Wikispecies:Village Pump/Archive 70

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.

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Note regarding old post: The below section called "Why (only) Twitter/X account?" was started at Talk:Main Page in January 2024, but reinstated and moved here in February 2025. Hence it was originally created outside of the date span of this archive.

Reminder: first part of the annual UCoC review closes soon

Please help translate to your language.

This is a reminder that the first phase of the annual review period for the Universal Code of Conduct and Enforcement Guidelines will be closing soon. You can make suggestions for changes through the end of day, 3 February 2025. This is the first step of several to be taken for the annual review. Read more information and find a conversation to join on the UCoC page on Meta. After review of the feedback, proposals for updated text will be published on Meta in March for another round of community review.

Please share this information with other members in your community wherever else might be appropriate.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:48, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Global ban proposal for Shāntián Tàiláng

Hello. This is to notify the community that there is an ongoing global ban proposal for User:Shāntián Tàiláng who has been active on this wiki. You are invited to participate at m:Requests for comment/Global ban for Shāntián Tàiláng. Wüstenspringmaus (talk) 12:36, 2 February 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for the information. However, it's worth nothing that they haven't made any edits to Wikispecies since April 2023.

–Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 15:24, 3 February 2025 (UTC).

Alchemilla

I have removed the section, subsection and series names from the Alchemilla species taxon pages where they existed. The existing section, subsection and series pages have been redirected to Alchemilla, itself, preventing them becoming orphans. The only section page was Alchemilla sect. Alchemilla there were no others. There were no references on any of the infrageneric name pages.

• Gehrke, B., Bräuchler, C., Romoleroux, K., Lundberg, M., Heubl, G. & Eriksson, T. 2008. Molecular phylogenetics of Alchemilla, Aphanes and Lachemilla (Rosaceae) inferred from plastid and nuclear intron and spacer DNA sequences, with comments on generic classification. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 47(3): 1030–1044. DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2008.03.004 PDF Reference page. 

provides a synopsis of available circumscriptions, as well as recommending a wider view of the genus. This has not been fully accepted. I think it is best to keep things simple, hence my edits to date. I throw this open for discussion. Andyboorman (talk) 09:39, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Dianthus

The infrageneric classification on the Dianthus taxon page do not represent monophyletic categories and therefor are not natural groupings (Fassou et al., 2022). In addition they seem to be based upon Williams (1885) not the more recent and comprehensive Pax, F. & Hoffmann, K. 1934. Caryophyllaceae. In: Engler A, Harms H. (Eds) Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien.Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig, 275–364. Then there is Fedoronchuk, M.M., 2016. System of the family Caryophyllaceae in the Ukrainian flora. 2. Subfamily Caryophylloideae. Ukrainian Botanical Journal 73(1): 33-45 PDF.

The current WS infrageneric classification could be removed pending future work, particularly as most taxon pages are stubs. Thoughts? Andyboorman (talk) 16:41, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Synonymous Page

I was making a wikipedia article on aquatica leii, and noticed that on wikispecies says the species is synonymous with aquatica hydrophila, but A. hydrophilas doesn't list it as one? Are these the same species or not? — The preceding unsigned comment was added by PineappleWizard123 (talk • contribs) 22:09, 11 February 2025.

@PineappleWizard123:: I think it's just a mistake, it looks to me like "Aquatica hydrophila" on Aquatica leii should actually be "Aquatica leii", to show that Fu, Ballantyne & Lambkin, 2010 transferred Luciola leii from Luciola to Aquatica (as seen in the abstract), making the new combination Aquatica leii. Monster Iestyn (talk) 04:19, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

There, just fixed the page accordingly. Monster Iestyn (talk) 04:20, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Use of Taxonbar and Reference Section

It could be argued that there is some duplication/overlap between the template Taxonbar and the Reference Section, if the former is added to the end of a taxon page. Traditionally, the Reference Section was used to cite the protologue, as the first reference or under the Primary Reference and then the other material sourced to cite the information presented on the taxon page. This material could be books, papers or links out to trusted secondary sources. It is presented in the same way as a reader could find in scientific paper. However, recently it has become common to use Taxonbar, as an additional section that contains WD and other links out. Recently, a fellow editor removed my links from the Reference Section noting they were also found in the Taxonbar box. We discussed this and decided to raise the issue on the Pump for discussion. I present these three recent edits, as examples (please excuse any imperfections);

• Scabiosa columbaria subsp. banatica
• Scabiosa columbaria subsp. pratensis
• Scabiosa columbaria subsp. saetabensis

They hopefully illustrate the points I an trying to make. I present this for open discussion. Best regards. Andyboorman (talk) 20:44, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this issue. My personal opinion is that if the link is not providing any new information to what is already in the page, and it is included in WD, should be excluded from the Reference (Links) section. One exception is the IUCN status for which we have a template that adds the conservation status even as a category. This is a limited opinion for Aves; one example, some pages, in general outdated, are showing the ITIS link. ITIS is, for many cases years ago outdated, and is also contained in WD. In this case, I remove it. Hope I helped... Hector Bottai (talk) 14:28, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

We have templates for a number of the items in TaxonBar, such as the ICZN ZooBank id, Reptile DataBase id among others. However I agree we could keep the TaxonBar to reference occurances in Checklists and the References to do what they say they do and be a list of relevant citations. Of which Checklists are not primary sources of taxonomy or nomenclature. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 15:04, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

Taxonbars do not display in mobile view. That is due to some other underlying template/module (I don't recall exactly what it is) that is set not to display in mobile view (on English Wikipedia the underlying code is also used by navboxes, and I think it is reasonable to exclude navboxes from mobile view there). English Wikipedia has not worked out a solution to display taxonbars in mobile view.

I would expect that Wikispecies may have a lower proportion of mobile views to non-mobile views than English Wikipedia does, but I would expect there is still a significant proportion of mobile views here. Until the mobile view situation is corrected, I wouldn't support removing "redundant" links that are also held in the taxonbar.

Wikipedias don't have any link to Wikispecies or Commons in mobile view. In non-mobile view, there is a sidebar with links to Wikispecies, Commons and other language Wikipedias. In mobile view, the sidebar isn't displayed and it is only possible to view the links to other language Wikipedias, not Commons or Wikispecies (although you can find a link to Wikidata and then follow that to get to Wikispecies/Commons). Whatever code underlies this, it is not the same as the code that supresses taxonbars in mobile view. I've been opposed to removing templates that link "redundantly" link to Wikispecies on English Wikipedia, since they aren't redundant in mobile view. Plantdrew (talk) 16:27, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

┌───────┘ Thank you for bringing this up, Andy. For the sake of completeness, the initial talk can be found here: User talk:Tommy Kronkvist#Taxon Identifier Box.
To @Plantdrew: Thank you for the insightful information regarding mobile views. Somewhat surprisingly, there are actually quite a lot of edits being made from mobile devices, as you can see here. –Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 18:30, 13 February 2025 (UTC).

Sandboxes and such

What's a good way to share formatted content (i.e. how content would display if 'published') for a non-wiki user, but not have it yet on the main system. Hard to explain what i want without the right terms! Basically, i think what i mean is 'a sandbox' where i see there's already this Wikispecies talk:Sandbox. My only concerns with that are two issues, firstly how short of a time will something placed onto that persist for, and secondly it looks like entirely public, can view-ability be limited? Is there any related feature such as a user only (personal) sandbox? I know such a thing exists on main wikis, but i never used them - i'm guessing over on that need to log into account to view the content? What i'm ideally after is to have somewhere that i can input some novel content (with markup for wikispecies - if that's the right terms for coding) but then have that displaying as being 'formatted/published'. Rather than a public transient sandbox above, to have it persisting until a time of my choosing, and only accessible/visible to someone i designate [ideally them not being logged into wikispecies] for private discussion (admins etc seeing content and having access is understandable as failsafe). This kind of thing might not exist due to potential problems with users who create junk, spam, etc., but i just want a way to privately share a preview of some potential wikispecies content with someone before 'going live'. Suggestions welcome!
— The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sjl197 (talk • contribs) 08:28, 16 February 2025 (UTC).

