User talk:Plantdrew/Archive 8

Name of an orchid

Hi Plantdrew.

Wondering if you can help me (but I realise you're busy). I was planning on creating an article for Neobenthamia gracilis. This is the accepted name in quite a few place. But WCSP is a notable departure. It has N. gracilis as a synonym of Polystachya neobenthamia. Wikispecies has followed this lead.

I don't need you to try and figure it out for me ... just wanted your opinion. Should an article be named P. neobenthamia, or Neobenthamia gracilis? Prime Lemur (talk) 14:55, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

trust

the new year is treating you well - having suffered from kangaroo ticks at various parts of the anatomy at different times (not a pleasant experience) I am curious on your take of the south american slant of categorising of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amblyomma_triguttatum, is that just lazy pick a country any country as the plotting on seismic processing I did all those years ago, in your knowledge - or simply lack of adding the oz material? cheers JarrahTree 08:27, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

think I have answered my own question by observation - laziness... it was JarrahTree 08:35, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

Kermesia immaculata

The broken link on CoL should point to https://www.hemiptera-databases.org/flow/?db=flow&page=explorer&lang=en&card=species&id=143. The database is not particularly user friendly — you have to enter the scientific name and wait for it to offer a target — and it doesn't show the link to the result in the address bar (I had to guess it using the CoL link).   Jts1882 | talk  08:03, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

@Jts1882:, did you mean this message to go to somebody else? I haven't had anything to do with any Kermesia, so I'm not sure what you're trying to show me (unless it pertains to instability of CoL IDs that I mentioned at Template talk:Taxonbar). Plantdrew (talk) 19:18, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

There is a exasperated comment on your main user page about it. I don't know from when.   Jts1882 | talk  20:22, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Oh, right. I wasn't turning up anything on here on en.wiki for it. I know I have something on my page about some decent ceb.wiki bot articles, but had no memory of what those specific articles were. Plantdrew (talk) 20:36, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Blue squirrel (animal) listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Blue squirrel (animal). Since you had some involvement with the Blue squirrel (animal) redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. -- Tavix ^(talk) 14:12, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

mason[i]orum

I thought at first you were wrong; IPNI has Nerine masonorum (but Gladiolus masoniorum). Practices seem to have changed with names ending in "n", but the ICNafp at 60C.1.b actually has the example "mason-iorum for Mason, father and daughter", so you were right, it should be Nerine masoniorum, since this seems to be a correctable wrong ending. Only "er" ending can now have the "i" omitted. I'll e-mail the IPNI. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:37, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, you were the one that moved it to the current title in the first place, so you're second-guessing your own judgement if anything. Good that IPNI got it fixed. Plantdrew (talk) 18:13, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Sigh... I'd forgotten that I had moved it; not sure why I didn't approach IPNI then. Anyway, Kanchi Gandhi, as usual, acted very swiftly! Peter coxhead (talk) 18:16, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

family move

your turn to demonstrate what should happens with the taxobox system, sorry, how does it play out when a higher taxon no longer needs the redirect from a commoner's name? cygnis insignis 16:52, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

@Cygnis insignis: Is this regarding Vespertilionidae? I already took care of that in this diff; it just needed to have the |link= use the scientific name directly rather than piping to the vernacular name. I also edited Template:Taxonomy/Vespertilionoidea (took me two edits because I screwed up the first one; the monotypic superfamily needs a piped link to the family, but it should be the scientific name rather than vernacular after the move). All the subordinate taxonomy templates (and the taxoboxes in articles) will eventually update the link, but it may take a few days (the update can be forced immediately via null edits to each genus taxonomy template, but I don't think that's worth the effort). I plan to check back in a few days and see what links to vesper bat remain. Plantdrew (talk) 17:15, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Plantdrew, cheers, there is a lag then, and I looked for the template and kept landing at the nav box, probably missed the correct title in the links out. Getting the parent to link down is something I now know where to look for an example. Some, but not all, of the autoboxen will be refreshed as I edit them, I'll add a fact instead of null edits. Cheers again, cygnis insignis 17:25, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, there were a bunch of navboxes (e.g. {{Vespertilionidae}}) that needed updating as well (and which may continue produce "What links here" results at "vesper bat" for a couple days). Plantdrew (talk) 18:00, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

And continue to include links to every other article in every article listed and categorised within, as I am so fond of pointing oot, and that will be out of date tomorrow. cygnis insignis 18:12, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Your opinion

Hi, would you be able to have a look at Dorotheantheae when you've got a bit of time? I'm not sure of what else to add as it's a hardly discussed tribe from what I can find (do you know of any tribe GAs or B-class articles that I could look at?). Also, it'd be great if you could verify whether I've used the correct botanical terms throughout. Cheers, Anarchyte (talk | work) 10:52, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

@Anarchyte: I'll look over Dorotheantheae. Tribes in general aren't very much discussed, you've chosen a rather challenging subject to write about (although you do at least have one really good reference). Most articles with high quality ratings are species, and there are very few above genus. Gilliesieae is the only tribe rated B or better, and Grevilleoideae is the only subfamily (although Allioideae is probably more deserving of a B than Grevilleoideae). There are a bunch of well developed articles for minor ranks (subgenus, series) in the genus Banksia; e.g. Banksia subg. Isostylis. Plantdrew (talk) 17:21, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Automatic taxobox parameters

Could you please just check Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system/Archive 1#Default taxobox name, if you haven't seen it.

