User talk:Tommy Kronkvist

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Wikidata & synonyms etc

Hello; perhaps I should raise this at the Village Pump, but anyway; I have just moved the page Oceanodroma matsudairae to Hydrobates matsudairae. There are wikidata items Q785281 for the former and Q28122588 for the latter; the wikispecies link is automatically updated with the page move, so now the former item "Oceanodroma matsudairae" has a link to the wikispecies page Hydrobates matsudariae, while the "Hydrobates matsudairae" item still has no site links; I considered removing the wikispecies link before the page move, but were one purist, and move the link to the Hydrobates matsudairae page to that item, it would be stranded without links to other projects. In the same way that there is a Commons category property, so one and the same Commons category can be added to more than one wikidata item, should there be the same for wikispecies pages - this one page is relevant also for the protonym item Q28122592. I take it there is no way to connect redirects to wikidata items. I guess this semi-relates to the scenario where some language wikipedias, where there is a family with but one genus, create the page with the family name and others with the genus name; sometimes you see a link added to the "wrong" item, so that the page in question can link up with other language wikipedia pages. Thanks, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 15:50, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the notification, Maculosae tegmine lyncis. This is an unfortunate but very common problem, mainly deriving from the fact that Wikipedia pages are founded on taxon names, whereas the names of Wikispecies pages are based on taxon. A slight but important divergence, and the majority of Wikipedia users doesn't know the difference (since they're not taxonomists). This also frequently leads to Wikipedia users wanting to merge Wikidata items for different taxa (for example merging the Oceanodroma matsudairae and Hydrobates matsudairae Wikidata items into one), since according to them "it is the same species". While this may be true they are still two different taxa, and this is what many Wikipedia users fail to understand.

I've made some small changes to Q785281 and Q28122588 as well as to Q28122592, but will have to wait until the weekend before doing any major corrections. However I'm not sure I'll be able to do a very good job of it, since the taxonomy surrounding both Oceanodroma matsudairae and Hydrobates matsudairae seems questionable. Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist, 09:40, 8 October 2021 (UTC).

Thank you—so best practice, before a taxonomy update-related page move, would seem to be to remove the wikidata wikispecies link, re-adding it to the new taxon/name, and wait for the wikipedias (and their wikidata links) to catch up as it were; I could manually add the old-style square brackets-based links from wikispecies to eg enwiki, but I think they are one-way (or, were time infinite, update/move all the related wikipedia pages & links); so the practical result of the/a taxonomic update being implemented on wikispecies would be for the wikispecies pages, eg here a dozen or more linked-in Oceanodroma pages, becoming unlinked (apart from for anyone querying wikidata direct) in this instance Hydrobates pages; I'm tempted to revert your (I guess correct) correction as that doesn't seem beneficial, not least as one way for the wikipedias to find out there is an update in the first place would be (by chancing) to look at the connected wikispecies page (though in this case enwiki jumped the gun), Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 10:35, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

@Maculosae tegmine lyncis: I'm rather pressed for time at the moment, but here's a short answer until I have time to answer you properly.

1. Using the old-style square bracket links is a deprecated system, and shouldn't be used at all. Instead we should use Wikidata: that's what it's for. (Also yes:, the old system is one-way only).
2. The most important thing is that the information is correct. Whether an edit is beneficial or not is of secondary importance. It is not okay to change one correct page, simply as to comply with (in this case) 26 other pages that are wrong. The only right thing is instead to edit the other 26 inaccurate pages so that they are also correct. That's a lot of work, yes, but we shouldn't make improper changes. In other words we shouldn't lie. If we do, we might as well simply call all animals "Animalia" and all plants "Plantae", and skip the lower ranked taxon names. There's no point in having a nomenclature if we don't bother to name the taxa correctly.
3. If you look at Q785281 and Q28122588 you'll see that both refer to the other taxon as being a synonym of the other. That's of course incorrect, since from a taxonomical point of view only one of them is a synonym (P1420). The other should instead be marked as "synonym of" (P694). This is another rather common error made by many wikipedians since they frequently only use the word "synonym" in the general, semantical way (e.g. big = large), rather than as a property within the field of taxonomy.

