Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life

Notice of proposal to put WikiProject Poultry under the wing of WikiProject Birds

Join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Birds#Make WikiProject Poultry a task force.

Author or editor?

@BlackcurrantTea: Another editor and I have been discussing whether people who prepare taxonomic databases should be credited in references as authors or editors. Should it be:

Savela, Markku (4 August 2016). "Crocanthes epitherma Lower, 1896". Lepidoptera and Some Other Life Forms. Retrieved 9 July 2020.

or

Savela, Markku, ed. (4 August 2016). "Crocanthes epitherma Lower, 1896". Lepidoptera and Some Other Life Forms. Retrieved 9 July 2020.

I'm wondering if there should be a general rule for this type of reference. Thanks for your input. SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:04, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

I know this is dry as unbuttered toast, but I'm not sure which is right. This would affect a lot of references. Is there another place I should get input? Thank you, SchreiberBike | ⌨  01:22, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

SchreiberBike, I've had this page on my watchlist since your ping. I've not responded because I've had nothing to add to our previous conversation; I wanted to see what others' thoughts on the matter were before adding my own here. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 04:57, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Generally I follow what the taxonomic database suggests for the citation. Where attribution to someone is suggested this is usually as editor(s), e.g. Fishbase, Catalog of Fishes, Reptile database, IOC, Avibase. Many don't suggest an author, e.g. POWO, WFO, Fossilworks and WoRMS (generally). Some others suggest authors for particular entries, e.g. the IUCN lists assessors as authors. One where there is a site-wide author is ASW6 where Darrell Frost does seem to be author and editor. Algaebase also lists site-wide authors. WoRMS perhaps provides some guidance, as it hosts/mirrors other databases. Sometimes it has a plain entry with just WoRMS as author (e.g. Gastropoda), other times it cites a component database (e.g. Helix), but when it has a Fishbase entry it lists their editors in the suggested citation (e.g. Salmo) or the authors for Algaebase (e.g. Chara acicularis. Both the latter follow the suggested citation style of the database in question. I think this is good practice. —  Jts1882 | talk  06:13, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Where the database makes it clear which they think they are, like you said, I'd follow their suggestion. Many databases don't specify though. What to do then? I've posted a note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lepidoptera to see if anyone there has any input. Thanks, SchreiberBike | ⌨  05:04, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

I would say neither if its not clear. For the site you quote, Markku Savela is listed as webmaster. I assume he is author of the website (the |work= in citation template parlance), but authors for a taxonomic database tends to imply the person making taxonomic decisions, so editor is probably better if one must to be added. He also warns against citing the website for taxonomy, so I'd omit his name from the citation. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:46, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Need help assessing some edits

Pillow4 was reported at WP:ANI (two threads: Archive 1043 and current thread) for making massive unsourced changes to taxonomical information at various articles. This user also went on to create a small sock farm, which resulted in the user being blocked. The problem is that most of the editors who have reviewed these edits don't have the technical knowledge to evaluate whether they are valid (a case of an overzealous, but otherwise well-meaning, editor) or bogus (a case of rapid-fire vandalism). Can anyone in this WikiProject take a look at a sample of the edits of Pillow4 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), Pillow6 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and Quilt1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) to assess their validity. A small sample should suffice to know whether these edits are worth keeping or not. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 12:05, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

It looks a lot has already been reverted. None of Quilt1's edits are the lastest edits. Most of Pillow6's remaining latest edits are useful refinements of categorization (these can be spotted in their edit history as a series of edits to different articles that all result in the same change in character count). Pillow4 also did some useful category refinement, but most of their other live edits were adding inappropriate |display_parents= values to taxoboxes. The Pillow accounts also have some live edits where they made a series of edits to the same article. These appear to be aimed at updating the classification presented in the article. None of the edits I looked at added a source for a different classification; but some edits REMOVED statements about classification that had been sourced.

