User:MtBotany/sandbox

Creating new plant species articles

This is an eccentric guide. Why eccentric? Because the style is somewhat more chatty and informal than what you might get in an official guide. MtBotany and any other contributors have endeavored to make this accurate, but this is largely one editor’s view rather than policy.

Getting started

This red link is a trap, do not believe its lies

The first thing is to make sure what you think you know is accurate.

Look at the first image in this section. This is an example of a redlink trap. (Don't believe its lies.)

At some point, this link was added to the article for the Lotus genus. (I did research this, very briefly, it appears to be a case of disagreement by sources.) It was still there on 20 August 2024. All species are notable, but to establish that something really is a species it needs to be listed by a reliable source.

So before editing it is best to check sources such as major databases. In the case of the Wikipedia Plants Project the source most often used is Plants of the World Online (POWO). Follow this link and there you will see the landing page for POWO.

Enter our problem child Lotus latidentatus and there are no results. Try again with the valid name Lotus maroccanus. A result! Click on it and you'll find the information for Lotus maroccanus Ball. Also with some gobledygook under that saying "First published in J. Bot. 11: 306 (1873)". The small text to the right of the species name is what is called an authority in botany. But just an official short version called a standard form.

Head on over to the International Plant Names Index (IPNI) using this link. There click on advanced search and enter Ball from our example. One result for Ball – John Ball (1818-1889). Searching here on Wikipedia for John Ball returns quite a few results. Searching on that list of articles for the date of birth quickly narrows it down to John Ball (naturalist). All this is actually important. It is fine to make mistakes here on Wikipedia, but fewer mistakes are better.

Finding sources

Before starting an article it is good to make sure there actually is information available beyond what is in a database like Plants of the World Online. If all that can be said about a species of plant is that "John Ball scientifically described it in 1873 and it grows in Morocco," that is a pretty short article.

Because resources are spread across the whole world there is no one place to look. Also, the level of difficulty in finding information varies very widely. Doing a basic websearch is not a terrible idea, but it has some pitfalls. For example searching in late 2024 for "Lotus maroccanus" will find a random webpages, but nothing with a large amount of information. This is because it is a species that grows in a non-English speaking country, it has a limited range, and is not economically important. Every species needs a page, but this one is going to be harder to make a complete page with a full description of the species. Absolutely do the hard ones, but be aware that the farther you edit from the anglosphere the harder you will have to work.

Slightly better than randomly searching the web is going to archive.org and searching either for exactly "Lotus maroccanus". Not using the quote to limit it will produce more results, but this is balanced out by producing many false positives.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library often has similar out of copyright and open source materials to archive.org, but occasionally has highly specific sources. For example searching for "Lotus maroccanus" there found a journal article describing the species in great detail... though in German.

It is up to you as an editor to decide how much or how little is needed for a page. I advocate strongly for making very complete pages because the average plant species article will be created by one editor working alone and then barely touched thereafter. The average non-famous plant species will get one edit per year. At that rate a sub will become a complete article in about 89 years unless someone comes along and does a massive revision. Even relatively famous plant species can languish for a long time.

Starting a species page

Take a look at Wikipedia:Drafts, the shortened link is WP:Drafts. (Also: WT is the abbreviated form of Wikipedia Talk.) There is a text box there for entering the page name. When working on an actual article enter the species name there copied directly from POWO or another database. Don't type it. COPY. This will mean that an error in the page name is less likely. This only starts a draft with some basic code good for a first time out making a draft. And a draft is better. Or using a personal sandbox. Learn about personal sandboxes at Wikipedia:About the sandbox. Why? Because then the page can be saved half done or partly broken without putting it out into the WP:Mainspace with errors. Access your personal sandbox (if you are logged in) using the drop down menu at the top right of the screen.

Even though I'm a veteran editor I still use drafts to get pages into a satisfactory state before moving to the public area of Wikipedia.

Now this is where where an editor has to make a choice. Either visual editing or source editing using Wikitext. And it is not a pure choice because some edits can only be done using source editing and bits of Wikitext are almost always required to make the visual editor work.

Visual editor

The visual editor dropdown

Once a page is started or the sandbox is empty and ready to have new stuff put into it it is time to add the species template. The + symbol enables access to a list of things to add: Images and media, Template, Table, and More. Selecting Template opens a search box. Typing in species will find the template. Clicking on that opens a new dialogue box with a list of boxes to the right and image and authority automatically selected.