I have a working version of {{Automatic taxobox}} in Lua. It ignores the "width" parameters. It also ignores |binomial2= to |binomial4=, because the parameter report shows they aren't used. Were they ever, as far as you know? What would they be used for? (The four range maps are used, with the caption parameters used to label them.) Peter coxhead (talk) 14:26, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I'm still thinking about |name=, and will comment on it.

I want to say there was at one point a whale article using an automatic taxobox with |binomial2= that I converted back to a manual taxobox, but neither of the 2 whales now using binomial2 seem to have ever had an automatic taxobox. Maybe I'm misremembering, or maybe somebody else removed binomial2 from a 3rd whale sometime after I'd edited it.

|binomial2= is used for (in manual taxoboxes) articles covering two very closely related species (which may have recently been split from a single species). I don't think having a single article covering multiple species like that is a very good practice. But it might be appropriate in some cases. I don't know if you're aware of the ongoing mess with osprey (western osprey) and eastern osprey; it was recently split into two species on molecular evidence, but the (western) osprey article continues to include material about ospreys in Australia (which would be the other species). I think it will be difficult to find sources that use Pandion haliaetus in the new strict sense, so it will be quite difficult to write an article that's truly about western ospreys. |binomial2= might be a good way to deal with this for the time being (until there are more sources acknowledging the split and which are specifically about western ospreys). However, cases where binomial2 is appropriate will be very rare, and I think it's not worth supporting that parameter in automatic taxoboxes; where binomial2 is necessary, manual taxoboxes can be used.

I'm not very happy with the |range_map3= and |range_map4=. They're barely used, and make taxoboxes occupy a lot of screen real estate. It might be better to have multiple range maps in a gallery, or associated with sections discussing a particular subspecies. Multiple range maps aren't being used consistently right now anyway. Why does Alnus incana have range maps for 3 of the 6 subspecies mentioned in the article and a global map that recognizes 4 subspecies? Why does rock ptarmigan have close-up range maps for North America and Europe, but not for Asia? Eurasian three-toed woodpecker has a global map representing a different species circumscription, a Eurasian "close-up" (which doesn't really offer more detail than the global map), and a European close-up, and the 3 maps force the taxobox to vertically lengthen the article at the resolution I'm using. And why are we supporting more than 2 range maps, but not more than 2 images? I could see 3 images being useful for an overall picture of a tree, a close-up of a flower, and a close-up of a fruit (but then again, the 3rd image can just go into the article outside of the taxobox). Plantdrew (talk) 17:35, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Bryde's whale also uses |binomial2=. Here the common name applies to several species, but not all the species in the genus.

I think the purpose of |range_map2=, |range_map3= and |range_map4= was to position a map under |binomial2=, |binomial3= and |binomial4=. It wasn't intended for people to add addition maps, although a second one can be useful. So I think support for |binomial2= and |range_map2= has utility. As the osprey example shows, it's sometimes difficult to dissect out the information relevant to a new species when split off from an existing one. A few cat species article splits might have been better handled if people had waited for new information. I also suspect in the early days of Wikipedia it was more common to have a genus article covering several species as well, rather than an article for each species, making the additional sections useful. If people want extra maps they can always add them after the taxobox like any other image.   Jts1882 | talk  18:09, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I think you're right about multiple maps being intended for multiple binomials. Taxobox does position each map under each binomial when binomial2/range_map2 are present. I'd wondered why synonyms appear after range maps, but I guess that is a consequence of the decision to associate a range map with a binomial. Plantdrew (talk) 18:31, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

|type_species= and |type_strain= are displayed between the first binomial and the first map. I don't think that is desirable, as it dissociates the first map from the first binomial and the second binomial/map from the "Binomial name" section header. In practice though, there aren't any taxoboxes with the combination of parameters that would make this a problem. Plantdrew (talk) 18:36, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Agreed, there is an issue there. The position of the subdivision can also be questioned as that might also be something to be associated with customised binomial/range maps. I assume the binomial/rangemaps and type sections were developed independently. They both work, but not together.   Jts1882 | talk  19:59, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

This issue is symptomatic of the situation with automated taxobox templates (and indeed the manual taxobox template) generally. What started off as a planned and coherent system has had bits tacked on and fixes applied resulting a muddle – code that is difficult to understand and maintain, and parameters with unclear uses. I see sorting it out as involving two stages:

1. Convert the automated taxobox templates (and then {{Taxobox}}) to Lua, revising the parameters passed on to {{Taxobox/core}} at each step.
2. When it's clear what makes up the complete set of parameters needed for all types of taxobox, convert {{Taxobox/core}} to Lua. At that stage the layout within taxoboxes can be discussed and changed if thought desirable.

Currently I'm working on (1). As noted above, this has thrown up two issues so far: handling the default for the name parameter, and whether the multiple binomial parameters are needed.