@Sjl197: Feel free to create your own sandbox connected to your user account, i.e. User:Sjl197/sandbox, just like in any other Wikimedia project.

Also, please remember to always sign your comments on talk pages using four tildes, like this: ~~~~. This will automatically produce your username (if you're logged in) and the date, making it easier for other users to follow the discussion.
–Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:46, 16 February 2025 (UTC).

Thanks good to know there's at least a user specific sandbox. Forgive the lack of tilda thing, they hide them from me on my mac keyboard. Even without them i still see it as reading "The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sjl197 (talk • contribs)" and with that (provided that's what you also see), then you seemed to be able to fathom who for a direct reply. However, yes i see in guidance as you say that i should specify it explicitly, cheers.

Sjl197 (talk) 07:42, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

A pass through Category:Sources and a proposed rename of Category:Journals

I assume more than a few people noticed me rampaging through category:Sources and aggressively moving everything that could be into either Category:Journals or (after a renaming) Category:ISSN (Monster Iestyn also did a lot of moving into Category:Journals, although my focus was more on the ISSN issues, with the Journals a side effect). I will shourtly begin a similar crawl through Category:Journals, but I think we should really consider renaming it to "Category:Periodicals" because "periodical that published a work of taxonomical reference once" does not necessarily mean "a scientific or scholarly journal". A fair number of gardening/trade publications and even newspapers or general interest magazines have published such content over the years... Circeus (talk) 01:08, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Support It's not necessarily the highest priority as it's mostly a technicality, but it's best to be accurate. Thanks for this work. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:27, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

 Support Makes sense to me. Not all periodicals that have an ISSN are journals, and yet currently Category:ISSN is a subcategory of Category:Journals which doesn't quite add up. (I'm aware I put it there myself, but that was recommended to me at the time I was working towards having Stho002's "Series identifiers" category deleted: see here and here) Monster Iestyn (talk) 03:25, 18 February 2025 (UTC)

Upcoming Language Community Meeting (Feb 28th, 14:00 UTC) and Newsletter

Hello everyone!

We’re excited to announce that the next Language Community Meeting is happening soon, February 28th at 14:00 UTC! If you’d like to join, simply sign up on the wiki page.

This is a participant-driven meeting where we share updates on language-related projects, discuss technical challenges in language wikis, and collaborate on solutions. In our last meeting, we covered topics like developing language keyboards, creating the Moore Wikipedia, and updates from the language support track at Wiki Indaba.

Got a topic to share? Whether it’s a technical update from your project, a challenge you need help with, or a request for interpretation support, we’d love to hear from you! Feel free to reply to this message or add agenda items to the document here.

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We look forward to your ideas and participation at the language community meeting, see you there!

MediaWiki message delivery 08:28, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Why (only) Twitter/X account?

[Moved from Talk:Main Page ]

Have you considered setting up something like @Wikispecies for alternatives to Twitter/X like the free open source Mastodon and Bluesky? It varies a lot by community, but my sense is a significant fraction of activity, especially for many academic sub-communities, has moved off Twitter/X. Crust10 (talk) 17:27, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Hello, Crust10, and welcome to Wikispecies. Good question! I'm the custodian of the @Wikispecies X account, and brought this same question to light on some of our Wikimedia sister projects already in 2022 and early 2023. I wanted to ask for their opinions since I felt it would be a bit odd if only Wikispecies opted for the Twitter alternatives, while our sister projects such as Wikidata, Commons and Wikipedia stayed behind. Back then our discussions mostly revolved around Mastodon and Discord as alternatives, since Bluesky was only about one year old and still fairly unknown. (And yes, I know there's been some criticism and controversy surrounding select Discord servers and their subgroups, but I feel we (i.e. the Wikimedia Community) should alway have an open mind and try to stay objective when discussing things like this.)

So, what was the outcome of these discussions? No dice, I'm afraid. The interest from more or less all of the other Wikimedia projects was luke warm, at best. My guess is that it's still a bit early, and that the current system with a multitude of Mastodon and Discord servers scattered more or less all over the globe might be confusing for some of the users. Sure, the different servers/communities all talk to each other seamlessly and without problems, but it's easier to "understand" Twitter's system which only use one single hub as a central for the whole service. Hopefully the situation will clear up fairly soon, because I recognise the same problem as you: many X users are jumping ship, becoming ex users instead... Kind regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 21:49, 6 January 2024 (UTC).

Tommy, thank you for the fulsome, prompt, generous and humorous (X to ex, lol) reply.

Discord is also a natural venue in my opinion.

That's disappointing that other Wikimedia projects were lukewarm on the last go round a year ago. I can see the value of coordinating on this. But I wonder if there might also be value in one of the custodians boldly giving it a go. I suspect a lot of the hesitation comes from being unsure of best/efficient practices, so questions like: "What is the easiest way to post to multiple platforms?"; "How do I / do I need to monitor comments on multiple platforms?"; "How much do I need to worry about idiosyncrasies of different platforms (formatting, treatment of links, norms about appropriate posts)?"; etc. So if you personally have the enthusiasm and others (still) don't but also don't have objections to you trying (e.g. on reputational grounds or whatever), you might try forging the way and working out best practices. One hopes others would follow! Of course this is all easy for me to say. Just a possible suggestion. Crust10 (talk) 22:43, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Sorry I know this is old but it does actually raise a good point. The idea of a Discord Channel is very appealing actually, allows for significant modernization and customisation along with options for Discovery. Leading to possible new editors. Lets face it X is probably bnot a science friendly option these days.

I am happy to set up a discord for us if people are interested?? Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 07:57, 25 February 2025 (UTC)

Only Wikispecies presents the link to twitter/X on its main page, not our sister projects. I support the proposal to move off from this platform, e.g. to Mastodon and/or Bluesky, like most universities have done recently. Discord once started as an U.S. gamer platform, so I do not know, if it is suited for our editors and users worldwide. Thiotrix (talk) 11:19, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

It would likely be more hassle, but something to consider is being on multiple platforms. The audience formerly on Twitter has now splintered to many platforms, but you might for instance add Bluesky, Mastodon and Discord while retaining X. While Discord started as a gaming platform, it is now used for many purposes. Crust10 (talk) 17:33, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I agree with this, and yes although Discord started for gaming there are thousands of non gaming servers on it now including many Buiological Sciences ones. Its also used for Wikimedia, we also use it for the Ombuds Commission though that one is private of course. I am fine with Bluesky also I use that, I do not use Mastodon but it seems fine to me. I do still technically have my X account but do not use it at all. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 19:14, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Bangla 2025 has begun—Join us!

Hello,

Greetings from the Wiki Loves Bangla Team!

We are excited to announce that Wiki Loves Bangla 2025 is coming soon! This year, the contest theme will focus on Birds of Bengal, inviting participants to capture and share stunning images of Bengal's diverse birdlife.

Contest Details

📅 Dates: 1 – 31 March 2025

📍 Theme: Birds of Bengal

🎯 Organized by: Bangla WikiMoitree

Wiki Loves Bangla is an international photography contest hosted on Wikimedia Commons to document Bengali culture and heritage worldwide. As part of the Bangla Culture and Heritage Collation Program, it is held annually with a specific theme, inviting participants to contribute their photographs to Wikimedia Commons to expand free knowledge. Through this campaign, you can become part of a community dedicated to preserving and showcasing the beauty, behavior, and biodiversity of Bangla’s birds. This initiative aims to highlight the richness of Bangla’s natural heritage to the world.

How can I participate?

The contest runs from 1 - 31 March 2025 on Wikimedia Commons. To take part, simply:

📷 Capture photographs of Birds of Bengal.

📤 Upload your images to Wikimedia Commons under the Wiki Loves Bangla 2025 category.

📖 Learn more about contest rules and guidelines on the contest page.

