User talk:Peter coxhead/Archive 15

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Linking monotypical genus pages in some languages to sole species pages in other languages

Hi Peter, I just have become aware that the page on the monotypical genus Borthwickia which is linked to same title pages on other language wikis (via Wikidata) cannot in practice be linked to pages in further languages in which the article is on the species Borthwickia trifoliata. I am aware that in some language wikis (among those the Dutch one), consensus is to have both monotypic genus and species articles separately, which is certainly a complication. This is a problem probably common to the coverage on Wikipedia of all monotypic genera. I have no idea whether this issue has been discussed, and hence do not know what solution if any was agreed upon. Could you shed some light on this issue? Thank you in advance, Dwergenpaartje (talk) 14:12, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it has been discussed several times to my knowledge. The problem is not restricted to monotypic genera; it occurs whenever one language wiki splits an article and another does not, such as Berry and Berry (botany). It simply is not the case that concepts have a 1:1 relationship in all languages. ("Banana" and "plantain" offer another good example of conceptual issues. In Western countries that import very few Musa cultivars, there's a sharp distinction between sweet dessert "bananas" and starchy cooking "plantains". In the countries close to where bananas originated such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. no such distinction is made, since there's a continuum of cultivars that can't be divided into two neat groups.) There's no solution to any of these problems unless and until Wikidata removes the requirement that all inter-wiki links be 1:1, which they appear either unwilling or unable to do.

My impression is that they are unable to do this, which points to a major design flaw in Wikidata, but I may be wrong. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:18, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, good to know a lost cause. Dwergenpaartje (talk) 18:29, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Anomalurus and various hummingbirds in monotypic genera

I'm curious why subfamily won't show in the auto taxoboxes even if they are defined in the template taxonomy and the genus or species boxes. See Speckled hummingbird in the case of a hummingbird species...It also won't show for the genus Anomalurus for same reason (monotypic genus in this case). Is it because 2 taxa are listed in the autotaxoboxes?........Pvmoutside (talk) 10:22, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

also, is there a bot that can convert the taxoboxes?....Pvmoutside (talk) 13:22, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside: by default automated taxoboxes show only one rank above the target taxon in addition to the principal ranks. So if the target taxon is a genus, and the taxonomy template has a subfamily as the parent, then the subfamily will show up. But if the target taxon is a species, then the subfamily won't show up. You can force extra ancestral ranks to be shown, as Quetzal1964 says, by adding |display_parents=, but it should only be done rarely and for good reasons – a monospecific genus is a good reason to force one extra level, since the genus is a target as well as the species.

No, there's no bot to convert manual taxoboxes to automated ones, for several reasons:

• There has never been a consensus to convert all manual taxoboxes; although some wikiprojects have generally been happy for this to be done (e.g. dinosaurs, spiders, many plant groups), other wikiprojects have strongly opposed it (but opposition may be weakening?).
• Automated taxoboxes only work if all the taxonomy templates have been created for all the parent taxa, and it would be difficult or impossible to get a bot to do this.
• There are also cases where the taxonomic hierarchy shown in the taxobox is different from the one set up in taxonomy templates. In particular, there are compatibility issues with taxonomic hierarchies in different areas of the tree of life (e.g. bird editors treat Aves at the rank of class, whereas dinosaur editors put birds much, much lower down the hierarchy). Various "fudges" have been implemented to circumvent these problems (such as "skip templates"), but they need considerable human ingenuity to implement.

There's lots of information about automated taxoboxes at WP:Autotaxobox system. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:02, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Pvmoutside Have you tried display_parents = 3, it leads to more parents being displayed in the taxobox? I have just edited Anomalurus to do that, although I forgot to state what my edit was. Quetzal1964 (talk) 13:30, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

nope......i'll try that....thanks.....also having trouble with Template:Taxonomy/Sephanoides and Firecrown. Not sure why the tax template is defaulting to Firecrown vs the scientific name. First time I've had trouble with that.....Pvmoutside (talk) 15:46, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

The problem with Firecrown was that you had |genus= but for {{Automatic taxobox}} the correct parameter is |taxon= – as it normally is for {{Speciesbox}}. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:06, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Peter!....Pvmoutside (talk) 16:09, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Display parents 3 worked for the hummingbirds, but not for Anomalurus. The subfamily is monotypic. For monotypic genera in hummingbirds you can list the parent and the species, where it will show both links, but it's not showing for the Anomalurus subfamily even though I used a similar format. Anomalurinae (the subfamily) does not have a template created. Should I do that even if there won't be an article because of the monotypic status?.....Pvmoutside (talk) 15:59, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside: yes, the automated taxobox system only shows ranks above genus if there's a taxonomy template. So I inserted Template:Taxonomy/Anomalurinae between Anomalurus and Anomaluridae, and corrected the taxobox at Anomalurus – the subfamily is picked up automatically and cannot be given; for monotypic taxa, the authorities for ranks above the target taxon have to be specified via |parent_authority=, |grandparent_authority=, etc. You've started to use the automated taxobox system with some of the more complicated cases! Peter coxhead (talk) 16:15, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that info and the info on using the scientific name for subfamily.....Pvmoutside (talk) 16:18, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside: I put back |display_parents= after Peter removed it because the subfamily was not showing (on my monitor using Cortana as the browser), I also added the |type_species= and |type_species_authority= which I normally put in the Automatic taxobox for genera if I can find the information. Quetzal1964 (talk) 17:25, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Although I see now that subfamily is not normally shown for monotypic taxa, so feel free to delete. Quetzal1964 (talk) 18:24, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964: |display_parents= isn't needed at Anomalurus to show the subfamily; 1 non-principal level above the target taxon is displayed by fault. It may not have shown up because of cache issues – the way that Wikipedia handles changes to templates means that it can take time (sometimes days) for them to work down the level of articles. It's always a good idea to do a "null edit" (edit and save with no changes) to check on a possible problem with automated taxoboxes – this forces updates to be recognized. I've removed |display_parents= at Anomalurus; can you please check now, after a null edit if necessary, whether the subfamily shows? It does for me. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:38, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes it does now. As always, thank you for your patience. Quetzal1964 (talk) 06:56, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