• Since posting above, I've realized that the new {{Virusbox}} template uses the target taxon name as the default, not the page name. The underlying reason is that it was revived by Bob the Wikipedian from old code, and this was originally the default for all automated taxoboxes. It makes sense to me to leave it this way for viruses, because there are virus taxoboxes on pages about diseases caused by the virus, and because there are few if any non-ICTV (i.e. "common") names for viruses, so the articles are almost always at taxon names. On the other hand, for non-viruses, particularly groups like birds and mammals, many articles are at the English name, and this is used as the taxobox name, so using the page name as the default makes more sense.
• The arguments for restricting range maps to two, as with images, seem sound to me. So if this is implemented, then before the Lua version of {{Automatic taxobox}} is made live, we need to fix the articles with more than two.
• Whatever was originally intended, the extra binomial parameters are not actually used in association with range maps, so I remain in favour of removing them.

At some point, we need to try to have a wider discussion, but there seem few other editors interested at present. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:40, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Missing taxon parameter in Automatic taxoboxes

By the way, to avoid duplicate effort, I've been though the January list of articles with missing taxon parameter and fixed them. Any update to {{Automatic taxobox}} will have a tracking category for articles relying on the page name. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:16, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:, I hate to break it to you, but you only did the first of 31 pages of missing taxon. The report shows 100 results per page, first sorted by article creation date, then sorted alphabetically (when template data error reports started up, it was strictly sorted alphabetically, so it would've been more obvious that there were additional pages when the first page didn't get past the As; I don't know why the sort order was changed). Most of the automatic taxoboxes that had an image_width were also missing a taxon parameter; I'd guess I added about 1000 taxon parameters in January while working through image_width. To avoid further duplicate effort, we should wait for the February report to come out and split the work up by page (e.g. you start with page 1, I start with page 10). Or we could see if somebody who uses AWB (i.e. Tom.Reding) will do it. Plantdrew (talk) 16:24, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Ah, I was surprised there were so few! Sigh... Maybe it's better to wait until there's a tracking category, which will keep up-to-date better. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:31, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Category:Automatic taxoboxes relying on page title is now live, and slowly filling up. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:31, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Are these errors that need fixing? Trochozoa was the first example of an entirely parameterless automatic taxobox I have seen.   Jts1882 | talk  16:22, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes and no. Yes, because relying on the page title isn't a good idea – it doesn't always work; it breaks if the page is moved; it's not self-documenting; it makes consistency and error checks more difficult; it offers bad examples to less experienced editors. A classic problem that arises is:

• A less experienced editor converts a page with a title other than the taxon, e.g. the English name, to an automated taxobox, or creates a new page at such a title, copying the style of a taxobox without |taxon= from another article.
• The message they get says the taxonomy template is missing, so they create it – at the page title, which is wrong.

There were many such taxonomy templates at one time.

Another issue is that sometimes the editor thinks they've specified the taxon, but have used the wrong parameter (e.g. |genus=) or used |Taxon= and they haven't realized it's been ignored in favour of the page name.

No, because it does work, so it's not urgent, but personally I'd like to get rid of such taxoboxes. We've done it for Speciesbox. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:52, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Macrotermes natalensis

Thanks for already doing a cleanup on this page. I had done some work before you but the page creator then came along and removed all the references and placed in some pretty poorly worded text. I've gone through and tidied up his/her most recent efforts but need someone with more expertise to check my wording for accuracy. Would you mind? (or know anyone else who could help me out). Cheers and Regards. Hughesdarren (talk) 23:13, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Happened to see this, so I made a few edits. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:49, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Cheers Hughesdarren (talk) 12:06, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Higher plant classification

I've been bothered for some time about the imposition of the "eukaryote phylogeny" classification on plants, and your comment spurred me into action. I have now set up a consistent separate hierarchy using the "/Plantae" qualifier. See e.g. the taxobox at Pteridospermatophyta and the underlying taxonomy templates. I think we do need to make more use of variant taxonomy templates. Any taxon treated as a division should be placed in a kingdom – at least that's my view. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:43, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Peter, looks good. I'm still puzzled by why we need/have four different taxonomy templates for embryophytes. Template:Taxonomy/Embryophyta and Template:Taxonomy/Embryophytes appear redundant to each other to me. Plantdrew (talk) 22:02, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Yes, you're right; partly my changes of mind. I'll try to clean it up tomorrow. Part of the issue was the confusion I had/have over whether the title of the taxobox and the link value should match, i.e. should "Template:Taxonomy/Embryophyta" have |link=Embryophyte|Embryophytes or not. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:21, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Gorilla

Hi. The Gorilla title is still italicized. How do you change it. LittleJerry (talk) 16:30, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

@LittleJerry:, you deleted "italic_title = no" from the taxobox when you changed the image there. Plantdrew (talk) 17:17, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't realize. I copy-pasted the taxbox. LittleJerry (talk) 19:08, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Always good to have confirmation that |italic_title=no works, after my changes to {{Automatic taxobox}}.

Am I alone in finding the reference in the taxobox name odd? What is it supposed to reference? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:57, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

There are a fair number of mammal species articles that have an MSW reference with |name=. I think that is an excellent practice; the vernacular name should be referenced, and it's probably better to have the reference in the taxobox rather than right after the title of the page in the lead. I've come across a handful of mammal species articles that have an MSW reference associated with {{para|binomial}, which I've moved to |name= while converting to a speciesbox. However, an MSW reference of this sort on a genus article isn't really appropriate, as MSW doesn't assign vernacular names to genera. Plantdrew (talk) 20:38, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

Ah, right, I see now that it's supposed to reference the English name; I do strongly agree that English names should be referenced, as you know. But it shouldn't be on the genus article, we can agree. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:10, 10 February 2019 (UTC)

I have unreviewed a page you curated

Hi, I'm Boleyn. I wanted to let you know that I saw the page you reviewed, Saurauia latibractea, and have marked it as unpatrolled. If you have any questions, please ask them on my talk page. Thank you.

Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer.

Boleyn (talk) 21:50, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

trying

to improve assessment in the Austraian biota project - it would be really great if you when add further material (and thank you for your effort when you do), that in WP:AGF you might find the few seconds to add a simple few extra parts to the talk page - an example being what I have just done with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Calytrix_purpurea - so we are trying to encourage fellow biota adders to move beyond the solitary and very lonely biota=y, and actually progress to add the companion and the default to add the part biota-importance=low - which really helps - thanks for your understanding and help in this.. cheers JarrahTree 12:35, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

@JarrahTree:, I almost always include importance. I would like to say I always do, but you've found a case where I didn't. I must have copy-pasted the banners from somewhere else in that example, because I always type out {{WikiProject Australia}} rather than {{WP Australia}} if I'm doing the typing.

You asked about other regional biota projects a little while ago. I mentioned the one for Great Britain and Ireland. There's also Wikipedia:WikiProject Japan/Flora and fauna task force (and Wikipedia:WikiProject Pakistani biota which seems to have never gotten off the ground). Plantdrew (talk) 17:30, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your response - acknowledgement of the issue regardless of the response always helps! Yup you copied the shorthand free of assessment more than once... all the best and thanks for the intelligence on the other projects - cheers JarrahTree 23:27, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

LIst of the orchids of the Philippines listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect LIst of the orchids of the Philippines. Since you had some involvement with the LIst of the orchids of the Philippines redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:34, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

LIst of bird species described in the 2000s listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect LIst of bird species described in the 2000s. Since you had some involvement with the LIst of bird species described in the 2000s redirect, you might want to participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. UnitedStatesian (talk) 13:36, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

Template:Taxonomy/Vaccinium_sect._Myrtillus

I assume that this version is in error, and the link was supposed to match the title of template, i.e. Vaccinium sect. Myrtillus? I've changed it to this in the current version.

(I'm not sure whether you've seen it, but I've implemented checks on whether the taxon in the title of the taxonomy template 'matches' the link text. Cases that don't go into Category:Taxonomy templates with name and link text not matching. At first there were many false cases in the category, since 'matches' is tricky to program, because of qualifiers on the taxon name, disambiguating terms, italics added manually, double-quotes and "(?)" to show doubtful, etc. I've managed to prevent these appearing now, I think. There were the usual crop of straightforward errors, particularly typos, that meant the taxoboxes in the relevant articles were wrong – in some cases for years. Once I would have said "a surprising number of straightforward errors", but what we've learnt recently is that whenever checks are added to the automated taxobox system code, many error cases are revealed.) Peter coxhead (talk) 09:55, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, some kind of mistake on my part there. I know the italics are automated now and had noticed you removing them. Previously, when italics were manually specified you were abbreviating the genus in plant section/subgenus templates. Apparently you're leaving the genus written out now? Is that due to the check for matching the title to the link text? My reason for writing out the genus was that I didn't think it should display an abbreviation in any article on the sections/subgenera themselves. I have no objection to showing an abbreviation in articles on species, but the system couldn't abbreviate in some instances, but not in others. Plantdrew (talk) 17:55, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

The match code handles abbreviated genera in taxonomy templates – Template:Taxonomy/Levenhookia sect. Coleostylis isn't put in the tracking category for example. However, I favour leaving the genus in full in the taxonomy template because it helps to check errors that I've seen such as where a series, say, has as the parent a section in another genus. What should happen is that the abbreviation should be done automatically in the taxobox, as happens for a species. The code that italicizes also handles abbreviation:

{{Taxon italics|Acacia sect. Acacia|abbreviated=yes}} → A. sect. Acacia

so it's just a matter of updating the taxobox code. I got rather bogged down and bored with coding the matching and then fixing the errors revealed in taxonomy templates, so I'm having a break from automated taxoboxes and have been working on actual articles, as I used to. :-) (Even then you now have to fix Wikidata to make the taxonbar work properly – it used to be simpler!) I'll fix the abbreviating soon. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:02, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

Polygonoideae

I've been moving species in Polygonoideae as per PoWO, not because it's necessarily right, but because for genera such as Reynoutria and Koenigia it does seem to be up-to-date with pretty solid molecular phylogeny – well, as solid as that ever is! I see that in some cases I'm moving articles back to where they were and where you'd fixed them for a previous move. Sigh... Peter coxhead (talk) 12:06, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

There are 11 articles in Polygonaceae still using manual taxoboxes. Most of them probably need to be moved to a currently accepted name (moving articles is not part of workflow when converting to automatic taxoboxes). Plantdrew (talk) 20:12, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Advice sought

When sorting out some of the Polygonoideae species, I've quite often found homonyms – so many species were in Polygonum at one time that it's not surprising that they use most of the obvious epithets! An example is:

• Persicaria mitis (Schrank) Assenov ≡ Polygonum mite Schrank
• Persicaria mitis Delarbre ≡ Polygonum persicaria L. = Persicaria maculosa