–Tommy Kronkvist, 12:08, 8 October 2021 (UTC).

Hello again, I was thinking about a software feature request, relating to the multiple wikidata items & links issue. My understanding is that, if there is an old-style (and deprecated) interlanguage/wiki link such as [​[en]​] on a page, then this is ignored when the software builds the list of links in the left margin, but made use of if there is no link to enwiki on the wikidata item to which the wikispecies page is linked. What might be good would be instead to be able to add an equivalent to [​[en]​], but specifying a wikidata item, or multiple items, instead (eg for each combination); then, the software could look at the links on that/those item(s) and add them to the list in the left margin; I don't know if there are any obvious issues with this, thank you, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 09:34, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

BHL template

Hi! Please don't replace BHL template from reference templates! BHL is a valid template for use in the references templates, there is no consensus to replace it or not to use it. Regards, Burmeister (talk) 00:17, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi Burmeister, and thanks for your note! Okay, I'll comply with that.

However when there's time I think we should look over the {{BHL}}, {{BHL item}} and {{BHL page}} templates, since in some instances they no longer work as well as they used to. For example some of the biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography... and biodiversitylibrary.org/creator... links have URLs that our templates can't handle well. I can't give a good example right now (it's 4:34 in the morning here and I'm still awake… :-) but if I recall correctly it has got to do with their use of characters such as =!? and # etc. (i.e. URI queries and URI fragments). They are not used very often in BHL URLs and sometimes BHL present a DOI that can be used as an alternative, but we should try to find a way to easily work around the problems when no DOI alternative is available. The problem is comparable to when we use certain characters in Wikipedia links in the Wikimedia Commons "information" template, which messes up the template/wiki code. As you know, in Commons that can be solved by adding an "invisible" "1=" code string, for example "{{Information|description=pt-br|1=Tachyglossus aculeatus no Zoológico de Adelaide}}". That particular solution probably wont help us though, since I don't think the problem with BHL links is primarily related to wiki code.

–Kind regards, Tommy Kronkvist 02:34, 14 October 2021 (UTC).

Templates

Hi, please take a look at this: https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikispecies:Templates/cs At the very bottom are warning signs. Although the templates are translated to them, the English-language text is displayed. Why is it?--Rosičák (talk) 15:41, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hello Rosičák, I guess you mean the templates in the "Pracovní šablony" subsection of that page? Is there still a problem with these? Tommy Kronkvist, 23:09, 24 January 2022 (UTC)~.

Hi, take a look at the screen scan. The message from the template is in the articles in English, despite the fact that the template is translated.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Protista-_wikispecies_26012002.png Rosičák (talk) 18:47, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

How we will see unregistered users

Hi!

You get this message because you are an admin on a Wikimedia wiki.

When someone edits a Wikimedia wiki without being logged in today, we show their IP address. As you may already know, we will not be able to do this in the future. This is a decision by the Wikimedia Foundation Legal department, because norms and regulations for privacy online have changed.

Instead of the IP we will show a masked identity. You as an admin will still be able to access the IP. There will also be a new user right for those who need to see the full IPs of unregistered users to fight vandalism, harassment and spam without being admins. Patrollers will also see part of the IP even without this user right. We are also working on better tools to help.

If you have not seen it before, you can read more on Meta. If you want to make sure you don’t miss technical changes on the Wikimedia wikis, you can subscribe to the weekly technical newsletter.

We have two suggested ways this identity could work. We would appreciate your feedback on which way you think would work best for you and your wiki, now and in the future. You can let us know on the talk page. You can write in your language. The suggestions were posted in October and we will decide after 17 January.