No problem! Here's another example of cache issues. You created Template:Taxonomy/Platytetracampe earlier. When I checked Category:Automatic taxobox cleanup this morning, as I try to do daily, this template appeared, i.e. was showing up as being in error. A null edit on Template:Taxonomy/Platytetracampe showed there was nothing wrong with it, and it then disappeared from the error-checking category. It seems that changes made to taxonomy templates can take a long while to show up in articles and categories, sometimes days, which can suggest there's something wrong with a taxobox or taxonomy template when there isn't. In this case, you didn't initially see the change I'd made to Template:Taxonomy/Anomalurus. Moral (and memo to self too): always try a null edit before investigating an automated taxobox problem. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:06, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

UK d+t

Thank you for your recent edit. I would only ask that you reinstate the bit about not mixing notations. Thanks -Sb2001 (talk) 11:49, 5 July 2017 (UTC) Sb2001 (talk) 11:49, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

@Sb2001: I'm not quite sure which bit you mean: can you clarify? Be aware that it's unencyclopaedic to give instructions and against policy (see WP:NOTHOW). We can say that "X advises ..." but this will always need an explicit inline citation.

More generally, as a British editor, I sympathize with your struggles with the MoS, but it does embody some important ideas. It could have been decided to use only American English in the English Wikipedia (no other single ENGVAR would have been either sensible or possible). Instead it was decided to seek commonality where at all possible, accepting only strictly necessary variations in ENGVAR. This means that in relation to, for example, punctuation, British editors have to accept styles that aren't always natural, but so do American editors – there have been long and very heated discussions over WP:LQ, which is seen as a British style. I strongly suggest you keep out of MoS discussions until you've been around longer – this is not an attempt to suppress or censor, it's because you don't and can't know all the background and how many times some of these issues have been discussed before. Long-standing editors' impatience is understandable although never excusable. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:12, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Proposed deprecation of /ᵻ, ᵿ/

Hi, I was wondering if you might be be interested in giving opinion at Help talk:IPA for English § RfC: Proposed deprecation of /ᵻ, ᵿ/ since I see you have previously participated in the conversation regarding dropping another diaphoneme /ɵ/. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Nardog (talk) 13:00, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Plant epithet

Peter, many thanks for taking a look at the article. The IP's ref 13 remains broken – I've put a note on the talk page where it seems to mean; and I'm unconvinced that the rambling paragraph about the surname "Plant" fits the article. Many thanks, Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:01, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: I've replaced the bare URL for ref 13 by a reference to the book. Unfortunately it seems that you need a subscription that I don't have (either through the city library or through my university library) to access the online version. I think the paragraph could be reduced: basically it says "it used to be thought that 'Plant(e)' was a metonym but now it is thought to be a toponym". That's worth saying I think, if it can be properly sourced. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:16, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh, well done. I'll try to reduce it, but since the IP is in full edit-war mode, it would help if you could keep an eye. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:19, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Whistling duck

One more for you.....the whistling duck page (its a genus page) originally listed both a tribe (no link) and a subfamily (also no link). I got the page to list both the tribe and subfamily, but they are linking when they should not. Also the subfamily lists an authority, but I can't get it to show. (The tribe has no defined authority).......Pvmoutside (talk) 15:55, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside: have a look at Template:Taxonomy/Dendrocygninae now that I've corrected it. When the name of the taxon is not the article that should be linked you must put |link=LINKED_ARTICLE_NAME|TAXON_NAME in the taxonomy template. Authorities above the target taxon in an automated taxobox are set via |parent_authority=, |grandparent_authority=, etc. The taxobox should be as you wanted it now, but you may need to do a null edit to clear the cache before you can see it properly. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:12, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

looks great Peter.....thanks!

Heads up on "new" editor's questionable categorization

You recently left a note to a newly registered editor regarding some questionable categorization decisions. I'm pretty confident that this is the new identity of a editor who was active from 2015 till 19 May 2017, who you had communicated with repeatedly regarding questionable categories with little to no response on their part. I'm also pretty confident that this editor has at least two other accounts that were used and retired prior to 2015. This editor does make some useful edits, and I'm not really interested in stirring up any drama, but I thought you should be aware that communication is unlikely to produce any change in their behavior. Plantdrew (talk) 16:44, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

New Zealand musk duck

One more......The NZ musk duck is extinct. It's genus is not......I can't seem to get a dagger to show in the species note in the speciesbox..........thanks again Peter......Pvmoutside (talk) 14:40, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

(talk page stalker)@Pvmoutside:, this is something that doesn't work quite right with auto taxboxes. You can use |extinct= to produce a dagger at the species line (but there's no way to display the dagger at the binomial line). Any value entered for |extinct= produces the dagger, but it probably best to use "yes" for the value ("yes" is the value used for other fossil/subfossil species in otherwise extant genera). A problem is that |extinct= really expects the entered value to be a year of extinction. If |status=EX is present, then the value in |extinct= is displayed (and you don't want to display "yes").

With the New Zealand musk duck, you could perhaps enter "1500s" (per the article) for an extinction date. Or you could remove|status=/|status_system= and just have the dagger produced by |extinct= as an indication of extinction. Either way, |status_system=IUCN3.1 should probably go away; it's not actualy listed in the IUCN redlist. Plantdrew (talk) 17:06, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside: yes, as Plantdrew says this is something that isn't quite right in autotaxoboxes. There are at least a couple of issues with species autotaxoboxes that need some resolution:

• There's inconsistency between the species line and the binomial box. Should the dagger and the authority be displayed in both, or if in only one, which one? (Manual taxoboxes are just as inconsistent, but here the editor has some control.)
• |extinct= is used for two different purposes: to give a date used with the status system and to mark a species as extinct when the genus is not. This is a poor design decision.