Keep the categorization edits. Revert Pillow4's |display_parents=. I'm inclined to see their other edits reverted as perhaps good-faith, but unsourced. Plantdrew (talk) 02:56, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: Thank you for taking the time to look into this. WikiDan61^ChatMe!_ReadMe!! 11:42, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

I would hesitate to keep any of their edits. Unhelpful categorisation edits by IPs, clearly the same person (the easiest examples to find as I just reverted them): removing Amniote from Category:Mammalia, removing an article about a mare from Category:Individual mares, and removing an article about a racehorse who was euthanised from Category:Animal deaths by euthanasia. Zigongosaurus1138 has reviewed some of their work, and I've asked them to join this discussion. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 06:11, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

As an example, what about Artiofabula? I asked them to source it but obviously that never happened. Looks legit to me, but weird sub-order tribes really aren't my area. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 00:11, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

It is pretty accurate, apart from using a single superfamily for the river dolphins. I've added new river dolphin superfamilies and some references for the cetacean taxonomy and for the definition of the clade. It still needs a good taxonomic reference for the artiodactyls generally, which comes back to the lack of a clear replacement for MSW3, and for the phylogeny (Meredith et al., 2011, would do but I'm looking for a more artiodactyla focused study. —  Jts1882 | talk  13:52, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Watch User:Pillowquilt2 with some edits in draft. —  Jts1882 | talk  15:25, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

List of species redirects to delete

I was going to just nominate one and start the process, but I'll draft it up here as a start and to make sure I'm not missing anything.

Redirects for deletion:

Achillea ochroleuca (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Achillea setacea (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Achillea tenuifolia (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Reliable and maintained sources listing these taxa as accepted: Achillea ochroleuca,[1] Achillea setacea,[2] Achillea tenuifolia[3]

Per WP:TOL, WP:PLANTS, other TOL subprojects, and WP:RED, we don't create redirects from accepted species to places like a list of species or the parent taxon - except in cases like being the only member of a monotypic genus. General consensus in many discussions (couldn't find one - is there an actual policy that points to species/other taxa as inherently notable? or just accepted practice?) is that all accepted species are notable, and so should remain as redlinks. Most recently, see the RFD for the redirect Achillea ambrosiaca where the consensus was to delete the redirect, as well as Exophthalmus vittatus (also deleted) where @Plantdrew: said "I'd be perfectly happy to see all such species to genus redirects deleted".

It looks like neither PROD nor CSD options are available for this type of situation, and that these must all go through RFD, right? If folks want to help check through places like Category:Taxon redirects with possibilities and Template:R from species to genus, I'm happy for other uncontroversially accepted taxa to be added to the nomination. Though as @Abductive: noted on the Achillea ambrosiaca RFD, it would be great to somehow automate this process... —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 22:17, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

• Long ago there was a discussion that reached the consensus that species and higher taxa (but certainly not lower) are not only automatically notable, they are so notable that they must merely pass WP:V, not WP:GNG to have an article. And proving that one does not pass WP:V is on the person nominating the article for deletion. Abductive (reasoning) 22:23, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

I think that oversimplifies the position on supraspecific taxa. Accepted taxa at the principle ranks (genus, family, order, ...) are notable. But I think that accepted taxa at intermediate ranks have to be treated on an individual basis. (Out of mild curiosity how many subgenera have articles?) Lavateraguy (talk) 18:19, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

• (ec) (couldn't find one - is there an actual policy that points to species/other taxa as inherently notable? or just accepted practice?) - that's a good point, BTW. I am only aware of WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES, which is not a guideline or policy in itself but states "All species that have a correct name (botany) or valid name (zoology) are inherently notable." I have always assumed that there is something more definite in the background, and it would be nice to have that to point to on occasion... --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:26, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Ah thanks! I knew I had seen something like that somewhere. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 22:38, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

This is not followed at the paleontology project, though, where, unless very notable and with enough literature to warrant separation, species are treated at the genus article. FunkMonk (talk) 02:32, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Because fossil species often turn out to fail WP:V—as an example, flowers and fruit rarely are found fossilized together, making descriptions, to be kind, weak. Abductive (reasoning) 05:13, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Well, species of any kind have a pretty strict publication process (see ICZN), so it's not the sourcing that's the issue, rather the fact that very little can be said about a fossil species that doesn't apply to the genus as a whole. Exceptions are recently extinct species, such as mammoths, where we know almost as much about them as we do living species. But also the fact that it is extremely difficult to be certain whether a given fossil represents a new species or just an individual of an already described, similar fossil species. We can't observe their colour or behavior, so it's practically impossible. FunkMonk (talk) 13:08, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

