Wikispecies:Village Pump/Archive 43

This is an archive of closed discussions. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this archive.

French-speaker needed

Can a French speaker please check and translate the recent edit to Salomé Fabri-Ruiz? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:00, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

N'est-ce pas the unicorns? Andyboorman (talk) 20:30, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing to translate. Obviously this was vandalism. I reverted. --Franz Xaver (talk) 21:11, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Franz Xaver: It doesn't seem obvious to me (I do not know French and relied on Google Translate): "also known as Salami, Salopette or Salamèche. French echinodermologist / urchinologist but especially licornologist in his hours." It seems like the user gave alternate names and a specialization. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:16, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf: The "alternative names" are inspired by the name Salomé, the first is an Italian sausage, the second a kind of (working) dress, the third a Pokémon. And as Andy has written, a "licorne" is a unicorn. To me, it is obvious, that this is no serious information. --Franz Xaver (talk) 21:28, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Franz Xaver: Thanks, then--this is obviously the correct choice. Didn't know about that pocket monster. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:38, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The contributor just wanted to test us ... he says. --Murma174 (talk) 07:45, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (until April 15)

This message, "We invite you to join the movement strategy conversation (now through April 15)", was sent through multiple channels by Gregory Varnum on 15 and 16 of March 2017 to village pumps, affiliate talk pages, movement mailing lists, and MassMessage groups. A similar message was sent by Nicole Ebber to organized groups and their mailing lists on 15 of March 2017. This version of the message is available for translation and documentation purposes

Dear Wikispecies users:

We've started a broad discussion to define Wikimedia's future role in the world and develop a collaborative strategy to fulfill that role. You are warmly invited to join the conversation.

There are many ways to participate, by joining an existing conversation or starting your own:

Track A (organized groups): Discussions with your affiliate, committee or other organized group (these are groups that support the Wikimedia movement).
Track B (individual contributors): On Meta or your local language or project wiki.

This is the first of three conversations, and it will run util April 15. The purpose of cycle 1 is to discuss the future of the movement and generate major themes around potential directions. What do we want to build or achieve together over the next 15 years?

We welcome you, as we create this conversation together, and look forward to broad and diverse participation from all parts of our movement.

Find out more about the movement strategy process

Sincerely,

Nicole Ebber (Track A Lead), Jaime Anstee (Track B Lead), & the engagement support teams, adjusted and sent by SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 21:09, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm Szymon, a Meta Strategy Coordinator. My task is to ensure that all online communities are aware of the strategy process and can participate in it. I have two questions to you:

could you please set up a page like that one, where your community will discuss (see bullet point 2 above),
I'm looking for someone who could facilitate the discussion and coordinate it. Become one or ping a person that's likely to be interested!

Ping to 3 recently active admins: @Accassidy, Franz Xaver, and Pigsonthewing:. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 21:09, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Linking templates

Hi Is anybody out there skilled enough to take this Catalogue of Life citation template - {{Catol-Hassler}} and improve it, so that it automatically displays the Page Name and also links to the COL search results by name and/or id? I believe there are other similar templates as well, for example {{Catol-Schoolmeesters}}. Thanks in anticipation, as my rudimentary coding is not up to the job. Regards Andyboorman (talk) 14:00, 19 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What do you mean by "displays the page name" - do you mean the name of the page on which the template is used? If there are other templates needing the same functionality, the best solution would be to make each of them call a single parent template which has the necessary code - like {{Cite journal}}, as discussed above. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:23, 19 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking more like {{WCSP}} or {{APD}}, as the authors etc will not change, just in this case the link to COL and like the others the taxon page. The date will be the date of access, which is important for databases/sites that update at frequent intervals. It is more flexible that way and a lot easier to use. Thanks Andyboorman (talk) 19:46, 19 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't got the time to check all the necessary parameters and conditions etc right now. However, a few weeks ago I created the template {{Mueller, 1876–1877}}. It uses page numbers as parameters in {{{1}}} and {{#if:{{{1|}}}}} code snippets, which renders links to specific pages within a 145 page long BHL document. I think it should be possible to use a similar method in the Catol-Hassler template, except using taxa names instead of page numbers. For instance the CoL link could be split into three parts. The first and last part are always the same for CoL links and could therefore be "static" within the template code. The mid part would be the taxon name, added as a template parameter.

Example: First part, always the same: http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col/search/all/key/ Second part, the desired taxon name added as a template parameter, for instance Rumex How about this: http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col/search/all/key/{{urlencode:{{{4|{{PAGENAME}}}}}}} {{{5|''{{{4|{{PAGENAME}}}}}''}}} to automatically pick up the page name? Andyboorman (talk) 19:30, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply] Third part, always the same: /fossil/1/match/1 Why this is needed? @Andyboorman: The "fossil/1" part is needed to also include extinct taxa. For instance www.catalogueoflife.org/col/search/all/key/Tyrannosaurus will list zero records at CoL, while www.catalogueoflife.org/col/search/all/key/Tyrannosaurus/fossil/1/match/1 will list Tyrannosaurus, including all daughter taxa. The "match/1" part is needed to only match whole words. Otherwise trying to list for example Passer will also include Passeriformes, Passerivirus, Paradistomum passerculum, etc. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 11:48, 24 March 2017 (UTC).[reply] Put together that would create the link http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col/search/all/key/Rumex/fossil/1/match/1 i.e. to the CoL Rumex page. The trouble comes when we need a CoL link to a binomial taxon, for instance Rumex patientia. The rendered link would have to be http://www.catalogueoflife.org/col/search/all/key/Rumex+patientia/fossil/1/match/1 and right off the bat I don't know how to exchange the space in the taxon name with a plus sign in the template code. Or rather, it's getting late here in Sweden and I don't know right know, at least... If any one else know how to do this, please go ahead and update the template! :-) Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 22:25, 19 March 2017 (UTC).[reply] My plagiarised code above works with the binomial as well! See here and here Andyboorman (talk) 19:30, 20 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tommy Kronkvist: and others interested. Please have a look at my attempts {{Catol-Hassler}}. @Mariusm: it may be of use for {{Catol-Schoolmeesters}}. It follows the citation request for COL, as does yours. @Pigsonthewing: Does this have relevance to Discussion No 46? Regards Andyboorman (talk) 20:56, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Andyboorman: I see no advantage of Accessed: {{{1}}} {{{2}}} {{{3}}} over accessed on {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTDAY}}, {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}] because the latter doesn't require adding parameters to the template. Mariusm (talk) 05:19, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariusm: @Tommy Kronkvist: @Dan Koehl: and @Pigsonthewing: you maybe right about these code snippets, but I did not know they existed and indeed there use is a preference! How many more of them are out there and what other useful functions are available? No idea and how do you even begin to find out how to locate them? Indeed I also do not have the time, inclination and skills in writing them, but if I did then I would certainly publicise my efforts. However, as Andy has pointed out these and other approaches have no doubt contributed to the variation in citation styles on WS. Oh what to do? Perhaps a Special Page dedicated to such useful items, which is accessed on page one? Regards Andyboorman (talk) 13:52, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I really would suggest looking at {{Cite journal}} (maybe by applying it on a sandbox page), and the examples given on the English Wikipedia version's talk page. Note also en:Template:EGA, which wraps the latter for a specific journal. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:27, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The advantage of Accessed: {{{1}}} {{{2}}} {{{3}}} over accessed on {{subst:CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{subst:CURRENTDAY}}, {{subst:CURRENTYEAR}}] is that the former set allows a user to cite something which they accessed on a day before the current one. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:27, 22 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And now we need an Oversighter

If you want to track down the diffs, you can through my contributions or RfC but we need an Oversighter now and I would have been happy to do it but members of the community were opposed to it on principle. Note that I'm not upset that I don't have the rights but that some users were naysaying our necessity for it and less than a week after the RfCs close for Oversighters here on Wikispecies, we need Oversighters. Off to Meta I go. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:55, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The issue was there since July. You edited the page with the offending materials in November but didn't spot the issues at that time. It was until today when somebody complained and it was oversighted within matter of hours. This particular incident was handled exactly like what I described earlier this month. In other words, our current system of handling it is working fine. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:55, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@OhanaUnited: It wasn't an issue in July or November, so I don't understand your point. If personal information is posted here and that person requests its deletion, then it needs to be deleted. If someone here could do that without troubling a Steward to intervene, that would be better. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:11, 25 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And how often does that happen? Not very often. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:25, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@OhanaUnited: Agreed. I don't understand your point. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:24, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dinosaur (& bird) phylogeny

Press release and Nature abstract about some major new findings on dinosaur phylogeny from the Natural History Museum (London). If verified, will affect the higher classification of dinosaurs, and birds as well. - MPF (talk) 20:48, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I read news article about it too. Question is, how are we going to present the information on the involved pages if the scientific community is split between the new and old system? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:58, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest waiting for the moment. New proposals such as this take time to be accepted by the scientific community, attempts will be made to refute it. Wait to see if the new arrangements are showing up in further review papers as evidence it is being accepted. Then switch to the new arrangements. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 09:42, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, my thoughts too. Just one to have on the radar to look out for wider acceptance of the changes. - MPF (talk) 22:20, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Auto-archiving bot for talk pages

Many wikis have a bot which archives talk pages, when there is a "marker" template present on that page, to indicate that this should be done. See, for example, my en.Wikipedia talk page.

I have asked User:Whym whether their ArchiverBot could kindly do this on Wikispecies, and they have agreed, subject to the five standard conditions:

local community consensus for running the bot
localization of the manual (if not yet available)
the name of the marker template
ensuring no AbuseFilter affects the bot
flagging ArchiverBot as a bot.

Please see Whym's further explanation.

We already have User:MiszaBot/config available for point 3; see the instance on my talk page on this project.

The template can be used on user talk pages, article talk pages, and project discussion pages such as this one. It will not act on any of these, if the template is not present.

Is everyone happy to proceed? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:03, 14 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am fine with a bot archiving pages, including the pump. However we do need to be careful of one thing. Particularly on this wiki we have a habit of discussing policy changes and issues on the pump. Probably because we are small and can get away with it. As those discussions pan out, even if they stop some of them should probably be moved to the Wikispecies:Local policies page this would have to be selective as not all of these discussions needs to be saved in an obvious place. Basically for the pump we will need to keep an eye on what is being discussed and move things occasionally. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 13:21, 14 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. We don't need to move the discussion, just create a summary (which can link to the archived discussion, of course). We also have Wikispecies:Policy. Perhaps those two pages should be merged? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:40, 14 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: My understanding of the difference between the two is that Policy actually publishes a complete and pithy, finalized statement, whereas Local Policy is a discussion of issues that may need to be different here than a default "this is how it is on Wikipedia/Meta". —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:39, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes the concept behind setting up the page local policy was it would be a place to discuss, vote on etc policy issues. They could then be formalised where necessary for the policy pages. The reason for this was discussions of policy matters was cluttering up the pump, alot, so I tried to separate things out a bit. While recognising we are not Wikipedia in size and do not need massive numbers of subpages to accomplish this. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 11:51, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, in that case I'd consider moving "Wikispecies:Local policy" to "Wikispecies:Village Pump (policy)" (mirroring en:Village Pump (policy)). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:28, 15 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to step in. My current BRfa for MABot, which is on trial now, does support archival of pages and trial is approved for such a task. I use User:MABot/config for this, with the same parameters as User:MiszaBot/config. Let me know if I can be of any help here. Regards, -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 11:28, 15 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@MarcoAurelio: Thank you. I my experience, archive bots generally recognise each others' templates, so your bot should be able to act upon parameters set in User:MiszaBot/config. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:54, 19 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: Certainly I can add support for User:MiszaBot/config if wanted. However considering that it has no transclusions I've not done that. —MarcoAurelio (☎ talk) 15:32, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

talk:Pigsonthewing&oldid=3084834 Well... Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:51, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, well. It is simpler to replace the only instance of that template rather than set up a pararel process. Sorry if that disturbed you. —MarcoAurelio (☎ talk) 11:44, 27 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

/Archive 41 set up for this page. Please review if you're happy with this and check if some topics are to be moved to Policy/Policy discussions, please. Thanks. —MarcoAurelio (☎ talk) 11:58, 27 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Useful user script: taxoboxes at Wikidata

I have just learned of a user script, Taxobox (script) that can be used at Wikidata, to show a Taxobox for any Wikidata item which has a taxon name (Wikidata property P225). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:13, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: I've had this for awhile now--I had forgotten it wasn't just a standard feature. I have no clue how you got the box to float to the right--it always hangs at the bottom of the page for me. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:44, 27 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What is a species?

An interesting article in the Atlantic on bird taxonomy & naming where the following concepts are discussed:

Taxonomists try to apply artificial barriers on a continuum.
Taxonomists draw boundaries between species more narrowly now than in the past. Mariusm (talk) 12:02, 29 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, the processes of speciation have not stopped at some moment in the past. As this is continuing, as long as live exists, naturally there exist cases, which are on the brink, i.e. where it is difficult to decide, whether criteria are fulfilled just now, that two species can be distingueshed instead of only one. (Maybe situation would be clearer in some thousand years.) Nature shows quite a lot of situations in between strict barriers and a continuum. In my opinion, all these are arguments against creationists. Anyway, this mysterious "intelligent designer" must have had an extremly chaotic attitude. --Franz Xaver (talk) 12:52, 29 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See also Wikispecies:Village Pump#Popular-level article on bird taxonomy about the same article further up (currently near the top of this page) ;-) MPF (talk) 21:40, 29 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Charles Moore

Charles Moore is an Australian botanist (as linked to wikidata item) and a British paleontologist. Is this one person of maybe this are two different authorities? --Thiotrix (talk) 11:29, 28 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The British palaeontologist might be 1814-1881, as described here(1) and here(2). --Murma174 (talk) 11:43, 28 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

They are two different people see here for the botanist. The WS entry confuses the two and there is also a need for a disambig page. IPNI will not have an entry for a paleontologist, by the way. Andyboorman (talk) 08:38, 29 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, there exist some IPNI entries for paleobotanists, e.g. [1], but coverage is far from complete. --Franz Xaver (talk) 08:58, 29 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Should the disambiguation be Charles Moore (1820-1905) / Charles Moore (1814-1881) or better Charles Moore (botanist) / Charles Moore (geologist)? The birth year of the geologist is given as 1814 or 1815 in the links by Murma174. --Thiotrix (talk) 09:16, 29 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Do we know whether any or both of them have a middle name? If so, the Wikispecies praxis is to add the initial to the page name, e.g. David G. Smith and David R. Smith. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:43, 29 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]

No middle name as far as I can find. Andyboorman (talk) 13:01, 29 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────┘ In that case I propose Charles Moore (1820–1905) and Charles Moore (1814–1881) (please note the en dashes) rather than Charles Moore (scientific discipline) since there is a significantly smaller risk of another Charles Moore being born and died in the same years, compared to another Charles Moore also working as botanist or geologist. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 22:08, 29 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Done --Thiotrix (talk) 07:21, 30 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Vote for bot

I ask the community kindly to take a look on the changes done, and vote on the new bot MABot, which has a request to get bot flag. Dan Koehl (talk) 00:28, 8 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As the result of a user poll MABot was granted a trial period of seven days, and approved and given full bot status in March 29, 2017. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:46, 31 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Popular-level article on bird taxonomy

I figure this may interest some of you: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/02/to-name-a-mockingbird/518013/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:35, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I saw this artical earlier from Facebook where it was shared by someone. Yes the ornithologists get somewhat pedantic. I also do not think taxonomists sdhould be in the game of dealing with common names, at least not in the same way as we deal with scientific names. Common names are made popular through usage, they should be determined by a bunch of people who probably have little to do with the species. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 23:32, 1 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to point out that in French, unlike in English, the IOU created the fr:Commission internationale des noms français des oiseaux, which has published standardized lists of names, most of which have been taken up wholly (as far as I know) by the french birdwatching community, so obviously taxonomist sometimes DO deal in common names. Circeus (talk) 21:40, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes they do, I just do not think they should. It is beyond the realm of taxonomy and has no set of rules to back up the decisions. Also as I said they creating names for species without local consultation with those who actually work with the species. Rather obnoxious actually. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 22:31, 2 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Had already seen it; some interesting points but nothing new. @Faendalimas: - I fear you're contradicting yourself there, first "they should be determined by a bunch of people who probably have little to do with the species", and then conversely "creating names for species without local consultation with those who actually work with the species"; you are of course correct with the second, not the first ;-) Yes, taxonomists should be dealing with vernacular names: their formation works from formal species lists (like IOC, or BSBI) which are followed by field guide authors, from where the public pick them up. And yes, care is needed in choice of names; there are two simple rules to follow: 1 vernacular names should be taxonomically accurate (so as to help counter creationist / anti-evolutionary misinformation), and 2 subject to 1, should follow local native preference, to avoid the obnoxious cultural imperialism exhibited by some such as ITIS, USDA Plants, and the Clements bird list (see e.g. example here). - MPF (talk) 14:44, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry yes I meant "should not" hence my apparent contradiction. Taxonomists and organisations of them, should not deal in vernacular names. They are irrelevant to taxonomy. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 15:53, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Though I'd disagree on the latter point - vernacular names derive from taxonomy, so taxonomists do hold a responsibility over their accuracy. As an example, in the past, Pseudopodoces humilis was thought to belong in Corvidae, and was called Hume's Ground Jay in English; subsequently it was found to be in Paridae, and was then renamed Ground Tit in English (with similar changes in other languages, e.g. Mésange de Hume in French, Tibetmeise in German, etc.), to indicate its correct taxonomic position. - MPF (talk) 16:36, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Eh probably due to the unusual level of involvement of bird watches compared to say the situation with snails. Geni (talk) 20:00, 3 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rather off topic, but in the late 1990's I actually went on a Finnish snail safari in the Åland Islands... :-) Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:21, 1 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Etymologies

Would it be a good idea to include at least some of the more interesting name etymologies for species names? For example Crocodylus porosus is named from its remarkable porosity; if you pour a bucket of water over one, the water drains straight through it, rather than running down the sides. Thoughts? - MPF (talk) 00:02, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"1 April". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:29, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

:-) MPF (talk) 13:28, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And I suppose Agra vation Erwin, 1983 is a very aggravating beetle ??? Mariusm (talk) 13:38, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The poor thing's aggravated because no-one's written its wikispecies page yet! MPF (talk) 14:03, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done ;-) Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 14:34, 1 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Thanks, Tommy on behalf of all the aggravated beetles around here! Mariusm (talk) 14:40, 1 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Salticidus palidenrekensis

A fake? --Succu (talk) 15:33, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Commons image in deletion process, author is known from fake creations Burmeister (talk) 16:00, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Neither genus or species shows up in GBIF or Google Scholar. I seriously doubt its existence. Neferkheperre (talk) 16:26, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I had my doubts about the claimed taxon early on, and marked the Salticidus palidenrekensis page with a "Validity disputed" template only a few hours after it was created. The Wikispecies IP editor is probably the same person as the logged in Commons user referred to by Burmeister. The IP address is located in Paraguay, and the logged in Commons user page is written entirely in Spanish, among other things mentioning Río Paraguay. Furthermore neither IP nor Commons user seem particularly familiar with the binominal nomenclature, both using leading caps for all parts of all taxon names (including sp. and ssp.) and never in italics. Compare the user page at Commons and the first version of the Salticidus palidenrekensis Wikispecies page for examples. In my opinion the page should be deleted. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 20:59, 2 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Done! --Franz Xaver (talk) 21:15, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Deleted at Wikidata too. --Succu (talk) 06:27, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, the spider possibly belongs to the genus Frigga (Salticidae), maybe Frigga pratensis. --Franz Xaver (talk) 08:22, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Page formatting

Something odd gone wrong with the formatting on this page? First paragraph of most new sections is in indented grey boxes with different font. Does it affect any other pages too? - MPF (talk) 10:06, 5 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

While archiving, User:MABot cut up a pump section (Automating new page creation) with the code words <pre><nowiki> right in the middle, causing undesirable display effects in the following pump sections. I think the cutting location of this bot is very weird... Mariusm (talk) 10:10, 5 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed that, but the pump section Automating new page creation remains cut up in the middle. Mariusm (talk) 10:12, 5 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Policy regarding biographies of living people

I have drafted Wikispecies:Biographies of living people. We should probably consider developing it further, I have been concerned for a while that we publish email addresses, without verification or checking for currency. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:49, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I'd rather we did not actually list direct contact information. Normally we'd be linking to enough material (i.e.institutional pages, articles...) that the information, if they have made it available, can be recovered. Circeus (talk) 23:14, 23 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you both. If we chose to list email addresses they must be current and correct, but in my opinion we shouldn't publish direct contact information at all. In either case a formal policy for biographies is a very good idea. Thank you for the initiative. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 18:43, 27 March 2017 (UTC).[reply]

My personal policy is never publish addresses or e-mails, only institutions where the author was working at the time of certain publication. Necessary initiative. Congrats.--Hector Bottai (talk) 02:04, 28 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Myron William Kimnach

A case in point is Myron William Kimnach - a new editor just pointed out that we have dates of 1901-2001, while they met Kimnach in 2010 and (s)he was still writing in 2016. es.Wikipedia has a birth date of 1922. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:02, 6 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Automated taxobox on Catalan Wikipedia

The Catalan Wikipedia now has a taxobox template: ca:Plantilla:Infotaula d'ésser viu that is populated using data from Wikidata. An example can be seen on: ca:Nautilus praepompilius. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:55, 6 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. But it seems it doesn't work when Wikidata has multiple values for parent taxon. If Wikidata adds more parent taxa, articles using this template will see chunks of the taxonomic hierarchy disappear. Plantdrew (talk) 20:44, 7 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have an example? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:28, 10 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: ca:Heteromeles arbutifolia for one; nothing between order and kingdom, the Wikidata item for the order (d:Q21895) has multiple parents. There are also (not surprisingly) problems when the hierarchy at Wikidata uses minor ranks and/or clades. Wikispecies, en.wiki and Wikidata all seem to be using clades to some extent for gastropod classification between class and family; the Catalan article on ca:Partula calypso has nothing between family and class. And fungi aren't displaying division/phylum (see ca:Agaricus impudicus); I'm not sure what's causing that (maybe the taxobox expects phylum where Wikidata has division)? — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Plantdrew (talk • contribs) 16:13, 10 April 2017‎.