I think about these issues from time to time. One problem is that the options for change really need a good discussion and there seem to be very few editors around at present interested in joining in. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:21, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Peter and Plantdrew about the info. I'll continue to ask questions moving forward....It is what it is, as long as it makes progress.....We have until the next life killing meteor or pandemic hits I guess......Regarding where daggers go, I'm flexible, as long as it's consistent........Pvmoutside (talk) 11:11, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Speciesbox help

Hello Peter. I am new to using species boxes and have started with Wallcreeper and think I have set it up correctly. It was a monotypic genus and family so I made two new templates and the box seems OK, but how would I get the family authority to show in the box? Thanks, Loopy30 (talk) 03:02, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

@Loopy30: in automated taxoboxes, you use |authority= for the target of the taxobox, |parent_authority= for its immediate higher taxon, then |grandparent_authority=, |greatgrandparent_authority=, etc. up the hierarchy where the taxa are monotypic. I added |parent_authority=; it would be good to add |grandparent_authority=, given that the family is also monotypic. Always happy to try to help; keep up the good work! Peter coxhead (talk) 08:15, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I had found |parent_authority= for the genus, but did not know that |grandparent_authority= existed. Cheers, Loopy30 (talk) 11:01, 21 July 2017 (UTC).

Wikihow reliable source

So exactly where is it written on this site that wikihow is not reliable? Google lists their entries first in search results even before wikipedia. No offense, but it's as reliable as wikipedia. Where is it listed as unreliable? Octoberwoodland (talk) 21:54, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Also, please see [1]. Octoberwoodland (talk) 21:56, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

@Octoberwoodland: please read WP:RS, and especially WP:UGC. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:46, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. Basically says that wiki sites, and even Wikipedia are not reliable sources. Thanks for the pointing me to the right page. Octoberwoodland (talk) 21:01, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

??

Hi Peter: Just wondering about this edit. Can you please explain your reasoning? All of the rest of the species in that category are listed under their common names, and I don't see that you've added the species under its scientific name... MeegsC (talk) 08:21, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh, undo it if this is how WikiProject Birds does it. It's wrong, because what was described in 1766 was not the bird itself – who knows how long it had been known? What happened in 1766 was that a scientific name was assigned and the species was described for science. But if birds are handled differently, so be it. (I mostly edit plant and spider articles, where we put the year category on the scientific name.) Peter coxhead (talk) 08:42, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Ah. Yeah, all avian scientific names redirect to common names; we're "lucky", in that there ARE common names for every species — something I assume is probably not the case for spiders, for example. So the "birds described in" category goes on the common name pages. I must admit that your other comment has me scratching my head. How would you determine which year to assign the "species described in year [x]" to, if you don't use the year it was described for science? How do you do that for plants and spiders, for instance? MeegsC (talk) 11:28, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

That's my point. We have no idea when a plant or spider was first described. All we know is when it was first assigned a name under one of the nomenclature codes. So we know when a description was attached to the name Tichodroma muraria. We don't know when the bird with this name was first described. That's why I believe those Wikiprojects that attach these categories to scientific names, whether articles or redirects, are right. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:18, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, actually "described" in the case of biological entities means described for science, not described in somebody's journal or explained to a friend over a pot of tea. :) If that's not clear to non-biologists, perhaps we should change the category name to "species described to science in year x". MeegsC (talk) 20:26, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Actually, it doesn't quite mean that either. It means the year associated with the earliest acceptable name under the relevant code. A species can be scientifically described without being named; this often happens when the genus is not clear. It can be given a name that turns out to be a duplicate and so not available, when the year used in the category will be the year in which the first acceptable name was published. In all cases, the only true association is between the scientific name and the year, not the species and the year or the English name and the year. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:37, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

So should we put all of the "bird described in year x" categories up for deletion? Because they aren't being used that by the project — and can't be, since all bird articles live at their IOC common name rather than their scientific name. This means that anybody clicking on the category link will end up on the wrong page, I guess. MeegsC (talk) 12:32, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

@MeegsC: no, I'm not saying that. My point is simply that what these categories really mean is something like "... validly given a name under one of the nomenclature codes in ...", and so it seems more sensible to me (and other editors) to categorize the redirect at the scientific name when the article is at the English name. But clearly bird editors don't agree. Peter coxhead (talk) 05:43, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Repasted URL

I repasted this URL: http://www.catalogueoflife.org/annual-checklist/2017/search/all/key/Trilobite/fossil/1/match/0, which I evidently copied wrong before and hence why it would not actually save in my Talk Page comment. Anyway, you can see here that ITIS does have listings for extinct taxa despite your assertion to the contrary. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 00:24, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

@The Mysterious El Willstro: thanks. But if I look at, say, Arthropoda, with "show extinct taxa" checked, the only extinct arthropods shown are trilobites. If I expand Class Arachnida, again with "show extinct taxa" checked, where are the extinct arachnids (Haptopoda, Phalangiotarbi, Trigonotarbida, Uraraneida, for example)? I haven't been able to find any of the early extinct plants, which require extensions to the classification of extant plants. So although some extinct taxa are there, coverage seems very limited, which is why its very traditional and in some areas very outdated classification appears to work. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:56, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

It may be limited coverage of extinct taxa, but that still differs from what you said before. The Mysterious El Willstro (talk) 19:46, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

@The Mysterious El Willstro: actually I think I was right. The Catalogue of Life, which is the link you pasted above, isn't the same as ITIS. It draws on ITIS as well as other sources. The source for the information on trilobites isn't ITIS but the Paleobiology Database. I can't find any exinct taxa in ITIS itself. This matters because ITIS has credibility as a source, since it gives sources and references taxonomists. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:22, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

I noted that the Catalogue of life was not ITIS when the link was placed on talk:insect. I also noted that The Paleobiology database is not a reliable source as its very incomplete and outdated in any area not being maintained by an expert.--Kevmin § 15:02, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Redirected Category in Wikimedia Commons

I moved some images to Pelargonium × domesticum and found the following when I checked the category:

This category is located at Category:Pelargonium Regal Group

Note: This category should be empty. Any content should be recategorised.

This tag should be used on existing categories that are likely to be used by others, even though the "real" category is elsewhere. Redirected categories should be empty and not categorised themselves. It should not be used on categories that are misspellings and thus unlikely to be used by other people.

