Template talk:Taxobox/Archive 5

Status + Range Problems

Is there any way to fix the gap between Conservatio Status and Fossil Range? When both arguments are used is creates about two lines worth of space between them (see Giraffatitan).Dinoguy2 18:49, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't use both. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:01, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

In the article Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/taxobox usage, under Fossil Range, it states, For groups that still exist or only went extinct recently, the second period should be given as "Recent", and the current status should be indicated using the status argument. To me, this suggess the status and fossil_range arguments should be functional when both are used. If I'm wrong, maybe this section should be re-written.Dinoguy2 19:35, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I changed the logic from using 'div' tags to 'span' tags to remove the blank space between the two sections. --CBDunkerson 21:30, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks!Dinoguy2 22:40, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Conversion

I did some major rewrites of the template logic today... which should not have any impact on the actual display of the template (other than the separate spacing issue above). The goal was to remove the out-dated {{row}}, {{section}}, and {{subtext}} templates with #if:. While I created those templates for use here in the first place (and think they did alright as an interim solution) the newer built-in #if: functionality is less vulnerable to vandalism, faster, and in other ways a general improvement I believe. I also converted the way the existing #if: calls were working from a mix of HTML tables and wiki tables to using wiki table markup throughout for consistency. Note that the {{!}} template called in numerous places just evaluates to a '|' character... the pipe needs to be hidden inside {{!}} this way when used inside a #if: conditional to differentiate between |s separating #if: parameters and those which are table markup.

Please let me know if you encounter any problems. I tested this on about twenty pages, but there could still be a few glitches in the conversion which will only show up in specific circumstances. --CBDunkerson 00:56, 10 May 2006 (UTC)</nowiki>

Conservation status

The link in the taxobox points to Wikipedia:Conservation status. This violates WP:SELF and should be changed to a relevant content page. SchmuckyTheCat 20:06, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, apparently this was changed, but the result is bad. Compare Conservation status, which is vague and does not explain what the codes used in this taxobox mean, with Wikipedia:Conservation status, which gives precise meanings to the codes. I don't think this violates WP:SELF any more than the "How to read a taxobox" link does. Stevage 08:14, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I was confused when I clicked on the link and got that short article. I wanted to compare the status with others on the list. I think it should be changed back, or linked to an article space article that specifically deals with this status rating scheme. -- cmh 22:40, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Previously the link sometimes went to one and sometimes to the other in an inconsistant manner. Now that the conservation status field uses IUCN classifications it should be changed to something more appropriate. I've started several articles dealing with particular red list categories (see links on the sidebar of Conservation status) so perhaps the words after "conservation status" can be linked instead. —Pengo 10:24, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Box border

I recently changed the color of the box's border from black to #aaa, which is standard across Wikipedia. However, I was quickly reverted by UtherSRG. Is it ok to use the standard #aaa color for the box's border or should we continue to use a black border, and if that's the case, why? Thanks. ☆ CieloEstrellado 03:48, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

We should continue to use black because it looks better. --Yath 04:02, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree that it looks better. In any case it is not standard throughout Wikipedia to use boxes with a black border, so it looks inconsistent and therefore amateurish. ☆ CieloEstrellado 04:33, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Unranked rank

That is "| unranked_familia =" for example, and an oxymoron if you ask me. This particular template got to be a pain when editing Chiniquodontoidea as it allows for no flexibility in the positioning of unranked clades which sometimes are rather abundant as is the case. As I'd rather like to get the superfamily Probainognathia into that box and as I think simplicity is in order why not bring back unranked as exemplified below and allow it to fit everywhere among the ranked hierarchies.

• | unranked = {taxon}
• | unranked_authority = {author, date}

I agree I'm no template luminary, though I think this saves quite a few lines of code even if one has to create a subsidiary template and would make life somewhat more easy on us paleo-types Dracontes 14:52, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

The template allows one unranked taxa above each (major?) ranked taxa. Each is needed because it is not simpler, given the restrictions of wikicode, to have a "floating" entry, that is, an entry that can appear in different places depending on other entries. Also, there is only one given because any more would be too much information for the taxobox to adequately describe. The taxobox should be a breif highlight, if you want to shove more information in it, you probably really need to split it into multiple articles and/or describe it in the text or with another diagram. - UtherSRG (talk) 16:49, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