Thank you. I've let our Catalan Wikipedia colleagues know. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:20, 10 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try to check where the problem or problems could be. First, I think it could be due to some redundancies in the field P171 (Example). Second, we selected only some taxonomic ranks which, for example, we didn't include division. But it may be something else. Thanks for the input. Paucabot (talk) 20:14, 10 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Further explanations in cawiki thread by Vriullop. Paucabot (talk) 09:39, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sophie Lutterlough

A recent collaboration with the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History resulted in an article on their first African-American entomologist, Sophie Lutterlough. Apparently she "co-identified 40 type specimens" and "in 1979, a mite [Pygmephorus lutterloughae] was named in her honor". We have nothing on her, or the mite. Can anybody help me to fix that? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:44, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia entry. There are also entries at Smithsonian's website. Neferkheperre (talk) 14:14, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thank you. That's the one I linked to... Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:29, 11 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Fixing dead links

A "404" reference link is mentioned in the section currently above this one. We could do with a bot like those used on Wikipedia, that finds such links and substitutes a URL at archive.org, where one exists. I will ask one of the bot operators at en.Wikipedia if they can assist, unless there are objections here. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:49, 6 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A good idea according to me, since dead links are fairly common. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:06, 16 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Puccinia hieracii var. (b.)

What to do with that page? Index Fungorum does not have such an entry. --Succu (talk) 05:57, 6 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, it can be deleted. Anyway, it is not a name under the code of nomenclature (ICN). --Franz Xaver (talk) 09:13, 6 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also has a 404 error on the reference link. Andyboorman (talk) 15:13, 6 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also, a Google search for the exact phrase "Puccinia hieracii var. (b.)" only renders two hits, namely the Wikispecies taxon page and this Village pump thread. I have deleted the page, and requested the referring Wikidata entry (Q21380025) to be deleted. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:18, 16 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Thx. --Succu (talk) 07:52, 18 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Arabidopsis or Cardaminopsis?

On the page for the genus Arabidopsis the link for Arabidopsis arenosa redirects to Cardaminopsis arenosa, however is not listed there as a synonym. Any botanist here who knows which combination is current and correct? –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 09:23, 22 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Arabidopsis is correct – see e.g. DOI: 10.1199/tab.0001 or Euro+Med Plantbase. --Franz Xaver (talk) 10:05, 22 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Thanks also to Andyboorman for updating the Arabidopsis arenosa page. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:39, 22 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

You're welcome Andyboorman (talk) 15:37, 22 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Pending changes necessary?

Most or some pages have been vandalized, like Hippopotamus amphibius, Haloquadratum walsbyi, Euphorbia leuconeura, Aphyocharax anisitsi, and some others, especially on the Main Page of Wikispecies. I wonder whether "pending changes"-like protection is necessary. Well... the backlogging can be potentially huge if PC is enacted. However, I figure that the community of the project is limited. I thought about taking this to admins' noticeboard, but I would like your thoughts first. --George Ho (talk) 02:56, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You have to balance the positives and negatives. In this case, the negatives will certainly outweight any positives from enacting pending changes. Almost all edits are constructive and would take away our time from editing and creating pages just to vetting pages. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:31, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with OhanaUnited, cases of vandalism are relatively few and quickly dealt with. Andyboorman (talk) 08:51, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's my opinion as well. Vandalism is fairly uncommon and almost always dealt with within the hour, most often minutes. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 09:01, 23 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Adding Subgenus to species names

User: PeterR isn't obeying the decision made a long time ago not to add the subgenus to the species names in the form of Genus (Subgenus) species but to leave it as Genus species. Adding the subgenus to the names causes many problems including name-duplicates, search difficulties etc. The subgenus is to be included in the hierarchy-ladder but not in the name itself. I worked hard in the past to get rid of the subgenus names, but now I'm not able to convince PeterR to stop adding them. We need to make a decision on how to handle this. Mariusm (talk) 13:12, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PeterR and Mariusm: As can be seen on his talk page, PeterR is claiming, the names would be invalid without the subgenus added. (I can hardly believe.) So, what is the zoological code telling on this matter? --Franz Xaver (talk) 13:27, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If Wikispecies has more than article for the same species they are marked as Wikimedia duplicated page at Wikidata. --Succu (talk) 14:31, 14 April 2017 (UTC) PS: query. --Succu (talk) 21:12, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Tens of thousands of species are currently named at WS without their subgenus. Does PeterR propose to rename them all ? Mariusm (talk) 14:59, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See the discussion here Mariusm (talk) 15:07, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find anything definite in ICZN code, except that subgenera are recognized and treated. Customarily in literature they are rendered as "Genus (Subgenus) species", which must be dealt with as painlessly as possible here. Subgenera are frequently upgraded to full genera, necessitating changes of some type. Page titles of "Genus (Subgenus)" won't work, too much changing. Yesterday, I ran Zaragoza, 2017, which elevated three diverse subgenera of Chthonius to full genus. Being semi-helpful, I altered subgenera species lists, created taxon templates, and adjusted Chthonius species overview. When I started this, I re-checked and discovered about 100 of these species which were filled out as Chthonius without reference to subgenera. Most of today will now be spent correcting these now orphaned pages. There needs to be some sort of definite and consistent treatment of subgenera and species thereof. I have some ideas, let me get through fixing this, they will crystallize. Neferkheperre (talk) 15:11, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Article 6.1 of the ICZN code says: 6.1. Names of subgenera. The scientific name of a subgenus, when used with a binomen or trinomen, must be interpolated in parentheses between the generic name and the specific name; it is not counted as one of the words in the binomen or trinomen. It must begin with an upper-case letter. [my bold] Clearly the subgenus is considered optional and not mandatory.

Wikipidia article Subgenus says: In the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, a subgeneric name can be used independently or included in a species name, in parentheses, placed between the generic name and the specific epithet: e.g. the tiger cowry of the Indo-Pacific, Cypraea (Cypraea) tigris Linnaeus, which belongs to the subgenus Cypraea of the genus Cypraea. However, it is not mandatory, or even customary, when giving the name of a species, to include the subgeneric name. [my bold]

Considering the confusion, extra work, duplications etc. which naming with Subgenus causes, I think the obvious choice is not to use it! For example, recently PeterR created Bembidion (Bembidionetolitzkya) smetanai while Bembidion smetanai still exists. Mariusm (talk) 06:21, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The question is: Are Toledano & Schmidt the authors from Bembidion (Bembidionetolitzkya) smetanai or Bembidion smetanai. The species label says Bembidion (Bembidionetolitzkya) smetanai. Yes I have made a redirect from Bembidion smetanai to Bembidion (Bembidionetolitzkya) smetanai, because some Bembidion species are transferred to Bembidion (Bembidionetolitzkya). If you add category Author taxa and category museum this have to be allways the original combination. I'm not afraid for a little bit work more, because there are thousands of species with subgenera in species.wikipedia.PeterR (talk) 07:54, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PeterR: No, sorry, this is not the way to act. This is anarchy, where anyone can do as he deems fit without considering the consensus. This is interfering with the work of others and causing unnecessary representation-conflicts. The species can be perfectly represented including the respective subgenus in the text but not in the page's name. The page's name must allways be Genus species and I'm asking you again to comply with the consensus and stop introducing page-names which include the subgenus. Mariusm (talk) 13:05, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PeterR: See for example Bembidion smetanai: You got: (1) In the hierarchy ladder there's "Subgenus: Bembidion (Bembidionetolitzkya)" and (2) in the NAME section there's "Bembidion (Bembidionetolitzkya) smetanai Toledano & Schmidt, 2008". Why isn't it enough for you by way of representation that you're so eager to add the subgenus also to the page's name? Mariusm (talk) 13:18, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is not an act. I follow fauna europaea see [[2]]. This side is created by 45 expert authors. I shall someone ask why they add species with subgenus and after which ICZN code. If we add with author taxa you have to do it after original combination, this discussion we had before. If we don't add after original describtions I stop with author taxa and museum. PeterR (talk) 09:16, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My view is that we should list subgenera on the genus page and create subgenus pages. However, the species pages are best kept binomial. See the treatment of Polyommatus and Polyommatus (Polyommatus) to see what I mean. There is a big benefit to retaining binomial species pages, as this is how most people search for a particular taxon. Accassidy (talk) 16:48, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
- - @Accassidy: See [3]. Polyommatus (Polyommatus) icarus is valid after Fauna europaea. Who am I to discuss the information from 102 experts and I have hundreds of bulletins with original descriptions with subgenera. PeterR (talk) 10:17, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is how I have been handling this. Neferkheperre (talk) 16:55, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Neferkheperre: @Accassidy: @PeterR: this is above all a question of guarding the integrity of WS. If we keep shifting between two name-representations, and bearing in mind that the majority of page-names here is rendered without subgenus, then the harm we'll do will be much greater then the benefit of adding the subgenus to the page's name. Keep in mind we're talking here only about the page's name and not about the page's contents. Mariusm (talk) 14:59, 24 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

I'm sorry, but we talk here about the official name published by an author. Have he published with or without a subgenus. For me is this publication the author taxa name. In WS I find a lot of species with subgenera and a lot of genera with subgenera not addPeterR (talk) 06:17, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Under the code all sub- infra- supra- names are optional for one. You do not have to use them at all, though it is recommended in reviews. I have described subgenera, I do not expect people to use them, and I am the author. I would expect them to be used when it is relevant to do so. But generally not. A spacies name is a binomial as the code says the subgenus name is not part of the binomen. Names here should be binomials this is nomenclaturally correct. I agree with the concept of having pages for subgenera, please look at how I did the genus Elseya for an example. Note that yes for the nominotypical subgenus I did use Elseya (Elseya) for the page name, since I have to but this is not a genus page it is a subgenus page. The genus Elseya has its own page. From the perspective of the zoological code this is what should be done. Cheers, Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 19:14, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

False information?

I have here a species with lectotype Ferrerianus biimpressus. The lectotype is all ways designated from the original combination, in this case Aphodius beiimpressus. If I look to this species it looks for me that the lectotype is from Ferrerianus biimpressus. In my opinion you have described after the lectotype: Lectotype Aphodius beiimpressus designated by Dellacasa, Dellacasa & Gordon, 2007: 3.

And this is the agreement between Mariusm and me. Diphaulacosoma bicolor and Phygasia bicolor. PeterR (talk) 12:38, 15 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PeterR: The lectotype indeed bears the name of Aphodius biimpressus (which is thus inscribed on the label at the repository by the original researcher) but it is designated to serve Ferrerianus biimpressus which is the current accepted name. I see no reason to make a separate page for (the invalid) Aphodius biimpressus as you imply only to accommodate the lectotype... This seems to me an unnecessary overkill and overreaching pedantry. I don't consider the lectotype data to be false information as you state. Mariusm (talk) 15:23, 16 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What I understand is that the lectotype is designated for preservation of the original combination. PeterR (talk) 09:23, 21 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A museum-type labeled under its original combination which isn't the current accepted combination doesn't necessitate the creation of a separate page (for an invalid name) for the sole purpose of manifesting this fact. Mariusm (talk) 15:06, 22 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

The original combination is the basic for all research. The new name is a result after this research and can later change in a other name after for instance DNA control. The original combination is the author taxa name. The new names are transferred by others. PeterR (talk) 10:45, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A lectotype is set to prevent or remove ambiguity in the assignment of a name. It is done to preserve the nomen, not the binomen. Binomens are not nomenclatural issues they are taxonomic and hence beyond the code. It is not done to preserve the original designation, just the nomen. Also once a lectotype has been assigned, if done correctly, its new assignment is the designation to be used, what it was or labelled as is irrelevant and invalid, making a page for a binomen that no longer is valid is an invalid act in itself. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 19:21, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Accepted or Valid

What is the different between Accepted and Valid? PeterR (talk) 10:01, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The conceptual meaning is reciprocally matching yet Accepted has the inference of the species (name) being accepted as valid by the authorities' majority while Valid is a more ambiguous term, rearing the question of valid by whom?. Mariusm (talk) 10:25, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is clear for me now. So if I have a list from Fauna europaea with Taxonomic status: valid than it is an accepted name, like Polyommatus (Agrodiaetus) admetus. [4]. accepted by at least 102 authors. PeterR (talk) 10:53, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would also suggest that, in botany anyway, to be Accepted requires a majority of authorities to be content in using a Valid name. Validity does not automatically assume acceptance or very rarely vice versa! Validity is a function of publication under relevant articles. Acceptance is what then happens out in the wild, so to speak. Just have a look at Corbichoniaceae for example. Andyboorman (talk) 11:02, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I see, there is less difference between "accepted" and "valid" in zoology. Being an "accepted" taxon depends on a consensus of experts/authorities, who accept a certain taxonomic concept, i.e. a circumscription of a taxon, as correct. For example, there is consensus, that a horse is different from a donkey, although they can be crossed. Given a certain circumscription of a taxon, according to the respective code only one name can be correct, which in zoological terminology is called "valid". In botany, as far as it concerns acceptance of a taxon, the situation is the same. However, the botanical code (ICN) uses the term "valid" in a sense different from zoology. According to Art. 6, "valid publication of names is publication in accordance with ....", which means, that "validly published names" in botany are more or less the same as "available names" in zoology. And the "valid" name of an accepted taxon in zoology would be the same as the "correct" name of an accepted taxon in botany. --Franz Xaver (talk) 13:08, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To my mind, the latest publication which revises a taxon-status is considered accepted while no one else is disputing it in a subsequent publication. The latest publication wins can be safely used by us as our best tool to establish the acceptance of a taxon name validity. Mariusm (talk) 14:45, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

What Franz and Mariusm write is of course correct, but unfortunately sometimes things hit the buffers of the real world of botanists. Take Vachellia nilotica (L.) P.J.H.Hurter & Mabb. Mabberley's Pl.-Book 1021. (2008) circumscribed to replace Acacia nilotica (L.) Willd. ex Delile Fl. Aegypt. Illustr. 79; Desf. Tabl. Hort. Par. ed. II. 208. (1813) the type species of Acacia Mill. Gard. Dict. Abr. (ed. 4) vol. 1. (1754) s.l. when the genus was dismembered into 5 segregates. Now this circumscription is accepted by all authorities except botanists in Africa - see APD who are still unhappy about Australia getting Acacia s.s.! Andyboorman (talk) 18:06, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If in Fauna europaea Polyommatus (Agrodiaetus) admetus status valid is Polyommatus admetus also valid? PeterR (talk) 06:31, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PeterR: If I understand Article 5 ("The scientific name of a species ... is a combination of two names (a binomen), the first being the generic name and the second being the specific name.") correctly, Polyommatus admetus clearly must be valid. Article 6 rules "The scientific name of a subgenus, when used with a binomen or trinomen, must be interpolated in parentheses between ..." This seems to be a rule applicable in the optional case, that someone wishes to indicate additionally the subgenus. Do I understand this correctly? I must admit, that the botanical code is more familiar to me. --Franz Xaver (talk) 18:57, 25 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PeterR: the answer is a definitive yes - both Polyommatus (Agrodiaetus) admetus and Polyommatus admetus are valid representations for the species. Moreover, the majority of instances where the species is mentioned, it is mentioned as Polyommatus admetus and not as Polyommatus (Agrodiaetus) admetus. Mariusm (talk) 09:34, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PeterR: I agree with Mariusm above. Both are valid ways of expressing the taxon. However, I understand that we have agreed here to keep the binomial epithet for page names, but to include the subgenus (trinomial), if one has been established, in the Taxonavigation hierarchy. This will mean that web users making the most common Google search, for the binomial name, will always get an early hit, so will probably bring us more traffic. Accassidy (talk) 20:50, 26 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

The new species with subgenera is for me the valid author taxa species and I make a redirect for the species without the subgenus. If Alan publish a new species as example Polyommatus (Agrodiaetus) mariusi, for me is this species valid and I make a redirect from Polyommatus mariusi to Plyommatus (Agrodiaetus) mariusi. All the problems I have is that we haven't define what the category: author taxa is. For me is the category: author taxa the original combination. For me that is not the transferred combination.PeterR (talk) 07:52, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PeterR: I regretfully must decline to support your practice. The easier and straightforward way (in zoology) for [[category: ''author name'' taxa]] is to use it with the current valid combinations only (and if so desired, with true-synonyms [which are not the results of comb. nov.]). This means that we'll get the valid names on the taxa-lists and not the original combinations. The alternative is more harder to implement and prone to errors and confusions. Since the original-combination-author (in zoology) remains the only one mentioned in conjunction with the binomial, the list obviously will not be a deviation from the normal name uses. All the needed information, including the original combination will be included in the taxon page itself. Mariusm (talk) 08:26, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

and @PeterR:, please make it the other way around: Make the binomial to be the main page and the trinomial to be the redirect, otherwise we'll struggle telling left from right. Mariusm (talk) 12:23, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My last problem. If i have a bulletin with new synonymy and it is a species with subgenus, I never get a connection with this species. How to handle this? PeterR (talk) 06:56, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@PeterR: Oh, it's very simple. Just write * ''[[Genus species|Genus (Subgenus) species]]'' and everything will fall into place. Mariusm (talk) 09:00, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That is of course correct, and easy to do. For lists of subspecies in the Taxonavigation section I recommend using the {{Sgsps}} template instead of {{Sgsp}}. It will link to a species page with the name "Genus species", but displays as "G. (Subg.) species". –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 14:52, 28 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

When you cut out all the word inflation its actually simple in zoology. Names go through two tests, first is available/ unavailable, to be available the name must meet the criteria of publication and declaration in the code, basically published appropriately have a type etc. If it is available it is then decided if it is valid or invalid, if valid it is the currently used name for a taxon, if invalid it is a synonym and will appear in the synonymy. Unavailable names are not in the synonymy they cannot be used and do not, for purposes of nomenclature, exist. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 19:29, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Gryllinae and taxobox templates

Please note that several of the insect genera pages listed under Gryllinae (especially within the Gryllini tribus) still uses the deprecated {{Taxobox}} template. The template should be removed from all Wikispecies pages, in favour of standard Wikispecies Taxonavigation syntax. Feel free to help out removing them if you like to. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 16:05, 27 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

By the way the {{Taxobox}} template is currently used on just over 1,000 pages. A list of them all can be found here. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 18:49, 27 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

For the majority of these pages it's simply a matter of finding in the page history Kheller's contribution and reverting it. Mariusm (talk) 07:01, 28 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, now I remember that we've already had this discussion, back in 2014. Thanks for the reminder! Unfortunately many of the Taxobox templates were added at the same time as Kheller created the actual taxon pages. In those cases simply reverting the edits wont cut it since his page creations are often good, with the exception of the Taxobox templates. Those taxon pages would have to be rewritten rather than reverted. The same goes for some 100 or so template pages which he created using the {{BibForm}} template. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:01, 28 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

The strategy discussion. The Cycle 2 will start on May 5

The first cycle of the Wikimedia movement strategy process recently concluded. During that period, we were discussing the main directions for the whole Wikimedia movement over the next 15 years. There are more than 1500 summary statements collected from the various communities, but unfortunately none from Wikispecies. The strategy facilitators and many volunteers have summarized the discussions of the previous month. A quantitative analysis of the statements will be posted on Meta for translation this week, alongside the report from the Berlin conference.

The second cycle will begin soon. It's set to begin on May 5 and run until May 31. During that period, you will be invited to dive into the main topics that emerged in the first cycle, discuss what they mean, which ones are the most important and why, and what their practical implications are. This work will be informed and complemented by research involving new voices that haven’t traditionally been included in strategy discussions, like readers, partners, and experts. Together, we will begin to make sense of all this information and organize it into a meaningful guiding document, which we will all collectively refine during the third and last cycle in June−July.

We want to help your community to be more engaged with the discussions in the next cycle. Now, we are looking for volunteers who could

tell us where to announce the start of the Cycle 2, and how to do that, so we could be sure the majority of your community is informed and has a chance to feel committed, and
facilitate the Cycle 2 discussions here, on Wikispecies.

We are looking forward to your feedback!

