User talk:Kwamikagami

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Hello, and a belated welcome to Wikispecies! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you are enjoying being here. Here are some pages you might not yet have found:

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–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:19, 8 March 2022 (UTC).

hts

Hello. What language does the code hts refer to? Thanks Andyboorman (talk) 08:50, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Hadza. The name hasn't gone through, but I was told I could start using the code. It should convert to the name when the name file is updated. Kwamikagami (talk) 08:51, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Cheers and wow! Andyboorman (talk) 09:54, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

@Andy Boorman: See Template talk:VN#hts for details. Regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:22, 10 March 2022 (UTC).

You asked whether or not you can create new articles - the answer is yes, but please follow the help section and look through previous articles of a similar nature. I will help if required. All the best Andyboorman (talk) 10:29, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Vernacular names

Hello Kwamikagami. Please note that the Vernacular names section on taxon pages should only include one (i.e. the most common) vernacular name per language, as described in the "Usage" section of the "Vernacular names" help page. If a taxon page already lists a vernacular name in a specific language and you would like to add a new one, then please also remove the old one(s) in the same process.

Also, please use leading caps for vernacular names, regardless of language. As stated on the Vernacular names section help page "Titles of the articles in interwiki always begin with a capital letter ('Sentence case'). The VN list should follow suit, even when the within-sentence convention for vernacular names is in lower case in some languages".

Happy editing, and thank you for your contributions! –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 14:06, 16 March 2022 (UTC).

Sometimes there is no most-common name, but one name used in the north and another in the south. Kwamikagami (talk) 17:53, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

I know, and this can be tricky. Consider English, which is the main and/or official language in Britain, Zanzibar, the United States, Nigeria, Australia, India, South Africa, the Philippines… and the list goes on. Still, we should only add one vernacular name (VN). There are two reasons for this:

1. Either we only add one, or all of them. The latter would be impractical, since for some widely spread languages there may be several hundreds if not thousands of vernacular names for some equally widely spread species.
2. If we can't add only one, we add none. Quoting the Vernacular names section help page, linked above: "As vernacular names are not an important part of Wikispecies, the vernacular names list in Wikispecies is only a summary; it is not intended to be a comprehensive listing of every local variant, past or present."

Put together that means that if it's impossible to chose a single "most suitable" vernacular name to add, its best to leave it out altogether. Since the vernacular names are not part of the taxonomy some users even argue that we should skip the entire list and delete all vernacular names – however I don't agree. Having said that, it's important to remember that the core of Wikispecies is only to act as a database for taxa, taxonomy, biological systematics, type repositories, and information about the authors and references needed to verify that data. Nothing else. Hence adding the vernacular names is actually out of scope of the Wikispecies project. This is also one of the areas were Wikispecies differs the most from Wikipedia, where a comprehensive list of vernacular names may be better suited.

Lastly I would like to make point out that I have no issue with you adding VNs as such: I'm merely referring to the standard and praxis commonly agreed upon and used at Wikispecies. Your additions are very welcome, especially since you often add vernacular names in languages which the bulk of our active Wikispecies editors don't speak, and therefore can't assist with. But please try to limit the VNs to one per language. Sometimes Wikipedia or better yet Wikidata can be of assistance when picking a good vernacular name to display. Wikidata has a property named "taxon common name" (P1843) explicitly used to list common or vernacular names of biological taxa in Wikidata items. See for example Q145992, the Wikidata item for Norway Spruce which lists some 40 different vernacular names in almost as many languages. (A few may be considered duplicates, for example there are two posts for the Serbian vernacular name, since the Serbian language is one of few that interchangeably use both Cyrillic and Latin script.)

–Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 00:29, 17 March 2022 (UTC).

Thank you for the advice. I've gone through and capitalized the first word of the names (per corrections by other editors and other languages where only the first word is capitalized). When there are competing names I'll try to consider whether one is a descriptive term and the other an old, opaque name; if one is a loan, or, if both are loans, which is older / more established. Kwamikagami (talk) 00:38, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Excellent. Please don't hesitate to contact me on my talk page or use the community Village Pump if you have any questions, ideas or suggestions. For technical or administrative issues please use the Administrators' Noticeboard instead. It's more or less constantly monitored by admins and bureaucrats. Thanks again for your contributions. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 03:05, 17 March 2022 (UTC).