The sourcing is still primary, and we hear all the time about how what was thought to be a juvenile turns out to be a related dwarf species, or the other way around. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with treating them at the genus level, its the best thing to do. Abductive (reasoning) 14:32, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I did mean extant species in my original post but forgot to specify. :) —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 20:22, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, RFD is the deletion process that should be used for these (and SPECIESOUTCOMES is the most authoritative statement about Wikipedia's practices with regards to notability of taxa). It's going to take a lot of RFDs to get through them going three at a time. I started the plants with possibilities category in 2014. My impetus was seeing Panax ginseng redirecting to ginseng, and wanting some way to flag that the species was worthy of an article in it's own right. At first it was redirects from fairly high profile plants, and I had visions that I'd shift from wikignoming to content creation, starting with the plants with possibilities. But I just kept on wikignoming, and other editors added possibilities category for animals and other taxa, and we filled the possibilities categories with obscure species redirects that nobody is very interested in writing about. At this point, the possibilities categories just need to be purged (there are a few titles/redirects that are high profile, but not many).

I've added possibility categories to redirects as I've come across them, but I haven't made an effort to go systematically through edits of editors I know are responsible for a large number of taxon redirects. User:Galactikapedia created well over 6,000 redirects from lower taxa to higher taxa (some have since been converted to articles, largely by Qbugbot). User:Stemonitis had a history of converting substubs to redirects (especially crustaceans created by Polbot (see redirects to Orconectes), but also some insects (List of Tachinidae genera) and plants (List of Carex species). Galactikapedia has expressed remorse for their actions on their talk page, but we are still stuck with their redirects. Perhaps a special CSD (as was done with Neelix's redirects) would be appropriate for Galactikapedia's redirects? Plantdrew (talk) 02:27, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes please. Abductive (reasoning) 05:14, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

I mentioned it on the Plant Project talk page, but using custom CSS to highlight redirects (see WP:Visualizing redirects) makes it easy to pick out the six redirected species in the list on Achillea. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:58, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Yep, having a different color displayed from redirects links is how I found the Achillea species above and tagged them as possibilities. They were created by User:Joseph Laferriere, who is the most prolific creator of redirects for synonyms of plant taxa. He had a bad habit of copying synonym lists from TPL, without removing names flagged as illegitimate, so a few of his redirects represent junior homonyms (to be fair, in this case, TPL hadn't flagged A. ochroleuca and A. setacea as illegitimate). The vast majority of Josephs redirects are good, but can be difficult to find the bad ones. Whenever I come across a bad one, I've redirected it to the next higher taxon, added a possibilities template, and a note in hidden text with the authority for the senior homonym. Plantdrew (talk) 21:38, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

"Perhaps a special CSD (as was done with Neelix's redirects) would be appropriate for Galactikapedia's redirects?" & link for reference - that sounds like a reasonable option to me, but maybe it could be less specific since the issue spans beyond any single person's editing habits. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 18:54, 27 August 2020 (UTC)

One particularly prolific creator of many (tens?) of thousands of redirects from subspecies and species to their parent taxa is User:Wilhelmina Will. This practice has continued as recently as July 2020. Loopy30 (talk) 12:40, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Potential deletion of WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES

Welp, heads up that our collective decades of effort may soon be up for discussion and erased. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 15:35, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

I undid the change. There are almost half a million articles with taxoboxes, the majority of which will be on species. A strong consensus is needed to change such long standing guidance. Let there be a proper RfC. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:58, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

The people advocating do it on Wikispecies don't seem to know what Wikispecies is about or intended to be. The Schefflera simplex article selected as a "bad" example, even in stub form, goes beyond the information Wikispecies will ever contain as it has distribution data and a historical note. Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that everyone can edit, while Wikispecies is not. —  Jts1882 | talk  16:11, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