Base (WMF) and SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 26 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It appears to me that you have found the best place to initiate discussion with contributors to WikiSpecies, right here. Accassidy (talk) 12:58, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Accassidy: thx for your response. What do you think, why there was no feedback to my previous message? Was it unclear? SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 17:15, 27 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): Because the message was written like other WMF regular updates and people tuned out. And many of us already got used to not receiving any support from WMF and we somewhat became self reliant while WMF focused almost exclusively on its poster child, Wikipedia. Anyhow, it's too late to start now that it has already moved on to cycle 2. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 07:16, 29 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@OhanaUnited: you're right, the messages were written by WMF staff (or contractors) and are after one fashion. This is justified to some extent. There isn't many WMF employees who know various communities personally, so they don't write personalized messages. Announcements are written once and sent globally to all, with little adjustments. On the other hand, I'm a Wikipedian, with different approach, that's why you can see the bullet points and bolded words. As for the timing, the movement strategy is about the movement, not about individual projects. You can join any time and add your feedback, concerns etc. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 14:38, 29 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Haplorhini

Over ten years ago, Haplorhini was renamed to Haplorrhini with a redirect left behind, assumedly as an alternative spelling. For consistency, a case might be made to reverse this to make "Haplorrhini" the alternative and "Haplorhini" the main species page after reading why the en-Wiki article was renamed on its discussion page. Paine Ellsworth ^put'r there 22:35, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This was recently corrected in Wiktionary. Paine Ellsworth ^put'r there 22:45, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder what "no response" means? Has consistency among sister projects become a very low priority? Paine Ellsworth ^put'r there 17:07, 1 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the delay. I move the article, thanks for the colaboration. Burmeister (talk) 17:21, 1 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much, Burmeister! Paine Ellsworth ^put'r there 17:28, 1 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Orchid ID

Hi, can you can me with identification of this plant? I think that is one of Dactylorhiza species, but I'm not sure. Tournasol7 (talk) Migrated here for more help. Andyboorman (talk) 15:15, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tournasol7: can you tell us a bit more, for example; time of flowering, description of leaf (spotted?), where it was located, habitat and associated vegetation. Thanks Andyboorman (talk) 16:19, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Time of flowering - april; location - Lot, France; habitat - meadow, scrub. Tournasol7 (talk) 16:29, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's certainly not Dactylorhiza. Most species of this genus have much larger and green bracts. As far as I see, it is Orchis mascula (s.lat.) --Franz Xaver (talk) 16:34, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Franz Xaver:, I added other image. Tournasol7 (talk) 16:37, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that's the same species – Orchis mascula. But, don't ask me for the subspecies. I am not an orchid specialist and I am not sure, how to distinguish subsp. laxifloriformis from subsp. mascula. --Franz Xaver (talk) 16:48, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thank you very much! Tournasol7 (talk) 17:04, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The question of subspecies is why I asked about more details. Assuming it is not cultivated then subspecies are more localised. For example, Subsp. laxifloriformis tends to be found in the Central Pyrenees down to Morocco. Subsp. mascula is very widespread flowering now in woods near me in definitely non-montane Essex, but these populations have the distinctive spots on the leaves! Andyboorman (talk) 18:13, 4 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Phytolacca

Is there an editor or two familiar with Phytolacca? I am particularly concerned that the 2 subgenera and 2 sections may not be appropriate for the more reduced species circumscription that is now accepted. Any thoughts appreciated. Andyboorman (talk) 19:28, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Did you also find this paper? There are three subgenera in this paper, but non of these seems to be monophyletic. Anyway, I am missing a reference for the present subgeneric classification. --Franz Xaver (talk) 20:58, 7 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Franz Xaver: To answer your second question first - no I could not find a reference for the present WS classification, which is one reason for my post here, as somebody else may have come across it. I have read Ali et al. (2015), which finds Nowicke (1969) untenable, but as they state their own suggestions are tentative at the best. So IMO we can not really get rid of the current unreferenced WS classification in favour of either Nowicke (1969) or Ali et al. (2015). Therefore, it may be best to dispense with any subgeneric classification for now. Andyboorman (talk) 09:59, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Andyboorman: In my opinion, even an outdated classification with references is better than any classification without. Anyway, Nowicke (1969) cannot be implemented here without regarding the nomenclatural corrections by Rogers (1985) – JSTOR. However, I did not check the code for this. It seems possible to me, that in the light of the present code also Rogers requires some adjustments. Moreover, the list of generic synonyms in Phytolacca seems to need correction. According to Rogers (1985), Pircunia Bertero ex Ruschenberger would belong to Anisomeria. Also Ali et al. (2015) must be used with some caution. A weakness of this study is the choice of the outgroup taxa, none of which presently belonging to Phytolaccaceae. And the disregard of Nowickea, of course. --Franz Xaver (talk) 10:44, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Franz Xaver: Good points. I am now not sure of the value of any classification for the much reduced Phytolacca s.s. I am inclined to suggest in this case no classification is better than a problematic one given the needs of a few combinations and the difficulty in bringing back Nowickea into a subgenus and section. For this once segregate, I am happy with the analysis of Hernández-Ledesma et al. (2015) even though I can not get hold of a copy of Ramírez-Amezcua & Steinmann (2013) that casts series doubt on its segregation. I will try to improve the synonymy of Phytolacca in the mean time. Andyboorman (talk) 19:23, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

TOC's in Village Pump archives

I have noticed that about a handful of the Village Pump archives (for instance Archive 1 and Archive 26) doesn't have a table of contents ("TOC"), while most of them (for example Archive 2 and Archive 27) do have a TOC. Does anyone here know why this is different from archive to archive? As far as I can see there are no __NOTOC__ codes in any of them, which would otherwise explain the lack of a TOC. Since many of the archived VP pages are very long having a table of contents in all of them would increase legibility; it's also helpful when linking to old discussions and poll results. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 22:21, 30 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

I looked to the first archive and noticed there has been included a template that uses __NOTOC__. I guess that is the reason why more archives don't have a TOC. QZanden (talk) 22:25, 30 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You're correct: in "Archive 1" it's the {{Animalia}} template which adds the NOTOC magic word. I'll go through them all and try to remedy the problem, of course without losing any data from the actual discussions. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 23:07, 30 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Done. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 23:53, 30 April 2017 (UTC).[reply]

I've fixed the template so that it only applies __NOTOC__ in main (article) space. Please watch for issues and revert if it causes problems. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:42, 3 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thanks! As far as I have seen it works well. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 21:40, 4 May 2017 (UTC)-[reply]

Is there any reason the Animalia template needs a NOTOC in it? Why not just remove it altogether? - MPF (talk) 09:54, 8 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Template:Animalia (likewise: Plantae, Fungi, ..) is used by hundreds of other templates. Without __NOTOC__ you would see a TOC in each page, that transcludes {{Animalia}}. --Murma174 (talk) 07:04, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but it's already in {{Eukaryota}}, which is higher up the tree above Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, etc. So having NOTOC in Animalia (and Plantae, Fungi, ..) is superfluous. Just have it the once at the very top of the taxonavigation tree, and not anywhere else. - MPF (talk) 12:30, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe there is some reason, why the template {{Eukaryota}} is NOT included in the template {{Animalia}} ? I don't know, just asking. --Murma174 (talk) 13:11, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Murma174: Nope, the {{Eukaryota}} template is not included within the {{Animalia}} template. That seems a bit odd, to say the least, and I do not not why. The same goes for the {{Archaea}} and {{Bacteria}} templates. They both include a link to Prokaryota, but not a {{Prokaryota}} template (which as you can see isn't even created yet). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 15:36, 9 May 2017 (UTC).[reply]

┌─────────────────────────┘ @MPF: Back in 2015 NOTOC used to sit in the {{{Main Page}} template instead, which was worse. See User talk:Tommy Kronkvist/Archive 2015–2016#Removing "Main page" template. Cheers, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 12:34, 9 May 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Yep, I can see having it cover the whole of wikispecies would be a nightmare! But it should be OK having it just once at the top of the taxon tree, rather than in the top dozen or more layers - MPF (talk) 13:09, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@MPF: Indeed, I can't see any reason for including it to all the regna Taxonavigation templates, since it is already included in all of the superregna (and virus) Taxonavigation templates. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 15:36, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

But the highest level classification is disputed (in parts). Not even speaking about Adl et al., 2012 (Groups), Cavalier-Smith, 2009 (Supergroups):

Superregnum: Eukaryota

Regna: Protista (disputed: Protozoa + Chromista ?), Animalia, Plantae, Fungi

Superregnum (??): Prokaryota

Superregnum, but also Regnum: Bacteria

Superregnum, but also Regnum: Archaea

So it might be the best to leave the __NOTOC__-tag in the Regnum-templates. --Murma174 (talk) 16:22, 9 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Editing News #1—2017

Read this in another language • Subscription list for this multilingual newsletter

Did you know?

Did you know that you can review your changes visually?

When you are finished editing the page, type your edit summary and then choose "Review your changes".

In visual mode, you will see additions, removals, new links, and formatting highlighted. Other changes, such as changing the size of an image, are described in notes on the side.

Click the toggle button to switch between visual and wikitext diffs.

The wikitext diff is the same diff tool that is used in the wikitext editors and in the page history. You can read and help translate the user guide, which has more information about how to use the visual editor.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor Team has spent most of their time supporting the 2017 wikitext editor mode which is available inside the visual editor as a Beta Feature, and adding the new visual diff tool. Their workboard is available in Phabricator. You can find links to the work finished each week at mw:VisualEditor/Weekly triage meetings. Their current priorities are fixing bugs, supporting the 2017 wikitext editor as a beta feature, and improving the visual diff tool.

Recent changes

A new wikitext editing mode is available as a Beta Feature on desktop devices. The 2017 wikitext editor has the same toolbar as the visual editor and can use the citoid service and other modern tools. Go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures to enable the ⧼Visualeditor-preference-newwikitexteditor-label⧽.
A new visual diff tool is available in VisualEditor's visual mode. You can toggle between wikitext and visual diffs. More features will be added to this later. In the future, this tool may be integrated into other MediaWiki components. [5]
The team have added multi-column support for lists of footnotes. The <references /> block can automatically display long lists of references in columns on wide screens. This makes footnotes easier to read. You can request multi-column support for your wiki. [6]
You can now use your web browser's function to switch typing direction in the new wikitext mode. This is particularly helpful for RTL language users like Urdu or Hebrew who have to write JavaScript or CSS. You can use Command+Shift+X or Control+Shift+X to trigger this. [7]
The way to switch between the visual editing mode and the wikitext editing mode is now consistent. There is a drop-down menu that shows the two options. This is now the same in desktop and mobile web editing, and inside things that embed editing, such as Flow. [8]
The Categories item has been moved to the top of the Page options menu (from clicking on the "hamburger" icon) for quicker access. [9] There is also now a "Templates used on this page" feature there. [10]
You can now create <chem> tags (sometimes used as <ce>) for chemical formulas inside the visual editor. [11]
Tables can be set as collapsed or un-collapsed. [12]
The Special character menu now includes characters for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics and angle quotation marks (‹› and ⟨⟩) . The team thanks the volunteer developer, Tpt. [13]
A bug caused some section edit conflicts to blank the rest of the page. This has been fixed. The team are sorry for the disruption. [14]
There is a new keyboard shortcut for citations: Control+Shift+K on a PC, or Command+Shift+K on a Mac. It is based on the keyboard shortcut for making links, which is Control+K or Command+K respectively. [15]

Future changes

The team is working on a syntax highlighting tool. It will highlight matching pairs of <ref> tags and other types of wikitext syntax. You will be able to turn it on and off. It will first become available in VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode, maybe late in 2017. [16]
The kind of button used to Show preview, Show changes, and finish an edit will change in all WMF-supported wikitext editors. The new buttons will use OOjs UI. The buttons will be larger, brighter, and easier to read. The labels will remain the same. You can test the new button by editing a page and adding &ooui=1 to the end of the URL, like this: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Sandbox?action=edit&ooui=1 The old appearance will no longer be possible, even with local CSS changes. [17]
The outdated 2006 wikitext editor will be removed later this year. It is used by approximately 0.03% of active editors. See a list of editing tools on mediawiki.org if you are uncertain which one you use. [18]
If you aren't reading this in your preferred language, then please help us with translations! Subscribe to the Translators mailing list or contact us directly, so that we can notify you when the next issue is ready. Thank you!

—Elitre (WMF)

18:06, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Citation templates, redux

Having worked on adding structured, machine-readable data to our projects for over ten years now, it saddens me that we still see edits like the recent good-faith creation of {{Sclater & Salvin, 1860a}}.

The wiki-source of that template includes:

{{a|Philip Lutley Sclater|Sclater, P.L.}} & {{a|Osbert Salvin|Salvin, O.}} 1860. Characters of eleven new species of birds discovered by Mr. Osbert Salvin in Guatemala. ''[[ISSN 0370-2774|Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London]]'' pt28. In: ''Biodiversitas Heritage Library''. [http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12866850 P. 299-301]

while it is good that the authors are templated, it is problematic that there is no programmatic way to distinguish:

date
title
publication
part
pages
host website name

this means that we are providing less of a service to our users than we otherwise could.

A more structured approach would have this in a template, as something like (line breaks added for clarity):

|author1= {{a|Philip Lutley Sclater|Sclater, P.L.}}
|author2= {{a|Osbert Salvin|Salvin, O.}}
|year= 1860
|title= Characters of eleven new species of birds discovered by Mr. Osbert Salvin in Guatemala
|journal= Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London
|journal-ISSN= ISSN 0370-2774
|part= pt28
|republisher= Biodiversitas Heritage Library
|republisher-url= http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12866850
|republisher-pages = 299-301

Not only would this be easier for tools to read (parse), but we could have other tools that build such templates, given a URL or DOI (like the new Wikipedia/OCLC tool) , or we could import data from tools like Zotero. That will make our lives as editors easier.

How can we move towards this model? I know {{Cite journal}}'s format was not liked, but can we adapt it? If not, what is the solution? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:17, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the highly technical comment on this template, I didn't know those resources. I honestly thought I had done a good job putting a reference where there was nothing or a plain text with no link in at least 9 species grouped in the same original description. If you are sad with that, just go and improve it. I assure you it will be easier than spending a few hours finding to whom all those original description belongs now. That's Wikipedia. Sincerely.--Hector Bottai (talk) 14:37, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You'll notice that I purposefully described your edit as "good-faith". I was lamenting the lack of more advanced facilities, not your actions. I can't improve on what you've done - no-one can, including you - until we agree what those facilities should be, and implement them. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:07, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hector - your basic template conforms to WS Help so do not be ashamed of your work. However, the additional information is not required on a reference template and is probably best on the taxon pages. At the moment Andy's cite template is discouraged on WS, as it does not follow our journal based reference format. It has been developed for a WP style page and format, which also needs in text citations.

Andy who are our prime users? I make the assumption that they are people simply interested in taxonomic and classification facts and references or simply adding the required data. This is a different clientele compared to bots or people using the site for data mining, who require advanced features. I do not have the facts to back up my or your assumption, does anybody? Andyboorman (talk) 15:19, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It's not "my" citation template. Our "prime users" may indeed by "people simply interested in taxonomic and classification facts and references" - and they will want to find the works we reference, in their (or another) library; or to curate them in citation management tools like Zotero in order to more easily cite them on their own works (or indeed elsewhere on Wikispecies, or on Wikipedias). Structured data such as I suggest will aid them in doing all of these things. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:55, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Despite my comments in the past against the Cite_Journal template, wikipedia style, I am not against a better system here. I just think that template is ridiculous, and I know its not yours for the record. Most taxonomists do not use Zotero since they generally have institutional access to EndNote or they use Mandelay or something similar.So introducing Zotero as a method just adds to the things they have to do with references. These people are not concerned about freeware, they want sharable results. Of the 100 odd coauthors I have had over my career I can share endnote exports with them since thats what they use. So this is a part of the issue also. To move forward, first up the cite templates will have to output the reference in an acceptable fashion, ie, journal style, that is in the way we authors have to write our references when we submit papers. This gets very complicated when dealing with book chapters and I would suggest that journals, books and book chapters will need to be separate templates. Internally these can be formatted in the way you want, so long as the output is the way taxonomists want. Most of the litertature in taxonomy is very old and as such electronic versions are not that useful, some people datamine references, most do not. Its going to have to be a balanced approach with good proposals, maybe do one at a time. Develop a good journal reference template and work from there is my suggestion. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 16:33, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Zotero was an example; the same applies to Endnote or any other citation-management tool capable of parsing metadata. The example paper under discussion is "very old", but has an online copy which is linked to; I can't understand why you would claim that "electronic versions are not that useful". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:47, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Which ever system I get the need to have the references minable. I think that is important. I said not always useful, I have spent too much time scavenging for very old papers to believe everything is online, its not. Some texts are lost to history, some are very difficult to find. Eitherway, thats not the issue. I agree a change is needed. Focus on that. I agree that when they are available we can import them and format the output accordingly. When they are not, and this is more frequent than you believe I think, we will have to do it manually. Hence the template needs to be quick to use. The downside of the cite journal template is its not worth the time and effort to use, its useless. As I said come up with a proposed template for journals only that creates an acceptable output showing the full reference in journal style. Then we can discuss that and try to get it through. Once achieved we can work on books then chapters. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 17:08, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────┘remember that the only reason many old papers have online copies is because some librarian somewhere thought it would be good if this particular paper was available, it has lost its copywrite, and hence it ends up on BHL or something. This has not happened to all old papers yet. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 17:18, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Coming to it from a practical point of view, typing out all that |author1=, etc., stuff, is an awful lot more tedious than Hector's original version. I'd not want to have to do it. Hector's version looks fine to me, except for the ugliness of inconsistent spacing (why spaces after some fullstops, but not others - it looks horrible!). - MPF (talk) 18:16, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree. It's fine as it is. In the case, we would have to change to something more favourable for data mining, I expect a lot of problems with reference templates like the following one: {{Acevedo-Rodríguez & Strong, 2012}}. --Franz Xaver (talk) 21:07, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

It is not "fine as it is", because such text cannot be used by the tools I described. "Acevedo-Rodríguez & Strong"'s functionality can easily be included in a more general, structured template. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:03, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"typing out all that... is an awful lot more tedious than Hector's original version" Probably so. Who said anyone would have to do that? As on Wikipedias, we would have blank versions to copy and fill out, like a form. The visual editor would act as a wizard. And other tools could be made avaialbe to perform such mundanc=e chores. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:03, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Technically it is fine as it is. The references work as we currently wish to do them as a community. The correct question is should our refs do more. To me the answer to that is yes they should. I think we need to look at how to do that. This would be an improvement. I will argue for this in a different way to Andy has. The response to "we should make our references data-minable for programs like zotero" (liberal summary of what has been requested) is basically "why should we, what we do is good enough." This is not helping or achieving anything. My reasoning is that it will help those that are starting careers in taxonomy, who come from a modern background in utilizing software tools to do many of these tasks. Including the acquisition of reference lists and the obtaining of these references. In other words it will help modern students of taxonomy. Considering taxonomy is almost a fossil of a science these days anything we can do to encourage and assist people to become a part of the science of taxonomy is a positive. Andy has his reasons for doing this, that is fine, I have mine. I am thinking of the students. I know how hard it is to find references, type data etc for species I have suddenly become interested in because I started a masters or something. So please it does not matter whether you agree or disagree with Andy's reasons, or mine. The goal is the same. Look at what we do, think about modern computing and the people who use its methods and what we can do as a Wiki to step up to that. To me making our references more mine-able is a clear step in the right direction.

So I think this is something that we should look into. Our references should follow standard research publication practices in their presentation, they must be fully written out, no abbreviations. They must be mine-able, where possible should provide a link to a pdf. The template should be simple to use, personally I would prefer to not use the visual editor it horrible but thats just opinion. So we need to look at a way forward in this. First steps will be for a number of us to think this issue in terms of modernisation and what this wiki can and should do for our readers, a tone down on the frustration will also help. Whether we like it or not we need to discuss this, and I do not care how many times we have come to consensus on refs in the past, what we are currently doing is retro and has to be brought into this century. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 23:03, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just an addit, it may help if this issue was given a policy development page of its own, and I would ask that all interested people partake in that page and discuss the issue properly. Develop possible templates and work together forwards on the issue. I think this issue being re-hashed over and over with no continuity between this because previous discussions are archived before any satisfactory resolution is just not helping. Get it all together, discuss and develop it properly. What we are currently doing is just a constant re-hash of the same argument. With that development until such time as it produces an outcome that has been voted on by the current community the current system in place has consensus and is therefore acceptable. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 23:22, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I for one would prefer a template structure, especially assisted with a Cite journal or Cite book tool that autofills fields by simply entering a DOI or ISBN, as can be done on English Wikipedia. (Note the autofill is not perfect, and may require some additional formatting). Anything that facilitates both uniformity in style and convenience in creation should be encouraged. -Animalparty (talk) 19:37, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Susan Loiseaux

Is Susan Loiseaux also known as "Susan De Goer Loiseaux", or are they different people? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:30, 12 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Susan Loiseaux only seems to exist until shortly after 1982. After that, Susan Loiseaux-de Goër (as then spelled), is sole version. Probably married name. Both work on genetics of mostly algae. Neferkheperre (talk) 23:58, 12 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I've added those aliases to Wikidata; how should we record them on the page here? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:51, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My idea is to make redirect of married name to original name, and make note of that fact on author mainpage. Neferkheperre (talk) 22:55, 13 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done; also for the Susan Loiseaux de Goër variant of her name - please check. I've also updated the category on Iyengaria quadriseriata - do you agree with that? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:53, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal of bot-policy modification

After some concerns were brought out regarding the definition of AWB whether it qualifies as a bot or is just considered an assisted editing and in view that some admins are making use of it without a bot account, and comparing to the practice used at the enWP, I propose the following modification to be made to the Wikispecies:Bot text.

After the phrase "Use of tools to assist with repetitive tasks, such as reverting vandalism, is termed assisted editing, and is not usually considered to be operation of a bot." I propose to add the following: Some software-tools may also be excluded from the bot definition to be considered assisted editing. The tools currently excluded are: AWB (AutoWikiBrowser) and JWB (JavaWikiBrowser), which is a web-version of the AWB. Please note that if you're using these programs regularly to make more than a few edits per minute you're strongly advised to open a bot account.