Thank you. /Johan (WMF)

18:19, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Taxonomic databases

I have more or less completed the table I mentioned on the Pump. Taxonomic databases. Thanks for editing out poor spelling etc. What do you think of the table, I may add a few more comments in due course If you feel that it maybe useful, where to put it or I could add a link to my Talk Page on the Pump? Andyboorman (talk) 16:01, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Hi Andy! The Taxonomic databases table on your talk page is a great initiative, so thank you for that. However I don't really think it's "talk page material"; it's better suited as an instructive over-all Wikispecies help file than for general- or user talk related discussions. I propose we create a subpage to Help:Project sources (such as Help:Project sources/Taxonomic databases), and add a link to it on the "Project sources" page. An informative link about the new page would of course be welcome at the Pump as well. Actually, perhaps we should bring the whole issue to the Pump prior to creating any new pages, should any community member have a better suggestion for the placement of the file? –Tommy Kronkvist, 16:32, 4 February 2022 (UTC).

Hi Tommy. More than happy to support this initiative. I agree we bring this to the Pump first in order to prevent wasted work. Feel free to link the discussion to my Talk Page citing my table as an example. Best regards Andyboorman (talk) 18:51, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Help with ref template? ⧼what are these brackets⧽

Hey, you've been kind to help me before; I tried making a ref template: {{Roberts & Brooks, 1987}}, but the subheadings for the various nomenclatural acts (other than new names) look weird with ⧼⧽ surrounding them. Do you see what I did wrong? Thanks! Umimmak (talk) 01:28, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Hello Umimmak! The problem was that you used the {{int:}} tags for automatic localization for phrases that wasn't present in our database which controls all of those translations. If the value is missing from the database, the server software returns the phrase with those weird looking brackets instead. Odd behaviour, but there you are... I've now entered the phrases "New ranks, New combinations and New synonyms" to our Wikispecies:Localization database and they should all look and work as expected from now on. (I also added an {{int:}} tag to your template, but that's a minor detail.) Happy editing! Tommy Kronkvist, 01:53, 14 February 2022 (UTC).

Ah thank you! Good to know, and I appreciate you adding those localizations! Umimmak (talk) 01:57, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

Little debug of your userpage

Heads up: you have the text "By some odd reason you only get the full captions, links and all, if you hover from the bottom of the images and up, rather from the top or sides." toward the bottom of your userpage. Two small things: first off, in (American?) English, this should start "For some..." rather than "By some..." Secondly, the reason this caption floats in the way it does is because you have mode=packed-hover chosen along with certain lengths of text and sizes of images. If you want different displays, see mw:Help:Images#Mode_parameter and tool around with the image sizes, etc. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 09:35, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Request for moving

Hey Kronkvist! hope you are well. I recently translated sidebar descriptions in Bengali on my subpages (list). if you can please move these pages to MediaWiki namespaces without leave a redirect. Thank you! খাত্তাব হাসান (talk) 11:39, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

@খাত্তাব হাসান.  Done. Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist, 12:19, 13 March 2022 (UTC).

Edit conflict

That's very strange!

I made this edit to the vernacular names, though without any change to the authors, not this edit. I never touched the int:Name section. I guess we were editing at the same time. It should've been an edit conflict. Instead, it seems to have saved my version (removing one of the vernacular names) by overriding yours. Maybe a bug somewhere?

Anyway, just to let you know it wasn't intentional. Kwamikagami (talk) 03:42, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Wait, I made my edit almost 12 hrs after yours. How could I remove a name you'd already removed? Maybe somehow I was editing an old version of the article. But in that case there should've been a warning. This kind of thing has happened to me before, though not often. (Maybe a couple times a year.) I'd like to know what's going on so it doesn't keep happening. Kwamikagami (talk) 04:46, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

As you said, looking at the time-stamps in the page history it seems unlikely to be an edit conflict considering there are several hours between each of the last handful of edits. It may of course be a software bug, but more likely it's got something to do with the database cache being out of synch on one of the servers. I'll have a look at the logs and a chat with the tech overlords later today. Anyway I didn't think you had any malicious intention: that's also partly why I chose to "undo" rather than "rollback". Not that it matters much, but it looks a bit better in your user statistics. :-)

By the way. I guess you already know this, but just to make sure: The reason we should always use the full author names in links is that while author abbreviations are unique for any author within the field of botany, in zoology they are not. See for example Anderson and Young, which does not link to the botanists James Anderson and Thomas Young even though their IPNI abbreviations are indeed "Anderson" and "Young". Instead they are links to disambiguation pages, listing almost a hundred different Andersons and Youngs.