Why participate?

By contributing, you help in documenting the rich birdlife of Bengal, making knowledge accessible to all. Plus, there are exciting prizes to be won!

Prizes

1st prize: BDT 50,000, crest, and certificate.

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If you are interested in participating in the photography campaign, start photographing and get ready for the photo campaign happening on Wikimedia Commons. For more information about the rules and prizes of the contest, refer here. For any questions, email us or join our telegram group here.

Warm regards,
Wiki Loves Bangla Team.

#WikiLovesBangla
Moheen (talk) 12:59, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

Universal Code of Conduct annual review: proposed changes are available for comment

Please help translate to your language.

I am writing to you to let you know that proposed changes to the Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) Enforcement Guidelines and Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) Charter are open for review. You can provide feedback on suggested changes through the end of day on Tuesday, 18 March 2025. This is the second step in the annual review process, the final step will be community voting on the proposed changes. Read more information and find relevant links about the process on the UCoC annual review page on Meta.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this information with other members in your community wherever else might be appropriate.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) 18:50, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

mihi

Hudson, 1885 has several species described as "n.sp. mihi." (e.g. "Stephanops armatus n. sp. mihi.")

What is "mihi" in this context? Our glossary does not mention it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:42, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi Andy, I believe it just means "my name" - have not researched the derivation... see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihi_itch . Regards - Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 17:57, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you. That makes sense, and further searching confirms. I've added it to Wikispecies:Glossary#M and requested an addition at Wiktionary. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:38, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Hi Andy, I just checked my hard copy of Hawksworth, "Terms Used in Bionomenclature", and it is there, under "M". If you are not familiar with this work, it can be downloaded from https://www.gbif.org/document/80577/terms-used-in-bionomenclature-the-naming-of-organisms-and-plant-communities . There may (or may not!) be other terms there worth adding to the Wikispecies Glossary, but it would take some effort to go through and decide on potential useful additions, if indeed there are some :) Regards - Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 04:59, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

┌───────┘ Thank you @Tony! I've added a link to Hawksworth's glossary to our Help:Project sources: Bibliographical resources and digitized literature page.

@Andy Mabbett: Thanks for adding the "mihi" glossary item to Wikispecies:Glossary#M. I've created redirects pointing there from mihi and m. in the same way we already have links from for example fl. and floruit. –Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 05:35, 11 March 2025 (UTC).

In case anyone is interested, I think this is an example of an elliptical dative of the agent, along the lines of "[as coined] by me", although I guess it could also be parsed as a dative of advantage, along the lines of wiktionary:mihi nomen est, "to me [the name is...]"; Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 11:04, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Good, I was not aware of that page and its content at Help:Project sources: Lists of species/genera. I have taken the liberty of adding in IRMNG ("my" database, plus input by others of course) as a resource for "all groups"... Tony 1212 (talk) 22:12, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I think that this discussion is resolved and can be archived. If you disagree, don't hesitate to replace this template with your comment. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:38, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Hesperis

The sections for this taxon are mostly paraphyletic and will be removed unless there is strong and reasoned objections. Andyboorman (talk) 08:35, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

@Andy Boorman: I agree, they should be removed. To our other editors: for the origin of this discussion, including references, please see the thread "Infrageneric Classification of Hesperis" on user @Fagus' talk page.

–Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 22:19, 12 March 2025 (UTC).

Request to enable Tyap [kcg] on species translation

Moved to Template talk:VN#Request to enable Tyap [kcg] on species translation. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:41, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Odd technical issues

Did Wikimedia recently make a change to authentication/logging in? Trying to press "Log out" gives me an error message with "Invalid CSRF token" and doesn't log me out. I had an edit fail, seemingly because of account/session issues. I then tried clearing my browser's cookies for species.wikimedia.org and auth.wikimedia.org, but trying to sign in keeps giving me an error: "There seems to be a problem with your login session; this session has been canceled as a precaution against session hijacking. Please resubmit the form." (Firefox, 136.0.4) Has anyone else experienced similar issues? I'm using a different device where my session was still preserved, but so far I haven't been able to log back in on that device. --WrenFalcon (talk) 03:50, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Well... it's resolved now. Apparently logging out via en.wikipedia.org fixed it. --WrenFalcon (talk) 03:57, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Recommended practice for synonym taxa page

Dear All, what is the recommended practice when two taxa are synonyms, but each already has its own Wikispecies page? Besides updating the data on the senior taxon's page, should we keep both pages? Redirect the junior synonym’s page to the senior synonym’s page? Or delete the junior synonym’s page altogether? I have found this 2016 discussion that seems to support deletion. Thanks in advance for your suggestions. --Hiouf (talk) 07:54, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

For plants, two names are occasionally accepted for the same taxon according to differing authorities. These names are not truly synonymous until consensus has been agreed and when this happens ICBN is clear about which is a synonym, unless conservation is applied. However. until consensus, we are left with two {{Disputed}} taxa, as WS can not take sides favouring one taxonomic opinion over another. As an editor I do not create pages for synonyms and if I find them I use a redirect sometimes temporarily leaving data . Hope this helps. Andyboorman (talk) 08:26, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Which taxon are you referring to? My preference is to turn the junior synonym into a redirect if it was formally used for a period of time, so that if people search for it they will still find the page. You should provide the citations for the synonymy that declared the two taxa as synonymous on the senior synonyms page. Note that wikispecies is as much about names as species. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 08:33, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you both for your replies. As an example, Indrapura is now considered a junior synonym of Axiagastus according to Salini et al., 2025. I already updated the Axiagastus page but left the Indrapura page as it is waiting for your advices. So I'll now modify the junior synonym into a redirect page. Thank you very much! Hiouf (talk) 10:50, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Please remember to keep categories such as "John Doe taxa" or "Eponyms of Jane Doe", when making such redirects. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:21, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

You mean the junior synonym page that I changed into a redirect page should keep its categories? I haven't thought of that when making redirects. Ok will correct this. Thanks Hiouf (talk) 15:59, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this important issue up, I have faced dozens of situations when due to taxonomix changes, an existing genus page, with a lot of info included, like authors, references, etc., turns into a junior synonym of other one. First, we should never delete the content and just turn into a redirection losing all the content, even because other wikis linked sometimes will take years to be updated. So, if we agree with the preservation, there are two options:

• No redirection: See Atthis as an example. Atthis is listed as a synonym on Selasphorus page, as an internal link. This my presonal preference.
• With a redirection: See Neospiza as an example; every search of Neospiza here or a link to WS in other wiki will take to Crithagra making the search for Neospiza more difficult.

Thanks to @Tommy Kronkvist: for the inputs in a previous discussion on this matter.--Hector Bottai (talk) 16:29, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I favour the later, as I have already posted. Searching for the synonym finds the accepted name, but there is a link at the top which may be useful if the data has been retained. Much of the data from the original, once accepted name, is relevant for the now correct name page. For example, distribution, vernacular names, images, many references, additional synonyms and so on. A link to protologue of the original taxon can even be used either as an additional reference or as a link on the list of synonyms. I strongly advise not automatically deleting data on redirect and it is retained until editors are satisfied that the data has been transferred where appropriate. Andyboorman (talk) 20:58, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Following on from @Hector Bottai: I have to agree that although its extra work, my actual preference is to retain the junior synonym and have it link to the senior one. If you look on Chelodina_longicollis you can see that every junior synonym is also a page, this preserves the unique nomenclatural data for each name. Under status on the junior synonym pages I used the templates {{Junior subjective synonym}} to make this clear and it then links to the senior synonym. This was started after a discussion about keeping Wikispecies relevant in the face of many other checklists, we are the only one that also includes all the data on synonyms, which is the preference. Although no where near complete. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 21:41, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Of course, it is worth bearing in mind that names/taxa "sunk" as synonyms can also be revived at a later date, with new knowledge, so maintaining the original information as compiled with some effort is clearly worthwhile... Tony 1212 (talk) 04:28, 12 March 2025 (UTC)

[for zoology]: I think the more synonym pages we have, the better. Currently there are hundreds of synonym pages. The example of Creophilus villipennis is perfectly adequate. The templates {{Synonym}}, {{Invalid}} (for species synonym), {{Invalid genus}} and {{Invalid taxon}} were made to be used in synonym pages. Mariusm (talk) 06:15, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

┌────────────┘ In reply to Hector Bottai: I agree with Andy Boorman, Mariusm, Scott Thomson and Tony, per above.
–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 12:44, 13 March 2025 (UTC).