I for one am applying now to be approved a bot account. See my request for approval here: Wikispecies:Bots/Requests for approval. Mariusm (talk) 04:36, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would recommend a minor emendment that if autosave functions are used then AWB is to be considered a bot and approval by that route is required. I would set the edit limit to 20 per minute. I am aware this is still faster that WP but please realise a major reason this is deemed an issue is server lag and we do not have that issue on WS. However it can still cause flooding of recent changes so I think 20 per minute is a reasonable balance, over this and a bot flag is recommended (NOT mandatory). Cheers, Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 06:25, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Both proposals would get my vote. All seems sensible. Andyboorman (talk) 08:26, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Faendalimas: Auto-mode will make saves automatically only for accounts registered as Bots, so your concern about autosave do not apply in this case. Mariusm (talk) 09:44, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. This would make use of a bot-flagged account optional for anyone running AWB/JWB at 50 or more edits a minute. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:09, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: Take into account that AWB/JWB can be used only by admins or by users with a special permission and if these responsible individuals were told in a civilized manner that they exceed the speed limit and consequently they have to switch to a bot account, they'll readily comply. Mariusm (talk) 12:23, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with @Mariusm: here, I would prefer that users of AWB/JWB have a little latitude on what they are doing and agree that any issues admins have with an account doing this can be discussed and dealt with on a case by case basis. This is not something that new users will be doing. If Edit rates become an issue then it can be raised. In regards to autosave, yes Mariusm on WP you need a bot account to use the autosave capacity of AWB but is that true here? It is not clear to me if gaining AWB privelages on WP was global or whether other sites do not require this. When I received AWB privs on WP, before I was an admin here, I could use AWB here without asking for it. However as I said I do not know if thats because getting the flag to use AWB on WP made this global, or if WS does not require the flag to use AWB. If the later is true I would prefer to distinguish the autosave feature. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 13:06, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

When a bot is editing at 50 or more edits per minutes (that's 36,000 or more edits in 12 hours), and there is no indication as to whether or not a human is watching the edits, it needs to be blocked; waiting for discussion could take several hours. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:01, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Recent evidence is that there are admins who use AWB in breach of the bot policy and who are not reasonable; when asked in a civilized manner to give an undertaking not to do so again, they refuse. Besides which, the change you suggest removes your hypothetical "speed limit". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:01, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: Nowhere was a speed limit specified for an assisted-editing and you might have well known that an account which isn't a Bot can't possibly edit in a fully automatic manner. Conclusion: A person must always be present behind a non-Bot account running the AWB. What is good enough for enWP which has a lot of AWB users can satisfy us also, and they aren't concerned by your concerns. If every casual AWB user would be requested to apply for a Bot it would be highly inconvenient and will necessitate a lot of bureaucratic procedures: applying, discussions, voting etc. all for running it once in a long while Mariusm (talk) 15:44, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Your wording would exempt some users from any requirement to moderate the speed of their automated tools. That is not acceptable. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:04, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I suggested a limit of 20 edits per minute and personally I think that is reasonable. I suggested that when it gets too high editors should consider applying for a bot account, I would imagine that as that happens this suggestion would be made too them by an admin. We are not EN WP where there are thousands of users with AWB permissions. We do not need to be draconian about this. I feel editors should have some freedom and admins should be able to make case by case decisions using the policy as a guideline. @Pigsonthewing: saying its unacceptable is the wrong word here, whatever we as a community come to consensus on is acceptable. What you can say is you oppose other editors may disagree with you. In the end the consensus of all editors is what prevails. This needs to be a simple process, our AWB editors are generally experienced users and few in number. I think we can handle this without making it too difficult for everyone. @Mariusm: If I could suggest, this has been on the pump for a day, write up the policy changes taking into consideration comments here. Give us some time to further discuss it then prepare to make it an RfC for a vote. I would like to see this issue dealt with. Also, if anyone else feels they may need a bot account for running their AWB edits please make an application on Wikispecies:Bots/Requests for approval, you should consider this if you are regularly using AWB to edit at a high rate per minute, note you will be subject to the bot policy in regards to this. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 17:53, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Scott's suggestions have merit and have my support. I look forward to resolution and a vote, in due course, in order to inform consensus. Andyboorman (talk) 17:57, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

My reasons for trying to get through this is because I personally think this whole issue was not entirely necessary. However, deal with it we must. So lets get it done. Then we can move on to some issues that are actually important. One in particular is I want to see us discuss in detail and come to a proposal that permits us to move to a different referencing system. Something I had hoped you may actually consider important Andy since you have brought it up so often. Its a separate subject so do not respond on that here. But this I wanted a discussion page done on so we can actually do it. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 18:00, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Something I had hoped you may actually consider important" See #Citation templates, redux, just (at the time of writing) a couple of sections above this one. You commented there several times, so I would hope you would also recall my participation. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:14, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"saying its unacceptable is the wrong word here" Under what circumstances do you think it would ever be acceptable for some editors to be allowed to use automated tools to edit at unlimited speed? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:17, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I know you did that was my point. But lets not mix the topics. This is all about the bot policy. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 18:27, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Under what circumstances do you think it would ever be acceptable for some editors to be allowed to use automated tools to edit at unlimited speed?" Under any circumstance where the community had come to a consensus that it was ok, whether that is likely or not is not the point. My point was that we are discussing what can be done here and one person cannot determine an action is unacceptable. AWB may be capable of unlimited edit speed, this does not mean that will be used. I have no issue with our users hgere being trusted with this. As I said we do not face many of the issues that EN WP does. We do not need to be as proactive and can give our editors some freedom. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 18:31, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've never claimed to have "determined" that unlimited editing speed is unacceptable; I'm simply pointing out that it is. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:35, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: There exists no such thing, that is inherently unacceptable. If someone can accept something, it is acceptable for him, maybe not for other. You simply had pointed to the fact, that it was unacceptable for you, presuming, it certainly would also be unacceptable for others. --Franz Xaver (talk) 07:05, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Change to 'more than 20 edits per minute', and for greater clarity please add: 'If autosave functions are used by these tools, then bot approval is always required'. --Thiotrix (talk) 06:42, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Thiotrix: This would be entirely superfluous because only bot accounts can run the autosave functions. Just try logging in to AWB with your regular accout; you'll see at the bottom Logged in, user and software enabled. Bot = False, Admin = True. This means that when you click the Bots tab and then the Auto save, you'll be denied. Mariusm (talk) 07:29, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariusm and Thiotrix: I note your point Mariusm, however, I think adding the autosave point in has merit, not so much as a condition but as an explanation, so there will be no confusion. Basically a statement that in order to use the autosave function a bot account is essential. This demonstrates to users that AWB does cross that boundary between assisted editing and a bot depending on how its used. I support what you have put above but would add something explanatory about autosave for clarity. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 13:04, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Faendalimas and Thiotrix: Ok than, lets modify the text to: Some software-tools may also be excluded from the bot definition to be considered assisted editing. The tools currently excluded are: AWB (AutoWikiBrowser) and JWB (JavaWikiBrowser), which is a web-version of the AWB. These tools need user-approval to complete each edit and can be used in an automatic mode (Auto save) only with a bot account. Please note that if you're using these programs regularly to make more than 20 edits per minute you're strongly advised to open a bot account. Mariusm (talk) 13:34, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariusm: I support this. Give some time for others to respond, then when appropriate take the entirety of the bot policy with your modifications (so that people can see what it will all say) make it into an RfC and put it to the community for voting. But do give a little time first for others to see this. Once it goes to RfC and is voted on we can be done with this. Cheers, Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 14:38, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problems with this wording and the Rfc suggestion by Faendalimas. Andyboorman (talk) 16:05, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, our current bot policy says: "Bots' editing speed should be regulated in some way; subject to approval, bots doing non-urgent tasks may edit approximately once every ten seconds, while bots doing more urgent tasks may edit approximately once every four seconds." That means maxima of six edits and fiteen edits per minute, respectively. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:49, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Read the bot policy, agree it needs to be changed, that is the point of this exercise. Make sure speeds are all 20 @Mariusm: we are not Wikipedia, server lag is not as big an issue here. Then we can vote on it. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 19:12, 19 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Faendalimas: I would like also to consider changing the following bot policy text: "Bots' editing speed should be regulated in some way; subject to approval, bots doing non-urgent tasks may edit approximately once every ten seconds, while bots doing more urgent tasks may edit approximately once every four seconds." In view that these criteria were crafted for and adopted from the enWP, where the usual editing rate is 70–100 EPM plus an additional 30–60 EPM bot edits. This is hardly applicable to WS. I would like to change the text to: Automatic Bots' editing speed should be regulated in some way; subject to approval, bots doing non-urgent tasks may edit approximately once every five seconds, while bots doing more urgent tasks may edit approximately once every two seconds. Assisted-editing with a short span of activity is allowed to edit in a rate of up to 50 edits per minute. Mariusm (talk) 06:03, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose There is no reason to give "assisted editing" a faster rate than other automated edits. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:17, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support Assisted editing will be under the control of an editor. Andyboorman (talk) 10:40, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support I agree and can see the rational with this. Assisted editing is always under human control and is therefore safer than a bot in anycase. I think this can go to an rfc now @Mariusm:. Basically write out what the bot policy in its entirety will now say, with a link to the current policy, this discussion, the discussion on the admin noticeboard, and set up a discussion and vote section. Convert to an RfC for full community vote. I believe 7 days is appropriate for this. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 14:30, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've set up the voting at Wikispecies:Requests_for_Comment#Change_of_Bot_policy Please vote! Mariusm (talk) 15:40, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please continue at the RfC, voting and any further points. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 16:52, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Subgenus page

Hi! I like to ask about subgenus page. In the case of species there is a consensus to create pages as Genus species. Is there a consensus to create subgenus page just like "Subgenus" (example: Bombias) or "Genus (Subgenus)" (example: Bombus (Bombias) ? Thanks Burmeister (talk) 15:48, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Subgenera are complicated in a way because the nominate subgenus is identical in spelling to the genus name. so for clarity what I do is this example in genus Elseya where you will note the nominate subgenus is Elseya (Elseya). Similar to your example with Bombias. Nomenclaturally this is the correct way to write the nominate subgenus, and names are technically always binomial, ie a species name is for example Elseya rhodini even though this species belongs to the subgenus Hanwarachelys and could technically be written as a trinomial Elseya (Hanwarachelys) rhodini. Cheers, Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 16:00, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Burmeister: This subgenera issue is indeed a WS minefield! Ideally it would be nice to have Genus (Subgenus) pages for subgenera and Genus (Subgenus) species pages for species. However this will cause a lot of problems, a lot of confusion and a lot of duplication! See for example Antheraea cadioui and Antheraea (Antheraea) cadioui - and there are many more. We debated this issue several times and came to the conclusion not to create Genus (Subgenus) species pages, but always to stick with Genus species. I also strongly suggest to make subgenus pages not named Genus (Subgenus) but just Subgenus. See for example the page Goetzia I made today; and see Protaetia on how to display and link the subgenera pages. I think this is the best way to avoid confusion, duplication, search problems and inconsistency. If you still worry that "proper names" are not represented on WS, you can create redirects for Genus (Subgenus) and for Genus (Subgenus) species, but I think this is unnecessary. Mariusm (talk) 05:44, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: There's a special template {{Sgsps}} for species lists, which can be used to display the species in the trinomial format yet to link to the binomial names. {{sgsps|G|enus|S|ubgenus|species}} will display as G. (S.) species but will link to Genus species. Mariusm (talk) 11:29, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, I don't have any problem with the consensus to use "Genus species" approuch. My question was about "Subgenus" pages only. In cases where the genus and subgenus are the same name, example Bombus and Bombus (Bombus), what is the format for disambiguation, continue using Bombus (Bombus) or use a different format, Bombus (subgenus). Burmeister (talk) 13:16, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yep as I said the nominate subgenus, the one identical to the genus name, is the issue. My preference is to name that page Genus (Subgenus) so as to disambiguate it from the genus page. I looked at the example given by Mariusm but it does not have a nominate subgenus for some reason, ie Protaetia (Protaetia). In the genus Elseya there is a page for Elseya (Elseya). Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 13:27, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Elseya use the format most common in WS, Elseya (Elseya), Elseya (Pelocomastes) and Elseya (Hanwarachelys). Burmeister (talk) 13:34, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Burmeister: You have 2 choices:

Create the page named Elseya (Elseya) as done (but be sure to include in the species list links to Genus species).
Skip the nominate subgenus page altogether and simply add a section: "Elseya (s.str.) species" (see the page, I made at Talk:Elseya), where I listed in one section all the species in alphabetic order and in another section "Elseya (s.str.) species" for the Elseya (Elseya) species. (s.str. means in the strict sense [Latin: sensu stricto] and is used by many authors to denote the nominate subgenus). Since all the details for Elseya and for Elseya (Elseya) are the same (Author, publications, type species etc.) there's no need really to create the Elseya (Elseya) page. See also my modified Protaetia. Mariusm (talk) 15:21, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariusm and Burmeister:I have a couple of reasons for not doing it the way you did on the talk page. First the nominate subgenus is a new combination, and this is declared by the reference erecting the new subgenera. The term sensu stricto with regards to Elseya is referring to the nominotypical species, in this case Elseya dentata not its con-subgeners. The reason for this is that there are other taxa described that have been synonymised with the type species, eg Elseya intermedia, so sensu stricto must be qualified, There are also other genera synonymised with the genus, and hence the subgenus Elseya, again meaning you must qualify this statement. To me for completeness, accuracy and recognition of the entire nomenclature it is better to have a page for the nominate subgenus, and obviously this needs to be disambiguated in some way. The way you do it works as well, I am not saying you are wrong. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 16:19, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Mariusm wrote "Since all the details for Elseya and for Elseya (Elseya) are the same (Author, publications, type species etc.) there's no need really to create the Elseya (Elseya) page." A nominate subspecies fall in the exactly same problema, it have the same author, publication, type locality and holotype, tecnically a duplicate of information, but we decide to create individual pages for it (see a discussion in village pump a few months ago). So this argument for not create nominate subgenus because of duplicate of information is not maintain oneself. The other technical details about new combination, taxonomic act itself and allocation of synonyms, already discuss in Faedalimas commentary [, so I will not details this here]. Honestly, Mariusm, I find your suggestion confusing. I agree with Faendalimas, one page for each subgenus including the nominate, exactly the same approuch for subspecies. The only question is about the format. Burmeister (talk) 17:19, 23 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I continue to sustain that both nominal subspecies and now nominal sugenus are huge mistakes and a lost of time and effort. A true duplication, that a simple redirection would solve. But looks I am, by far, a lost vote. --Hector Bottai (talk) 00:21, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The same as Hector Bottai I can't understand why we have to make pages for the nominal subspecies and the nominal subgenus. These are duplicates which waste our time and efforts and don't contribute any information at all. @Burmeister: I would advice you to reassess their necessity. Mariusm (talk) 04:11, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

To me it is innaccurate representation of the nomenclature. Your page you made for Elseya on its talk page, I could not agree with that. You list it as having 2 subgenera, not true it has 3, including the nominate. When I declared the subgenera of that genus, yes my paper is cited, I declared 3 subgenera, diagnosed 3 subgenera, split the existing species of Elseya into 3 subgenera, not 2. The nominate is nomenclaturally a recombination it may have the same data as the genus, but it is not the same entity. Under the code the subgenus adopts its nomenclature from the genus, it is not however the same thing. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 15:53, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

All right, @Faendalimas: I see your point. I just thought that since the nominate SG must always be present among the SG, if there are any, it can be considered as default and consequently can be skipped. When I indicated "2" I meant 2 + nominate. Of course the G and the nominate SG are not the same entity, yet since they share the same information, we can save some work by skipping (or redirecting) the nominate SG. Mariusm (talk) 04:32, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wrongly named (fossil) taxa pages

We currently have quite a lot of pages named "Unspecified Eusaurischia Suborder", "Incertae sedis Coelophysoidea" and such, which obviously aren't named after valid taxa and therefore doesn't meet our naming scheme policy. On top of that many of them are also otherwise malformed. Nonetheless some of them contain valid data and shouldn't be imprudently deleted. Ideas? Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:55, 26 May 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Wikispecies:Village_Pump/Archive_37#Incertae_sedis_on_Taxon_Pages. Incertae sedis pages already discussed and banned. Reassign the valid content and delete the pages, maybe is the solution. Burmeister (talk) 14:05, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, make ===Incertae sedis genera=== sections at the parent taxon and delete the pages. Mariusm (talk) 15:12, 26 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Bot policy update

A direct link to the actual poll can be seen here.

I updated our bot policy according to the vote at Requests for Comment. We have yet to define what exactly are bot "urgent tasks" which allow an accelerated rate of editing. Any suggestions? Mariusm (talk) 04:19, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The policy currently says "The urgency of a task should always be considered; tasks that do not need to be completed quickly (for example, renaming categories) can and should be accomplished at a slower rate than those that do (for example, reverting vandalism)." I think that suffices. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:31, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Agree - I think we who are approving bots have a good understanding of urgency and vandalism is an adequate example. The bot policy can be let be I think, when people apply they can justify their needs in the application, if approved they can do what they have been approved for. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 23:33, 28 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I still think we need an AWB policy though, or at the very least some guideline pointing out the basic AWB dos and don'ts. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 23:41, 28 May 2017 (UTC).[reply]

InternetArchiveBot and the Wayback Machine

I'm pleased to note that User:InternetArchiveBot is now active on this project, updating dead links so that they point, where possible, to a copy of the relevant page on the Wayback Machine.

You may see talk page edits like this one; if so, please follow the guidelines it contains, and check that the updated links are OK.

You may also like to submit web pages which you cite here, to the Wayback Machine, to ensure that an archive copy is available for future reference, Various browser plugins and use scripts (not specific to Wikispecies) exist to do this.

Many thanks to User:Cyberpower678, who operates the bot on several Wikipedias, for responding to my request to render this service here. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:45, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to do it. Also if you're interested in the tools they come with, have a look at https://tools.wmflabs.org/iabot. —CYBERPOWER (Chat) 12:45, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WS android app

I just made the 100th download of the Wikispecies android app, available at Google play. Just a reminder for you who already know it existed, but also interesting news for you did not. The app is made by the Kiwix Team, who also made other useful Wikimedia applications. Dan Koehl (talk) 15:41, 8 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update, Dan. I added a link to the Android app to Main Page back in October last year, but it's not very apparent together with the Twitter link there, so your reminder of the app is welcome. Not that it's of much use for me personally, since I'm an Apple guy and unfortunately there's no Wikispecies app for iPhone or iPad, at least not yet. :-) Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 04:02, 9 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

@Tommy Kronkvist: - try here :-) MPF (talk) 00:37, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but "These aren't the Droids you're looking for" :-) Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 09:11, 15 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Template:Ale

{{Ale}} is unused, undiscussed, and undocumented. Does it serve any purpose? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:43, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see any sense in keeping it. It looks like Author template (category:Author templates), which are at best redundant. They are from older ages, and do not use our present accepted naming format. They mostly direct to author pages. Occasionally, they have interfered with taxon pages. This needs to be evaluated, as there are over 3000 of these. Neferkheperre (talk) 20:44, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Deleted. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:07, 14 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Unused templates

Further to the above, there are thousands of templates listed at Special:UnusedTemplates; is there any reason not to start deleting them, beginning with unused author-name templates? We'd also need to keep any /doc templates listed there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:57, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

IMO do not start with the author pages, as they could be waiting for the relevant taxon pages and associated references to be created or simply they could be used on stubs and semi-stubs. A lot of the taxon templates could be disambigs, orphans, synonyms or again waiting for a taxon page to be created. Repository templates are not a delete category either. This whole task will need the help of taxonomists I feel. It is most definitely not a task for a bot. WS has a lot of these OMG moments! Regards Andyboorman (talk) 11:09, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This is indeed a mess, and will take some time to wade through. As for the author templates (whether used or not) many of them are also malformed, using HTML and CSS instead of proper wiki code. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 11:21, 15 May 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Who mentioned a bot? Which unused templates would you delete? If templates are used on stubs and semi-stubs, they will not show on the above page, as "unused". Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:26, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I did not write that templates are being used on stubs and semi-stubs. Sorry what I meant is that they may have a place on incomplete taxon pages. Andyboorman (talk) 11:34, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean they could have potential use on stubs in the future? How long after creation should we keep such templates? Indefinitely? And, again: Which unused templates would you delete? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:37, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Look I am not trying to be awkward, but for example, I looked at A.Fleischm. and found that I could use it by enhancing the existing page Nepenthes flava. However, I was happy to delete Aizoön, as the actual taxon page has been previously redirected. Two down a few thousand to go! I guess this is great and valuable tidy up project. Andyboorman (talk) 15:15, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Many templates from this lists are reference templates, which simply have to be added to the respective author pages, e.g. {{Bigelow, 1967}}. After having done this, they will no longer show up as unused. IMO it is best to start with this kind of templates. --Franz Xaver (talk) 15:12, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Andyboorman: Anyway, {{A.Fleischm.}} still is unused, as {{a|A.Fleischm.}} actually is working with the redirect page A.Fleischm. and not with the template. Probably this kind of author templates can be deleted altogether, but in some cases creation of a redirect page might be necessary before. --Franz Xaver (talk) 15:27, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Franz Xaver Too true! Andyboorman (talk) 15:32, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Franz Xaver: So you would add {{Bigelow, 1967}} to Robert S. Bigelow? How? - Please can you do so now, so that it can be used as an example for others? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:26, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: Done. Regards --Franz Xaver (talk) 16:31, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Is there any reason that such content needs to be in a template (presumably, it will only ever be used on that one page?), rather then entered directly? Either way, I think it would be worth having a bot scan Special:UnusedTemplates for similar cases, and then either i) applying them or ii) writing a list for human attention. Afterwards, if agreed, such templates could be "Subst:-ituted". Does anyone have a bot that could be approved to do such a task? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:40, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: Of course, the template {{Bigelow, 1967}} can be used in many taxon pages, probably in most pages on grasshoppers from New Zealand. Similarly, most other reference templates are to be used on more than one page. That's the reason, why these are templates. --Franz Xaver (talk) 17:04, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And I did not say you are trying to be awkward. I simply asked you what you meant, since your first statement was not clear; and asked you a second time, "Which unused templates would you delete?", since you did not answer the first time (and I asked that, because you gave a list of types of template which you think we should not delete). And indeed, you have not yet answered that question. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:22, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I really do not have time to trawl through unused templates for possible deletes. I was just pointing out a few possible pitfalls given your original post. Andyboorman (talk) 20:13, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I found these templates {{Btname}}, {{At}}, {{2015sp}}, {{2014sp}}, {{X1}} unused, undocumented and with apparently no use. Possible candidates to delete! Burmeister (talk) 17:33, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. However, the list also includes a bunch of template documentation pages which actually are in use. For instance {{Boddaert, 1785/doc}} which really isn't a template in its own right, but the information ("help") subpage of the {{Boddaert, 1785}} reference template. These /doc pages should of course be kept (unless truly unused). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 18:07, 15 May 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Hence "We'd also need to keep any /doc templates listed there." in my original post. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:35, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I've deleted the first. The last is provided for use as a sandbox. And the rest are labelled as being for substitution only, so I wouldn't expect any uses. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:38, 15 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've deleted the rest – and their documentation subpages where available – with the exception of the {{X1}} "sandbox" template. Apart from being mentioned here at VP they were all unused. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 09:42, 16 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Let me ask another question: how long should we keep unused templates, before deleting them? And another: what purpose does, for example {{Ampelosicyinae}} serve, when it duplicates Ampelosicyinae? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:17, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral Please do not forget that some templates are always used by substituting them. But if you use a substituted template, it will not appear in the list of linking to. QZanden (talk) 13:35, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As discussed in my reply to Burmeister, above, you mean? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:27, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How long is a piece of string? Each unused template should be treated on it own merits or lack of them. As to your second question, in my view the taxon page Ampelosicyinae was poorly constructed in the first place. Now the template has value and is used. This class of unused template can be dealt with by page edits. We like to use templates in this way so that if classification changes it can be dealt with quickly and simply. Andyboorman (talk) 20:33, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, {{Ampelosicyinae}} is now used, because you've just deployed it. But you told us above, that you "really do not have time to trawl through unused templates". So how to you envision the issue of these thousands of unused templates being resolved? Meanwhile since you've removed my last example; here is another: {{Adamietta}} duplicates Sulcospira, to which Adamietta redirects, apart from using Genus: ''[[Adamietta]]''. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:26, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Adamietta was synonymised within Sulcospira; the page was redirected, but the template was forgotten. I think in these cases the template could be deleted without prejudice for WS. If Adamietta was resurrected in future, the template always can be restored to be used again. Burmeister (talk) 21:49, 17 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Burmeister: Thank you. Is there a programmatic way to detect such templates? Maybe someone could draw up a list? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:11, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I very regularly find these templates waiting around to be used when I undertake my edits and updates. I think we are talking at cross purposes. I am seeing templates that could be useful, for example those that could/should link to a taxon and must not be deleted until evaluated or used. However, I cannot comment on authors as I am not an author geek. In other words I will be helping out through my taxon page creations, edits and updates. However, you still seem to see all used templates as the same entity, but of course it would be great if there was a sort program, but my skill set is elsewhere. Sorry Andyboorman (talk) 11:14, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"you still seem to see all used templates as the same entity" This is patently untrue, as should be obvious from even a brief reading of this short section. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:08, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry if I offended you - this refers to the "how long should we keep unused templates" as, in my opinion, this is a question with no blanket answer, but you have asked it a couple of times as if there could be one answer. Hopefully this helps. Andyboorman (talk) 14:31, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure our colleagues are capable of framing an answer in the manner of "two months in the case of authors, but a year in the case of a taxon", or whatever. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:39, 18 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Dealing with oddly formatted pages