I can understand the reasoning. But wouldn't the same reasoning apply to Pelargonium × hortorum and some (most, all) of the other primary hybrids? User-duck (talk) 10:45, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Hi, this is an issue that comes up regularly, namely the historical use of hybrid (and even species) names for what are now known to be cultivars. One issue is that the ICNCP is much newer that the ICN and less well known, so many sources don't use its nomenclature. Personally, I think that we should be using ICNCP names for cultivars and cultivar groups, so, yes, in my view Pelargonium × hortorum is better treated as a cultivar group. A particular issue with Commons is that, in my experience, there are few if any editors around willing to discuss title issues, so the usual advice to discuss and build a consensus doesn't seem to work. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:17, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Rangatira Spider

Hi Peter, Thanks for improving the Rangatira spider page that I have been working on. I'm really pleased to have learned a quicker way of doing the taxonomy from your edit - I'm a fairly new editor of wikipedia and still learning my craft! I was wondering about the use of a secondary source instead of a primary for the species description- I've completed around 10 new species pages and always gone for the primary - is this because the secondary source are all in one repository? This will also add to my education. Thanks again, Markanderson72 (talk) 09:44, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

@Markanderson72: Welcome to spider editing – we definitely need more editors interested in this group of animals!

The short answer to your question is that because of policy set out at WP:PST, as far as possible you should use secondary sources, possibly supplemented by primary ones.

The long answer to your question is that there is some tension among editors over the meaning of WP:PST. My view is that this policy (and it is policy, not just a guideline) was written by and for arts and social science editors, and isn't worded entirely appropriately for science topics. However, this is disputed, as I discovered when I first started editing here. So we need to be careful about primary sources. There are some clear-cut cases:

• Only a secondary source that deals with a substantial number of taxa is useful as a reference for a classification system, including whether a name is accepted or a synonym. What can happen if primary sources (scientific papers) are used is that the classification isn't accepted by the relevant community, and so expresses just one point of view, and/or isn't self-consistent even at lowish levels, like genera and families. For spiders, we have agreed to use the binomials, genera and families in the World Spider Catalog; there isn't a reliable recent secondary source at present for ranks between family and infraorder.
• Only a secondary source that evaluates taxonomic sources should be used to support the authority for a taxon. The primary source isn't acceptable as the only source because it doesn't show whether later taxonomists have found earlier names, which often happens. Writing that X first described a given species, sourced only to X, only shows that X thought they were the first to describe the species, not that (as far as is known) X was the first.
• On the other hand, the etymology of an accepted species name can (in my view) best be sourced to the taxon author(s) if they gave an explanation, since this is definitive.
• It's not acceptable to describe an organism yourself from an illustration or photograph.

But then we get to areas of disagreement, like species descriptions. If a secondary source, like a book on the spiders of a country, gives a description which has in all essentials been copied from an original source, why is this better? I told my students, including research students, not to trust second-hand accounts of other people's research, but to check the original. To comply with the spirit of WP:PST, I personally recommend where possible checking both secondary and primary sources, using only the information which appears consistent, and referencing both kinds of source. But many spider species simply aren't sufficiently well known or interesting to appear in secondary sources, and I personally would always rather use a primary source than give no information at all.

I hope this is of some help! Peter coxhead (talk) 12:09, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

Arctocephalus forsteri requested move discussion

Peter, I just set up the RM discussion on the talk page. Bot should have page ready within the hour.....Pvmoutside (talk) 13:30, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Arthropod

Re: Insect, you've re-inserted an error. I guess I reversed the link syntax, it should be text "arthropoda" linking to article "arthropod" (since there is no article Arthropoda), but "arthopoda" is just wrong. TSylvester (talk) 16:20, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Whoops, now corrected. There's no need for a wikilinked as it appears just before. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:26, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Microtus subgenus

Peter, is there any way to address subgenus within a speciesbox? Probably best to move on to other species if a subgenus is listed in the species taxobox? Microtus is both a genus and a subgenus?......Pvmoutside (talk) 12:39, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Field vole
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Rodentia
Family:	Cricetidae
Subfamily:	Arvicolinae
Genus:	Microtus
Species:	M. agrestis
Binomial name
Microtus agrestis (Linnaeus, 1761)

Yes, there are two ways.

• The preferred method seems to be to set up a taxonomy template for the subgenus. For zoological code subgenera, the naming convention is "Taxonomy/GENUS (SUBGENUS)", so you could set up {{Taxonomy/Microtus (Microtus)}} with |parent=Microtus. Then in the speciesbox for a species within the subgenus, e.g. Field vole, you would specify |parent=Microtus (Microtus), to over-ride the default of the genus as the parent.
• The alternative is to put |subgenus= in the speciesbox, which is simply copied into the displayed taxobox without going through a taxonomy template. This produces a taxobox like the one to the right. If there's an article on the subgenus, the wikilink must be in the value of the subgenus parameter.

The documentation for {{Speciesbox}} says that the second method is deprecated; I'm not entirely sure why (Plantdrew may have a view), except that [See below] a reference for the existence of the subgenus can be put into taxonomy template in the first method, and if there's an article on the subgenus, the wikilink will be picked up automatically. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:16, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Peter, deprecating |subgenus= was a misunderstanding on my part. I thought when you'd added |parent= that the intent was to move away from using |subgenus= (rather than just setting up a solution that worked for other infrageneric ranks). However, in the mean time, I did switch almost everything over to use parent; there are 468 articles with parent and just 7 now with subgenus. I've undeprecated subgenus now. Plantdrew (talk) 02:08, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: actually, on reflection, I think that it wasn't a misunderstanding on your part, but confusion above on mine. As I noted, there are advantages in setting up a taxonomy template (single place for a wikilink to the rank below genus if there's an article, place for a reference), and I believe that at the time I added |parent=, the intention was indeed to move away from using |subgenus=. On the other hand, when there isn't an article on the subgenus, nor likely to be one, a taxonomy template seems overkill. It's probably best to leave things as they are for now, i.e. don't say that |subgenus= is deprecated, but prefer taxonomy templates in most cases. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:46, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Zephyranthes carinata

