding more minor manipulations too, as long as they are not extremely conditional or complicated. ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf) 03:16, 17 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Go for it and thank you. I just spent the last week or so doing something similar for about 12 thousand mostly Lepidoptera related articles using AWB. It's a little annoying to the watchlist, but it needs to be done and it's good that you're able to accomplish other things along the way. I'd say go as fast as you can handle without losing your mind. SchreiberBike &#124; ⌨ 08:29, 17 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm good with it. Cleaning up Wikipedia is a worthy task that outweighs the temporary inconvenience of having a flooded watchlist.--SilverTiger12 (talk) 22:37, 17 October 2020 (UTC)


 * It's a thankless job, but definitely needed to keep articles standardized across the 'pedia. Also, note that Italic title is not required for most articles with automatic taxoboxes and speciesboxes. Loopy30 (talk) 01:16, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I would like to propose a few more maintenance changes including:


 * 1) Replace a number of template redirects (exact list on request) by one of the two canonical forms use dmy dates and use mdy dates for performance reasons (per Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_70 and Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2020_September_5)
 * 2) Replace a number of deprecated or discouraged non-hyphenated citation template parameters by their hyphenated form (per Help_talk:Citation_Style_1 and Help_talk:Citation_Style_1) (where [#] is a placeholder for an optional number 1 or higher.):
 * 3) * editor[#]link[#] -> editor[#]-link[#]
 * 4) * author[#]link[#] -> author[#]-link[#]
 * 5) * author[#]mask[#] -> author[#]-mask[#]
 * 6) * displayauthors -> display-authors
 * 7) Change
 * Does this provide basic functionality for citations to the new COL infrastructure? —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 16:15, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware of BioRef - very useful! Yes, I think the taxon option and the tree option are the two use cases. At least I'm not aware of anything else that was done intentionally (i.e., previous links to the search page I assume were not an intended outcome).
 * I wasn't aware of BioRef - very useful! Yes, I think the taxon option and the tree option are the two use cases. At least I'm not aware of anything else that was done intentionally (i.e., previous links to the search page I assume were not an intended outcome).


 * However, it doesn't look as if the re-routing of the sandbox version to search results has worked - all the examples now go to the blank (unparameterized) search page? -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:26, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Sorry. I was working on the sandbox version after I wrote the above. I've updated the link above to the version I was discussing.
 * I have put a module version in Catalogue of Life/sandbox that handles the old style with positional parameters and new style with named parameters. This mean existing citations to the old COL system (which uses positional parameters) will get linked to something relevant (if not the browser tree) and the template can now also be used with the new COL system by using named parameters, i.e. id, option, title and all the cite web parameters. It's incomplete, as I need to handle the synonyms and I haven't added ITIS and Species 2000 to the citation.
 * Suggestions and questions? —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 13:59, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Heh. I first thought that this had completely backfired because the very first old ID I tested (from Vespertilionidae) linked to - Chinchilla chinchilla... someone must have done a bad c/p there :p Discounting that, seems to work nicely. Great! -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:08, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * There appears to be a capability to search previous checklists using the old interface (see here). So for 2019 a search uses a link such as http://www.catalogueoflife.org/annual-checklist/2019/search/all/key/Chinchilla+chinchilla/fossil/1/match/1 and old ID links with http://www.catalogueoflife.org/annual-checklist/2019/details/species/id/7539827da517bd6273a4a3836578cb24. This suggests that the old-style links could use access-date to get the year for the appropriate checklist and link to what the editor presumably saw. —  Jts1882 &#124; talk 16:42, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * There are a lot of COL links that don't use this template (see here)
 * A browse tree link from that list such as http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col/browse/tree/id/003e480e646d0e7647ab67efc1218197 (which fails) can be converted to a functional link on older checklists as http://www.catalogueoflife.org/annual-checklist/2019/browse/tree/id/003e480e646d0e7647ab67efc1218197.
 * This suggests a bot task could fix all the old links. — <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 17:47, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Is that something one would broach at WP:BOTREQ? I was wondering about the date issue... "access-date" is probably not universally present in these links (I know I'm quite bad at including it), so might it be possible to have a bot look at the timestamp of when the link was added, and use that as an indicator of which annual checklist to link to? Might be a bit ambitious - it's basically a WikiBlame job attached to each one. Otherwise maybe just take the 2020 one and run a smallish risk of taxonomic changes/mismatch. -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:23, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I think a bot converting those general cite web links to Catalogue of Life would do. The module can then check for dates and link to old databases. We know the date of the last update in Dec 2020 and might be able to get the exact dates for other updates.
 * A lot of them are of similar form to the one at Orestilla (they might have been created by a bot):
 * So if those could be converted to something like:
 * Then when old-url is set it could be used with access-date to determine the appropriate link (and perhaps default to the 2019 (last) version). I'll have look to see how many have a standard form. — <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 17:58, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Then when old-url is set it could be used with access-date to determine the appropriate link (and perhaps default to the 2019 (last) version). I'll have look to see how many have a standard form. — <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 17:58, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Then when old-url is set it could be used with access-date to determine the appropriate link (and perhaps default to the 2019 (last) version). I'll have look to see how many have a standard form. — <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 17:58, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Update
I've updated the template to use the sandbox version discussed above, including an option to link to the hierarchical tree. I've also added an option to link to older versions of the CoL database (taxon page or browsing tree). I've made a first pass at updating the documentation. — <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 15:48, 15 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Great job - thanks for getting stuck in there! -- Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:25, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

I've been looking at what might be possible with AutoWikiBrowser, something I've been meaning to play with for some time. Here is a proposal, or at least the first stage of one.

This search  yields 2344 results, which seems to be citations added by some automated process (there are also Itis, GBIF and BugRef citations of similar form in the reference section, e.g. at Dermestidae).

I think these citations using Cite web can be replaced with Catalogue of Life using AWB with the following find and replace:

Find:

Replace:

Output:

Then Catalogue of Life can handle an old-style id and, in the case of those April 2018 citations, link to the 2017 version of Catalogue of Life.



I'll explore this a bit more, but thought I'd outline the plan here now for feedback. — <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 13:37, 16 January 2021 (UTC)
 * . Do you have any comments on the above. I've being looking at some of the 2344 pages using a link of form  and it seems they were mostly added by you in references using a standard form. Was this an automated (bot?) process that can be used for updates? — <span style="font-family:Arial;background:#d6ffe6;border:solid 1px;border-radius:5px;box-shadow:darkcyan 0px 1px 1px;"> Jts1882 &#124; talk 17:01, 19 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Those references were added using qbugbot. Qbugbut currently removes Catalogue of Life in edits and no longer adds it to new pages. I'll be glad to use the bot to remove Catalogue of Life references in these pages that have GBIF, if there's a consensus for that, or I can convert it to the template Catalogue of Life. I can also convert ITIS, GBIF, and BugGuide references to templates if they are available.
 * In addition, I would suggest removing the "data sources" in qbugbot pages for lists of species, genera, etc. It's too cumbersome for editors to look up this information when a new taxon is added to the list or removed from a database, and the data sources inevitably get out of date. I can also do that with the bot if there's a consensus. Bob Webster (talk) 05:28, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
 * In addition, I would suggest removing the "data sources" in qbugbot pages for lists of species, genera, etc. It's too cumbersome for editors to look up this information when a new taxon is added to the list or removed from a database, and the data sources inevitably get out of date. I can also do that with the bot if there's a consensus. Bob Webster (talk) 05:28, 20 February 2021 (UTC)