The are a number of pages with a flawed or at least odd format, such as for example Ocellularia albobullata and Gloeodendrales. I think we might benefit from marking them in some way, preferably by use of a template such as {{Cleanup}} (see this working example on enWP.) That template could also automatically add the pages to a specific category, say Category:Pages needing cleanup, which would make it easier for us to deal with them as quickly as possible. I try to help out as often as I can when I stumble upon a page that needs a bit of refurbishment, but there are quite a lot of areas where I feel I lack the proper expertise (Pteridophyta, Rotifera, Tardigrada, etc.) However if they were all gathered together in a category it would be easy for users to help fix any pages within the user's specific areas of expertise. What say ye?
–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 22:56, 14 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

In addition to this it would be appropriate to appeal to the page's creators, in this case @Ed Uebel: and @Zorahia: and ask them to abstain from making and/or correct their badly formatted pages. Mariusm (talk) 04:18, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Identifying and marking bad formatted pages, is in any case good, I support that template. Dan Koehl (talk) 14:33, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely a good idea. Andyboorman (talk) 15:44, 15 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Both the {{Cleanup}} template and a "Pages needing cleanup" category are now created, but feel free to add additional information to them, if needed. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:43, 16 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Old foreign-language journals

I wonder how's best to represent old foreign-language journals.

For example a Russian journal published between 1925 and 1932:

The original name:
- Ежегодник Зоологического музея Академии наук Союза Советских Социалистических Республик.
The French name which was written on the journal's front page in addition to the Russian name:
- Annuaire du Musée Zoologique de l'Académie des Sciences de l'Union des Républiques Sovietiques Socialistes.
Cyrillic transcribed to Latin - which is used by several authors:
- Ezhegodnik Zoologicheskogo Muzeya, Akademiya Nauk SSSR.
The English version:
- Annual of the Zoological Museum of the academy of sciences of the U.S.S.R.

Mariusm (talk) 14:19, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am guessing what you mean are old journals using non latin characters such as the Russian one you refer to. My thinking is to use the original names listed in the journal, whichever is appropriate, first, ie in your example the French name, for no other reason that to avoid cyrillic lettering, in the absence of this we should use the cyrillic maybe with a Latinised version to help. Not a fan of translating it to english since that is not really representative of the journal. However I can see a need to have something to give meaning to the cyrillic, maybe a link to wherever its available will help too, eg BHL. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 16:09, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. If the journal is using an alternative title in a language using Latin script, this should be used. Anyway, there exists a variety of systems for translitation of Cyrillic script – see en:Romanization of Russian – and even more systems for transcription, e.g. de:Kyrillisches Alphabet#Beispiele für die Umschrift von Namen. Do we need a rule, which of these systems to use, in case we need it? --Franz Xaver (talk) 17:24, 16 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The same reasoning goes into the article names. One way to do it is to write the article's transliteration followed by a translation in square parentheses like:

Zhuki-nosorogi (Oryctes Ill.) russkoy i sredne-asiatskoy fauny (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae). [Species generis (Oryctes Ill.) Faunae rossicae et mesasiaticae (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae).]

Mariusm (talk) 05:54, 17 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, agreed in general. However, in your example the Latin translation of the Russian article title is flawed. (In the Russian text the words "species" and "genus" don't occur.) Was this Latin translation given by the journal? Anyway, in this special case, I don't think, that a translation of the Russian title actually is necessary, as it is not difficult to understand, even if you don't speak Russian. --Franz Xaver (talk) 08:01, 17 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Franz Xaver: Yes, the Latin translation is from the article. One other possibility is to write the article's name only in English between square parentheses like: [Russian and mid-Asiatic fauna of Oryctes Ill.] Mariusm (talk) 08:37, 17 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariusm: For Russian article titles, the latter should not be recommended. However, it might be an option for articles with only a Chinese title, as transcription of Chinese (or Japanese) is much more difficult, compared to languages using Cyrillic script. Anyway, in your example, the Russian title correctly should be translated as [The Rhinoceros beetles (Oryctes Ill.) of the Russian and mid-Asiatic fauna (Coleoptera, Scarabaeidae).] --Franz Xaver (talk) 09:12, 17 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See Zevina, 1981 for another way. This works well for journal articles. Russians organize differently, and longer bibliographies will be in two sections; first is all references of Russian origin, in Russian, second is for everybody else, in whatever. Since it is conventional to use Latin alphabet languages for main titles, and translation/transliterations for other writing systems, original citation, at least title thereof should appear somewhere on reference page. Neferkheperre (talk) 13:07, 17 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Synonyms and homonyms revisited

This post has been prompted by this discussion with @RLJ: regarding Paronychia Mill., Gard. Dict. Abr., ed. 4: 1019. (1754) and its edits. Rightly, it was pointed out that Paronychia Hill, Brit. Herb. 259 (1756) is a homonym of the first, but not a synonym, as it refers to a totally different entity and therefore does not belong in a list of "Synonyms". These solutions were found, to paraphrase here they are:

Adding a comment in the relevant paragraph, see Ouratea ferruginea, Brackenridgea arenaria and now Paronychia
Adding a comment on the whole article, as possibly "Notes" see Rosa sempervirens
Working with disambiguation pages, see Atriplex axillaris and linked pages.
Omitting the problematic homonyms - see Aspalathus, of which homonyms exist in Caragana.

I would like to widen the discussion to the community. Firstly, does the term Synonymy cover these sorts of non-synonymous homonyms? Are there any of the alternatives above so problematic that they can be dealt with through routine edits, as and when encountered? Finally is there a consensus for a common taxon page format for this section of the page. Regards Andyboorman (talk) 18:58, 17 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking from the point of view of Zoology and the ICZN code. Homonyms referring to the the same species are actually referred to as cresonyms, homonyms refer to same names for different taxonomic concepts (eg species). In general homonyms are however listed in the synonymy with references to the other taxa, so that the name can be declared a junior or senior homonym, for purposes of priority. It is essential that both effected taxa have this. For our purposes I would recommend a link between the two. Junior homonyms are unavailable names, senior homonyms are available, in the absence of other rulings or issues. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 22:29, 17 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I don't list homonyms under the header "synonymy". It has a separate header at the level in the hierarchy – see e.g. Ouratea rigida. (So my solution is not too different from the Rosa sempervirens example.) As I treat the matter, there are two different ways, one for homonyms of accepted names (Ouratea rigida) and another for homonyms of synonyms (Ochna ferruginea). The solution in Atriplex has the disadvantage, that there is no link to Atriplex axillaris Ten. from the illegitimate Atriplex axillaris Phil. --Franz Xaver (talk) 00:14, 18 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I add the junior homonyms (Zoology) under the synonymy subsection and label them as [nom. praeocc.] (preoccupied name) like:

Actinobolus Mörch, 1853 [nom. praeocc., see Genus Cardites Link, 1807]
Actinobolus Stein, 1867 [nom. praeocc., see Genus Actinobolina Strand, 1928, nom. nov.] Mariusm (talk) 07:46, 19 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why do taxonomists write the meanest obituaries?

http://54.197.248.184/issue/49/the-absurd/why-do-taxonomists-write-the-meanest-obituaries-rp —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:58, 19 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Botanists' last stand

https://qz.com/1007400/the-botanists-last-stand-the-daring-work-of-saving-the-last-samples-of-dying-species/ —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:27, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Back again . . .

Take a look at Special:Contributions/Allspecies - guess who! - MPF (talk) 10:23, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure, if it's him. Working at an unsual time of the day, compared to his earlier editing. Moreover, also habits of editing are slightly different, e.g. now linking to author pages and not to reference templates, as he did before - see here. --Franz Xaver (talk) 11:25, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Who is "him"? I can tell you that I certainly am me, but am I him? Maybe I'm two people, or more! Allspecies (talk) 11:32, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Allspecies! Would you agree to a checkuser assessment, whether you and User:Stho002 are the same person? --Franz Xaver (talk) 11:41, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We cannot do CheckUser requests this way. If it is believed a CheckUser is required the appropriate request must be made and must show some evidence of this being required. They cannot be done at the User in questions request, particularly if prompted. Cheers, Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 13:14, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies @Allspecies: assuming that you are not impersonating a serial sockpuppet amateur entomologist with attitude based in New Zealand. This character thought that WS was his personal garden and had a habit of picking a fight with all who disagreed with his vision, whatever that was! So in good faith welcome. Regards Andyboorman (talk) 18:52, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, feel free to do your "CheckUser" if you wish, but I can tell you with utmost sincerity (hand on heart) that I am not an "amateur entomologist" of any description! Allspecies (talk) 19:41, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Allspecies: Let me echo the above sentiment: we are happy to have new contributors and some of us are still a little on edge about what has happened in the past. Thanks for adding to the directory. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:47, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Help needed for using this template

I created and used this template, but I am not able to find where at BHL (if there) are the figures cited in each original description as "Atlas". Like this. Any insight? Thanks--Hector Bottai (talk) 11:48, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Closed topics

Why were the above topics closed and by who or what? Suggest they are opened ASAP. Andyboorman (talk) 10:43, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The reason is this edit by User:MABot, having removed {{Discussion bottom}}, but leaving {{Discussion top}}. --Franz Xaver (talk) 11:41, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed it, MABot isn't behaving well. I mentioned it about a month ago when it cut a discussion at the middle producing an unwanted effect. Mariusm (talk) 11:48, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@MarcoAurelio:, who operates MABot. However, the problem was caused by User:Faendalimas in Pump&oldid=3334948 this edit, where the template was placed before, rather than after, the relevant section heading. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:23, 20 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry. The script archivebot.py archives threads starting from the == Title ==. Everything above the section is ignored, because the bot understands that the thread starts with the title and not above it. The solution is to put those archive templates inside the thread and not above it. Hope that it helps. Best regards, —MarcoAurelio (☎ talk) 11:09, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

User: PokestarFan using the AWB has dammaged many author pages

@PokestarFan: has been using extensively the AWB on author pages, and made many harmful edits in the process, removing author's links like this diff. I will block him until we make sure he does't continue this massive dammage. Mariusm (talk) 04:36, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I also wanted to express this concern at some point. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 04:42, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For those of you who want to undo his edits, this link is a start. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:47, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf: All edits? —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 04:49, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@AlvaroMolina: Not all of his edits need to be undone--I'm just suggesting a way to try to look thru them. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:51, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 04:51, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

For clarification: the vast majority of his edits are very small and looks fine (for example this one), but unfortunately some of the bigger edits were incorrect and slipped through my checks. This of course includes the edit mentioned by Mariusm above. (That page were flawed even before PokestarFan's edit – hence still is even though it is now reverted – but that fact doesn't really have any merit here.) I'll start fixing the erroneous edits later today, but feel free to help out if you want to. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 05:06, 21 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

I don't know the style rules that should follow the pages of authors, so someone more experienced will know which editions are correct or not. That yes, in its modifications I have noticed that it adds bold to the names and it changes of place the DEFAULTSORT or the sections. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 05:10, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────┘ I think it would be a good idea to establish some type of restriction of use with this application through a list of authorized users as in English Wikipedia. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 04:57, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As I mentioned in the Bot policy update thread above, yes I agree that we need an AWB policy of some sort. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 05:07, 21 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

I also agree we need an AWB policy, but I think it needs to be clearly recognised that under most circumstances it is assisted editing, not a bot per se. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 06:22, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariusm, AlvaroMolina, Koavf, and Tommy Kronkvist: In my opinion, the edit mentioned by Mariusm actually is not that problematic. He only has removed circular links pointing back to the same page. That seems OK to me. However, he additionaly should have bolded the author name. Anyway, better to have all these references in templates. --Franz Xaver (talk) 09:08, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Franz Xaver: I downright disagree with your comment on "circular links". These links are supposed to facilitate copying and pasting a reference into an article, where no further editing will be necessary to make an author link. These "circular links" are also manifested in ref templates once they are added to the "Publications" section of an author. Furthermore, not all refs can be templates, since this will mean a lot of work to make templates and consequently the the more important taxa pages will suffer. Mariusm (talk) 09:40, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

and how can a person who didn't make a single normal WS edit and isn't familiar with our format, make thousands of automated edits without first consulting us and supposedly "correct" us? This sounds like a very absurd situation! Mariusm (talk) 09:46, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariusm: OK, I understand the argument concerning copying. However, I can't see the point, why it should be much easier to add these references to the author page than adding them to ref template pages. --Franz Xaver (talk) 10:43, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

New editors should be welcomed, and guided, not treated as unwelcome outsiders. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:57, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Mariusm has blocked user:PokestarFan for a month, with no warning other than that given immediately prior to the block. [P.S. PokestarFan did noted edit between the warning and the block.] Since blocks are supposed to be "preventative not punitive", it is difficult to see why a month-long block is needed, nor indeed, why PokestarFan should be allowed to resume the same editing, after a month. I suggest therefore that the block be changed to an indefinite one, and lifted as soon as PokestarFan gives an undertaking not to edit in the same manner, at least without first obtaining consensus to do so. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:57, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As already pointed, I reviewed some of the edits and looked very simple organizing edits, did not perceive the removing of links. Definitely, yes, we need more control on bots. Meanwhile, in this case, I don't see any signal of bad intention and the one month blocking looks to me excessive and should be changed to some sort of orientation process. Otherwise, as said, we are not encouraging new editors.--Hector Bottai (talk) 11:06, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

At the top of this section, Mariusm says PokestarFan "made many harmful edits". Can we see some evidence of this, please? It seems that the majority of their AWB edits were benign, and only one diff demonstrating alleged harm has been provided. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:15, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: I'm glad to provide you with acute opportunities of attacking me, and I'm pleased you readily seize them. I only hope you'll practice more on this trend to bring it to perfection. Please look here here here here here here and dozens more undesired edits. I'm surprised you're defending PokestarFan being so strict on bot usage. I propose AWB to be available only to Admins or by special permission, and i'll propose this change of policy in another post. It is unthinkable that a beginer would have such a powerful tool at his disposal. Mariusm (talk) 14:06, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please drop the paranoid accusations, and simply address the issues raised, as any admin should, when requested. It seems from your (now seven) examples that the only "harm" done was the removal of non-functioning links from the pages that they linked to. As we can see above, not everyone agrees with you that this is harmful, at all, nor that the length of the block you made was justified. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:25, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure that the block is warranted in this case, but I will leave that to @Mariusm: to decide. In regards to whether or not the user gets a bot flag, that is really another issue and should be dealt with at his bot application. As for whether we need an AWB policy, I think we do, this needs to be proposed and discussed. Just separating the issues here. So my view here is, first try to communicate with this editor and bring themup to speed on policies, and editing protocols, maybe askhim to refrain from AWB for now and get used to the place first. Second instead of arguing here about it, vote appropriately on the bot application and third we should discuss AWB in more detail. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 14:31, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Hey all, im coming all the way from Wikidata. His bot was rejected 4x. 1, 2, 3, 4. All closed by bureaucrat as "not trusted". His contributions are 50/50 good bad. However, his automated contributions are really poor. MechQuester (talk) 18:15, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I unblocked him so that he can help undo his own edits. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:35, 21 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have created Wikispecies:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage to avoid future abuses with this program. See Here for More Information. Regards. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 06:11, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: @Koavf: Please note that PokestarFan is blocked indefinitely on commons for "Treating Commons as a playground. User is incompetent" [19] and also on the enWP for "Clearly not here to contribute to the encyclopedia" [20]Mariusm (talk) 09:21, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That's Commons, this is Wikispecies. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:36, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: @Koavf: @Faendalimas: The extent of PokestarFan's edits on 21 June from 21:10 to 2:10 is mind-boggling: He made in this span of 5 hours no less than 9000 edits! For someone who's blocked on several wiki this was a major negligence on our part not to try to stop him, even if his edits were neutral for the best part. This only shows we're not properly protected and our rules are too relaxed. And on top of this laughing out loud - he's applying now for a bot... Mariusm (talk) 15:18, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, to be fair, him applying for a bot is basically what we asked him to do. We can--probably will--deny it but that's a legitimate request. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:22, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

He has every right to apply for a bot account, whether it will be granted is another matter. That will be based on the results. As to his block, I said before that I leave it to you as the original blocker of the account to decide. I was not going to overrule you. That Justin unblocked him is reasonable and was added as a comment. I do agree this user needs to do some learning here before he does any more large scale editing. However, I am willing to give him the chance to demonstrate this and learn. Cheers, Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 16:34, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal for Bot Policy change (canceled)

In view of PokestarFan's recent use of AWB program to perform thousands of edist in a very short period, some being entirely undesired, and him being a WS newcomer with no knowledge of taxonomy or of our unique formats I propose to change our bot policy. I was sure AWB can be used only by admins or after special permission. This however seems not to be the case. We have to take precaution to prevent these incidents. Therefore I propose the following addition to our Wikispecies:Bot policy: "The software tools AWB and JWB can be used only by admins or by users who made at least 150 WS edits and after acquiring a permission from an admin." I would also like to ask @PokestarFan: how did he get the permission to use AWB which is a restricted program. Mariusm (talk) 04:35, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I may be incorrect but I think the restriction of AWB is wiki project specific. It is restricted on the WP sites but I think on many sites this is not the case. If I am correct maybe we should consider it being a restricted program here too. Not sure how all this works but I know that once I got permission to use it on WP I could use it everywhere. However that may be as I said because it is only restricted on WP. Cheers, Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 04:49, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

If there is no checkpage, then any user can use AWB. That's how it works. PokestarFan (talk) 19:35, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We simply didn't know an essential fact: we had to construct the page Wikispecies:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage where the AWB looks for permissions!! I added MariusBot to the list. Now it remains to add there all the other AWB bots. Till now we were vulnerable to any user operating the AWB and even didn't know it; a major oversight! But now everything is OK. Many thanks to @AlvaroMolina: for creating the page. Consequently my proposal is canceled. Mariusm (talk) 06:34, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Faendalimas: Not only that but AWB is free/open software that anyone can edit, so you can just take out the bits that identify it as AWB and use it anyway. I know that users have done that before on en.wp. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:49, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've tried Wikispecies:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPage with my MariusBot account and it works: without an entry there I can't log to the AWB, so now PokestarFan would not be able to use the AWB unless his username is added to the page (by an admin). Mariusm (talk) 09:59, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The page Wikispecies:AutoWikiBrowser shows a broken link (some template error). --Murma174 (talk) 10:13, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed it with this edit and it now displays properly, but I'm not sure if it broke anything. Feel free to revert it if you find it a mistake. Also, feel free to import the templates we use at Meta for the translate extension such as TNT, TNTN and Dynamite and keep it in sync. :) Regards, —MarcoAurelio (☎ talk) 11:29, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, MarcoAurelio! —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 13:34, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We need a process for people to ask for AWB permissions then. Some minimum requirements can be included in that page. But some process is needed since people have the right to ask to use it. We must then decide if they can based on experience and add them to the checkpage. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 12:44, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I propose as basic requirements that the user takes some time collaborating in the project (the number of editions and registration time I leave it to criterion), that is trustworthy here and in other projects, and is able to demonstrate to know all the policies of style which should follow the Wikispecies pages. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 13:34, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

We may use the enWP as an example. Their rule is "Except in unusual circumstances, users with fewer than 250 non-automated mainspace edits or 500 total mainspace edits will not be added to the list." (see [21]). Mariusm (talk) 15:04, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Distinguished author on the Main page: criteria?