Any specific reason why you removed the picture I added of the flowers? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Subhrajyoti07 (talk • contribs) 03:09, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Subhrajyoti07: see WP:NOTGALLERY (as I put in my edit summary). The image you added shows nothing extra compared to the one now at the top of the taxobox. The article has a general image of the plant in bloom, plus a close-up of the flowers. Added images need to show something not already covered. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:35, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: I feel the picture I added shows a better illustration of the closeup of the flower compared to the earlier one in the page. If only one image can be kept, then I propose to replace the older image with the one I added. Also let me point to the fact that this flower is captured in Kalimpong where it freely grows in the wild. Kalimpong in India is not listed as one of the places where this species is found naturally. I think that makes the picture unique in some sense.Subhrajyoti07 (talk) 03:46, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Several points:

• None of the images is ideal, since none show the plant where it is native (Mexico to Columbia). Plants naturalized in Japan or India will be from cultivated stock, so may not reflect the true wild plant.
• There's already a close-up of the flower, so the fact that your image shows the flower better is irrelevant.
• Your image has a major fault as an illustration of the plant (which is what is needed in the taxobox): the foliage isn't visible. I downloaded the image and lightened it to see if the leaves can be seen, but they can't – the flowers look as though they are associated with the leaves of the other plants around them. Indeed, one of the flowers is partially obscured by the leaf of a different plant.
• The daisy family flower at the top is distracting, and should be cropped off.

If cropped, it could perhaps replace the Cincinnati close-up, because one of the flowers is shown slightly better, but I would still be concerned about the misleading foliage. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:35, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Whisperback

Hello. You have a new message at Kudpung's talk page. 19:40, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

"Endangered", and some loosely connected musings

I get your point, at WT:MOSCAPS, but think mine was missed. The genesis of the capitalization isn't IUCN and people enamored of them thinking they're special, of course. We all know the capitalization is emphasis to disambiguate a term of art. The special pleading (commingled with argument to authority) aspect is the insistence that Wikipedia just has to do it this waym too, because that's how they do it in their specialist works – that they are right and WP is wrong, that they're here to correct us, that our rules to do not apply to them. I know you're familiar with the WP:SSF argument, and the central point that sources reliable for facts about a topic, be it fungi or comic books, are not the most reliable sources for how to write about it, so I needn't belabour the details of that.

I have no certainty what is behind the "IUCN caps" push (again), and I assume it's just the typical SSF effect. That's usually the case. But sometimes it really is worse – a conflict of interest. I'm thinking of a case where a specialist-caps style advocated by a particular organization was being pushed here by someone (not an editor here any longer) working with the organization to do so, literally updating their website with news of the "progress" of forcing the style on all relevant articles here. The idea that there's never any promotional intent is provably false, and we are wary for a reason. That interest is central to the "Paganism" issue, and various other ongoing matters, like "Deaf". It's actually rare for there not to be an active style/titles dispute at any given time that doesn't have a CoI/non-neutrality/undue-weight element to it.

I come from the nonprofit PR sector, so I know from experience that organizations are competitive, and seek "mindshare territory" (both for themselves and their central issue/stakeholders/constituency) with marketing language and stylization, or they go broke [skint]. I wrote that kind of material professionally for years, and over-capping for emphasis was an integral part of the messaging and branding, be it in newsletters and website updates, or in private grant proposal documents. I'm also active on another wiki, for a very narrow topic, where disambig-caps is used religiously; it works there because it's for a special niche audience, every one of whom knows exactly what the capping signifies. If one were to port one of those articles here, as-is, people would cough up their own skulls.

It's really a quality issue, when it comes to public perception and trust. The overcapping style isn't normal in informational writing. It's not what people see in their newspapers, magazines, secondary and university textbooks, nonfiction books, and professionally edited news and opinion websites. It's what they see in advertisements, low-end blogs, and insider publications (for different initial reasons, respectively: attention-getting and mnemonics, ignorance and bombastics, and contextual disambiguation and signification). The Heathenry (new religious movement) article is an outright embarrassment, obviously largely written and text-controlled by its adherents, and not a proper encyclopedia article. The over-capping screams at the reader "no one is checking this page – beware!" (Almost two years, I started working on it and Heathenry in the United States and Odinist Community of Spain – Ásatrú, etc., and gave up because too much of it was too off-kilter to fix without weeks of sourcing; I did overhaul the Spain one, including dealing with demonstrable CoI, as the group's co-founder had been editing the article. Just checked, and over-capping had crept back into it.)

Of course, specialists in various fields (paganism, ecology, anime, ...), insistent on certain style quirks, claim it's a quality problem for WP to not do as they insist. But they're thinking "quality in the eyes of me and my colleagues/co-nerds/fellow fanclub members". We're not writing for them in particular, and aren't aiming to have our quality judged by the publishers of The Journal of Forensic Proctology or the members of the Elder Scrolls gaming forum, or whatever. For every "my style or else" specialist, there's probably at least several million regular schmoes who would find the special style confusing or at least jarring, distracting them from their reading and comprehension.

Anyway, intent-wise, one assumes but can never know (and "trust but verify" doesn't really work here due to pseudonymity), but it boils down the same answer in the end: Avoid unnecessary capitalization. I'm reminded of the rule/observation/whatever we have, that CoI doesn't really matter at AfD because it will be decided on the policy and sourcing merits, not whether an argument to keep or delete has an ulterior motive; many articles are kept despite CoI keep !voting, because the objective facts support the article remaining (usually with a lot of cleanup). I know you know that, and don't mean to lecture; just thinking out loud. If the style/titles rules, too, are just applied neutrally and without bowing to special pleading, then CoI becomes irrelevant. Any time someone complains of "robotic MoS enforcers" or "title and category consistency zealots" there's about a 95% chance they're engaging in a special-pleading argument that has in mind the interests of their professional or hobbyist circle, not those of the general readership. And I do note that many of the MOS:CAPS rules, and MOS:TM in pretty much its entirety, obviously exist especially to counter CoI and other non-neutrality/undue-weight problems; same with MOS:WTW, much of MOS:ICONS, etc. So, we're actually aiming consciously, in our style/titles rules, to neutralize CoI as well as get consistency.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  06:56, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Actually capitalizing the IUCN categories has been discussed several time before, to my recollection (although right now I can't find the discussions), always in a low key manner, and always concerned with distinguishing the "term of art" from the general use, and capitals have been supported as the way to achieve this. So personally I don't think there's a current "push"; it's a continuation of a practice that has had some degree of consensus.