I have been keeping the junior synonym page intact with a redirect. On the senior synonym page, there is a recap paragraph with referral to author of synonymy, and reason if known. Thus, if the taxon is resurrected, there is less work to be done. In addition, should the senior synonym become unavailable, priority is given to the oldest junior synonym for a replacement name. Neferkheperre (talk) 13:51, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Page moves / Phabricator

Hello, I was intending to make a software request on Phabricator so that, where there's a page move here relating to a taxonomic update, there's a pop-up box or equivalent to facilitate the move of the wikispecies site link from the old wikidata item to the new (thereby reducing the amount of resultant mess on wikidata / time involved moving the link manually from one item to the other). I guess this should be a (mandatory) option. Would the preference be to (have an option to) generate/retain also a redirect-style link on the moved-from wikidata item to the wikispecies redirect page? Are there any other considerations/objections before I proceed? Thank you, Maculosae tegmine lyncis (talk) 13:44, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

@Maculosae tegmine lyncis: Good idea, but I think this may be tricky to automate in a good way. There are quite a lot of hemihomonyms (etc.) in Wikispecies, and even more equivalent "hemihomonymic Wikidata items" in Wikidata. For example we have Wikispecies pages for two genera named Viola – one in Plantae and one in Animalia. Both of these genera also have Wikidata items, of course: Viola (Q146095) and Viola (Q1225000), respectively.

To further complicate matters Wikidata also have the items Viola (Q301657) (a female given name) and Viola (Q30669581) (a family name), and perhaps even more. I'm not a fully fledged expert on the code base that runs the Wikidata and Phabricator toolsets, but I suspect that it would be difficult for the software to pick the right "Viola" (for example). Add in a bunch of synonyms, which often have their own Wikidata items, and it becomes even more challenging.

But as I said I think it's a good idea, as such, and I would be happy to hear opinions from users that are more Wikidata/Phabricator-savvy than me. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk),23:52, 15 March 2025 (UTC).

I suggest: When a page is moved, a pop-up box is opened if new item on wikida does not exist, allow user to choose to create a new item or not (create manual later) and add a new wikispcies link to it, this prevents item is deleted due to emptiness and redirectlink bot.

I suggest not to edit redirect link manually, this will be done by bots. We can have our own rules about this. Henrydat (talk) 14:04, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

@Henrydat: There's no pop-up box (yet?), but we already have a link in the top left above the article text, saying "Wikidata item not found." Clicking it will load a page for creating a new Wikidata item, using BASEPAGENAME to generate the WD label. However it's always a good idea to search Wikidata for the taxon name first, since in most cases there actually is a Wikidata already available. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:57, 19 March 2025 (UTC).

Thanks for letting me know. That's all I think. Maybe we need a little "Auto". If the item already exists then we need the second suggestion, probably no redirect wikispcieslink bots on WD but that might be an "advice". Henrydat (talk) 14:33, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Thomas Bolton

I have written a Wikipedia article about Thomas Bolton, who had a thriving Victorian-era business supplying specimens of pond life, by post from Birmingham, England, to customers with microscopes. His contributions to science have more recently been largely overlooked.

Wikispecies colleagues may be interested in the parts about species he discovered and named, but which were subsequently not formally attributed to him; and those named after him. Any additional info would be welcome.

I'm also keen to know whether any of his specimens are extant in collections (other than the few I already tagged in Bionomia).

Is there justification for page about him here, and if so how should we indicate his role in relation to the species mentioned above (other than the eponymous aspect which I understand already)? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:48, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Anyone? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:04, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

• Personnaly I would say yes, a page here for this author should be in scope. You said it well here and in the Wikipedia article, though there are no taxa formally attributed to him, it seems that his works influenced the taxonomy of certain names and can also be used as references for these names. Christian Ferrer (talk) 13:28, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

{{Date}} issues

I decided that using {{Date}} to format dates would probably be better than writing them out in plain English (see e.g. Template:Evenhuis et al., 2010#Nomenclatural acts). However, @Monster Iestyn caught an issue with this on Template:Evenhuis & Pape, 2019 - in certain circumstances, using the template in a natural-seeming way may lead to it displaying the wrong date. Specifically, providing a date in the form {{Date|yyyy|Mon|d}}, where "Mon" is an abbreviation for the month, and "d" is the day, from 1 to 9, will lead to the result "1 Month yyyy". That is: {{Date|2024|Dec|5}} → 1 December 2024 ("1 December 2024"). Notably, this works fine for {{Date|2024|Dec|05}} → 5 December 2024 ("5 December 2024").

This seems to be due to the inner workings of {{Date}} - in the above example, it would pass 2024-Dec-5 to {{#time:}} as {{#time:j F Y|2024-Dec-5}}, which according to the documentation gets passed to the PHP strtotime() function. It seems like the issue is a mix of odd PHP behavior and the way that {{Date}} passes its arguments.

This is also an issue with e.g. {{Date|2024|February|2}} → 1 February 2024 ("1 February 2024").

Potential fixes/workarounds:

1. Always include a leading 0 for the date, e.g. {{Date|2024|Dec|05}}. (IMO this is insufficient, someone will inevitably forget and not notice)
2. Never use it as {{Date|yyyy|Mon|dd}}, instead always use it as {{Date|yyyy|mm|dd}} (e.g. {{Date|2024|9|2}}), which seems to work regardless of leading zeros.
3. Modify {{Date}} to convert months and shorthand months to the corresponding month numbers before passing them off, e.g. January → 1, ..., December → 12. Benefits: {{Date}} could be used without worry or issue; {{Date|2024|Dec|2}} and {{Date|2024|February|2}} would work as expected. Currently, the documentation for {{Date}} implies that it's meant for numerical values only; this change should allow for non-numerical values (i.e. the names of months) without odd edge cases/bugs.

Personally, I'm leaning towards #3, but I'd rather not touch anything without some feedback. Furthermore, is it a good idea to be using this template at all (once it is/assuming that it is working correctly)?

--WrenFalcon (talk) 02:19, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Given that we're a multilingual project, option 2 would be best. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:03, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Andy Mabbett. It's also worth noting that the code for our Wikispecies' version of the {{Date}} template is very different from the code in the corresponding versions at Wikidata (d:Template:Date), Meta-Wiki (meta:Template:Date and MediaWiki (mw:Template:Date), and that they are all very different in regards to each other as well. It may be worth looking into the differences in more detail, since all of the above three wiki projects are also supposed to be multilingual. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:17, 23 March 2025 (UTC).

I third Andy's solution: we should be using ISO dates as much as possible. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:22, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

True, ISO 8601 is the best way to go. It's the international standard (as the name suggests...), and it doesn't get much more language independent than that. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 09:53, 24 March 2025 (UTC).

Talking about ISO it would be nice if we could also enter the actual ISO date format as a parameter in the Date template. In other words not only the presently accepted format

• {{Date|2024|9|2}} and {{Date|2024|09|02}} but also
• {{Date|2024–9–2}} and {{Date|2024–09–02}} i.e. ISO format.

I think that's a bit more intuitive and user-friendly than the present-day format with three separate parameters divided by pipes. Obviously all four of them must render the same outcome, e.g. 2 September 2024, relying on the user settings to show the month in each user's preferred language. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:20, 25 March 2025 (UTC).