There was a redirect at Persicaria mitis to Persicaria maculosa, obviously referring to Persicaria mitis Delarbre. I replaced this with an article on Persicaria mitis (Schrank) Assenov (which may be an illegitimate name – see the article). We don't (ever?) have redirects at name+authority, so I'm not sure of the best way of managing plain "Persicaria mitis". Just a hatnote? A dab? An SIA? What do you think? (There are other examples ex Polygonum.) Peter coxhead (talk) 20:41, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:, I don't know. I'm pretty sure we have examples of all of those (including name+authority). It's really only going to be an issue in the rare cases when an illegitimate homonym eclipses a legitimate name in visibility, right? Persicaria mitis was one of Joseph Laferriere's creations, and while he did a lot of good work, he didn't pay any attention to illeg. status before creating redirects. Plantdrew (talk) 03:15, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your response.

(The status of the two Polygonum mite names was changed by conservation, as I've been told by Rafaël Govaerts, who seems to be the person to contact about the database that underlies PoWO. Unlike WCSP and IPNI, which update immediately, it seems that the web view of PoWO is separate from the underlying database, and only changes when an update is run. As of now the correct status of P. mite isn't in IPNI, although I have e-mailed them. So the illeg. status is the other way round to what I initially thought – or to be precise the originally legit. name is a nom. rej.)

I think it's an issue whenever a name that is technically illegitimate has actually been much more widely used than the legitimate one – and sometimes still is – and has not been conserved. This is not so uncommon with American species, in my experience, perhaps because of the historical use of "American rules".

On reflection, I'm inclined to go for a hatnote in future. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:58, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank-you

Thanks Plantdrew, for responding to my page....Pvmoutside (talk) 03:02, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Microbiology taxoboxes

Hi Plantdrew, in your recent tidying up of Apicomplexan parasite taxoboxes, I see that you have been removing the "display parents" field that was included in order to show the domain. Without this, the highest rank shown is SAR (a taxa unknown to many), and not a major taxonomic rank. Most of the manual taxoboxes that I replaced also had the domain displayed as well. Could you pause for a bit and tell me your rationale here? 'Cheers, Loopy30 (talk) 03:57, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

There are a couple of interesting issues here (well, interesting to me!):

• Why does Template:Taxonomy/SAR have |always_display=yes? I don't think it should have.
• What we really want, I think, is that if (and only if) there's no kingdom/regnum rank in the taxonomic hierarchy, then the domain should be shown automatically. (I don't want to add "Domain: Eukaryota" to every animal, plant and fungus taxobox.)

The first point is fixable; the second is more tricky, but could be programmed if wanted. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:00, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

I agree that Eukaryota is not needed for animals, plants and fungi, but I think it should be shown for other groups. Are there any other Eukaryotic kingdoms used apart from those three? If not then the heirarchy search could just stop at kingdom.

I'm inclined to support the always display on SAR as it is one of the major supergroups. What needs fixing is the splitting of this group between SAR and Harosa (Cavalier-Smith's name for it) as at the moment we have the heterokonts under the latter (within Chromista) and the alveotates and rhizaria under SAR. We should use one or the other, not both with the subgroups split between them. But this brings us back to the discussion for the primary Eukaryote taxonomy reference.   Jts1882 | talk  14:31, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Further, the heterokonts themselves are split. The Ocrophyta are under Heterokonta (in SAR), while the pseudofungi are under Heterokontophyta (under Chromalveolata and Bikonta) and others use manual taxoboxes (presumably because of the confusion).   Jts1882 | talk  14:39, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I think that it is appropriate that "Domain: Eukaryota" should be added to the articles within the SAR supergroup. If this could be programmed to display automatically without having to use the "display parents"" field and showing all the intermediary ranks, then that would be great. I also agree that the SAR supergroup should continue to always be displayed in the taxobox. As far as the SAR/Harosa split mentioned above, it needs to be discussed further, but that discussion should probably take place at WT:WikiProject Microbiology, where the current state of eukaryotic microbe taxonomy has been described as a place where "anarchy reigns". Loopy30 (talk) 01:28, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

@Loopy30:, I'd be happy to have Eukaryota display for SAR articles (and all other non fungus/plant/animal eukaryotes), I just think having |display_parents= values of 10, 11, or 12 is a poor way to do that. I'm inclined to think that Diaphoretickes should not be displayed, but there's no way to skip it if the current template arrangement is kept and display_parents is used to get to Eukaryota. Another drawback of display_parents is that additional templates can be inserted into the middle of the current template tree, leaving the display_parents value insufficient to display the intended parent (or the template tree could be reduced, and then a given display_parents value overshoots). The solution with the current state of affairs is to use some combination of |always_display= and variant taxonomy templates (e.g. Template:Taxonomy/Archaeplastida/displayed) to get the important ranks/clades showing in different branches of the tree of life. I've pondered whether it might be possible to make the automatic taxobox system display all minor ranks up to the next major ranks automatically (so that it "knows" to display subtribe, tribe, subfamily on a genus article without needing to specify display_parents at all). Plantdrew (talk) 02:30, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes, using display parents = 10 is a brute force method that could be improved with a more a elegant solution if the code could be amended as Peter Coxhead suggested above. Loopy30 (talk) 03:09, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