I've always agreed, as I've made clear elsewhere, that it's possible to distinguish between specialized and general uses of terms in other ways than capitalizing – on that we agree; although I also think that capitalizing is sometimes the best and certainly the easiest solution – on that we disagree.

What does puzzle me, and perhaps you can comment on, is why italics are seen as less "shouty" than capitals for such terms, especially given that the em tag renders in italics by default, so italics are seen as a form of emphasis. Faced with a choice between "This species has given the rating critically endangered by the IUCN" and "This species has been given the rating Critically Endangered by the IUCN", I plump for the latter every time. It's far less immediately obvious and intrusive.

Incidentally, re your revision elsewhere on the capitalization of bird names, yes, it's clear that systematic use of capitals in this way has been fixed, for all groups that I encounter. However, there are still a very large number of articles with capitalized English names of organisms, and they are constantly added by new editors. Ironically, I spend quite a bit of time fixing this! Peter coxhead (talk) 07:18, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

The "distinguishing the term of art from the general usage" rationale is exactly what is offered for species-caps and just about every other overcapitalization effort, which is why this is alarming to me. I can't think of a dispute (at least not a MOS/AT one) more disruptive and destructive than that one was, other than maybe the date auto-formatting and -linking and reversal thereof, from way back, but that fiasco only lasted about a year or two, not eight.

I actually agree that the caps style is the easiest solution in many contexts (including my other wiki, and various other specialist or special-interest contexts where everyone's on the same page; e.g., it's very often used in business writing to signify internal stuff – "Marketing" is a department, "marketing" is what they're doing). Just not in the WP context, because of the spreading-of-capitals-everywhere effect it has, and because no one is an insider to what the intended signification is. For every "I wanna capitalize this" dispute we have, there's about a 60% chance it's someone from off WP arriving to impose what they're used to in their specialist stuff. About 35% of it is "hey, they get to capitalize that, so I wanna capitalize mine, too" (and about 5% misc. weirdness). That guesstimated 1/3 is still a significant "dispute burden" that needs to go away. I have a really low trust level in this kind of shenanigan not getting out of hand.

The italics-as-general-markup thing – for mild emphasis, foreign words, work titles, binomials, variables, words-as-words, terms of art being introduced, onomatopoeic sounds effect ("a loud whack"), etc. – way pre-dates the concept of usability studies, so it's hard to say. People use it for more things now that ever, e.g. the "Web style" of italicizing all quotations, which isn't found in any style guide anywhere that I know of, and using italics as a headline style that is rivaling boldface and is more common now that all-caps, and small-caps, at least online). So, the assumption that it means emphasis by default seems to be declining. Web writers often use boldface for all emphasis, much like journalism only has one dash character. I've noticed italics used more frequently for words-as-words and terms of art today than it was in my youth (quotation marks predominated, at least in what I was reading). I do recall a usability study (I think by Nielsen Norman Group) showing that the more capital letters there were in a text, the longer it took to read, unless it was ALLCAPS and short, as used on signs; it was the mixture that slowed them down, due to the up-and-down nature of it. But I saw that study ca. 1998–2000 and don't recall the details nor do I know if it's been confirmed. For WP, the basic issue is that italics mean lots of things, so default to it for this is somehow different markup. But caps almost always indicate a proper name (aside from acronyms/initialisms, which may not be, e.g. AIDS). The potential for confusion is higher. I liken it to the comma versus the period (full stop, whatever). The comma is used for a bewildering array of purposes, the dot for very few. We instantly notice a misplaced period, but misplaced commas survive in articles often for many years, because people don't consciously register them very much. What they signify is vague and rules of their use are vague, while what the point signifies is a sharply limited class of things, that matter more, and have tight, virtually unvaried rules. Anyway, as I said in the original thread, I think the average editor will interpret italicization of critically endangered as excessive stylization and remove it, because "listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List^[1]" is already three kinds of disambiguation at once (verbiage, link, cite); someone would have to have dain bramage to not understand that this means something specific. The italics style is usually used when a term is introduced and is going to be discussed further. Using it when it's not may give the wrong impression.

I didn't reflexively come to a no-caps position on this; over two years ago when I first started de-capping it per MOS:CAPS #1, I thought on it a lot, and cast about for other examples. Just thinking on "listed as ..." and similar phrases brings plenty to mind:

