Category talk:Gastropod families

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Taxonomy: For all marine species, Project Gastropods uses the taxonomy in the online database WoRMS. When starting a new article, do not use sources of taxonomic information that predate the 2017 revision for all gastropod groups ("Revised Classification, Nomenclator and Typification of Gastropod and Monoplacophoran Families" by Philippe Bouchet & Jean-Pierre Rocroi, Bernhard Hausdorf, Andrzej Kaim, Yasunori Kano, Alexander Nützel, Pavel Parkhaev, Michael Schrödl and Ellen E. Strong in Malacologia, 2017, 61(1–2): 1–526.) (can be dowloaded at Researchgate.net), substituting the previous classification of 2005 Taxonomy of the Gastropoda (Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005). If you need help with any aspect of an article, please leave a note at the Project talk page.

Clean-up family subcategories

Right now there are a bunch of subcategories included in this category. Those family subcategories contain genera and species. That means genera and species are being classified as "gastropod families". My understanding is that the link to Category:Gastropod families should only be from the article about the family (e.g. Conidae) rather than on its category (Category:Conidae). —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 19:24, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just pinging a couple active gastropod editors to whom this may be of interest. @JoJan, Snek01, Ganeshk, and Invertzoo: Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 19:30, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well... this IS container category and {{Container category}} template should apply. As there exist the category for each gastropod family as a standard within WikiProject Gastropods, there are ~721 (sub)categories. And it is completely NORMAL that there are articles of species within them. By the way this is the only way to avoid unnecessary overcategorization of all of those 721 articles. Wikipedia could even work without the "Gastropod families" category, but as it exist, that is the way how categories works. - If you wish to see a better overview of all families in an article like way, then I can recommend the older 2005 ovewrview meantime. But it would be great if we could write Diversity of gastropods article in a table like way to contain greater overview of those families. --Snek01 (talk) 14:31, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Container category could apply if the subcategories were, instead of the current system, which is:

Gastropod families
- Family1
  - Genus1
  - Genus2
    - Species1

If they were instead:

Gastropod families
- Caenogastropoda families
  - Family1
  - Family2
- Cocculiniformia families
  - Family3

...etc, though 1) there are some incertae sedis families so some families might be directly categorized under Category:Gastropod families, and 2) I'm not sure further division of the family groupings would be too necessary or helpful. Not sure.

You can see an analogous system here: WP:WikiProject Plants/Categorization#Taxonomic rank categories e.g. Category:Eudicot families (no genera or species in that category). —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 16:32, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I see the point, but that is not needed to do it as plants. Seriously, we will not change it only because of plants with no advantage. We do not need to have two categories in the article of a certain family when there can be only one category. The current categorization scheme is as simple as possible, nobody needs to take care about monotypic families and it is also fully compatible with categorization at Wikimedia Commons. It is also compatible with Nederlands Wikipedia, Latina Wikipedia, Farsi Wikipedia, Turkish Wikipedia, ... (As for now the only Russian Wikipedia categorizes articles of families.) Keep it simple, thanks. --Snek01 (talk) 12:19, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There are two categories in either scheme; the question is whether they are placed on the family category or on the family article. Neither way seems, necessarily, "simpler" to me. Rather than comparing to other wikis, let's strive for on-site (English Wikipedia) consistency across all taxa. I'm happy to categorize, consistently, in whichever way makes most sense, and it seems most parsimonious to continue the scheme followed by the other WikiProjects/taxa here on the English Wikipedia, such as Category:Algae families, Category:Bacteria families, Category:Fungus families, Category:Insect families, Category:Plant families, Category:Virus families, as well as other mollusks, Category:Cephalopod families, Category:Bivalve families etc. (Also, I do care about being able to find monotypic families in some way through the category scheme, but I personally don't think we need specific/separate categories for them.)

It's not all that important to me, but I thought I would raise the issue since it's inconsistent with all the other WikiProjects. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 19:04, 3 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Hyperik: I find this category useful to do a recursive search of all gastropod-related pages and perform clean up activities on AWB. That will not be possible if it only had family articles. — Ganeshk (talk) 00:02, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Ganeshk: Can you explain a bit how Category:Gastropod families (24921 articles according to PetScan) is necessary compared to just searching/querying Category:Gastropods by classification and its subcategories (30571 articles)? —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 00:31, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Hyperik: I was not aware of the other category, will use that going foward. — Ganeshk (talk) 00:35, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Ganeshk: The taxonomic categories are kind of a mess! A lot of it the work of a now-banned user. I've been trying to standardize them across taxa to try to make sense of it all... —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 00:40, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Category:Gastropod families is one of the oldest categories of its kind. It was created as the oldest category dealing with the difficult taxonomy of gastropods. It has been always used as a container category showing directly categories of families of gastropods. It was created and used as a container category because it was useful. No other solution was needed. No other similar category has been created within gastropods and used for years. The Category:Gastropod families is the most stable category within gastropods. It brings stability here within the whole categorization system of gastropods. This is the most important category of the whole WikiProject Gastropods. Every other category dealing with the taxonomy of gastropods is dispensable. Gastropods by classification, Caenogastropoda‎, Heterobranchia‎, Neomphalina‎, Neritimorpha‎, Patellogastropoda‎, Vetigastropoda‎, Gastropod taxa‎, Gastropod genera‎, Gastropod superfamilies‎, as well as categories of superfamilies of gastropods. All of them are dispensable. The Wikiproject Gastropods once existed without of them. I would rather agree to delete all of them than to anyhow alter the Category:Gastropod families. This comes from the natural attribute of gastropods; they are superficially similar to each other and there are plenty of them. There is usually not needed super detailed categorization for them for general public. There is much more important to view them as a complex unit. Decide wisely. Altering this core category in a wrong way may seriously and irreparably disrupt the system, that has been proved to be extremely useful here since the start of Wikipedia. --Snek01 (talk) 16:25, 5 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]