The underlying problem, it seems to me, is that the whole idea of showing a summary classification in a taxobox really only works well for Linnaean ranks, where there are clear principal (major) and non-principal (minor) ranks. Then |always_display= and |display_parents= are needed only for the odd exceptions. There was originally some code in the pre-Lua version that was supposed to show minor ranks in more-or-less the way that Plantdrew suggests above, but it never worked properly, partly because in most of the deep taxonomic hierarchies encoded in taxonomy templates, most taxa are clades, partly because some minor 'ranks', like series or section, are used so inconsistently across the tree of life (compare Template:Taxonomy/Quercus ser. Virentes with Template:Taxonomy/Erechthiinae), and partly because it wasn't coded correctly. At first I tried to reproduce it in the Lua version, but eventually I gave up.

The question is whether what we want, i.e. an intelligent summary of the classification, can be reduced to an algorithm, bearing in mind that it has to work for all the huge variety of taxonomy templates across the tree of life. (Just matching the link text to the taxon in the title of a taxonomy template took me days because of this variety.) Peter coxhead (talk) 09:33, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

@Jts1882: re the rank of kingdom, see this search. The issue is also that if you program it this way, as soon as anyone adds a taxonomy template to the hierarchy with |rank=regnum, it will stop further processing, which has knock-on effects (e.g. on determining taxobox colour).

How about simply making Animals, Plants and Fungi hard-coded exceptions which don't show any higher taxa, with the rest of the Eukaryotes showing the domain. It's unsatifactory from a systematic approach but accurately reflects the special status those three traditional kingdoms hold in biology. Alternatively, or is this the same, stop at a taxon that provides a colour for the taxobox.   Jts1882 | talk  12:53, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

My experiences lately have made me even more cautious than before about changing the underlying logic of the automated taxobox system, and using your invaluable system to look at some of the taxonomic hierarchies encoded in the system shows that some are even more tangled than I thought possible. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:41, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Incidentally, I've been exploring some of these tangled hierarchies. The one that stands out is Angiosperms, which follows AGP IV strictly, at least down to order. I think I can guess why.   Jts1882 | talk  12:53, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Reyesia draft

Hello Plantdrew. Hope you're keeping well. Thank you for your recent additions to the page that I created for subfamily Cestroideae.

Could I ask you the favour of reviewing my recently-created page on the Solanaceous genus Reyesia ? I foolishly left it unreferenced for a couple of hours, only to find, on my return, that it had been banished to 'Drafts' by the slightly overzealous user Discospinster, before I had a chance to add the references I had ready and waiting. I understand drafts can languish in limbo for 8 weeks or more, before being reviewed, and the page is now, I think, just as serviceable as others of mine that you've kindly given the 'OK' to in the past.

In case you're too busy, I'm going to ask the similarly kindly-disposed Peter coxhead the same favour - happy if either of you were kind enough to oblige.

kind regards

Flobbadob

 Done - as "clothes make the man", "refs make the article"! 'Cheers Loopy30 (talk) 15:51, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

unmaintained

try another one mate - you could have that for most of wikipedia (there is no emoji for irony on wikipedia - so this is of course in agf etc etc in the hope that no small sentient beings are hurt in the process etc etc)JarrahTree 23:43, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

not only that most of the 500k edits + creative editors (ie million edits or getting close) have never been near a talk page to put project tag or assessment of any sorts on in their entire editing life, how do you expect anything to be maintained? JarrahTree 23:57, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Peter C - in all agf - please dont bother to reply on this lot, thanks. JarrahTree 00:03, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Portal:Trees/Selected article has 9 articles (only two of which are better than C-class), and hasn't been edited since 2012. That is pathetic. Portal:Trees/Did you know hasn't had substantial edits since 2014. Portal:Trees/News has 6 items, and hasn't had any substantial edits since 2011 (except the addition of a now broken external link), and none of the news items are more recent than 2009. Wikinews:Girl killed by falling tree??? Sheesh, there have been hundreds of people killed by falling trees since 2005; why is the barely news-worthy item worth highlighting 14 years later? (Answer:Wikinews is moribund and may not have any more recent articles on deaths caused by trees). Portals should present interesting, actively curated content. It is a disservice to readers to have this outdated, boring, garbage portal spammed all over the place. Yes, there are many poorly maintained articles; editors efforts would be better spent maintaining articles, not portals forking content. If the exact same content in the portal were hosted anywhere other than Wikipedia, and presented as an External link in a random article on a tree species, would you even bat an eye if I removed it as an inapproriate external link? Plantdrew (talk) 00:59, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Ta I understand now - very well explained and I understand from the explanation - thanks for answering - anything similar to that I would strongly endorse - go for it! JarrahTree 10:00, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

A toast sandwich for you!