One solution I've used a few times is to use only ranked taxa in the txbx (or really well-known unranked taxa, but only one or two at most), and then have a phylogeny section in the text with an ASCII-style cladogram. The taxobox, in my experience, is best used for just classification, not phylogeny, so unranked taxa should only be used to designate major groups (like Oviraptorosauria).Dinoguy2 18:29, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

{{Taxobox}} is simply unsuitable for a phylogenetic classification; it's really for Linnean classification. You can use the old multi-template system, or (better) develop a new template that's suitable for the purpose. Gdr 19:07, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Conservation status

Too complicated to edit, but all the links to Conservation status (which is totally uninformative) should instead go to Wikipedia:Conservation status, which explains what the codes mean. Can someone change it? Stevage 08:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Listing common names

The Synonyms section of the taxobox is great, as it allows you to list all of the older scientific names for a species. However, even though Wikipedia seems to think common names are more important than scientific names, there is no satisfying or standard way to list all of the common names that are often associated with a single species. I would like to suggest adding such a section to the taxobox, below Synonyms.--Jwinius 12:35, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Synonyms

The text alignment of synonyms section was centered, which looked like crap when you had a long list of synonyms of different length. They should be left-aligned with a little margin as the species or other subdivisions are. However, the syntax is beyond me (I tried, but to no avail). Can somebody please change the alignment to left-with-a-little-margin as in the species etc. listing (see Palaelodus for example)? Thanks. Dysmorodrepanis 21:28, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I've fixed this, please double-check it is working properly. Josh

Hmmmmh, thanks aplenty! It looks sweet now! Dysmorodrepanis 04:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Preventing some line breaks

Sometimes the "species" line will break like this: [1]. Can the template be edited to prevent that? --Yath 17:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Done. Gdr 21:01, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! It looks better now. --Yath 14:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Links

Wouldn't it be nice to make the various fields into links? E.g.: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.13.139.28 (talk • contribs) .

Nope. That's what the single link to Scientific Classification is for. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:28, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Species field

For a while now I've been writing articles and making pretty standard taxoboxes without thinking much about it. But, now I wonder about the species field: what's the point of always preceding the species name with an abbreviation of the generic name? In my view, this is totally superfluous, since the generic name is already mentioned directly above it and the binomial name directly below it.

I fear that it may also be confusing for people who are only coming to grips with scientific nomenclature, since it may give the impression that a species name is not complete unless it is proceeded by a capital letter, a dot and a space. It may also give them the notion that there is some fixed link between the generic name and the species name while in fact there is not, since species are often transferred from one genus to another.

To my knowledge, it is simply common practice to abbreviate the generic name when describing a species at length in order to save space, but only after the binomial name has been spelled out in full. To transfer this practice into the taxobox is unnecessary, inaccurate and confusing. Am I totally alone in this, or are there others who share this point of view? --Jwinius 12:23, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

To leave off the generic or its abbreviation is much more wrong; the species epithet alone is insufficient. The Genus name can be abbreviated in the Species name if it has been spelled out previously on its own or in a Species name. - UtherSRG (talk) 14:21, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

This was discussed in some detail a couple of years ago; see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Archive10#Taxobox Standard. Gdr 17:20, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Whoa! That was quite a discussion. Looks like I should have been more precise. Here's an example of what I'm thinking of:

genus = Pseudocerastes

specific = persicus

subspecific = fieldi

trinomial = Pseudocerastes persicus fieldi

This seems more logical to me -- more in the spirit of the rest of the taxobox. Comments, anyone? --Jwinius 18:55, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The problem I have with this is that persicus or fieldi by itself has no meaning. It could mean any number of species, which also use the same epithets. P. persicus clarifies it so people at least have an idea what you're talking about. Most literature also does the same, abbreviating the genus name (and sometimes the species name), but I haven't seen many sources which just refer to something as fieldi and expect the reader to extrapolate the genera/species by previous mentions. They're going to use P. p. fieldi, or something similar. -Dawson 19:07, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

You example, Jwinius, is what we used to have at one point. I was a strong proponent of keeping it that way. Im now a strong proponent to keep it the way it is. Thanks for the thoughts, but the current system is more correct. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:16, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Do you mind letting me in on what made you change your mind? --Jwinius 22:35, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