blah blah, yak yak

If I'm looking at house listings on a real estate site, the actual webpage may read "Sold" [or "SOLD!" or whatever], but we would write "The property was listed as sold on [sitename] as of [date]". Not "as Sold", nor "as 'Sold'", or even "as sold". Loads of cases like that came to mind. The capitalized ones that I could think of were generally only a few things. One is made-up titles for people, e.g. "She was named Maxim magazine's '37th Hottest Woman Alive' in 2002"; we generally put these in quotation marks, unless they're generally recognized by the public and by sources as serious recognition, and they get no italics, regardless. Or they're governmental designations of some kind applied to a person or place: "Snorkelville Manor was designated a Historic Landmark by [government body of wherever]", "Schindler was named Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government in 1963"; no stylization beyond caps. A few others like that came to mind, but I misremember what they were; oh, one was job promotions, elections, and the like; WP doesn't even capitalize those unless the title is attached to the name ("He was elected as the new board chairman of DoofusSoft in July"). Some are unclear: "The single reached No. 3 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart". That can be written a whole bunch of a ways ("No.", "no.", "#", "Number", "number") and source treatment is inconsistent. The upshot was, it was difficult to come up with examples of this sort of stuff consistently being capitalized, much less capitalized here, when applied to things that were not themselves proper names like people and places (and maybe albums/singles?). So, it came down to the capitalization being "unnecessary" per the guideline. Some such things that are more comparable do get italics when it seems necessary to mark a term of art, and like this case they're usually classifying labels, but it's not done excessively: "Despite it's name, Tok Pisin is linguistically classified as a creole not a pidgin" (note lack of italics on the second term – it's already clear that we're using terms of art). Same pattern in "The United States almost entirely uses the common law system, though Louisiana retains some civil law elements from the days of French control". In both cases we usually wouldn't italicize; it's just might be done by some writers in some contexts, e.g. a secondary school textbook. Examples more similar to the case at hand might be "The broken point was eventually classified as a lanceolate, after cleaning and lab analysis" (no markup on the label; if anyone italicized it, it would probably be reverted). "The Church of Scientology was labeled a criminal organization by the Spanish government in [whatever year that was]"; no markup. Even human cases do not always get caps, e.g. world record holders, which don't get italics or quotes either, though quotes might be used for something absurd like most nails driven into one's nose.

Species-caps: Yes, I run into it as well. I think it's a combo of four things: Enough remains that some people think it's WP style and start spreading it until they figure out otherwise, and never go back to undo what they did. Some people unhappy with BIRDCON maybe continue to capitalize for POINTy reasons (I know of around a dozen "defy the MoS" editors who're actively editing in MoS-noncompliant ways for obstinacy reasons; I don't stalk bird, butterfly, or whatever editors, so I don't know if any of them have joined that little club). New arrivals used to it professionally or (especially with birds) avocationally, and doing it out of ingrained habit and a sense that it's "the only correct way". And people who just don't know a thing about capitalization and are apt to write things like "She started her Modeling Career in 2001 ...", with their doing it to organism names being an incidental blip in a wider pattern. Mainstream usage doesn't seem to be shifting; I just looked at about the top 15 or 20 Google News hits for "mountain lion" and none of them capitalize it outside of headlines. I'm not sure of a bird species (rather than general type, like "eagle" or "crow") that gets enough news coverage for a meaningful Aves-specific search. Given the general "death to caps" trend in journalism, I know how I'd bet.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:15, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Where I see a lot of caps introduced is in articles related to species kept as pets. Tarantulas are the subject of some terrible articles written by people who keep them as pets and use dealers' websites as sources. It doesn't help either that many of the main sources on pet spiders are written by Germans, who naturally capitalize even when writing in English. These editors aren't capitalizing to make a point; it's how they see the English names of spiders written. This is where you need to be careful in calling this "the specialist style falacy"; pet sources don't seem "specialist" to those who associate this term with "technical", "academic", "scientific", etc. although they are specialist in another sense. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:32, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

As a birder it is actually a convention to capitalise the vernacular names, you will never, ever read a bird book which refers to "white-billed diver", it is always "White-billed Diver". However, we had that debate in Wikipedia and came up with the "wrong" answer but that is now how Wikipedia bird articles have to be named so we birders live with it. I have to agree with Peter the use of capitals in the IUCN categories "looks right", italics over-emphasise the categorisation. Quetzal1964 (talk) 19:45, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964: the same is true of plant names in the UK; I've contibuted material to articles and books, and maintain a website for a National Nature Reserve; in all of these the style is capitalized English names. I've just about got used to writing in the English Wikipedia style, although I do still forget sometimes and it still looks wrong. A relevant issue is that there are many fewer editors around now than when the debates took place. Then it could be assumed that there would be enough copy-editors to fix articles not in the correct style. This just isn't true now; if you look at the wikiprojects that make up WikiProject Tree of Life, the majority appear to be at best "semi-active", which makes it hard to maintain styles that seem to be against editors' natural styling. We desperately need more competent copy-editors. Plantdrew makes about half of the edits I see on my watchlist at present, as far as I can see. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:10, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

There was a revision discussion regarding WP:COSMETICBOT a while back and we'll probably need to have another one. Many of these things can be auto-fixed, if the community will stop blockading this cleanup. The very need for it is also one of the reasons why the old rationale against letting bots do it is no longer valid. That rationale was that "cosmetic" edits trigger the watchlists of a bazillion editors, but we no longer have a bazillion editors. Other reasons to make the change are that we now (for many years) have had watchlists with the ability to suppress reports of bot edits, and conformance with any guideline, including a style one, doesn't actually qualify as "cosmetic".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:57, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

MOS:SPACEINITS in citations

Your claim that "no spaces is more usual in citations" looks unfounded. If you look in the ICN, referenced throughout the article, you can easily see that it actually uses spaces everywhere, including author citations and its own title.

But basically, this is determined by the house style; some styles use periods and spaces (CMOS; most consistent), some use periods without spaces between initials but with a space after the last one (AP; strange, why one space instead of all or none?), some use no periods and only a space after the last initial (Guardian; really weird). The style here, MOS:SPACEINITS, is general and does not mention any exceptions for citations/endnotes/captions/tables/whatever. And what would be the reason to make citations inconsistent with the text? — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 23:04, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

@Mikhail Ryazanov: I meant only that no spaces between initials is, in my experience, more common in citations in the English Wikipedia than spaces between initials. WP:CITEVAR says don't change consistent citation styles. Citations are allowed to have a different style from text; for example MOS:DATEUNIFY allows YYYY-MM-DD dates in access and archive dates when they are not allowed in text; "&" is used in lists of authors in citations but not in text. So no spaces between initials in citations but spaces in text is consistent with other differences. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:09, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

WP:CITEVAR is about the general use of references, like {{harv}} or <ref>, and citation formatting, like {{citation}} templates or manually. It does not say anything about retaining the punctuation that is inconsistent with WP:MOS. — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 22:26, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