I was just wondering what the criteria or rationale is for selecting a "Distinguished author" and featuring him or her on the Main page. Is there a voting process? Is it arbitrary? What makes them distinguished? I see little correlation with the quality/completeness of the author's Wikispecies page (compare Francesco Redi and Mary Agnes Chase to Johan Christian Fabricius) and their selection. I'd assume we'd want to highlight the best of the best, similar to highlighting featured articles on Wikipedia's main page, to maximize usefulness to readers, and inspire greater interaction with Wikispecies. -Animalparty (talk) 19:03, 21 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would change Distinguished author to Featured author, distinguished being a blurry term to use. Mariusm (talk) 04:04, 22 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think a voting/discussion process similar to In the news/Candidates or Good article nominations would aid in the selection/promotion of quality and useful content. Criteria to consider could be: quality of author's article on Wikipedia (comprehensive biographies favored over stubs); relative completeness of Wikispecies page (e.g. more than a handful of named taxa in "Category:Joe Naturalist taxa", and a fairly complete list of at least major taxonomic works); and perhaps timeliness corresponding to significant dates (e.g. Joe Naturalist is featured during the month of the 100th or 150th anniversary of his birth, death, major publication, or other significant milestone). @Tommy Kronkvist:: I see you have been active in distinguished authors templates. Any comments on criteria, and/or ways to make the selection process more transparent? -Animalparty (talk) 05:01, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I assume we are keeping this to authors who are deceased, avoiding Biography of Living Persons issues, I would suggest we figure out a way to do some sort of rotation between plant/ animal other taxonomic groupings etc just for the sake of both coverage and fairness. I would also think it may be good to advertise the new author (this would go for featured species too) on twitter and facebook pages. May attract additional editors. I think we have to be fair on their nomenclature, very old taxonomic works do not follow modern versions of the code and are very loosely accepted as given for taxa older than about 1930, however I think constant renaming of the same taxa may be something to be considered for assessing quality, John Edward Gray was very guilty of this. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 23:17, 25 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Faendalimas: A featured author (or species of the month, for that matter; any featured content) need not have exhaustive bibliographic data, but should have more info than say Adriana Hoffmann Jacoby or Francesco Redi. No doubt both authors are "distinguished", but highlighting their impoverished Wikispecies page seems lackluster. Wikispecies is first and foremost a directory, not a biographical dictionary or encyclopedia. There should be concerted, before-hand effort to compile major publications (at the very least), and to populate the respective named taxa category with more than one or zero taxa. Formally opening up the distinguished author selection to community discussion would allow for such before-hand improvement, even if all taxa or publications are not recorded. From cursory glance I believe John Edward Gray is of a satisfactory level of completeness to warrant being "featured" on the Wikispecies main page, keeping in mind Wikispecies' function as a directory. -Animalparty (talk) 16:36, 27 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────┘ @Animalparty, Faendalimas, and Mariusm: Sorry for not being as active in this thread as I should. Personally I find "Featured author" to be a much better title than "Distinguished author". My main criteria for choosing authors for the Distinguished author category has so far been that it should include authors of both sexes, from all continents of the world, working within different scientific disciplines. However that turns out to be rather difficult since male, European and American authors are overrepresented, and about half of all of the authors listed at Wikispecies are entomologists. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 01:01, 25 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Proposal for new template for people

I am sorry I messed up the project. However, as I know literally nothing about taxons, I want to improve Wikispecies in a different way.

I propose a template (below) to make pages for people much easier to navigate and understand.

I hope you accept it. --PokestarFan (talk) 21:07, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Template for People

Archive 43

Discussion

Please see the template {{Biography}} Mariusm (talk) 06:32, 23 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Seems comprehensive, not an expert on templates or an editor that works with authors, but look forward to hearing from those who could be interested in this approach. Andyboorman (talk) 22:08, 23 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Andyboorman: I pointed out the {{Biography}} template to PokestarFan not because I think it's a good way to treat author pages but merely to show him his author template suggestion has been dealt with before. Mariusm (talk) 06:21, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest to remove all these points from the template, which already are covered by {{Authority control}}. --Franz Xaver (talk) 06:30, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The {{Authority control}} template is transcluded within {{Biography}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:12, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

...also, unfortunately it places it in the wrong place on the pages. See [22], [23] and [24] (all used as examples in the template's documentation.) –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:43, 24 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

The fact, that it places the information in the wrong place, is the reason, that I would prefer these points to be removed from the biography template. --Franz Xaver (talk) 19:18, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No; that's not a reason to remove parts of the template; it's a reason to continue to improve the template. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:43, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Yes; Improve its usability by reducing its complexity. --Franz Xaver (talk) 20:49, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Possible duplicate

Does anybody here know whether the pages Hans Weber and Hans Martin Weber perhaps refer to the same person, hence should be merged? Personally I can't find specific enough data regarding the taxa "they" have named, respectively, and therefore don't know. Sometimes Wikidata carry useful information to help sort these matters out, but not in this particular case. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 00:41, 25 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Yes, I see no reason to doubt they are the same person. Both were added by @Kempf EK: in 2013 and both as Micropalaeontologists/Ostracodologists. Mariusm (talk) 04:44, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Good and bad news about cross-wiki search results in Wikipedia

Good news: The cross-wiki search results from other projects are now live in Wikipedia. Bad news: The search results from Wikispecies are suppressed via RfC discussion in English Wikipedia, meaning users won't see those results in English Wikipedia. ~~Don't feel down yet. Non-English users from non-English Wikipedia sites may still be directed to any pages of Wikispecies.~~ Feel free to share your thoughts here. --George Ho (talk) 20:29, 22 June 2017 (UTC); see near bottom, 12:40, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

suppressed via RfC discussion in English Wikipedia Not so; Wikispecies was never - it says there - in scope for this change. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:38, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

um I just read it, wikispecies was specifically mentioned as was wikidata in same viepoints. So how is wikispecies not included in their rfc? I wish I had known about what they were doing. I think WP has absolutely zero taxonomic capacity in all honesty, their data is outdated, incorrect and driven by personal ionterests and pet projects. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 23:37, 22 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wait, Andy and Scott. I was wrong. Wikispecies is not included yet as part of the cross-wiki search. Same for Wikidata. --George Ho (talk) 12:40, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the task was tried but declined due to that RfC discussion. --George Ho (talk) 12:44, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Problem of limit of template recursion depth

Hello,
I have created the templates for three missing levels in the Homo structure: Choanobionta, Filozoa and Holozoa (the proper pages are to be created, I have only created the templates so far), that are above Animalia and below Opisthokonta. However, now, in the Homo page, there is a red message saying “Template recursion depth limit exceeded (40)”. Is there a way to solve this problem? The best would certainly be to be able to extand the limit of the template recursion depth (to at least 50, but I would go even farther, maybe directly 100, in order not to have to change again if additional intermediate levels should be added: I have already found several other missing intermediate levels in the Homo structure, such as Olfactores, Euteleostomi, Euarchonta, Primatomorpha).
By the way, I mistakenly created Template:Opistokonta (with a missing “h”, while the correct Template:Opisthokonta also exists); could someone remove the erroneous page?
Thank you in advance.
SenseiAC (talk) 16:58, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SenseiAC: please be careful and do not insert undefined templates (red links)!!!!! They affect all the ranks below. Your insertion of Olfactores affected all the chordata pages in removing the __NOTOC__ option to all the Chordata pages. Before inserting a template please define (or create) it first! Please remove all the red-link templates you've inserted. Mariusm (talk) 04:25, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry @Mariusm:, it was a unique case, I had a computer problem yesterday when I wanted to edit the page of the Craniata (I was neither sure that the edit was saved, neither was I able to create the template). I created the template this morning and added back Olfactores. However, we still have the problem of recursion depth. I also added a number of missing levels in Elephas (Elephantiformes, Elephantimorpha, Elephantida, Elephantoidea, Elephantinae, Elephantini and Elephantina) and we have the same recursion depth problem. Any idea how to solve it? SenseiAC (talk) 09:36, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SenseiAC: Unfortunately templates can't be nested more than 40 levels deep. This means the template ladder from top to bottom can have 40 steps at the most (and see this). WS is more about species than about the upper (and isoteric) levels of classification, so you'll have to remove the steps you've created from the ladder, and try to restyle the classification in another way - not by templates but in the articles themselves. Mariusm (talk) 10:24, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariusm: an easy way to keep everything would be to not use as many inclusions. What I mean is that, for example, in Template:Elephantidae, instead of « "Template:Euelephantoidea" / Familia: Template:Zfg », there could be « "Template:Elephantoidea" / Cladus: Euelephantoidea / Familia: Template:Zfg » for example. In other words, some levels would simply need to use a template two (or more) levels above itself, instead one one level above now, + adding by hand the two (or more) levels down to itself. Would it be fine for you? SenseiAC (talk) 10:47, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SenseiAC: This isn't a good idea because if Elephantoidea has several cladi in addition to Cladus: Euelephantoidea the Cladus: Euelephantoidea will also show in all the other cladi whenever the "Template:Elephantoidea" will be evoked, which isn't what we want to achieve. Mariusm (talk) 11:13, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariusm: you didn't get what I meant. Euelephantoidea and Elephantidae wouldn't be written in the template "Elephantoidea" but in the template "Elephantidae" of course. Therefore, obviously Euelephantoidea and Elephantidae would not appear when calling the template "Elephantoidea"; it would not make any sense if it would. Practically, we would have this :

Template "Elephantoidea": as for the moment, call "Template:Elephantida" + write by hand "Cladus: Elaphantoidea"
Template "Euelephantoidea": call "Template:Elephantoidea" + write by hand "Cladus: Euelphantoidea"
Template "Elephantidae" : call "Template:Elephantoidea" + write by hand "Cladus: Euelphantoidea" and "Cladus: Elephantidae".

SenseiAC (talk) 11:17, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SenseiAC: Sorry I lost track with all these cladi. I need to see an example to verify if this really works. Again, the best way would be to omit the more esoteric cladi and to concentrate only on the ranks of familia and below which are the important ranks for Wikispecies. Mariusm (talk) 11:42, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree with Mariusm here. Also, familia and lower taxa are far more susceptible to taxonomical revisions than higher taxa. Adding more taxa "by hand" to the templates therefore will request more work for us when such revisions occur. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 12:26, 25 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

I agree with Mariusm and Tommy, given the restrictions, the lower taxa should be preserved against the higher, and manually adding definitely is not a good idea.--Hector Bottai (talk) 13:55, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Aptenia cordifolia authorithy

Hi. If you're a botanist please head over to Talk:Aptenia cordifolia and share your wisdom. :-) Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 18:00, 25 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Stegomyia --> Aedes (Stegomyia)

Hi all,
Given that Stegomyia is a subgenus of the genus Aedes, the page Stegomyia should be titled Aedes (Stegomyia). Can someone move the page? Thank you in advance.
SenseiAC (talk) 11:45, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SenseiAC: We're treating the subgenera here as genus-type names meaning that Stegomyia is an adequate and legitimate page name as long as it's labeled as a subgenus, which it is. Some contributors like to format the subgenera as Genus (Subgenus) and we've here many subgenera of either format - both formats being adequate. Therefore I say - let this name remain unchanged. We have here hundreds of subgenera with this same format. On top of that, if we change the name according to your suggestion we'll need to change the child taxa meaning the Stegomyia species pages which will be a considerable task. Mariusm (talk) 12:50, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariusm: it seems to be the only subgenus of Aedes in this case. Also, it just complicates the understanding for the “random” reader not to have a uniform way of titling the articles of subgenera. Maybe a community decision should be taken, either in one direction or the other, for things to be coherent. SenseiAC (talk) 12:54, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, I have removed this morning “Stegomyia” from the list of subgenera on the page Aedes since it was practically twice in the list: once as “Stegomyia” (the only subgenus written as such there) and once as “Aedes (Stegomyia)” (the one I let, as it is for all the other subgenera). SenseiAC (talk) 12:57, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@SenseiAC: I personally side with the Stegomyia format and I'm editing my contributions accordingly, and yes, we need to reach a consensus about this but it would be a difficult decision due to different opinions here. I think that the Stegomyia format is more simple and more coherent, more flexible and also it is used in a considerable number of catalogs and of listings. Mariusm (talk) 13:03, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I put it back as ''[[Stegomyia|A. (Stegomyia)]]'' - it displays as A. (Stegomyia) but links to Stegomyia Mariusm (talk) 13:08, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

[Also discussed here.] I agree with Sensei, "a decision should be taken, either in one direction or the other, for things to be coherent". There are pages been moved to one direction to another, and this cause instability in WS. It's time to discussed this issue. Burmeister (talk) 13:35, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Burmeister: I also agree with you both. The problem is that too few users are interested here in this kind of controversy and I presume a poll would unfortunately yield fewer than 5 votes. Nevertheless I encourage you to set up a vote or if you don't feel like it I'll ultimately do it. Mariusm (talk) 14:32, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I personally would prefer the Genus (Subgenus) format to be the standard solution, as this reduces the risk of having hemihomonyms with botanical genus names. --Franz Xaver (talk) 19:27, 24 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Franz Xaver: I'm sorry, but your reasoning entails a narrow point of view. You being a botanist don't have to contend with the subgenera, which are a major stumbling block in WS-Zoology. The hemihomonyms are a very tiny problem compared with the problems arising from the Genus (Subgenus) system, which wreaks havoc with many zoology pages. Please allow for a little consideration towards your fellow-zoologists. Mariusm (talk) 04:35, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Mariusm: You should not complain, "that too few users are interested here", when you try to brush aside my argument here. As I understand the situation now, zoological WS editors apply different approaches. Why not add an argument, about how zoological and botanical nomenclature are interfering? By the way, also in botany, subgenera are in use, e.g. Elvasia subg. Elvasia. --Franz Xaver (talk) 11:46, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Franz Xaver: I don't brush aside your arguments, it's just a case of priorities and of weighting the benefits against the drawbacks for each party. That's all. Mariusm (talk) 12:19, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Mariusm, maybe to soon to make a pool, perhaps call editors (via bot message ?) to discuss the issue is a better approuch. Burmeister (talk) 13:46, 26 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Moved from Wikispecies:Requests for Comment for visibility

It seems that Wikispecies is against freedom of expression, or more specifically against the right of a person to correct even the simplest mistaken statements or omissions about that person's biography and bibliography and lists of new taxa as presented by Wikispecies.

Until a couple of days ago, I had never accessed Wikispecies. Then someone pointed put to me that it has the most extensive bibliography of my publications in ichthyology available anywhere. I found out it also included a list of taxa supposedly named after me, and lists of higher taxa, new genera of fishes, and new species named by me.

Finding that a number of the patronyms named robertsi are named after persons other than me, I corrected the list accordingly, and added some new names. Apparently this has been accepted. But according to your policy, it should not have been because it was proposed by me, and according to Wikispecies (and Wikipedia), that is a conflict of interest. So you evidently employ a double standard in this. It is not evident how such decisions are made, so there is an issue of transparency here.

According to Wikispecies, correcting erroneous personal information is a conflict of interest! THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME I encounter someone or some institution defining "conflict of interest" to suit its own interests or purposes--isn't that a conflict of interest? Your concept of "conflict of interest" conflicts with my interests. When insurance and finance companies make mistakes about persons, such as providing wrong birth dates, they sometimes do not permit the person concerned to make a change. These are the sort of companies that have similar conflict of interest policies similar to Wikispecies.

Previously Wikispecies included an incomplete list of new fish genera of fishes named by me. The list included 18 names. I added some missing names, bringing the total to 23. Now all of these names have been erased.

Wikispecies also included a list of species named by me, with 161 entries. i added a half-dozen, bringing the number to 167. Now the entire list has been erased.

Wikispecies did have a list of 6 higher fish taxa (above genus level) named by me. I added one more, bringing the total to 7. Now that list has been replaced by an entry that provides references only to about 7 taxa at generic level. There is a comment that "this list may be incomplete." That is an invitation to add to it, which I did, and then the entire list was deleted.

Because of the University of Chicago Press and Wikipedia, I am now known as "the world's foremost authority on the oceanic oarfishes or Regalecus." I never claimed this for myself. In fact, I resent being referred to only as that because it slights all the other work done by me. Most of my work has been on tropical freshwater fishes. When i tried to redress the balance by adding very general statements about my work and my research results and interests, none of it in conflict of interest with anybody, it was rejected.

Most of the statements made by me cannot be documented by any published sources. Am I not a legitimate source about information concerning me?

In Wikipedia it was formerly stated that I am affiliated with the Center for Ecology and Conservation of Mahidol University. That center no longer exists. I am now affiliated with the Institute of Molecular Biosciences of Mahidol University. I made this change and it apparently has been accepted. But again, it should not have been accepted because since it was proposed by me it is a "Wikispecies confllct of interest" I mention Wikipedia here, because such a problem could easily have occurred in Wikispecies.

When I looked up the entry on me in Wikispecies, I clicked on edit. There was no warning about prohibition of self-editing by Wikispecies. The same applies to Wikispecies. This is unnecessarily misleading and caused me to do a lot of work for nothing.

I request that Wikispecies restore the corrected lists of taxa higher than genera, genera and species named by me that I recently provided.

I also request that Wikispecies allow the additional biographical material that I provided by me, so that I can now be known as an authority on oarfishes or Regalecus and also someone who has done a lot of work on freshwater fishes.

Wikispecies needs to modify its policy of self-editing, so that persons like me can make appropriate additions to lists of taxa, etc.

Thus far I have found Wikispecies response inappropriate and inadequate. I look forward to some substantive response addressing the species issues raised by Wikispecies account of me. Tyson R. Roberts (talk) 19:26, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Tyson R. Roberts: I respect what you're saying and I don't want you to be put off from contributing. Let me take a look and see what I can figure out but I am not a taxonomist and I encourage others who are specialists to take a look as well, please. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:47, 25 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf and Tyson R. Roberts: It was I who removed the data from the Tyson R. Roberts page, about 40 minutes after leaving a welcome note on User:Tyson R. Roberts' talk page. The summary I wrote when removing the data reads "Removed a dead external link, inline named taxa that should be listed in category instead, and out of scope material better suited for Wikipedia." In other words, it had nothing to do with any "confllct of interest" between Dr. Roberts and his edits of the page. One of the links in the welcoming message from me points to What Wikispecies is not, which among other things points out that "Blocks of prose are language-specific and would incorrectly lead to the impression that Wikispecies is a fork of Wikipedia, which it is not". Another link in my welcoming message is Help:Contents, which in turn give information about authors and author names. There one can read that "We maintain articles in Wikispecies with minimum information. First line [on author pages] should be dates of birth and, if deceased, death. Second line can be a very brief description for clarification. This is generally nationality and speciality. There may sometimes be more clarifying information, especially if there is another author with a similar name." That's the reason for me removing the most part of the biography, for as I say in my edit summary that information is "out of scope material better suited for Wikipedia".

As for the removal of the lists of named taxa, well... those lists should not be there. Again per my edit summary "inline named taxa should be listed in category instead". If we use the page Hypergastromyzon Roberts, 1989 as an example and check the code we find the code string [[Category:Tyson R. Roberts taxa]] near the very bottom. That code snippet automatically adds that page to Category:Tyson R. Roberts taxa i.e. lists the taxon as one of the (now) 7 taxa mentioned by Roberts above. So in order to list all of the taxa named by Roberts, we must first create the corresponding taxa pages, and add them to that category using the above mentioned code snippet. This is consensus on Wikispecies, and the reason is that some authors have named thousands upon thousands of taxa. Listing them all directly on the author pages would clutter upp the code and make the pages very hard to manage, hence using a category instead is better.

In the same edit I also changed the heading "Patronyms (one genus of gobioid fish, 20 species of fishes, and one species of hymenosomatid crab)" into simply "Patronyms". This is Wikispecies praxis, the reason being that per our Language convention "Wikispecies is language independent as much as possible". Also, stating type of organisms in the list's heading is redundant, since one can easily find that out by simply reading the actual list.

With all this said I would like to firmly point out that I have nothing against Dr. Roberts as such, and think that he is a welcome addition as an Wikispecies editor. He has described a considerable amount of species and higher taxa, and soon preferably all of them will be represented with their own pages here in Wikispecies. However in some aspects Wikispecies have a very different set of editing standards in comparison to other Wikimedia sister projects, and it can take some time to learn them all. I'm willing to help with that, if needed, and I'm sure others are as well. Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 21:07, 25 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

@Tommy Kronkvist, Tyson R. Roberts, and Koavf: Since Tommy has explained why the edits were changed etc I will not go into this. But I will explain the issue of COI, from the perspective of a taxonomist who also has described numerous taxa. As taxonomists we walk a fine line with regards to COI and NPOV, the latter is Neutral Point of View. Clearly if I edit about taxa I described I am not neutral, and it is easy for me to be accused of having a Conflict of Interest. How do I deal with this. First up I put nothing in that has not been formally published under peer review and I cite those refs. If you look at my author page Scott Thomson it lists all my publications relevant to species names used here. The authored taxa is automatically built from the pages on those species, I did not edit that. For the benefit of others I have been making templates for my publications they are on the talk page. There is no bio about me per se, just my name, date of birth, what I specialise in, authored taxa, and refs. On my user page User:Faendalimas I have the liberty to do a bit of bio, this is optional though, my user page links to my author page. The point is though I am very clear to follow guidelines I did not use any information that could not be looked up in a paper listed on that page. This avoids the COI issue, or more accurately acknowledges it with full disclosure. This can and has been checked by others, for example Tommy who edited it. We do not have to wait for some random person to put our own highly relevant work here. But we do need to be careful doing it. Feel free to use my page as a model, I suggest that for anything more biographical you put it in your User page. As Tommy pointed out, your edits were not removed for COI reasons, but because of guidelines, style etc that is kept consistent in Wikispecies. If you would like help please ask. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 18:47, 26 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Further comments by Tyson R. Roberts: First of all, thanks to Koavf, Tommy Kronkvist, and Scott Thomson of Wikispecies for their responses. I am still waiting for appropriate response from Wikipedia. Removing the Wikipedia template from the account of me stating quote: "This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)" would be appreciated.

While no sources were cited for the brief biographical statements, they are based on personal knowledge useful for others interested in me and my work, such as where the fish specimens collected by me have been deposited. The bibliographical statements about my work on fishes of the Fly, Kapuas, and Congo rivers are all "referenced" (I find this word has crept into our language) in the section below on "selected publications."

