User:AndrewT

From Wikispecies

I looked at Wikispecies in December 2006, made a comment on the Village Pump and a couple minor edits. I think I had registered a user name, but I can't remember what it was. Hype about the EoL launch made me think of Wikispecies, so I'm back. I'm pretty new to Wikis altogether; I've corrected a few typos and vandalisms in Wikipedia, and have spent a couple hours editing the Wiki based manual of a (not very popular) online game that I play.

I'm a botanist, but I don't do taxonomic/systematic research myself. I work at a major institution for botanical taxonomic research. I used to work for one of the major nomenclatural databasing efforts (Wikispecies makes pretty heavy use of this database).

I'd like to see a reference for all the species in the world in my lifetime, but I think EoL is probably going to end up like the All Species Foundation (anybody remember that? at least ASF wanted to support alpha taxonomy, unlike any other proposed project). Catalogue of Life keeps plodding along.

I think Wikispecies might have some potential, but I've got major concerns. I'll try to make some contributions before I totally give up on Wikispecies.

I'm not really interested in creating large numbers of minimal pages here. There should be bots for that. I'm planning on making a smaller number of fully developed pages. Ideally, I'd work on filling in data on the most viewed plant pages, but I don't know how to see which pages are most viewed. My goal: 100 good plant species pages. I have major reservations about Wikispecies, but I'll see what I can do to help.

1. User:AndrewT/GenusFormatting [\br]
2. User:AndrewT/SpeciesFormatting [\br] references
3. User:AndrewT/Name Section1 User:AndrewT/Name Section2 User:AndrewT/Name Section3 User:AndrewT/Name Section4
4. User:AndrewT/References Section

[edit] Good pages

1. Lonchophylla orcesi old ideal [\br]
2. Panthera tigris new ideal [\br]
3. Deania profundorum apparently was considered a good example at one point
4. Araucaria araucana good plant [\br]
5. Graphis scripta has basionym[\br]
6. Panthera sondaica types (but Holotype is a terrible title; what about lecto/neotypes?)
7. Curcuma petiolata has nice references (CODEN? Seems to be mostly a chemistry thing, I'd go with just ISSN)
8. Lecidea fuscoatra basionym as seperate section
9. Grylloblattina bold type species?
10. Euglenozoa presents multiple classifications
11. Banksia Wikisource link, also has page for the reference on Wikispecies
12. Asteraceae Has both subfamilies & a list of genera. Doesn't lose the full ranking, but much more functional.

There should be multiple ideal pages; at least one for each of the Codes; plant, animal, bacteria. Maybe more to demonstrate different possible data types (e.g., parasite hosts, fossil info, both neo and lectotypes, allotypes)

[edit] Useful Links

Category:External link templates-need more of these, improve existing ones like PLANTS. en:Wikipedia:Citation templates Template:Cite book [Nomenclatural citations]

[edit] Reference formats

Every editor has their own format. Why not create templates for more of the commonly used references? Collecting some reference formats below:

USDA, NRCS. 2006. The PLANTS Database, 6 March 2006 (address). Data compiled from various sources by Mark W. Skinner. National Plant Data Center, Baton Rouge, LA 70874-4490 USA. Rhodobryum ontariense

USDA, NRCS. 2006. The PLANTS Database, 6 March 2006 (address). Berberis thunbergii

USDA, ARS, National Genetic Resources Program. Germplasm Resources Information Network - (GRIN) [Data from 07-Oct-06]. 15496 Erica_umbellata

To Do List-Magnoliophyta to genus level? Is there a better break down than this? Editors mostly doing animals, I guess. Insecta is broken down (not that Magnoliophyta is as big, but close enough, orders of magnitude wise). Where to start?

Holotype page will get unwieldy as it expands. Split into types of musea? Herbaria/Bird Collections/etc? How are animal institutions assigned acronyms? Needs to be an entry point to type institutions and taxonomists from the main page. Are there other weird pages that should be linked? Any reader friendly material buried in WS? (hmm, should be more links back to Wikipedia to get some of the concepts WS employs described).

Completeness indicator. Maybe a comment in the page source stating that genus contains all species (should only be used when reference is provided). Visible information, rather than comment?

Hybrid: "×Amelasorbus jackii", "x Amelasorbus jackii" (spacing and x vs. cross)