If Mediawiki's templating system was stronger, then I'd prefer the way listed above, but it's crap so we should keep it as is. For information entry/storage the above suggestion makes more sense. With template-trickery the pieces could be assembled automatically and displayed exactly as they are now resulting in no change for the display of the page, but in a nicer input and more sensible division of data and display. However, there's no "substring" parser function to automatically take the first letter of the genus and prepend it to the species. So this is just idle pointlessness. —Pengo 02:28, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

It would be nice if the templating system were able to do certain things automatically, like generate a complete taxobox name using minimal input, but that isn't really necessary as far as I'm concerned. I'd be perfectly happy to keep filling in everything manually for the time being. I just thought that not typing those last few abbreviations would save everyone a little extra work while still looking pretty obvious to the casual reader. Thanks very much for your explanation, though. --Jwinius 22:35, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

The "?" link

Shouldn't the "?" be absolutely positioned so that it does not steal alignment from the name? Spiff 07:28, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely agree. —Pengo 12:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

If you can find a portable way to do this, please go ahead. (See here for details of a previous attempt.) Gdr 18:17, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I was thinking it would be easiest fixed by making a 3 column table:

space

The Flying Dingbat

?

So a strip of the left and right would be missing, but at least if the name wraps, it would stay centered. I never got round to implementing it though. And using tables just layout is usually a no-no. The other possibility is just to give the "?" a line of its own:

?

The Flying Dingbat

Which would be a little cleaner, but use an extra line (the height of the ?). —Pengo 05:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

This approach appears to work in Firefox, Opera and Internet Exploder without using extra table cells or lines:

?The Flying Dingbat

So I was bold and changed it. Let me know if it doesn't work in your favourite browser. Gdr 11:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, it's not so good in Safari, there's an extra thick border around the table cell. Maybe some CSS expert can make it render nicely in all browsers. Gdr 19:44, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Synonyms and range maps

I've just put a range map in the Emu article and the synonym field is showing up beneath the map rather than under the other taxonomic info. Is there a way to fix this? --Peta 12:25, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Line thru' taxobox

The line which goes under the section headings (like the one just above this), seem to be going straight through the taxobox. This hasn't happened before, and I am wondering if it is just my computer, or if anyone else can see it. E.g. Rocket Frog. Thanks --liquidGhoul 11:07, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm seeing it, too. I'm running Firefox. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

So am I. --liquidGhoul 13:01, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm seeing it in Opera, so it isn't just you nor just Firefox. -Dawson 17:57, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I was going to bring that up yesterday, but Wiki were updating the database so I thought that it must of been something to do with that. -- Froggydarb ^croak 22:41, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I can see the line in both IE and netscape.--Tnarg¹²³⁴⁵ 04:07, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

OK, now that we have established it occurs, what has caused it? Could it have been making the "?" absolute, as that is the only recent change, and I am sure the problem couldn't have occured any earlier than that, we would've noticed it. --liquidGhoul 07:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

It appears that the line isn't visible anymore. Did anyone change anything?--Tnarg¹²³⁴⁵ 08:15, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks like its back again.--Tnarg¹²³⁴⁵ 08:22, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Someone posted a fix on WP:TOL, which I have implemented. It has worked for all articles I have tested, except Rocket Frog. I have even reset the cache and it isn't working. So, I am guessing that it isn't going to work. I will leave the change there, but if someone knows a better fix, could they please implement it. Thanks --liquidGhoul 09:46, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Yay, I edited Rocket Frog, and the line dissapeared. Looks as though the problem is solved! --liquidGhoul 09:50, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Links to NCBI Taxonomy browser

I think it would be useful to have links to the NCBI taxonomy browser in the Taxobox, although I dare not mess with the template code. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?name=%s where %s is the taxon name. Alternatively we could add NCBI taxids to the taxobox and link based on that. --Grouse 14:39, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

NCBI is abysmally inconsistent with its taxonomy. It can range from month old cutting edge to very outdated even within a taxon. ITIS tends to be more consistent, but often consistently a decade old. TOL needs updating and finishing. Basically, I don't think there's a good enough source out there where we can apply or link to its taxonomy for all taxa.