The check boxes for genus and species

Two others that should be selected right away are □ genus and □ species. Blue highlighted checkmark in those boxes.

This guide is about using the visual editor, but it is time to learn just a tiny, tiny bit of source editing. [[target|text]] it the source edit way to say show this "text" but go to the "target". So the example target is John Ball (naturalist) while the text is the standard form of Ball. That is written [[John Ball (naturalist)|Ball]]. For many, many others like the botanist Asa Gray his standard form of [[A.Gray]] creates a link to the redirect, e.g. A.Gray. When it doubt, use the target link form if adding the link to the species box.

This is all that is required for a speciesbox, but additional information is useful. Probably the most useful thing is a photograph of the species. Here Wikimedia Commons becomes important.

Source editing

It is possible to create a plant article with a species box using the Visual Editor, but personally I find it faster and easier to just copy in the Wikitext and templates. Because I either write or rewrite them so often I have this on my user page for quick access.

• Taxobox information
  {{Short description|Plant species in the family}}
  {{Speciesbox
  | image = 
  | image_alt = 
  | image_caption = 
  | status = 
  | status_system = 
  | status_ref = 
  | genus = 
  | species = 
  | authority = 
  | subdivision_ranks = 
  | subdivision_ref = 
  | subdivision = {{Species list
   | 
  }}
  | synonyms_ref = 
  | synonyms = {{Collapsible list | {{Species list
   | 
  }}
  }}
  }}
  

Not all of these parameters from the Template:Speciesbox are required and more are available, but these are the ones I want to add if the information to fill them is available. Though both the species name and the authority are required. When putting in the species name and the shortened standard form. Often, but not always, an author's standard form will link by a redirect to the article, for example [[A.Gray]] will make a blue link A.Gray to Asa Gray. But when in doubt link directly because this will often not work for standard abbreviation that are just last names like Ball. With these names it must be written [[John Ball (naturalist)|Ball]] with the first part being the target and the second part after the pipe character | being how it will appear Ball.

Short guide for uploading plant photos to Wikimedia Commons

Searching for Lotus maroccanus on commons turns up nothing as of August 2024. The next place to look is iNaturalist. This is probably a good place to search even if there is a photograph on commons as the photograph may be of so-so quality or even be wrong. Click on the link for Explore or the little magnifying glass symbol, both at the top right, to start searching. The example of Lotus maroccanus turns up no observations. Just as an example try Lotus pedunculatus, a much more common species, instead. Over 9000 observations. But not all of these can be used by Wikipedia. We need photos that have no copyright or have a creative commons license. Fortunately, iNaturalist makes these easy to find.

There is a link called "Filter" at the top right of the Observations page. Clicking on it pulls up a menu including an option at the bottom for "More Filters". Opening this up gives to option to filter by Photo Licensing. The three to check are CC0, CC-BY, and CC-BY-SA.

Once again copy the species name. Other ones editors might want right away are Subdivision ranks, Subdivision Reference, and Subdivision. And with reference we we once again come to code.

<ref name="POWO">{{cite POWO |id= |title= |access-date=21 October 2024}}</ref>

This handy bit of text will produce a perfectly lovely Plants of the World Online citation for today's date once the approprate bits are added in. The id comes from the URL of the POWO page, all the numbers at the end after "names:". In the case of Lotus maroccanus that is 503753-1 and the dash is important. Put in the full name with a double single quote for example ''Lotus maroccanus'' Ball after the "title=" bit. Lotus maroccanus does not actually have any subdivisions but if it did they would be something like Lotus maroccanus var maroccanus and Lotus maroccanus var. villosissimus Maire. Put each one on a new line without any unless there are more than ten of them. In that case skip it. For var. that means variety and "Varieties" should be put into the "Subdivision ranks" box. Or Subspecies or Forms as the case may be. If more than one type put in something like "Subspecies and varieties".

In this case I skipped it and went on to checking □ Taxonomic synonyms and □ Taxonomic synonyms reference. Same deal for the reference, but it can be skipped until later if there is already a reference in Subdivisions. Same deal with synonyms. POWO puts them into two separate lists heterotypic and homotypic. Don't worry about the difference until you get more into plant editing. Just copy out the names with the authority while skipping all the "in Bull. Soc. Sci. Nat. Maroc 15: 24 (1927)" stuff.