May be good to finally have a big discussion about this, and get something more solid than WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES out of it. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:52, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. WP:N has a side box with a list of "Subject-specific guidelines" which provide criteria for presumed notability. I don't know what process got these guidelines accepted but don't see why it shouldn't be possible for species guidelines. The process of describing a species and its being accepted by various authorities pretty much provided the coverage in primary and secondary sources that is required for notability and verificability. —  Jts1882 | talk  17:15, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Updates to Ichnobox and Oobox

{{Ichnobox}} and {{Oobox}} have been updated. They should now handle automatic italicization of page titles and taxobox names in the same way as other automated taxboxes. See Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system#Updates to Ichnobox and Oobox templates for more information. I have tested the changes, but if you notice any issues, please report them there. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:59, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Change to colour of Ichnoboxes

I'd like to make a small change to the colour of Ichnoboxes; comments please at Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system#Colour of Ichnoboxes. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:56, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Speciesbox support for ranks between species and genus

At present, {{Speciesbox}} allows only one rank, subgenus, to be directly specified (i.e. not via a taxonomy template). All other such ranks need a taxonomy template to work with {{Speciesbox}}. Please see Template talk:Speciesbox#Ranks between species and genus for a request for comment relating to this. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:17, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Mass cleanup edits?

There is large, and still growing, number of {{Taxonbar}} pages (~13.6k) in Category:CS1 errors: deprecated parameters (0). I'd like to take this opportunity to both fix the CS1 error as well as piggyback what would otherwise be mostly trivial/inconsequential edits to these pages' wikitexts. These edits would be done via AWB manually, "slowly" (as opposed to in a large, fast burst from a WP:BRFA), over at least dozens of days. While "slow", it may be (and has been) undesirable to those who monitor their watchlist frequently. My desire here is to gauge what sort of consensus (or lack thereof) exists here for a run like this, and possibly what sort of daily limit would be acceptable.

The piggybacked edits would include:

1. Standardizing ~62 template redirects from {{Automatic taxobox}}–{{Wikispecies-inline}} to their canonical titles
2. Moving {{Italic title}}, {{Use dmy dates}}/etc., {{Use American English}}/etc., {{Good article}}/etc., etc. to their correct locations
   1. Removing duplicates (sometimes there is one at the top & at the bottom of a page)
3. Ending infoboxes with "}}" on a new line, followed by a blank line, then the article prose
4. Removing certain infobox parameter/values like |image_size=<any text> & |image_width=<null>, now handled differently or elsewhere
5. Correctly ordering §See also, §References, §External links (a non-trivial edit by itself, but not scanned for due to the long processing time it requires per page)
6. Removing {{Clear}} after {{Default sort}}/categories, or if redundantly adjacent to full-width navboxes like {{Taxonbar}}
7. Replace <references/> with {{Reflist}}
8. De-lint by self-closing HTML tags: <br/>, <wbr/>, <hr/>
9. Capitalize |status_system=IUCN (none required at this time)
10. Strip single-portal {{Stack|{{Portal...}}}}s
11. Correct {{Taxonbar}} placement
12. Correct stub-template & navbar placement
13. Remove empty §External links, including those with only an empty bullet
14. Remove commas preceding Jr./Sr. per WP:JR/SR
15. Start infoboxes on a separate line
16. Empty line before navbar block (new)

I'm open to adding more minor manipulations too, as long as they are not extremely conditional or complicated.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  03:16, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Go for it and thank you. I just spent the last week or so doing something similar for about 12 thousand mostly Lepidoptera related articles using AWB. It's a little annoying to the watchlist, but it needs to be done and it's good that you're able to accomplish other things along the way. I'd say go as fast as you can handle without losing your mind. SchreiberBike | ⌨  08:29, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm good with it. Cleaning up Wikipedia is a worthy task that outweighs the temporary inconvenience of having a flooded watchlist.--SilverTiger12 (talk) 22:37, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