Incertae sedis within tribe level – clarification (zoology)

In Moran et al., 2021, a number of genera were excluded from a subtribe and "left as incertae sedis inside the Milesiini (stat. rev.)". How should I represent this on the appropriate taxon pages? Perhaps on the tribe page, a list of subtribes, and a list of the incertae sedis genera below that - but what's the best way to phrase/format the list of additional genera? "Genera (incertae sedis): {{g|genus}}..."? Should I mention incertae sedis at all?

And how should I indicate the incertae sedis placement on the individual pages for the genera, if at all? I was considering having the taxonavigation jump directly from the genus level to the tribus level, while not mentioning the subtribus level - but what's the best practice for this?

While I'm here, any feedback on how to format nomenclatural acts and enter them on reference template pages (like what I did with Moran et al., 2021) is very much appreciated. --WrenFalcon (talk) 19:32, 23 March 2025 (UTC)

Hello WrenFalcon, and thank you for your questions. The phrase "incertae sedis" must be mentioned, and the incertae sedis taxa should be added to the Milesiini page, below the list of subtribes. See pages Eumetazoa and Hexapoda for examples.

Note that all taxon page names that includes the phrase incertae sedis were banned in 2016, mainly because "incertae sedis" isn't part of any actual taxon name. Hence a page name like for example "Milesiini incertae sedis" (intended for a list of all the applicable incertae sedis taxa) wouldn't be accepted. That said, we still have quite a lot of pages left with "incertae sedis" in their page name (see Incertae sedis for those). The reason for this is partly that some of them are tricky to sort out, from a nomenclatural point of view, but also... I don't really know, but my best guess is that many users are unaware those pages even exist. Nonetheless they should all be dealt with and ultimately deleted, so feel free to have a go at it if you like to.

–Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:44, 24 March 2025 (UTC).

@WrenFalcon: In this case, on the taxonavigation templates for the genera themselves I would put the "incertae sedis" placement directly in the templates:

{{Milesiini}}
Subtribus: incertae sedis
Genus: {{gbr|Genus}}

This way no extra template for the "incertae sedis" line is needed. Monster Iestyn (talk) 14:25, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

But WrenFalcon said that [some] “genera were excluded from a subtribe and left as incertae sedis inside the Milesiini (stat. rev.)”? Hence, technically speaking, they might be daughter taxa directly under tribus Milesiini and perhaps not necessarily part of any subtribe. So in their particular Taxonavigation list there shouldn't be any post for subtribus at all. Instead only:

{{Milesiini}}
Genus: {{gbr|Genus}}

Or am I misunderstanding? –Tommy Kronkvist (talk)‚ 20:01, 25 March 2025 (UTC).

Possibly. The authors' words (for Cynorhinella, with similar wording for the other genera) are as follows: "Monophyly of Blerina is maintained by the removal of Cynorhinella with the genus left as incertae sedis inside the Milesiini (stat. rev.)" (emphasis original) and "Removal of Cynorhinella from Blerina (stat. rev.) with the genus left as incertae cedis in Milesiini" (emphasis original) [Moran et al., 2021]. I'm not entirely sure on the best way to translate this onto the taxon page. Speaking of, here's what I have for Cynorhinella. --WrenFalcon (talk) 20:12, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

@Tommy Kronkvist @WrenFalcon: My interpretation here is that Cynorhinella being left incertae sedis in Milesiini means the authors don't know which subtribe it belongs to currently, since evidently nearly all of the other genera of the tribe are placed in one of its subtribes. Cynorhinella used to belong to Blerina but not anymore after the author's molecular study, yet they didn't place it in any of the other subtribes, instead leaving it incertae sedis in the tribe. Hence why I thought "Subtribus: incertae sedis" should be displayed in the taxonavigation template. But if others don't agree with me here, then fair enough. I just figured out my own system for handling incertae sedis taxa in the absence of any guidance for them in Wikispecies's help pages. Monster Iestyn (talk) 21:13, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

"...since evidently nearly all of the other genera of the tribe are placed in one of its subtribes." More on that point, the classification accepted by the authors of the paper (before this paper was published) seems to classify all genera of Milesiini into its subtribes. See the Syrphidae Community Website (somewhat slow - you may need to access it through the Wayback Machine), linked in Moran et al., 2021. ("Ximo", presumably Ximo Mengual, is a coauthor on this paper.) --WrenFalcon (talk) 23:01, 25 March 2025 (UTC)

Double-checking nomenclatural interpretation of paper

Could someone read Mengual et al., 2015a and double-check my interpretation of the nomenclatural acts? I interpreted it as saying that the authors were moving Pipizini from a tribe in Eristalinae to a subfamily, Pipizinae, in Syrphidae, to the effect that there is now a subfamily Pipizinae and no tribe Pipizini (the taxonomy as currently modeled at Pipizinae). That is, Pipizini is considered a synonym of Pipizinae. However, it seems some sources had a different interpretation (e.g. BioLib, FossilWorks), where a new subfamily Pipizinae was created, while the tribe Pipizini remained under Pipizinae.

I'm inclined to believe my interpretation, especially since an overview of syrphid taxonomy posted by Ximo Mengual (the first author) on the Syrphidae Community Website shows Pipizinae containing no tribes. iNaturalist's taxonomy also supports this interpretation (taxonomy changes).

Thanks. --WrenFalcon (talk) 16:14, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I would agree with your interpretation. The article states at the end "Based on all the evidence mentioned above, we propose to revise the taxonomic rank of the tribe Pipizini to subfamily Pipizinae stat. rev.", so tribe Pipizini is now subfamily Pipizinae. The authors don't mention the newly established subfamily includes any tribes, so I too assume there aren't any.

BioLib from my experience is problematic for many reasons and IMO unreliable as a taxonomic source, and in this case it doesn't give any sources for why it places Pipizini under Pipizinae (nor for any of the other data on tha page, for that matter). Meanwhile, PBDB / FossilWorks (FossilWorks' website went down last year, but PBDB seems to take its place) says its claim that Pipizini is under Pipizinae comes directly from Mengual et al. 2015: I think this is probably an error on their part? Monster Iestyn (talk) 17:55, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Just to point out that PBDB is a multi-contributor site so there is probably not a "PBDB voice" as such. Individual contributions can get it wrong sometimes... Tony 1212 (talk) 17:59, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you! --WrenFalcon (talk) 18:16, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

Something fishy...

Our Pisces is matched to fish (Q152), but that Wikidata item has its "Instance of = taxon" statement set to deprecated.

What's up? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:11, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: the statement was set to deprecated back in 2021 [1], and it seems nobody reversed it all these years later. (The taxon name statement was also set to deprecated shortly after, but that was changed back the same day.) Perhaps nobody disagreed with it, or otherwise questioned it? It might be redundant anyway as both paraphyletic group (Q58051350) and grade (Q2612572) are subclasses of taxon (Q16521), but I don't really know what should be done. Monster Iestyn (talk) 19:23, 28 March 2025 (UTC)

@Monster Iestyn and Pigsonthewing: The English Wikipedia disambiguation page Pisces says “Pisces, an obsolete (because of land vertebrates) taxonomic superclass including all fish.” The original wording on the disambiguation page was “Fish, as an obsolete taxonomic term.” added in September 2006. (The links above all points to enWP.) –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 20:35, 28 March 2025 (UTC).

From Wikipedia as at now:

{| class="wikitable"
|Subphylum:
|[[:en:Vertebrate|Vertebrata]]
|}
{| class="wikitable"
! colspan="2" |Groups included
|-
| colspan="2" |
* "[[:en:Agnatha|Agnatha]]"
* <abbr>†</abbr>"[[:en:Placodermi|Placodermi]]"
* <abbr>†</abbr>"[[:en:Acanthodii|Acanthodii]]"
* [[:en:Chondrichthyes|Chondrichthyes]]
* [[:en:Osteichthyes|Osteichthyes]]
** [[:en:Actinopterygii|Actinopterygii]]
** [[:en:Sarcopterygii|Sarcopterygii]] <small>(including [[:en:Tetrapod|tetrapods]])</small>
|}

I note Gnathostomata (everything that are not Agnatha) is missing from this summary. It seems that Agnatha and Gnathostomata are treated as infraphyla of Vertebrata per the page for the latter, which has:

"The fish include the jawless Agnatha, and the jawed Gnathostomata. The jawed fish include both the cartilaginous fish and the bony fish. Bony fish include the lobe-finned fish, which gave rise to the tetrapods, the animals with four limbs."