@Mikhail Ryazanov: that's simply not how WP:CITEVAR is generally interpreted, as I know from sometimes bitter experience. When it says [e]ditors should not attempt to change an article's established citation style merely on the grounds of personal preference, to make it match other articles, or without first seeking consensus for the change it does not define "citation style", and this has always been interpreted very broadly to cover many aspects of style. There are lots of features of citation styles that CITEVAR doesn't explicitly mention, but which editors regularly refuse to allow to be changed. My key point remains: you asked what would be the reason to make citations inconsistent with the text? and my answer is that there are many ways in which citations are inconsistent with the text, and CITEVAR protects these. The way forward if it bothers you is to start an RfC on whether CITEVAR covers spaces between initials. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:35, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

The result will be either that it does or that it sometimes does, because certain off-WP citation styles mandate no spaces, and we permit those styles here. [I think this is a terrible idea, but we're stuck with it for now.] A strong partial-counter-argument can be made that if an article isn't using an external citation style that requires no space (or no dots, or both, or whatever is at issue), then MoS applies to it, just like it applies to everything else in citations when a pre-defined citation style doesn't override MoS's default (e.g. we're not allowed to do ALL-CAPS TITLES, or italicize author names instead of work titles, or engage in other typographic weirdness).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:53, 4 September 2017 (UTC)
PS: For what it's worth, I routinely reformat "un-MoS" name and other styling in citations and am rarely reverted. If I get groused at, I move on to another article. It's better to make 100 articles more consistent with each other and with the default site-wide norms, and leave alone an article controlled by a CITEVAR aficionado who thinks it's license to WP:OWN, than to spend the same amount of time arguing to change that one article.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:01, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

FMC

Not sure why were conflicting on that one. I'm trying to take the same approach we've mutually taken when it comes to OWNish behavior about CITEVAR. I see all these *VARs as limbs of the same creature.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:40, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: it's not clear that we are exactly "conflicting"; perhaps a matter of different perspectives caused by experience. I edit mostly organism-related articles, most of which have no obvious ENGVAR, and most of which have few active competent editors with whom to reach a consensus, but many of which all too often get poorly edited by newbies and oddballs (a handful of US and UK editors in particular like to "fix" a random selection of spellings to their preference in less watched articles). On the larger articles, typically the ENGVAR gets more and more muddled until it irritates me enough to sort it out. It's very important to me that when I do so that there's a clear(ish) guideline that can be referenced and defended. It's no use saying "discuss and reach consensus" unless there are committed sensible editors around; something more mechanical is needed. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:39, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Picking up a point in your post at WT:Manual of Style, to avoid clutter there, it's simply not the case for more obscure articles (e.g. those on species of plants with no obvious use, or on many species of invertebrates) that the problem of mixed styles is caused by recent edits. That's my point above. It's like the physics of entropy: randomness increases without active intervention. There just aren't enough editors now in most of the Tree of Life WikiProjects for watchlists to cover more than a fraction of the articles, and style muddles build up over time. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:50, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I see what you mean here. Do disputes about style in them arise often enough that FMC arguments actually come up? Most of them sound like stubs to begin with, which don't qualify for FMC (first non-stub edit). I do edit in this area now and again (e.g. a bunch of work I did on cucurbit-parasitic micro-organisms), but it's definitely not my focus, so my experience of the area is too shallow to know what "typical" reactions are.

As a side matter, the slow death of the wikiproject system (and in many places its perversion into a WP:FACTION system of content control) keeps coming up, with various ideas for something new, but it never seems to gain any traction. I'm not really sure what to do about this (or whether anything can be until WPPs become even more moribund and/or problematic).
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:12, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: all these problems arise from a shortage of competent editors, which undermines the idea of discussing to reach consensus, whether at the level of individual articles, in WikiProject fora or community-wide. When one or two editors are effectively the only ones creating content in a particular area, they are almost bound to get a sense of ownership. There's no-one around to discuss issues with, and the concept of "editing by consensus" withers, not by any deliberate action but just by default. So I think that firmer rules rather than general principles become more necessary. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:06, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. This is one of the reasons I'm so resistant to "let style chaos reign" ideas (to reduce or eliminate rules or create more exceptions to them). People, especially those who go back to WP's more free-wheelings days, don't like rules, but they become necessary, as does increased interpretation of guidelines as rules not as just advice. Fortunately, the community generally seems to be going along with that shift in interpretation over the last 5–10 years. I raised the wikiprojects issue at Jimbo's talk page the other day, in a larger thread about the competent-editors problem, and the only reaction I got was a denial that there's any shortage of competent editors, and a claim that we have more of them than ever, from someone who's no noob or weirdo (thread here). I find this perplexing.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:02, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

There's no shortage of editors in some areas of popular culture, I think. I once edited a couple of pages on films I seen, but quickly took them off my watchlist, because of the volume of activity (mostly back-and-forward to little overall effect, in my view).

I don't agree with you overall about wikiprojects. The resources, standards and approaches the good ones have developed are extremely valuable, and need to be preserved. For example, when I started editing spider articles (probably my main activity now) I found the material at WP:SPIDERS invaluable (and have added to it). The same applies to WP:PLANTS. If wikiprojects attempt to over-ride general guidelines and policies then, as you know, I have always agreed that this is unacceptable. Some of the material developed by wikiprojects can be moved to MOS or WP space, but some will always remain too specialized. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:41, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Well, I don't think WPP materials should just be nuked! Rather, we have a couple of problems (and maybe more than I'm seeing): WPPs got topically fragmented, even micro-fragmented over time, with the result of so much decentralization that as they die off, they're not being folded back into larger, more general projects, and the work the topics need just tends to fall off into no attention being received. Secondly, their entire conception and conceptualization as "projects" with "scopes" (and templates for branding them as claimed), that one "joins" as a "member" has led to a number of control/territorialism/isolationism problems. Thus, I think it would be better to re-do them as something else that doesn't appeal to "joiner-ism" or "club" mentality – to convert them into processes not places (start by deleting the member lists and categories). And also up-merge any flagged as dormant, as a standard practice and without a lot of fighting about it. But I've been thinking this since the late 2000s, and haven't gotten the job done, so it remains a what-if at this point.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:36, 8 September 2017 (UTC)