It is all very well to cite specific Wikispecies statements I could have read that would have saved me from trying to edit the Wikispecies entry under my name, had I only known where to look or had I searched enough. Consulting the most obvious places, such as the Wikipedia tutorial, however, did not provide this information. It is not evident to beginners that Wikipedia and Wikispecies are "separate" entities, each with its own rules, etc. Having subsequently looked up a number of other Wikispecies entries on taxonomists it became evident that the biographical statements are invariably only one or two lines. That was not obvious when only the entry under my name was considered.

According to Koavf, [quote] In the same edit I also changed the heading "Patronyms (one genus of gobioid fish, 20 species of fishes, and one species of hymenosomatid crab)" into simply "Patronyms". This is Wikispecies praxis, the reason being that per our Language convention "Wikispecies is language independent as much as possible". Also, stating type of organisms in the list's heading is redundant, since one can easily find that out by simply reading the actual list [end quote]. Without help from me, is he or anyone else able to recognize that one of the 20 species named after me is a crab, and that the others are all fishes (note correct spelling of plural of for fish, when more than one species is involved)?

Yes some taxonomists have named thousands of species, and it would be too much and not very useful for Wikispecies to list them all. But Wikispecies made an effort to list all of the fish taxa named by me, and these lists were very nearly complete. A number of these species are endangered, and some are nearly or already extinct. It seems a step backward to have eliminated the lists. Such information apparently is not available anywhere else.

Koavf [or Scott Thomson] also states, "That's the reason for me removing the most part of the biography [added by Roberts to the Wikispecies account] for as I say in my edit summary that information is "out of scope material better suited for Wikipedia". OK, fair enough, but when the same information was submitted to Wikipedia, it was rejected.

All my life I have been against punishing innocents for the crimes of others. This is, of course, one of the ways used by dictators to control society, such as the widespread Asian practice of extending the death penalty to seven generations. I am referring, of course, to the Wikipedia and Wikispecies practice of prohibiting self-editing. Many people might abuse open editing, but prohibiting it punishes innocent persons by restricting their freedom of speech. Freedom of speech trumps political correctness (leaving aside some complicated and difficult issues such as hate speech) and it also trumps any restrictions by Wikipedia and Wikispecies. This issue was raised in my previous message, and so far there has not been any response.

Tyson R. Roberts

Advisor, Institute of Molecular Biosciences, Mahidol University

(Tyson R. Roberts (talk) 21:40, 26 June 2017 (UTC) )[reply]

Heya @Tyson R. Roberts: First up do remember that different projects, such as Wikipedia and Wikispecies, have their own scopes, rules, guidelines and policies. We cannot dictate what Wikipedia does, but we do know their scope. All we can do is suggest something that is beyond our scope may be suitable for theirs. Likewise, policies, templates and content they cover in their scope is not necessarily appropriate here. This is not about freedom of speech, it is about what this taxonomy only encyclopedia covers in its scope. What is outside of this is not covered. As for personal experience and information on specimens you examined or placed in museums, is this in the publication describing the species? if so include it, if not it is original research, another policy called NOR, ir No Original Research, hence again, if it is not published and cannot be independently verified then it cannot be here on Wikispecies. If you look at an examplae page of a species I described Elseya rhodini note the holotype is listed, as is the museum it is lodged in. Wikispecies is about species and their nomenclature. The original authors are just basic data. As I said before if it goes beyond the data needed for the taxoblock of a new description, ie the part that meets the code, then its not needed here. Wikipedia does the in depth pages on selected organisms and people. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 23:02, 26 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Farsi speaker needed

Do we have a Farsi speaker, who could review edits by new user Ariamihr, and advise them on how best to contribute please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:07, 27 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

yes Ariamihr (talk) 14:15, 27 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: There are two members of Category:User fa that are also listed as active users, namely Allforrous (fa-1) and ToJack (fa-4). Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 14:41, 27 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Monotypic genera

User:Lavalizard101 recently marked Daemonosaurus chauliodus and Eodromaeus murphi for deletion, saying "genus it belongs to is monotypic and all this information is stated there". Is that a valid reason, or do we want two pages in such cases? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:12, 27 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, legitimate taxa should have their own pages, even if their parent taxon is monotypic. I have reverted the edits, and noted the user on his talk page. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 15:06, 27 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

@Tommy Kronkvist: Thank you. Please check Daemonosaurus and Eodromaeus also. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:13, 27 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Done, including creating repository pages and their categories, reference templates, and such. Throw me a bone and suddenly I start writing pages about fossils... :-) Thanks for pointing the whole thing out from the start though. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 16:53, 27 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Template:ZooBankAut

I propose to add a "Zoobank author ID" parameter to {{Authority control}}, calling values from Wikidata, and then to delete {{ZooBankAut}}. The latter has around 445 transclusions, while Wikidata has over 1,400 values for the equivalent property. Any concerns? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:35, 27 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Nah, I say go for it. We discussed a similar matter a year or so ago, and most users found {{ZooBankAut}} redundant to {{ZooBank}}. From a technical point the same goes for {{ZooBankRef}}, however it is used on several tens of thousands of pages (many of them old "Zt" templates that all should be renamed...)

The template {{ZooBankAct}} (used on 3,959 pages) is a bit different than the others, and is probably still useful as it is. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 16:04, 27 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Short of running a bot, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to distinguish between transclusions of {{ZooBank}} for papers or for people :-( Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:30, 27 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

In fact, it turns out that P2006 is already in {{Authority control}}, so now we need a bot to replace instances of {{ZooBankAut}}, Anders Marshall&oldid=2779558 like this.

Afterwards, we need to check that all Zoobank IDs for people, in {{ZooBank}}, are in Wikidata, then have the bot do the same for those cases. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:45, 27 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And, after scanning the transclusions of {{ZooBank}}, only a few were for people, and I have - I think - manually replaced them all. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:32, 27 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

'Official website' template

I have fixed {{Official website}} and it is now available for use in biographies or institution pages. It pulls its value from Wikidata and will display a bold, red warning if no value is present there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:43, 27 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A very good initiative, and that will certainly save us some time when it is 100% working. The template seems to work well for all pages now using it, with the exception of Courtenay N. Smithers. There it links to http://www.austmus.gov.au/invertebrates/staff/smithers.htm but clicks are redirected to https://australianmuseum.net.au/animals instead, i.e. not even the same top-level domain, and certainly not a page about Smithers. Maybe the Australian Museum changed their domain and/or server layout recently? –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 03:05, 28 June 2017 (UTC).[reply]

The template is already "100% working", the issue on Courtenay N. Smithers is not with the template (nor indeed with Wikispecies), but with bad data, which I trustingly N. Smithers&oldid=3371819 copied from Wikispecies to Wikidata, without checking. It transpires that Smithers died in 2011. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:53, 28 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Join the strategy discussion. We’ll talk about the challenges identified by research

Hi! I'm a Polish Wikipedian currently working for Wikimedia Foundation. My task is to ensure that all online communities are aware of the movement-wide strategy discussion. That, of course, includes you!

Between March and May, members of many communities shared their opinions on what they want the Wikimedia movement to build or achieve. (The report written after the first round of discussions is here, and a similar report after the second round will be available soon.) At the same time, designated people did a research outside of our movement. They:

talked with more than 150 experts and partners from technology, knowledge, education, media, entrepreneurs, and other sectors,
researched potential readers and experts in places where Wikimedia projects are not well known or used,
researched by age group in places where Wikimedia projects are well known and used.

Now, the research conclusions are published, and the third round is going to begin. Our task is to discuss the identified challenges and think how we want to change or align to changes happening around us. Each week, a new challenge will be posted. The discussions will take place until the end of July. Literally all of you are invited!

If you want to ask a question, ping me or read the FAQ. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 19:40, 2 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Callistege vs. Callistege

In Wikidata the taxon name Callistege is mentioned both as a genus (Q1368450, also by English WP and other wikis) and as a subgenus (Q28466479, also by Dutch+Vietnamese WP and Wikispecies). Does any entomologist here have up to date information regarding this? Here is a link to the Wikidata issue: Interwiki conflicts / Unresolved / 2017 (check for "Callistege" under the March 2017 subsection, and be sure to click the "Expand" link to the far right in order to see the discussion). Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 07:53, 3 July 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Requesting help from a bot

AFAICT, we have no page equivalent to say en:Wikipedia:Bot requests, where an editor an ask for a bot operator wiling to perform a task. Am I wrong?

And can anyone help with the orphaning and removal of {{ZooBankAut}}, as described in #Template:ZooBankAut, above, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:58, 4 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rowans, service-trees & whitebeams

Sorbus has long been known to be paraphyletic, but no-one did anything about it. Now someone has, for the European taxa at least. Nearly 200 new combinations. I'm in no hurry to implement them, but I suppose we'll have to eventually. - MPF (talk) 21:23, 2 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Related: proposal for conservation of Sorbus (2014) - MPF (talk) 21:57, 2 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I would recommend waiting for the proposal to go through scrutiny before changing anything here. Particularly given the proposal for five new "intergeneric" hybrid genera, including comb. nov. x Sorbomeles. Most botanists throw their hands up in horror when intergeneric hybrids are split and promoted to their own "natural" genera. I am sure the paper will generate debate and counter-proposals before resolution and consensus is achieved, but I am sure this is not going to happen any time soon. Andyboorman (talk) 08:38, 3 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

in its original palce of publication. *vanishes back into darkness* Circeus (talk) 15:54, 5 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Cite journal, redux

I wasn't active here (I think) at the time {{Cite journal}} was discussed and rejected.

I've drawn up a comparison of the preferred style and {{Cite journal}}, in my sandbox, and the only difference seems to be how the online version of the paper is linked. Is that so? Why does it matter so much? Or have I missed something else? Feel free to point me at past discussion, by way of an answer! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:15, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

How does this template handle the process of creating citation templates to be used on multiple taxon pages complete with the code {{subst:reftemp}}? I still prefer the simple and quick process used here, although I know it causes cross wiki problems. Again what do we do about the numerous already created citations, including simple ones like {{WCSP}} and {{IPNI}} that are used on thousands of taxon pages? Getting to commonality will be a massive long term programme, me thinks. Andyboorman (talk) 08:21, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not familiar with {{subst:reftemp}}, but it's perfectly feasible for the citation templates to which you refer could themselves to use this template. {{WCSP}}, for example, isn't for a journal, but a book, so could use en:Template:Cite book or en:Template:Citation - individual pages using it would not need to be changed. en:Template:Cite Q already accepts individual parameters, in the same manner. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:43, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

FYI WCSP and IPNI are not books but essential and highly regarded websites with their own cite policies. Andyboorman (talk) 15:53, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Then en:Template:Cite web instead of en:Template:Cite book - but my point stands. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:02, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

? Andyboorman (talk) 16:36, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

fixed. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:45, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: It is possible, that there exist several online versions of the same paper, e.g. {{Giraldo-Cañas, 2009}} or {{Saint-Hilaire, 1824}}. I would not like to select only one of these, risking that there would remain no alternative, if the link should be broken, permanently or temporarily. How would {{Cite journal}} work with templates like {{Anonymous, 1902}}? --Franz Xaver (talk) 13:27, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia version, en:Template:Cite journal accounts for this, for example with a |jstor= property. The template here could easily do the same. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:40, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

PS ...and "Anonymous, 1902" can be given as an editor in citation templates. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:46, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Pigsonthewing: My point was not about JSTOR, but generally about the possibility of having more than one online versions – see also {{Saint-Hilaire, 1824}}. Concerning {{Anonymous, 1902}}, my concern is also, how these optional parameters could be implemented. I am not satisfied with a claim, the template could do it, but would like to see an example, how it has been done. --Franz Xaver (talk) 17:06, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I gave an example, above: "en:Template:Cite Q already accepts individual parameters". Likewise, the JSTOR property I mentioned was given as an example. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:33, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Zotero now has a Wikidata translator

Citation management tool Zotero now has two Wikidata translators. Not only does it read metadata from Wikidata items about works, so you can add them to your Zotero library, but it can export metadata in a format understood by QuickStatements, enabling users to more easily create Wikidata items about the works already in their Zotero libraries. Since Zotero can already read metadata about works from other websites, or data files such as BibTeX, it can now be used as an intermediary to import that data. See d:Wikidata:Zotero.

All we need now is a template, like Cite Q to display data about works here... Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:01, 6 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Cite Q looks interesting, and probably better aligned with what Wikispecies has been doing, in the sense that Wikipedia has been embedding the same (hopefully) metadata overtime an article is cited, whereas often Wikispecies has been embedding a template for each article. The Wikispecies approach is better in many ways, as it avoids redundancy (this is a separate issue from whether the references themselves should be more structured using of templates). I suspect the stumbling blocks to adopting a Cite Q-like approach here will be whether it generates citations in the format Wikispecies editors like, and how easy is it to discover whether an article exists in Wikidata. I get the sense that most citations are added by people copying and pasting in text from articles, then tweaking the formatting. This is a lot easier than trying to find an article in Wikidata, so until discoverability is fixed desire to adopt Cite Q might be limited. It will also need Wikidata to have a lot more of the taxonomic literature than it currently has, which suggests the need to bulk import that literature, much of it from Wikispecies itself. --Rdmpage (talk) 15:36, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you, Rod, for the encouraging response. The output of {{Cite Q}} on Wikispecies can be styled however the Wikispecies community wants. On en.Wikipedia, it is a wrapper for Template:Citation, so the simplest way to achieve that would be to import that template (and its dependencies) here, and customise its styling. The closer the coding (not necessarily the styling) remains to the original, the more effortlessly we can benefit from improvements made over there. Colleagues would still be able to copy and paste text from articles; but it would remain open for someone else (or a bot, especially where DOIs are present) to then convert that to an instance of {{Cite Q}}. And yes, bulk import should be done; but that's chicken-and-egg (or should I say "Gallus gallus domesticus-and-ovum"?) - we can't automate import for citations from WS to WD while the former only has them as unstructured text (again unless DOIs are present). Which gives me an idea... Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:59, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As you say chicken and egg. Your after converting citations here to using Wikidata queries, for items there that largely do not exist. So who goes first?? I support the notion of making the citations here more user friendly, including the ability for them to be data mined. I do not think EN WP is a good comparison since for the most part their taxonomic references are somewhere between irrelevant and ridiculous. There are exceptions but their methods are poor. I am no fan of Zotero I must admit, but I have for many years used much more robust systems, albeit not free. However that is not a major issue. Am still not a fan of the concept of using Wikidata as a source of data either, though for citations its not so bad if it has them all. I see no point changing to a system of extracting data from Wikidata if the majority of the data is absent. I think our method of using templates for citations has proven to be first of all robust and second has community preference, particularly from taxonomists. So I think alot of discussion is needed here. As I said I am not against it, but whatever is done has to receive the support of the vast majority of main space editors here, ie the ones who make the taxonomic pages. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 19:26, 7 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've done a little bit of work on converting Wikispecies citations into structured data (more specifically Citation Style Language (CSL) JSON). If you go to https://acoustic-bandana.glitch.me and paste in the markup for a citation (e.g., the text you see when editing a reference page) this tool will attempt to parse it. This tool can be automated to parse lots of references. My initial goal is to use it to gather additional references to then add them to BioStor. One approach might be to convert the CSL into a form that can be imported into Wikidata. From an outsider's perspective, Wikispecies is full of templates that are trying to do the sort of things that Wikidata could do (e.g., lists of names published by authors). As always, the stumbling block is that the benefits of doing this might be obious to data miners ike me, but less so to those doing the actual work of creating pages. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rdmpage (talk • contribs) 20:13, 7 July 2017‎.

Zotero 5 has just been released see: https://www.zotero.org/blog/new-features-for-chrome-and-safari-connectors/

One of its new features is the ability to subscribe to a journal's RSS feed, and have all (or selected) new articles added to a Zotero library. This opens up the possibility to add them all to Wikidata on a regular basis, as described above Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:34, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Citation templates matched to Wikidata: statistics, please?

The citation template Template:Mansion & Struwe, 2004 is matched to Wikidata's Q32824199 (I know, because I just created the later item and made the match).

A small random sample that I just took found several templates here not matched to Wikidata. Does anyone have any statistics, please, on what proportion of such templates are matched to an item in Wikidata; how many have a Wikidata item that is not yet matched; and how many do not yet have representation on Wikidata? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:33, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt anyone would have stats on that Andy, all I could say is that I suspect most will not have a wikidata item, those that do are unlikely linked. Even among my own papers I think only 3-4 of them have wikidata items. That means about 5%. But that is just using me as an example. My own papers that do have a wikidata item are not linked. There is a long way to go on this if you want to have this feature. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 18:50, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Or on how many works we cite in total; and how many have DOIs? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:52, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Example of mine with no current link Q20857562 and Template:Thomson_et_al.,_2015. Total citations would be enormous,many thousands. I do not know. I suspect less than half have a DOI as in taxonomy many are from older discontinued works that have no DOI. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 18:56, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Case in point: virtually every single Zootaxa paper has a template (probably a lot of Phytotaxa too). That alone makes for a huge amount. Circeus (talk) 07:15, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Strategy discussion, cycle 3. Let's discuss about a new challenge

Hi! It's the second week of our Cycle 3 discussion, and there's a new challenge: How could we capture the sum of all knowledge when much of it cannot be verified in traditional ways? You can suggest solutions here. You can also read a summary of discussions that took place in the past week. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 15:40, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Template Tysp

Something has happened during the last days to {{Tysp}}, which is used in hundreds of taxon pages. At the moment it does not show the words "Type species", nor any of its translations. I suppose this is the consequence of one of these edits by User:AlvaroMolina: [25] or [26]. Who is able to fix this? --Franz Xaver (talk) 20:29, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This concerns also other templates, such as {{Lectyp}}, {{Moty}}, {{TG}}, {{TSL}}, {{TSN}}, {{Type}}, apparently all with a title subpage. --RLJ (talk) 21:21, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The problem seems to be solved now. It's mysterious anyway. --Franz Xaver (talk) 19:04, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Andyboorman:, @Franz Xaver:,@RLJ: ....thank you for your actings. Orchi (talk) 15:44, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

ZipcodeZoo

The owner of ZipcodeZoo is interested in talking with someone about donating the contents of that site to wikispecies. (ticket:2017050610007861 for OTRS agents)

From the site: ZipcodeZoo is a free, online natural history encyclopedia. ZipcodeZoo has a page for every living species, supplementing text with video, sound, and images where available. The site's 6.1 million pages include over 1.2 million photographs, 52,000 videos, 223,000 sound clips, and a 3.9 million maps describing 4.7 million species and infraspecies.

Is there someone this person could talk to?--Sphilbrick (talk) 15:37, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Sphilbrick: Thank you. It sounds as though much of that material would belong on Commons (though it could be used here, of course, and on other projects). Are we sure that they have the rights to donate all the media under an open licence? I'd be happy to have an initial conversation with your contact, though it may be better in the long term for them to deal with someone geographically local - where are they based? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:07, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Sphilbrick: Update The image on http://zipcodezoo.com/index.php/File:Parus_major_minor_1.jpg is taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/francesco_veronesi/5590262636/ where it has a CC by-nc-sa 2.0 licence; so obviously, and unfortunately, we can't use it.

Just making sure I have your permission to share your email address with the person who contacted us. It is, of course, troubling to see the nonconforming license on one of the images. If they compile this site by scraping images from Internet sources such as Flickr and not paid attention to proper permissions than this may be a nonstarter. On the other hand, if we get lucky the person who contributed that photo to Flickr is also the person who contributed to the ZipCodezoo site and may be willing to provide a workable license.

It would be a violation of confidentiality for me to tell you where they are but they are not local. Perhaps you'd be willing to start and when they share with you where they are located we can find out if there's anybody in the area who can help.Sphilbrick (talk) 17:31, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Sphilbrick: The permission is almost certainly valid for their site. By all means do put them in touch with me - do you have my email address? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:23, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think I have your address. I'll write to that person and copy you.--Sphilbrick (talk) 19:47, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Email sent.--Sphilbrick (talk) 20:16, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Sphilbrick: Received, thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:34, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Sphilbrick and Pigsonthewing: - Commons already has a lot of Francesco Veronesi's photos (though not this one); it may be that he used to have it under a Commons-compliant licence at the time ZcZ picked it up, but then later changed it to a non-compliant licence. I guess individual cases would need to be checked, unfortunately, as we can't retroactively tag them with an old licence if we don't have cast-iron proof for each pic. But if ZcZ recorded harvesting it with a compliant licence, then that remains valid. - MPF (talk) 20:24, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Possibly so, but without a statement to that effect from the copyright owner, we can't use it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:34, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Sphilbrick: - the other point worth making: I've not looked at ZcZ for quite a long time, but I do know in the past, they had a lot of their data harvested from ITIS, which was then (and a.f.a.i.k. still is) not a very reliable source, with outdated taxonomy and a lot of inaccurate data - MPF (talk) 20:37, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@MPF: Thanks for that information. Obviously that means, that we can't simply import information but will have to take some care to curate it.--Sphilbrick (talk) 22:12, 12 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with @MPF:, as in the past they have tended to just harvest names without checking synonymy or current acceptance. Andyboorman (talk) 16:47, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Noping templates

I've just imported {{Noping}} and {{Noping2}}. These allow editors to be named, for example, in talk-page newsletters and on list pages, without irritating them with unnecessary pings. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:29, 13 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Protection and Block Indicators

Hello, I'm a bit new to this space. I've just adapted two gadgets in the Portuguese and Swedish Wikipedia. These are topicon and blockindicator, respectively. The first gadget generates an image of a padlock on the part of the article title, indicating the protection status of that article. This gadget is also used on Wikidata (see); in English Wikipedia, templates are used (like this), however, with this gadget the software itself creates the icon without having to insert a template in the article code. To prove it, you can add importScript('User:Jarould/Topicon.js'); in your JS personal page and you can observe a padlock on protected articles such as Archaea (a gray padlock for edit semi-protection) or this page the Village Pump (a green padlock for move full-protection). The second gadget (blockindicator) shows a prohibition symbol on blocked and/or banned user pages. It has a similar function as above, and is translated into a few languages.