You're probably referring to the genetics side of things, however. I had also been thinking that it would be great to have some sort of standard link to a species' NCBI page (for example, Pan paniscus would link here). Linked from that page is all genetic information ever published for that species. I would disagree with including this information in a taxobox along the same lines as not including basic measurements. Perhaps we should just develop a standard link to be included in External links. I would also argue against taking this approach above species level (or genus in poorly known taxa) as I can't see that doing much good. --Aranae 17:44, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Sadly, even ITIS is outdated for some things, and is missing whole genera for other things so it would not be suitable for a blanket link inclusion either. EMBL is the same way. I don't think there is a single definitive taxonomic resource, and agree that the best solution is to find the most accurate/detailed sites and include them in the external links instead of the taxobox. -Dawson 18:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

It wouldn't be right to do this, because Wikipedia doesn't follow NCBI. In any case, why NCBI and not ToL, ITIS, SN2000, IPNI, or one of the other taxonomy databases out there? Gdr 13:45, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

You could include links to the other taxonomy databases as well.--Grouse 14:32, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Better would be to link to a page like Wikipedia:Book sources. But better still would be for the authors of each article to give a reference for the taxonomy in the usual way. Gdr 17:31, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

It's clear that linking NCBI for the sake of taxonomy is losing here. What about the idea of a standardized link to NCBI's genome resources for individual species? It wouldn't be in the taxobox. --Aranae 18:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

A link to genome data in "External links" could be handy (and I certainly would not object), but much more useful would be a summary in the article itself of what is known about the genome and what it tells us about the species and its taxonomy. e.g. The number of somatic and sex chromosomes could be a start. And then linking to the NCBI's database as a reference. However looking at a small number of the Eukaryota listed, many have just one or two relatively short (500 base pair) sequences listed. I'm not sure how useful that information is to anyone. So... What would be the point of linking to NCBI's genome resources exactly? —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 22:27, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

It's a valid question. I think it's clear that the information for model organisms has some worth considering the sheer amount of data present at their NCBI sites. There may be several possibilities. A general idea of the model organismness of a particular species might be of use to readers. For example, it's not surprising that the Golden Hamster has been the subject of numerous genetic studies, but readers might be surprised that the Chinese Hamster has been a far more important model than any of the pet dwarf hamsters [2] [3] [4]. The fact that a species is only known genetically by 500 bp of CO I might be of value to some readers. It would certainly steer a student away from doing a report on the genetics of Sokolov's Hamster. These nucleotide entries would be a key place to look for the given student to find references. Overall, I think the best argument for it may be that NCBI is a unique and very important reference and a comprehensive record of the species should probably include genetics. I think the best argument against is "why would somebody asking these questions not be searching in NCBI in the first place?" --Aranae 01:12, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Well it sounds like the the real challenge is disseminating the information available into an encyclopedic form. Links to NCBI should be an afterthought. So, go on, start adding ==Genetics== headings. —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 08:59, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

ID or class ?

To allow personalization of how this thing looks, it'd be nice to have it defined by means of a class or id instead of hard-coded CSS rules. That way, I (and other people that don't like the box style) can customize it. Any chance? --Thunderhead 13:16, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Not likely. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:58, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Why not? At least you could give it an id so I can hide it. --Thunderhead 14:09, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Thunderhead. This is probably the only box in wide use that only relies on inline style. Can anybody come up with a good reason why? chochem 15:03, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Uh? No. 90% of boxes rely to some point on inline css, even when it would arguably makes it so easier to have a class (e.g. category:band templates). Arguably, one could add class="infobox," but that would only remove a minimal amount of styling. And a dedicated class/id would be ridiculous, in my opinion.Circeus 15:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I said "only relies on inline style". Well, to me it's just a matter of proper classification. It is an infobox (i.e. it is a rundown of essential information placed to the right at the start of the article), so label it as such. As for appearance, a) monobook is not the only style being used and b) as Thunderhead points out it allows for customization. chochem 09:49, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

All such features should have an ID (assuming that they occur one on a page; otherwise a class) - that's semantically correct HTML mark-up. Andy Mabbett 18:27, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Range map needs centering

The template needs to be modified so that range maps are centered, just as the main image is when it's narrower than the taxobox. See Puma for a currently non-centered range map. --Yath 11:02, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Doc page pattern

I've applied the template doc page patten. Everyone can edit the documentation, which is transcluded from Template:Taxobox/doc (even though the template is fully protected). Note that vandalism on the doc page doesn't propagate to articles.
Please add new interwikis to Template:Taxobox/doc. --Ligulem 23:27, 7 October 2006 (UTC)