Whether one includes non-fish Tetrapoda (amphibians, reptiles and mammals) that evolved from fishes within Sarcopterygii is a question for the cladists (in IRMNG I do not, following CoL 2016, PBDB does I think).

"Pisces" as a taxonomic group is obsolete since the term includes both the Agnatha and the Gnathostomata which are these days treated as infraphyla of their own, leaving no room for a traditional "class Pisces" which would have lived at at a lower level and included them both... Tony 1212 (talk) 17:14, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

FYI: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

Popular: https://www.livescience.com/animals/giant-fungus-like-organism-may-be-a-completely-unknown-branch-of-life

Academic: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.14.643340v1 —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 05:41, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Well, this is about Prototaxites (no Wikispecies entry as yet, but should be...) - a well known organism about which there are competing theories, most recently that it was a fungus of some type but not closely related to other fungi. The cited, new work is a preprint which (as I read it) would remove it from kingdom Fungi altogether, however as a preprint (not published or maybe peer reviewed) it should not yet be cited, I believe... In other words: somebody's new opinion, not yet formally published and too early to see how it will be received by relevant other workers in the field (although it may be correct of course, but too soon to know). Cheers Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 17:25, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Correct, it has not been peer reviewed or accepted by any naming authority. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:35, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Indeed. Although Wikispecies can certainly have a page for Prototaxites, probably just assigned to Fungi for now pending additional scientific discussion and/or consensus... most recent published reference would be What to Do with Prototaxites? by Matthew P. Nelsen and C. Kevin Boyce (2022) Tony 1212 (talk) 17:39, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Actually there is a newer one that also considers Prototaxites to be a fungus: Vajda et al, 2023, "Prototaxites reinterpreted as mega-rhizomorphs, facilitating nutrient transport in early terrestrial ecosystems", Can. J. Microbiol. 69: 17–31 (2023) | dx.doi.org/10.1139/cjm-2021-0358 . Interestingly, these authors reconstruct Prototaxites as a fungal structure creeping along the ground, not as a giant Devonian "tree" up to 9 meters tall... Tony 1212 (talk) 18:18, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Vote now on the revised UCoC Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter

The voting period for the revisions to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines ("UCoC EG") and the UCoC's Coordinating Committee Charter is open now through the end of 1 May (UTC) (find in your time zone). Read the information on how to participate and read over the proposal before voting on the UCoC page on Meta-wiki.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review of the EG and Charter was planned and implemented by the U4C. Further information will be provided in the coming months about the review of the UCoC itself. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

In cooperation with the U4C -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:34, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

BHL link templates

I have started merging {{BHL page}} and {{BHL item}} into {{BHL}}. Please see the examples on the latter's documentation page and comment on any issues or concerns at Template talk:BHL#Development. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:56, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

The merge is now complete and I have marked the former two templates as deprecated. I'll see about getting a bot to replace them. Once again, please note any issues on the talk page of the combined template. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:01, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Thank you very much, @Andy, good work! I'll see if for example the AutoWikiBrowser can be of assistance (however I run a Mac, so the AWB editor sometimes needs a bit... persuasion). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:47, 19 March 2025 (UTC).

Good idea - I have AWB, I'll give that a go. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:54, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

Using AWB, I now have now started removing {{BHL item}}. I will finish that, and do a trial run on {{BHL page}} tomorrow, then will need clearance to run AWB using my bot account to do the bulk of the conversions. Here's a BRFA. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:12, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

{{BHL item}} is now unused. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:17, 21 March 2025 (UTC)

┌───────┘ The bot is now approved, and added to Wikispecies:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 23:35, 22 March 2025 (UTC).

We need to update the "Wikispecies tools:" panel that appears below the editing window (at least in some skins) to replace {{BHL page}} with {{BHL}}. Where can that be done, and who can do it? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:35, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

 Done It's stored at MediaWiki:Edittools and I just edited it. Let me know if more is needed. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:46, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

{{BHL item}} and {{BHL page}} are now orphaned, and redirected to {{BHL}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:50, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Template:Q etc.

As agreed in Renaming Template:Q, I have now replaced all instances of the old {{Q}} with {{Wikidata short link}} (shortcut: {{Qn}}), and moved {{QID}} to {{Q}}.

This means that our {{Q}} now works in the same way as the equivalent on other projects, and won't be broken by future template imports.

So now:

{{Q|1043}} gives

Carl Linnaeus (Q1043)

{{Qn|1043}} gives

Q1043

{{Qx|1043}} gives

Carl Linnaeus

Please see the documentation of {{Q}} for other parameters and output options; and let me know if you find any problems resulting from this change. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:21, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, this will certainly simplify things. Good work! –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:47, 2 April 2025 (UTC).

Updated to use {{Qn}} as a shortcut for "Numeric" output. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:24, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Copyright license

User:MGA73 raised a question on Wikispecies talk:Copyrights about the Creative Commons license. On the footer of each page, the license has been updated to CC-BY-SA 4.0. But on Wikispecies:Copyrights, it still states CC-BY-SA 3.0. I'm not sure if one of us can simply change it to 4.0 or whether it requires a community vote to officially change it to 4.0. Would appreciate others to chime in here. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:34, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

The footer is stored at MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyright-footer. It was changed by WMFOffice (talk • contribs • block log • all projects) on 202-06-07 due to a larger change in the Terms of Use. Therefore, I'm changing Wikispecies:Copyrights unilaterally, as I don't think it needs any discussion. I'm happy to be corrected. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:29, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Spol. Zeyl.

I'm working on a new page for George Morrison Reid Henry. A number of his publications are listed as published in Spol. Zeyl., in the 1930s and 1940s, but our page on Spolia Zeylanica, ISSN 0081-3745, says publication ended in 1918 or 1921 (depending on which part of the page you believe), with no successor title listed.

What's the story? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:44, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Heya Andy, would seem to have been taken over by other institutions at various points see the BHL Page

https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/10229

Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 22:19, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Google Books results as well as Hathitrust clearly shows the journal running long after 1919. I'm assuming that 1919 could be just an error based on a misreading of the data at BHL, while 1921 is just the end year for volume 11, the last volume currently accessible from BHL. (Also, could Colombo Museum, National Museums of Ceylon and National Museums of Sri Lanka all be the same institution? Though the year spans given for each on BHL are cryptic to be honest.) Monster Iestyn (talk) 04:38, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

That page says "Vol. 13-22, pt. 1, issued as Ceylon journal of science. Section B. Zoology, which continues as an independent publication, v. 23-" (for Ceylon Journal of Science (Biological Sciences), we have ISSN 0069-2379). I'm still confused. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:25, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

See also [2], which says:

The Ceylon Journal of Science was founded in 1924 by the government of Ceylon bringing together the Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya (first published in 1901), the Spolia Zeylanica (first published in 1903) and the Bulletin of the Ceylon Fisheries (first published in 1923). Different branches of science were covered by separately published sections A, B, C, D, E, F and G. With the establishment of the University of Ceylon in 1942, the administration of the Journal was taken up by the University and Spolia Zeylanica reverted to its original status of a separate publication. In 1958 sections A, B and C comprising Botany, Zoology and Fisheries were combined as the Ceylon Journal of Science (Biological Sciences) new series.

It continues to be published by the University of Peradeniya, Formally the University of Ceylon...

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:31, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

Wikidata and Sister Projects: Online event

Hello everyone, I’m writing to announce an upcoming event called Wikidata and Sister Projects that will be a mini online conference to highlight the different ways Wikidata can be connected and integrated with the other WM projects.