If they like these gadgets, they could be moved to the MediaWiki namespace, or you could add them to your JS personal page. Thanks! Jarould ¿Diga? 05:19, 14 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Strategy discussion, cycle 3. A new challenge

Hi! It's the third week of our Cycle 3 discussion, and there's a new challenge: As Wikimedia looks toward 2030, how can we counteract the increasing levels of misinformation? You can suggest solutions here. Earlier challenges can be discussed as well. SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 12:19, 16 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Pro-tip about the mailing list

I'm the admin of Wikinews-l and I have rights for Wikispecies-l as well. The former gets between 700 and 2,000 spam messages a day and the latter doesn't. Please don't publish the email address for Wikispecies-l or else spambots will get a hold of it and start inundating the list. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 02:38, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Update of "category:XXX taxa"

Hello, I tried to use "category:XXXX taxa" in an authors page, but it does not update completely. Is there a way to improve this by changing the content in the author page or in the species page?

Scabba (talk) 01:12, 16 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This problem has happened before. It comes and goes when it feels like it. You might want to make sure all is formatted properly, just to make sure. Neferkheperre (talk) 12:00, 16 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks for this hint. I will check the formatting. Scabba (talk) 20:34, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Strategy discussion, cycle 3. Challenge 4

Hi! The movement strategy discussion is still underway, and there are four challenges that you may discuss:

How do our communities and content stay relevant in a changing world?
How could we capture the sum of all knowledge when much of it cannot be verified in traditional ways?
As Wikimedia looks toward 2030, how can we counteract the increasing levels of misinformation?
and the newest one: How does Wikimedia continue to be as useful as possible to the world as the creation, presentation, and distribution of knowledge change?

The last, fifth challenge will be released on July, 25.

If you want to know what other communities think about the challenges, there's the latest weekly summary (July 10 to 16), and there's the previous one (July 1 to 9).

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 14:16, 20 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Glyptostrobus europaeus author(s)

Dear botanists (which I'm not), please add your views to the discussion at Talk: Glyptostrobus europaeus. Thank you. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 09:40, 24 July 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Error LUA

In Charles Robert Darwin. Parece un error de este módulo aunque no sé que puede ser. --Jcfidy 22:38, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

@Jcfidy: No veo ningún error de LUA en la página que indicas. —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 23:51, 27 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@AlvaroMolina: pues no, ahora ya no aparece el error pero antes en vez de aparecer la plantilla {{Authority control}} apareciía un link rojo que abría un cuadro de texto mostrando el error y un enlace para editar ese módulo. No sé si alguien lo ha arreglado o fue un error puentual. Gracias de todas formas --Jcfidy 00:04, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

@AlvaroMolina: al parecer es un error conocido en en Phabricator. --Jcfidy 15:23, 28 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Strategy discussion, cycle 3. Challenge 5

There are only three days left (plus today) to take part in Cycle 3 of the Wikimedia strategy discussion. Insights to the last challenge our movement is facing has just been published. The challenge is: How does Wikimedia meet our current and future readers’ needs as the world undergoes significant population shifts in the next 15 years?

The previous challenges are:

How do our communities and content stay relevant in a changing world?
How could we capture the sum of all knowledge when much of it cannot be verified in traditional ways?
As Wikimedia looks toward 2030, how can we counteract the increasing levels of misinformation?
How does Wikimedia continue to be as useful as possible to the world as the creation, presentation, and distribution of knowledge change?

On this page, you may read more, and suggest solutions to the challenges. Also, if you're interested in related discussions that are taking place on other wikis, please have a look at the weekly summaries: #1 (July 1 to 9), #2 (July 10 to 16), #3 (July 17 to 23).

In August, a broad consultation will take place, but it'll differ from what we've been conducting since March. This is your last chance to take part in such a discussion! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 17:43, 28 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

DOI template

As it stands, the DOI template does two distinct things: (1) it creates a useful link to content via the DOI identifier; and (2) it displays the DOI identifier. I suggest that (2) is not useful, but rather just adds unnecessary clutter and complexity. I therefore propose that we modify the DOI template (or create a new one) which simply displays the useful link in the form DOI, rather than as doi: 10.7931/J2/FNZ.73 (i.e. the link is the same, but it displays differently). What do others think? ... Allspecies (talk) 21:57, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. That's also how most of the other external link templates works, for instance the {{BHL}} template. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 22:52, 26 July 2017 (UTC).[reply]

I agree too. Good idea. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 23:08, 26 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As the current DOI template is is used on numerous reference templates it makes much more sense to modify it rather than creating a new one. How easy will this be? If this proves to be impossible then I guess we will have to live with an historic error once again. Andyboorman (talk) 16:52, 28 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────┘ Done. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:06, 31 July 2017 (UTC).[reply]

@Tommy Kronkvist: Maybe this move has come too early. I just came across a case, where the DOI identifier would be useful: see here under Ortiz & Croat (2017). Regards --Franz Xaver (talk) 11:32, 1 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Franz Xaver: For those so far rather few cases I've created the alternate {{DOI-ID}} template, which will show the DOI including the identifier. Using the above example: {{DOI-ID|10.7931/J2/FNZ.73}} → {{DOI-ID|10.7931/J2/FNZ.73}} The help files for both templates include information about the other template, and their differences. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk)‚ 12:23, 1 August 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Thanks!!! --Franz Xaver (talk) 16:03, 1 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Adding the taxon as category to each page?

Hello, all. Maybe this is a very basic question. Is there a possibility to find each taxon in a category, e.g. I added in Strigidae the category "category:Familia" as an example. It would be quite a lot of work to do so, but it would mean to find ALL families at one place. Scabba (talk) 21:56, 25 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Scabba: Having hierarchical navigation in categories displayed like at OrthodoxWiki (see e.g. the bottom of https://orthodoxwiki.org/Antiochian_Orthodox_Christian_Archdiocese_of_North_America) is one of my long-term goals here at Wikispecies. I have not made any traction on it, tho. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:09, 25 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf: How would such a navigation look like as example for these nested categoried, as you have aimed it? Scabba (talk) 22:25, 25 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Scabba: I would like it if there were a hierarchy of linked categories at the bottom of the page reading "Vita → Domain → Kingdom → Phylyum → Class → Order → Family → Genus → Species" or whatever equivalent exists for a given organism or collection of organisms. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:33, 25 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf: Just to understand it better, how would this be different from the taxonavigation at the top of a page?Scabba (talk) 22:38, 25 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Scabba: They would have the same hierarchy but the top would lead to entries and the bottom would lead to categories. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:39, 25 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf: So the the category "Strigidae" would lead down to the 3 subfamilies (this would make it not nexessary to order it manually in alphabetical order... right? — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Scabba (talk • contribs).

@Scabba: No, it would only lead up. So Strigidae would have the following at the bottom of the page: "Category:Vita → Category:Eukaryota → Category:Animalia → Category:Eumetazoa → Category:Bilateria → Category:Nephrozoa → Category:Deuterostomia → Category:Chordata → Category:Aves → Category:Saurornithes → Category:Ornithothoraces → Category:Ornithurae → Category:Carinatae → Category:Neornithes → Category:Neognathae → Category:Strigiformes". —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:41, 27 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Scabba: and @Koavf: given this data is replicated at the top of the taxon page in the classification tree, what actually is the point of these categories? It just seems to add unnecessary clutter. Andyboorman (talk) 16:57, 28 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Andyboorman: It's just another way to view the data and could be especially useful for seeing a tree--it's easier to visualize in categories. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:21, 28 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Koavf: could you hide the clutter under a single "View Category Tree"? I am concerned that WS is really a simple easy to edit design about taxonomic and classification. Of course there are a few additional, but relevant features, such as images, location and VN. However, there seems to be a move to category creep, much of which gives editors a non-taxonomic task but not much added value. Just my opinion, mind. Andyboorman (talk) 18:44, 28 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Andyboorman: The initial idea was to include only the taxon type itself as a category in order to identify each taxon. This would also enable a count of the number of species, of genera, families etc. At least, the number of species would be very important. Scabba (talk) 01:37, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Scabba: Simple and useful is something I can live with, but an endless list of taxon categories at the bottom of the page replicating the classification structure at the top of the page could be off putting to a user, I feel. Andyboorman (talk) 08:52, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why are some people doing so difficult? If they want help species.wikipedia they have to do it on the way all others. If they don't agree with it they can do a proposal or leave species.wikipedia. PeterR (talk) 09:17, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely non sense to add the tree at the botom of the page. Maximum we can accept is one category, for example: Family of Aves or Genera of Mammals and so on.--Hector Bottai (talk) 14:25, 31 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree to me this seems to be a redundancy and not useful, possibly even a detraction. However, if some want this done it needs to be proposed and then discussed with a community input and decision. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 15:05, 31 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Please also see the thread "Calculation of species per taxon" on Andy Boorman's talk page. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 06:28, 1 August 2017 (UTC).[reply]

So I see, the tree is off from this topic, and still there is the minimum possibility to add only one category of the taxon itself like for the familiy "Strigidae" the category "Category:Familia". By this we would populate all taxons as categories with their members. E.g. we would know by how many species we have now :) Scabba (talk) 19:40, 2 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Interpolated subgeneric names in species page names

I notice that quite a few species in the Genus Etheostoma have the subgenus included in the page name, e.g. Etheostoma (Doration) stigmaeum. This seems wrong, since the subgeneric name isn't part of the binomen, just additional information. It would also make things messier when species get assigned to different subgenera.

Is this a mistake by one contributor that no one has gotten around to fixing, or is it supposed to be that way?

I would note that there's a page for Etheostoma stigmaeum that User:Haps converted to a redirect when they created the Etheostoma (Doration) stigmaeum page. Shouldn't it be the other way around, with Etheostoma (Doration) stigmaeum a redirect to Etheostoma stigmaeum? Chuck Entz (talk) 21:56, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

When species.wikipedia started it was all like Etheostoma (Doration) stigmaeum. So the old species like Etheostoma stigmaeum where transferred to Etheostoma (Doration) stigmaeum. To day fauna europaea works with subgenera (about 120 entomologists). It is not clear which additing is the best.

We work with sgsps see Carpelimus curvus. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by PeterR (talk • contribs) 11:05, 4 August 2017.

The distinction I'm getting at is between showing/linking to subgenera in the content of the species pages and embedding the subgeneric membership in the very name of the species entry. In Linnaean taxonomy, the most basic unit is the binomen- genus and species. The binomen can be extended at the end with names of infraspecific taxa, but the subgeneric name isn't part of it, any more than the name of the tribe/tribus or subfamily/subfamilia. All of those are parts of the classification of the species, but not the name itself. It's true that the ICZN, at least, specifies the format for displaying the subgeneric name within the binomen, but it says that it must be in parentheses, and it explicitly states that it's not part of the binomen. The real clincher is that you can't, AFAIK, have the same specific epithet in two different subgenera of a genus without one superseding the other- so the subgeneric name is, by definition, never needed to distinguish between different species. Chuck Entz (talk) 02:45, 5 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I. Căpuşe

Who can help me with the full name for I. Căpuşe: It is an entomologist who published in the seventy years. PeterR (talk) 10:08, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I think that he could be the same as Capuse as Iosif equates to Josif in Romanian I believe. Andyboorman (talk) 10:28, 30 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Indead it is Iosif Căpuşe. Thanks PeterR (talk) 12:19, 3 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A good source I've used in the past is Biographies of the Entomologists of the World, which has a page on this entomologist, listed as "Capuşe, Josif". Chuck Entz (talk) 03:01, 5 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Pedigree for species in captivity?

Would it be OK to use wikispecies as a place to keep track of the species pedigree in captivity? There are a number of less common species that are at risk of in-breeding since their ancestry is unknown. If we had a updated pedigree available we could help ensure the same species, sub-species and localities are bred, while avoiding in-breeding. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.168.160.255 (talk) 21:37, 5 August 2017‎ (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't look to be relevant to Wikispecies, sounds the sort of thing that needs a separate dedicated project of its own. Don't the zoos participating in such breeding programmes already do this, though? I'd understood they did. - MPF (talk) 10:43, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

You would be welcome to do this on Wikidata. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:10, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Rethinking `{{Doi}}` template format

In an above discussion it was decided to omit the DOI numbers displayed by the {{Doi}} template. I think this was a wrong decision because:

The number indicates to the user that the link follows a specific doi address and is not some other link type.
The DOI number is added to references in all the sites that I know of including the enWP, the french WP and all the other wikis.
The alternate DOI template which retains the numbers: {{DOI-ID}} is almost unused while {{Doi}} is used almost exclusively.
The DOI number does't add clutter as stated above. It adds clarity and conformity to standards.

I consequently propose to restore back the numbers to the template. Mariusm (talk) 10:58, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Support restoration of the full display. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:05, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support, as it is rather comparable with {{ISBN}}. --Franz Xaver (talk) 11:38, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support restoration on this basis: Old style showed many errors in doi entries, new way does not until clicked on. Neferkheperre (talk) 11:44, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support, for reasons given above. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 12:53, 7 August 2017 (UTC).[reply]
Support -RLJ (talk) 13:06, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support Burmeister (talk) 13:22, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support --Thiotrix (talk) 15:16, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral, Andyboorman (talk) 17:59, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

@Neferkheperre: Regardless of rendered format, using data from Doi.org it may perhaps be possible to add a built-in error control to the template that automatically adds a short error message after a faulty link, in the same way as the {{ISBN}} template does. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 12:53, 7 August 2017 (UTC).[reply]

en:Template:doi has some rudimentary error checking. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:09, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Naming scheme

Shouldn't the page Dufourea(Teloschistaceae) really be named Dufourea (Teloschistaceae), i.e. with a space between the taxon names? I propose a rename/move of the page, and all of its sub-pages. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:21, 7 August 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Shouldn't the page actually be named Dufourea (Ach.)? Naming after the family means that if the genus is reclassified in the future, the name will no longer fit. See Cryptococcus for an example where this is currently the case. Voganaa (talk) 14:47, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Good point! In either case it should be renamed, since right now it is erroneous even without a taxonomic revision. ;-) Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 20:08, 7 August 2017 (UTC).[reply]

Share your thoughts on the draft strategy direction

At the beginning of this year, we initiated a broad discussion to form a strategic direction that will unite and inspire people across the entire movement. This direction will be the foundation on which we will build clear plans and set priorities. More than 80 communities and groups have discussed and gave feedback on-wiki, in person, virtually, and through private surveys^{[strategy 1]}^{[strategy 2]}. We researched readers and consulted more than 150 experts^{[strategy 3]}. We looked at future trends that will affect our mission, and gathered feedback from partners and donors.

In July, a group of community volunteers and representatives from the strategy team took on a task of synthesizing this feedback into an early version of the strategic direction that the broader movement can review and discuss.

The first draft is ready. Please read, share, and discuss on the talk page. Based on your feedback, the drafting group will refine and finalize this direction through August.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 8 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

World Plants Online

Hello botanists. I would like to draw your attention to the developing World Plants Online database hosted by RBG Kew. It is found here POWO. I believe it is still under development, but does seem OK for the less controversial taxa or those that have not had a very recent make-over. Very improved compared to my last visit. So a useful check at least and perhaps even better than COL or Euro+Med. Certainly time to ignore The Plant List! Andyboorman (talk) 19:46, 1 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Link added to Help:Project sources. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 20:32, 1 August 2017 (UTC).[reply]

I have used POWO for a few eeks and like COL or Euro+Med it is not perfect, so please cross check before blindly adding data from the site. Andyboorman (talk) 16:15, 11 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Natrix natrix

A new paper in Nature recommends splitting Natrix natrix into two species, with Natrix helvetica (currently given as a subspecies) in the west of Europe. The research looks good, I'd think we should follow it unless there's a particular snakes authority we already adhere to (in which case, wait until they also take it up). It has received a lot of press attention in UK at least, so people will be looking for it here. Thoughts, anyone? - MPF (talk) 22:25, 8 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

As a rule, whenever a peer-reviewed article is published in an established journal, which involves certain taxonomic changes, these changes are to be automatically adopted by WS. The rule is: the latest revisions take precedence over older ones. Unless of course the modification involves a radical change of concept or the authors are including certain reservations concerning the validity of their findings. There's no question here of "adhering" to a certain "snake authority" but merely of updating WS according to the latest taxonomic findings. Mariusm (talk) 04:20, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I know these authors, their work is good. I would accept this. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 05:45, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Not every recent paper is resulting in quick updates. Some years ago, Anguis fragilis was split into several species – see DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2010.01.007. Anguis has not yet been updated with this results. What do you think about this case? --Franz Xaver (talk) 08:09, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Franz Xaver: with our limited number of editors, and the limited time they invest in WS we can't possibly update for each and every new paper. It would be a gargantuan task. Sometimes I think what's the use of all our efforts if in the end of the day we update less then 5% of the total new taxonomic acts. Mariusm (talk) 08:35, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try and get both done - though the Anguis paper being behind a paywall doesn't help (time to call in on Sci-Hub ;-)). But on @Mariusm:'s general point (04:20 UTC post), often it's best to wait a bit to see if changes are taken up by other groups (e.g. IOC for birds) before adding them here - authorities like IOC are in effect the final stage in peer review, and not every new proposal gets implemented. See also my post in Archive 43 #66 where the feeling was to wait and see before implementing. - MPF (talk) 09:44, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@MPF: For the paper on Anguis try this PDF. Regards --Franz Xaver (talk) 09:54, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Have a look also here. There is a paper from 2013 on phylogeography of Natrix natrix s.lat. --Franz Xaver (talk) 10:31, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I'd already downloaded the Anguis paper from Sci-Hub just before you posted, but the 2013 Natrix paper looks useful (tho' as an aside, his map in Fig 1 is inaccurate in UK, the northern limit is about 100 km further south than shown) - MPF (talk) 11:28, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

See here a partial list (2900 articles – about 60% of the total number) of the articles issued in 2017 so far which involve nomenclatural acts. Obviously we can't evaluate their validity prior to updating here the information. We must take it for granted. Mariusm (talk) 11:07, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And only animals, not plants, etc.! - MPF (talk) 11:28, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The even bigger problem is, that also most of the older names are missing in WS at present. So, adding some newly described species, often requires that an article of its genus has to be created first. When I recently created Gymnospora violoides, based on a paper from 2013, all the other names I had to deal with were 124–189 years old. Probably it is better to aim at a good coverage of taxa and names from all periods of taxonomic history in some smaller groups instead of running after all the taxonomic novelties covering the complete tree of life. Of course, vertebrates would be one of these bigger groups, where a good coverage including newly published results would be expected. --Franz Xaver (talk) 12:27, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I have got to fundamentally disagree with the putative WS "rule" @Mariusm: that a peer reviewed proposal gets adopted in WS automatically and as quickly as possible. Most other authorities adopt a period of grace, which may be as long as a year, unless the proposals have been extensively subject to pre-publication consultation or are uncontroversial. There are many examples of incomplete acceptance and subsequent revision and indeed some important cases of hold-outs - c.f. Acacia in APD and Acacia in WS and the rest of the world. The "real world" can be messy indeed. In this case I can not really comment as I have no expertise - do they interbreed with fertile offspring? Andyboorman (talk) 13:31, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────┘I think if a journal article is peer reviewed, presents the science and makes nomenclatural changes we should adopt it. It is not for us to judge this. We are accumulators of nomenclatural knowledge, not reviewers. Also hybridization has little to do with species boundaries except to make it a bit messy at the edges. There are plenty of examples of hybrids that are fertile, including multi directional hybrids that if we collapsed the nomenclature to recognise these as single species, and still recognised phylogeny, would result in 10 or more species and even genera being synonymised. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 13:46, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

That is fine by me @Faendalimas:, as long as we are prepared to accept the fact that there will be two taxon pages for the same organism. As you said it is not for us to judge. Multiple names is something WD and WP will not do in any circumstances, just try it. Of course {{Disputed}} can be used for the nov comb. and original until consensus is more or less complete. Mind you Intergeneric hybrids give botanists nightmares! Regards Andyboorman (talk) 14:18, 9 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure, by reading all comments, that this discussion is involving Aves. It was cristal clear to me that Aves follows IOC. No taxonomic changes or new species, even published by highly recognized authors, can be edited BEFORE the formal adoption by IOC. If we abandon this policy, it will be a nightmare. Am I correct?--Hector Bottai (talk) 01:12, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Hector Bottai: Ornithology indeed is a special case where the published nomenclatural acts are revised by the IOC editorial team and advisors before being accepted as valid by the ornithological community. See here the pending/accepted proposals. This however is not the case with the other organism-types to which the my statement above applies. Mariusm (talk) 08:39, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Correct @Mariusm:, thanks. Just to make it clear.--Hector Bottai (talk) 11:30, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Hector Bottai and Mariusm: yep; what I wasn't sure was if The Reptile Database (cited on the Natrix natrix page) fulfilled the same purpose for reptiles, or not. As an aside, quite a few bird pages here need to catch up with more recent IOC updates; I do quite a few, but don't have the time to do all of them - so please do join in! - MPF (talk) 17:27, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@MPF: I also do a lot of IOC updates for Neotropical birds, but the outdate in many cases is 5-6 years old, involving large genera and families changes. For example: Emberizidae. Lot of work!!--Hector Bottai (talk) 17:36, 10 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Reptile Database although very good and I am an editor there, is not an official list of reptiles. There is no official lists of reptiles. In all likelihood the Reptile Database will adopt any new changes on its next update. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 00:39, 11 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

┌─────────────────────────┘A very interesting and germane discussion and great to see points raised from different specialisms. I must admit, if I come across a peer reviewed botanic article that proposes a paradigm shift or major revision, then I usually check with other experts outside WS. More times than not I get a "its too early to make the changes" piece of advice and indeed many proposals just seem to fade away. I have many less controversial plant red links to fill with data to lose sleep over changes that may or may not stand the test of time and consensus. I can always go back and re-edit the synonymy or create the required pages, as required. Also it is worth remembering that for plants not all secondary sources are created equal! Andyboorman (talk) 16:11, 11 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Cycle 1 synthesis report

[2] Cycle 2 synthesis report

[3] New Voices synthesis report

[strategy 1]

[strategy 2]

[strategy 3]