It's a thankless job, but definitely needed to keep articles standardized across the 'pedia. Also, note that {{Italic title}} is not required for most articles with automatic taxoboxes and speciesboxes. Loopy30 (talk) 01:16, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I would like to propose a few more maintenance changes including:

1. Replace a number of template redirects (exact list on request) by one of the two canonical forms {{use dmy dates}} and {{use mdy dates}} for performance reasons (per Help_talk:Citation_Style_1/Archive_70#use_xxx_dates_redirects and Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2020_September_5#Template:Usemdydates)
2. Replace a number of deprecated or discouraged non-hyphenated citation template parameters by their hyphenated form (per Help_talk:Citation_Style_1#name-given=_and_-surname_parameter_variants and Help_talk:Citation_Style_1#support_for_various_deprecated_parameters_withdrawn) (where [#] is a placeholder for an optional number 1 or higher.):
   • |editor[#]link[#]= -> |editor[#]-link[#]=
   • |author[#]link[#]= -> |author[#]-link[#]=
   • |author[#]mask[#]= -> |author[#]-mask[#]=
   • |displayauthors= -> |display-authors=
3. Change <references/> to {{reflist}}.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:35, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, these will all be performed as well.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:08, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

Support proposal. Not sure how you aren't going to lose your mind with that many (I knew I'm tired after 100), but if you can do that, go for it! --Gonnym (talk) 17:07, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Support. I take it the first task means to replace redirects with canonical titles of templates? And your 51 templates includes most of those that are frequently found on taxon pages (so you don't need people chiming in with a whole bunch of examples such as "change {{taxobar}} to {{taxonbar}}")? Correcting placement of stub templates would be another task worth adding.

Personally, I don't care if my watchlist gets flooded. Since you suggested dozens of days for 13.6k articles, I'll suggest around 4 dozen (~250 articles a day). The handful of complaints I've had about flooding somebodies watchlist generally seem to be a not-currently active editor who has created a bunch of articles for species in a particular genus (or in several related genera). I'm not sure how feasible it is, but if you could scramble edits, so that you are not editing articles in either an alphabetic order, nor by a database Page ID (i.e. the default sort order in PetScan) that might reduce flooding of watchlists.

Re: task 3. I add a blank line between an infobox and prose when missing, and support this. If there is an image between the infobox and prose, I put a blank line between the image and the prose and have the image on the line directly below the infobox. I don't know if there is any guidance about spacing infobox+image+prose, but I suppose that should follow some standard (which I may have not been following myself). Plantdrew (talk) 02:05, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

And getting more esoteric, but is it worth editing to move taxobox parameters to position reflecting where they display? name/fossil_range/image.../status.../... display in that order, but I find articles where the image parameters are in between status parameters. Plantdrew (talk) 02:25, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: Yes to nearly everything, except infobox+image+prose (which I've never done so I have no opinion on it & have no existing code) & infobox wikitext parameter order (which I have some experience with from WP:AST & when updating IUCN status+refs here, but oh my god is it complicated, especially when <ref>s & <ref/>s are involved; I'm not opposed to looking into this, if there's enough interest, but it would & should be part of a separate effort). I'm using a hodgepodge of AWB rules + code that I've accumulated over many years. I initially listed what I thought would be the most relevant/impactful of the trivial edits, and expanded it as necessary, so I've updated it some more.

I'll randomize a large majority of these pages; that is a good suggestion. In terms of finding discrepancies amongst species articles, which is easiest when edited together, there are ~1500 remaining pages with 15+ pages starting with the same word (i.e. 78 "Synodontis ..." articles, 68 "Sepia ...", all the way down to 15 "Turbinicarpus ..." articles). If I lower the threshold from 15 to 10, the page count increases to ~2000, to give you an idea of the slope of the curve at that point, which is the start of a very long tail. I'll intersperse these self-similar groups over the entire run, as opposed to doing all 1500 or 2000 in a few days.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  03:46, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

With more & more editors making only the bare-minimum changes required to remove Category:CS1 errors: deprecated parameters, I've elected to complete this cleanup as soon as possible.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:38, 24 October 2020 (UTC)