Because you're pretty fresh BluePankow ✉ 20:58, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

Obsolete taxon

Hi Plantdrew, would you see any objection to boldly merging the single sentence article Tetractinomorpha into the article Demosponge? Loopy30 (talk) 20:09, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

I wouldn't object to merging it somewhere. From a cursory skim through WoRMS, it looks like everything in Tetractinomorpha is now included in Heteroscleromorpha. I'm not familiar with sponge taxonomy at all, and am likely missing something, but it seems to me that Heteroscleromorpha might be a better target. Plantdrew (talk) 21:10, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, I asked because you had edited the article previously and had noted then that it was a disused taxon. I agree that Heteroscleromorpha is perhaps a better target for the redirect. I was considering Demosponge as it mentioned Tetractinomorpha in its discussion of former classifications. 'Cheers, Loopy30 (talk) 12:14, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Echinops (genus)

A small, matter, but I moved the disambig link from Echinops (genus) to Echinops (tenrec). The main article of Echinops (without the genus tag) still goes to the plant genus. Now that Echinops (genus) has been moved, should that go away and be deleted, link to the plant article, or become a disambig page?. It now links to Echinops (tenrec) as that was where the page previously linked to... nothing really links to it now since the tenrec is monotypic....i'll leave it up to you to decide the best spot. I can't delete it if that is the best choice since i'm not an admin...…Pvmoutside (talk) 14:28, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

I think deletion would be the best outcome, but I'm not sure if that would happen. I'm going to redirect it to the plant for now and nominate for deletion. Plantdrew (talk) 17:55, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Looks like Echinops (genus) will stay. I had another question about the title pages i'd ask you first before I started a larger discussion. I looked at pageviews for the plant and the animal. The animal has roughly 10 more looks per day than the plant (averaging 40 on the plant genus, 50 for the mammal. Should Echinops then become a disambig page for Echinops (plant) and Echinops (mammal) or Echinops (tenrec) since the pageviews are close in number?.....Pvmoutside (talk) 18:19, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

I'm OK with saying that there is (almost) never a primary topic when there are valid/accepted animal/plant genera that share a name. However, the plant does have some ornamental cultivars, so I think Echinops is more likely to be a search term used by gardeners looking for the plant than anybody searching for the animal by it's genus name (the first several pages of Google rsults are exclusively the plant). Plantdrew (talk) 20:47, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the number of views of the page doesn't show the number of uses of different search terms. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:07, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks guys... I'll leave it linked to the plant....Pvmoutside (talk) 12:35, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Mandragora question

I’m not quite sure how this works...I just created an account to ask one question.

I’m curious if you know whether Mandragora turcomanica is self fertile, and if so, if it’s self pollinating.

Thanks!

Replied on your talk page. Plantdrew (talk) 23:24, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

Crenadactylus ocellatus

Cygnus insignus and I are having another discussion on the use of Engish names. He's left a comment on my talk page, and I've responded. Can you and Peter add your two cents? It would be appreciated....Pvmoutside (talk) 16:34, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Speciesbox problem

Howdy, thought I'd shoot this question your way, since you know your way round the automatix taxobox system... I was attempting to provide Palmeria scandens with a speciesbox, but something went wrong when creating the template for the genus Template:Taxonomy/Palmeria. I can't actually tell what the problem is, unless it's the article link (which is correct) - but the upshot is that a speciesbox at Palmeria scandens comes out truncated/malformed now (using a bare-bones syntax of "taxon="). Can you identify what the issue is here? It's not the first time I've run into this, and I'd like to be able to avoid it. Cheers --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 21:30, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

@Elmidae: Two things in the taxonomy template: You had for |link=Palmeria (plant) and not "Palmeria (plant)|Palmeria", and then you had some errant ref tags.

Umm. Thanks NessieVL [1]. For some reason I was sure that these tags are part of the template, and didn't mess with them. No idea how I managed to insert them. Well, senior moment. Much obliged :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 21:53, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Oh, while I'm at it: monospecific genus article -> speciesbox rather than automatic taxobox for genus w/ type species? (Lophopotamon) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 21:41, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

@Elmidae: It looks like you accidentally clicked on a button that inserts a reference; the template had "<ref></ref>" at the beginning, which was messing it up. Also note that the link line should have "Palmeria (plant)|Palmeria" in order to not have the disambiguating term shown in a taxobox. However, there is already a template for this genus {{Taxonomy/Palmeria (plant)}}. If a genus is disambiguated, before creating a template, I will check the disambiguation page to see whether there is another genus by the same name. If there is, I include the disambiguator in the template name. If there isn't another genus, I give the template the base title. Plantdrew (talk) 21:53, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Monospecific genus articles usually use speciesbox. For WikiProject Dinosaurs and WikiProject Palaeontology, usage is mixed; some monospecific genera have an automatic taxobox with type species, others have speciesbox. For modern taxa, monospecific genera use speciesbox. Plantdrew (talk) 21:53, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Ah-ha. Thanks; getting there. Should Template:Taxonomy/Palmeria be CSD'd as a duplicate? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 21:57, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

@Elmidae:, yes please. G7 will get it deleted the fastest, but you can mention that it's a duplicate as well. Plantdrew (talk) 22:04, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

NessieVL had done the tag cleanup, so G7 probably no longer works. Logged as T3 (duplication), even if that may take a while. - Nessie, I switched the genus template at Palmeria scandens to the pre-existing {{Taxonomy/Palmeria (plant)}} and copied your talk page tags over - hope that's all right. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 22:15, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

@Elmidae: I can dig it. --Nessie (talk) 22:22, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