Among the botanists there's only one each with the IPNI standard form Anderson and Young, but there are virtual cohorts of other authors with the same surnames and in theory any of the zoologists in those lists can be referred to as "Johnson" or "Young". In order to avoid misunderstandings we therefore always link to the actual author page e.g. {{a|Thomas Young|Young}}. It will still look like Young but links directly to the specific author rather than to the disambiguation page mentioned above. This is also why our naming scheme for author pages is to always try to name them after each respective authors full name (when we know them) instead of using initials. Sometimes that's not enough. For example there are several authors named "James Anderson" – the page for the one mentioned above can be found at James Anderson (botanist, 1738–1809). And Bob's your uncle. –Tommy Kronkvist, 05:18, 17 March 2022 (UTC).

Philyra bicornis

I am kinda confused why you replace P.K.L.Ng with just only Ng. Is it the agreement in the wikispecies cause so many website and literature use P.K.L.Ng as taxa name. Thank you Agus Damanik (talk) 20:34, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

​Yes, for zoologists we generally only use the authors surname/family name in the Name section. Botanists are different, since they (usually) have a standard IPNI abbreviation (listed at www.ipni.org.) The IPNI standard ID is unique for each botanist = not shared with any other botanist. The author abbreviations of zoologists are generally not unique, and are often shared by many other authors: see for example Li.

It is however important that we always lists authors as "Surname, Initials" in the References section, for example as Ng, P.K.L. There we never lists the authors only by their author abbreviations, and never only by their sunrname (since there are many Ng, Li, Smith, etc.) Hence, if a user is unsure which "Ng" is listed in the Name section, he can always make sure by checking the (for example) Ng, P.K.L. link in the References section.

I actually don't know why we've chosen this system, but it's been the Wikispecies praxis for many years. Kind regards, Tommy Kronkvist, 21:07, 23 March 2022 (UTC).

Okay. actually the naming makes it easier for me. Thanks Tommy. Agus Damanik (talk) 21:10, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

​Just a last note, for the sake of completeness: There are a few cases where this system is less than ideal, for example the Megathymini page which lists the two authors as "Comstock & Comstock, 1895" in the Name section. The two author links are different though, and of course the initials are added to their names in the References section, listing them as "Comstock, J.H. & Comstock, A.B. 1895" (they were husband and wife). –Tommy Kronkvist, 21:25, 23 March 2022 (UTC).

Okay. I got it. Thanks for the information and insight Agus Damanik (talk) 21:27, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Template:Rfcheader

Hi, this template is currently listed in the section broken pages at Special:PageTranslation. It would like to fix this, but the page is protected. Could you temporary lower the protection of that page? Thanks, --Ameisenigel (talk) 15:08, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

@Ameisenigel: Sorry for my late reply, but things are busy IRL. The status of Template:Rfcheader is now changed to semi-protected for one week (eg. only protected from IPs and newly registered accounts), which should make it possible for you to make the necessary fixes. Thanks for bringing this up, and happy editing! Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist, 07:17, 23 May 2022 (UTC).

Thanks, the template is now fixed. --Ameisenigel (talk) 09:06, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for help with O. barbadensis

Many thanks for tidying things up at the newly-established page for Oliva barbadensis -much improved!
I have now uploaded an improved (lighter brighter colour) version of the photo of the holotype of Ol. barbadensis to Wiki Commons
and have included this improved photo on the newly-established WikiSpecies listing, just mentioned. BathyMetrix (talk) 23:45, 24 May 2022 (UTC)