We are currently looking for session ideas and speakers for our program and wanted to reach out in case there were any editors here that might have a cool idea for a session proposal. More info and templates for sessions can be found on the talk page. As previously mentioned, we would like to showcase the relationship between Wikispecies and Wikidata and how data such as facts, or links to external databases and external identifiers can be stored and centralised at Wikidata and reused on Wikispecies.

The event is scheduled between May 29 - June 1st, 2025. If you have any questions about the event, would like more information or have a session idea to propose, please feel free to get in touch by replying to this post or writing on the event page or on my talk page. Thanks for reading, - Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 07:19, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Catalogue of Life Extended

Heya everyone. Letting you know the Catalogue of Life Extended Edition has now been released in Checklist.org and is available to use. Catalogue of Life XE can be found here. It is still a little early days but is fully functional with more options in the pipeline for future releases. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 16:25, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

PhytoKeys

I have just been informed by Kew that around 2021, the underlying databases behind POWO had trouble in importing from PhytoKeys. By now there probably are very few names that are still affected, but it is not unknown. For example I came across Saxifraga viridiflora. Please do not delete if the taxon is not in POWO, but make a check. First port of call should be IPNI, if the name is registered then it is likely a POWO error. Do a Scholar search and see if the taxon is referred to in later works. Check through other databases. Finally contact Kew via wcb@kew.org or bi@kew.org. Hope this helps. Andyboorman (talk) 08:00, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Final proposed modifications to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter now posted

The proposed modifications to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and the U4C Charter are now on Meta-wiki for community notice in advance of the voting period. This final draft was developed from the previous two rounds of community review. Community members will be able to vote on these modifications starting on 17 April 2025. The vote will close on 1 May 2025, and results will be announced no later than 12 May 2025. The U4C election period, starting with a call for candidates, will open immediately following the announcement of the review results. More information will be posted on the wiki page for the election soon.

Please be advised that this process will require more messages to be sent here over the next two months.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 02:04, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Category:Taxa by author

This Category has 61.461 entries. In a gross estimative, >25% are empty categories. I don't see any logical in opening a category for some taxon authority who is not an author (yet). It is a waste of effort and confusing. Should be all deleted? If agreed, could somebody set up a bot to perform? Thanks Hector Bottai (talk) 22:04, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

This one cuts me to my soul. The problem is that we have redlinks to a bunch of these categories on taxa authority pages, so we have two bad options at the moment: either have a bunch of wanted categories or a bunch of empty categories. E.g. see Syed Qaiser Abbas, which presently includes the line "0 taxon names authored by Syed Qaiser Abbas" that links to Category:Syed Qaiser Abbas taxa. This is because the page has {{Taxa authored}}. The solution is to make an if/then statement so that the category is only linked if it exists and only make the category if it has at least one entry. I'm kind of okay at MediaWiki and marginally knowledgeable about Lua, so I could try to do this, but it would probably be better if someone more competent tried. The best person I know who edits here is @Pigsonthewing:. Andy, are you motivated to fix this template issue so that we can delete all these empty categories? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:55, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

There is a third problem: persons who have authored many names in their category, but they are not displayed on the author's page (e.g. Willem F. Prud'homme van Reine). This occurs for names with an apostrophe. --Thiotrix (talk) 09:05, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. These apostrophes cause problems, so there is a workaround to escape them. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:04, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

@Thiotrix: this edit fixed it. If you don't see it working immediately, you need to purge the page by going to https://species.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Willem_F._Prud%27homme_van_Reine&action=purge. Let me know if you see any other issues. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 16:09, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Great @Koavf:! I knew another way to fix it but much more complex and case to case. This seems to be a definitive solution. Thanks! And let's continue the discussion over the empty categories.--Hector Bottai (talk) 16:27, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for this improvement, --Thiotrix (talk) 10:36, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Motivated, yes, but sadly not sufficiently skilled. If the template is so modified, rather than hiding it when the category does not exist (or is empty), we could make it say "we have no taxons listed yet" with a link to our guide to creating such pages. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:24, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Hm, I'm not sure how I feel about mass deleting all the empty taxon by author categories, since I probably made some myself for taxon authors, but I'm also aware that many of such categories have been made for people who have never authored a taxon and/or probably never will do so; for those I definitely feel that a taxa by author category is completely pointless, and on a number of occasions I've deleted them for those non-taxon author people I've come across. (I also remove Category:Taxon authorities on the person's page when doing that) Monster Iestyn (talk) 16:35, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

For instance, the earlier linked example of Syed Qaiser Abbas has an empty category, but the sole publication linked as well as IPNI is indirect evidence that they have at least co-authored a genus of fungi Cytopleastrum Abbas, B. Sutton, Ghaffar & A. Abbas. Monster Iestyn (talk) 16:51, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

The problem is that I don't want a bunch of redlinks to show up at Special:WantedPages, nor Special:UnusedCategories. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:15, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

Personaly when I create an author page, and that I know the person is indeed a taxon author, I create automatically a category, e.g. today I created Pedro Bonfá-Neto with the corresponding category. But I do not plan to create the taxa pages myself. Let me know if to create automatically such categories are a no wanted pratcice. Christian Ferrer (talk) 23:11, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

I prefer to keep the empty categories. As the Category:Taxa by author will grow very large, I propose to use a better style of Table of Content with a subheading: Aa Ab Ac Ad ..., like here [3]. --Thiotrix (talk) 10:36, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

Well, it seems we haven't arrived to any conclusion. Agree mass deletion is out of question because would create a mass of red links and seems a bot is not possible to avoid. But I think we should recommend something from now on: a. not to create new empty categories, b. not to include the {{Taxa authored}} template in new authority pages who are not yet taxon authors. I personally will delete empty categories AND resulting red link every time I face one. By the way, I already applied to 100% of the authority pages I created--Hector Bottai (talk) 17:19, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Template:VN language requests

There are several historic requests to add languages to {{VN}} on its talk page, including one to add eight languages and one to add 380 (yes, 380!). I'm minded to refuse the latter on the basis that there is no evidence of there being volunteers willing or wanting to use them; but that and others need more input. Please discuss there, not here. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:32, 9 April 2025 (UTC)

Some recent Wikidata property proposals

The following open proposals for new Wikidata properties are relevant to the work of this project, and may be useful for citations or {{Authority control}}.

• d:Wikidata:Property proposal/species protection status
• d:Wikidata:Property proposal/IndExs Exsiccata ID
• d:Wikidata:Property proposal/BirdLife DataZone species ID
• d:Wikidata:Property proposal/BirdLife DataZone site ID

If you have any views, please express them on their respective Wikidata pages. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:59, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Caesalpinioideae

It looks like the large Fabaceae subfamily Caesalpinioideae has been satisfactorily circumscribed to the tribal level by;

• Bruneau, A., de Queiroz, L.P., Ringelberg, J.J., Borges, L.M., da Costa Bortoluzzi, R.L., Brown, G.K., Cardoso, D.B., Clark, R.P., de Souza Conceição, A., Cota, M.M.T. & Demeulenaere, E. 2024.  Advances in Legume Systematics 14. Classification of Caesalpinioideae. Part 2: Higher-level classification. PhytoKeys 240: 1. DOI: 10.3897/phytokeys.240.101716 Reference page. 

I have added the required tribes, but not yet populated them with their data. For those interested I recommend reading the paper. Also have a look at;

• Stevens, P.F. 2001 onwards. Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 14, July 2017 [and more or less continuously updated since]. Online. Reference page.  as Stevens is happy to accept Bruneau et al.

I will edit the subfamily in due course, but I am happy for feedback. Thanks for your time and happy reading. Andyboorman (talk) 19:25, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Sentence at the top of categories

Hello, I think we should create a kind of template to put at the top of the categories contained within Category:Repositories, for two pruposes: 1/ to standardize the text used, 2/ in that way to make translations.

We currently have a lot of different headings (e.g. "List of type specimens reposed in..", "List of species group taxa whose type specimens are housed in ...", "List of species group taxa with type specimens housed at ...", "List of taxa whose type specimens are deposited in..", ect.... ), and none are translated. To begin we should chose one and only one sentence and make it tranlsated at Wikispecies:Localization. Once it is done either we chose to use it directy at the top of the categories with the help of {{int:}}, or we create a template using itself {{int:List of type.... in}} followed by a {{PAGENAME}} giving the right link to the repository page. The potential use of a template has the advantage that, once created, it's easier for future maintenance, e.g. change of text or formatting.

If necassary I think I'm able to work and potentially to make such template, but I'm not able to put it on all the 3000 categories contained within Category:Repositories.

What are your comments? Christian Ferrer (talk) 13:59, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

• There is also the possibility of something similar to {{Taxa by author}} that is translated, maybe it is more simple. Christian Ferrer (talk) 16:06, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

@Christian Ferrer: Good idea! I've been thinking of this for many years, but never gotten around to invest any actual work into it. I'm not sure which of the methods you suggest that is best, but implementing the feature is a fairly straightforward endeavor regardless of which solution the community finally opts for. Adding the improvement to +3,000 pages isn't a very big task, if I use a bot. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 05:06, 14 April 2025 (UTC).

@Tommy Kronkvist: Thanks for the comment. Well, after to have read Help:Extension:Translate in MediaWiki, I think the Local interface translation ({{int:}}) is the best choice. We firstly need to chose the right sentence before to create an entry at Wikispecies:Localization. Either Wikispecies users potentially say here their opinion about the sentence we will use, or maybe Wikispecies:Requests for Comment is a best place to get users' attention. Christian Ferrer (talk) 08:07, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

See Template:Types by repository! Regards, Burmeister (talk) 11:08, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks you! the question is therefore settled. We should have a page Help:Categories dealing with all that kind of stuff. Christian Ferrer (talk) 16:39, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

• @Tommy Kronkvist: if either you, or someone else, want to put (or to replace current texts with) that template with a BOT in all categories that don't have it yet, you can use this wikitext: {{Types by repository|{{PAGENAME}}|{{PAGENAME}}}}, because the template have been made to work with parametters. The little issue here is that it will render only acronyms,

E.g. "{{Types by repository|{{PAGENAME}}|{{PAGENAME}}}}" placed in Category:FWRI will gives  :

List of type specimens reposed in FWRI.

Sadly I don't how you can get the full names of the repositories with a bot, even if it is possible, but personaly I think that by default the acronyms are ok in the extand that the link lead to the page containing the full name. Christian Ferrer (talk) 17:25, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

IUCN template broken?

The IUCN template seems broken. See for example Bubo blakistoni where the link rendered by {{IUCN|EN|22689007|Bubo blakistoni}} ends up on a "404 page not found" page on the domain "apiv3.iucnredlist.org" instead of the proper Bubo blakistoni IUCN page on "www.iucnredlist.org".

The same is true for the three Canis lupus examples listed on the actual Template:IUCN page. Any ideas about what causes this? For comparison, the IUCN links created by the {{Taxonbar}} template works as expected. (Again, you can use the Bubo blakistoni page as an example. The Taxonbar template there includes an IUCN link with the same IUCN species ID as in the non-working template, i.e. 22689007, except here the link is working.)

–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 11:44, 14 April 2025 (UTC).

Same with other links, received message of "unsafe connection". Also tried from a different template at the Spanish wiki, same situation. Don't know the reason. I accesed their site and search straight with no problem. Hector Bottai (talk) 14:46, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

@Hector Bottai: I've never received an "unsafe link" message by use of our IUCN template. That particular template always produces a link that includes the encrypted HTTPS protocol instead of the old, unencrypted HTTP ditto. Hence the links should never be "unsafe" (at least not as long as the IUCN renews their SSL or TLS certificates on a regular basis – which they most likely do every year, just like for example Wikimedia). Having said that, I occasionally do get the "unsafe link" message from a few of our other link templates: especially some of the smaller external sites sometimes fail to renew their security certificates in time (due to lack of funding?) –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:04, 14 April 2025 (UTC).

┌────┘ Maybe it's time to change the template to use www.iucnredlist.org rather than apiv3.iucnredlist.org? Last time it was working I think apiv3.iucnredlist.org links just redirected to www.iucnredlist.org links anyway. Monster Iestyn (talk) 14:57, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

@Tommy Kronkvist: I fixed it, the former url have been deprecated, I changed it in the template. Christian Ferrer (talk) 16:34, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

@Christian Ferrer: Thank you, it seems to work very well! Thanks also for removing the <small> tag that had slipped in during the recent edits. Well spotted, since it's not part of our standard format. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:04, 14 April 2025 (UTC).

Bad link. Happening again today, at leat to me. Both WS and ES Anybody else?--Hector Bottai (talk) 12:08, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

@Hector Bottai: I haven't checked from Spanish Wikipedia (esWP), but here from Wikispecies they all looks good to me.

For example (per your own recent edits of Otus insularis and Riccordia bicolor):

• {{IUCN|CR|22688667|Otus insularis}} which renders as IUCN: Otus insularis  (Critically Endangered)

and

• {{IUCN|NT|22687380|Riccordia bicolor}} which renders as IUCN: Riccordia bicolor  (Near Threatened)

Those two IUCN species links points to

• https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22688667/177971497 (for Otus insularis) and
• https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22687380/219240628 (for Riccordia bicolor) which both are correct.

By the way, please note that some templates doesn't work very well if one adds blank spaces between the parameters and the surrounding pipe symbols. I don't know whether our IUCN template is affected, but for the sake of example a code syntax such as

• {{IUCN|EN|15933|Pan troglodytes}} will work, while
• {{IUCN |EN |15933 |Pan troglodytes}} or {{IUCN | EN |15933 | Pan troglodytes}} sometimes doesn't.

This particular shortcoming isn't specific to Wikispecies, but a technical issue for all of Wikimedia (although the problem is rapidly decreasing, as our global tech staff is constantly refining the software). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk),v13:11, 15 April 2025 (UTC).

Many thanks Tommy, working fine now at WS...and not at ES. Some temporary bug. Hector Bottai (talk) 13:18, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Anthias anthias wrong taxonavigation

Moved from Talk:Anthias anthias. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:17, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

Anthias anthias = a Fish Why does the Taxonavigation describe an Adephaga (beatle)? W0rldW1nt3r (talk) 19:34, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

The nomenclatural note at Anthiadinae explains what's going on: the fish subfamily used to be spelled "Anthiinae", but this is a homonym of the beetle subfamily Anthiinae so it was emended to Anthiadinae. The Wikispecies page for the fish subfamily used to be also named Anthiinae until 2019, when it was moved to its current name and "Anthiinae" reused for the beetle subfamily. Unfortunately nobody updated the taxonavigation templates for the genera as well, so they all look like they're beetle genera. Monster Iestyn (talk) 20:40, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

(Okay sorry, that's not quite true, Odontanthias and Pseudanthias were corrected in 2021, but none of the others were.) Monster Iestyn (talk) 20:46, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

There, all fixed  Done All genera under Anthiadinae now have their taxonavigation templates corrected, so Anthias anthias and relatives should no longer show Adephaga. Monster Iestyn (talk) 21:40, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

FYI: Can Citizen Science Be Trusted? New Study of Birds Shows It Can

https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/can-citizen-science-be-trusted-new-study-birds-shows-it-can —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:08, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

Vote on proposed modifications to the UCoC Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter

The voting period for the revisions to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter closes on 1 May 2025 at 23:59 UTC (find in your time zone). Read the information on how to participate and read over the proposal before voting on the UCoC page on Meta-wiki.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community in your language, as appropriate, so they can participate as well.

In cooperation with the U4C --

Keegan (WMF) (talk) 03:40, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

---

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