Removing WP:Biology tag from new gastropod articles

Hey, I noticed you removed some of my Wikiproject tags. I'm not upset about it, but I am wondering why you have removed them. Are individual taxa outside the scope of the Biology Project? They don't have a scope section on their page, really. I've been pretty inclusive with the WP:Biology tag so I'd like to hear your opinion on it. My thoughts are that most of the daughter project articles should probably make it into the biology tag, as well as many tree of life projects. Maybe we should request that WP:BIO come up with a scope statement? Prometheus720 (talk) 21:30, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

@Prometheus720: there really aren't any species with a WikiProject Biology tag (there are a few higher taxa like plant and animal that have it). WikiProject Biology banners, in my view, ought to either go on articles that are very broad and fundamental concepts in biology, or on articles that don't fit into any of the subprojects. I think there could be a role for Biology as a meta-project; a place to discuss article issues that cut across subdisciplines, but Biology doesn't have a very active talk page. WikiProject Tree of Life functions very much as a meta-project; discussion is active there. Tree of Life banners are mostly placed on articles about taxonomy as a discipline, not individual taxa (there are a handful Tree of Life tags on taxa that don't fit well into any other subproject). Taxon articles are usually tagged with one Tree of Life subproject banner (or occasionally two when the closest subproject is very narrow in scope or not very active). A spider species will have a banner for WikiProject Spiders, but not WikiProject Arthropods, WikiProject Animals, WikiProject Tree of Life or WikiProject Biology. Plantdrew (talk) 22:01, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

That's fair. I will be a little more considerate about using the WP:Biology banner in the future but I don't see a reason I should go back and remove it from anything but taxon articles. I really do think it would be a Good Thing if it worked as a meta-project. So I guess I'm in the hopes that I can help recruit some people to the project and get it moving again. Maybe I'm a dreamer. Prometheus720 (talk) 16:19, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Bad moves

Hi, you've cleaned up after at least one bad move. See Wikipedia:Requested moves/Technical requests#Contested technical requests. Best to leave until the moves are reversed. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:24, 14 April 2019 (UTC)

Large hawk-cuckoo

Can you look at the species page.... It looks like the hider function for its nest hosts is interfering with the genus entry in the taxobox. Is there another way to fix it other than deleting the hider?.....Pvmoutside (talk) 11:56, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside:, {{Hider}} is poorly designed, was previously deleted, and was only used on 8 (now 7) pages. It should probably be deleted. I replaced it with {{Collapsible list}} for now which doesn't obscure any of the lines in the taxobox, but it still has the show button in the middle of the taxobox. I don't have time right now to mess around with it more, but I'd assume a different collapse template, or different settings with collapsible list would fix it. Plantdrew (talk) 14:20, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Does the list need collapsing? It's not that long in in multiple columns wouldn't be oversized. Anyway, I've wrapped the collapsable list in a div set at 50%.   Jts1882 | talk  15:02, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

I agree that it should not be hidden; just set it in columns. See also MOS:DONTHIDE. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:52, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Apricot speciesbox

Could you add a speciesbox to the Apricot page, please? Thanks. --Zefr (talk) 14:12, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

@Zefr: I think the articles Prunus armeniaca (which is "the" apricot) and Apricot are confused/confusing. As currently written, Apricot doesn't correspond to any taxon, so how can it have a taxobox? Peter coxhead (talk) 15:52, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Peter. I don't know -- thought it would be best resolved by you or Plantdrew, if possible. --Zefr (talk) 15:57, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Well, I'll leave it to Plantdrew to express a view, but I think there should be a single article about the edible fruit. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:10, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

I've avoided articles like these two, and ones like Mango / Mangifera indica / individual mango cultivars, because I find them too muddled even to begin sorting out. The hassle over the work I did on cultivated Musa was enough to put me off articles on edible fruit! Peter coxhead (talk) 16:38, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

I've got a list of a bunch of these. The others most in need of merging are: Starfruit/Averrhoa carambola, Passion fruit (fruit)/Passion fruit, Peach (fruit)/Peach. Sorting these out hasn't been a priority, but I am keeping them in mind to tackle someday. Plantdrew (talk) 03:16, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Keep up the good work User:Plantdrew. When you ask seashell stores if they have a seashell that you are looking for they go by the Latin name instead, since many seashells go by many different common names.

Catfurball (talk) 21:33, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

An issue with some WP Palaeontology articles

I'm not sure when you;re planning to run the next set of stats on automated taxobox usage, but I found over a thousand articles that have only the {{WikiProject Palaeontology}} talk template and not any of the taxon-specific wikiprojects. A big chunk of these ate Ediacaran biota that can not really be placed in a project other than {{WikiProject Tree of Life}} or maybe {{WikiProject Marine life}}, but most of them are synapsids, reptiles, or other organisms that could easily go in a WikiProject. I'm slogging through them, but just thought I'd loop you in. There's a similar issue with {{WikiProject Marine life}}. --Nessie (talk) 18:24, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Hey, @Nessie, any time you find stuff like that feel free to send it my way as well. I'm just about done with the backlog of unassessed {{Wikiproject Biology}} articles and I really like this kind of work. I'm planning on doing a bit more sort of backend work like this until I feel a little more comfortable with making major article edits myself. So this stuff is right up my alley. I should be able to help with some of these in the near future! Prometheus720 (talk) 00:34, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

@Prometheus720: np. feel free to jump in. I did a similar backlog of pages with taxoboxes and no tree-of-life-related wikiprojects last year. Got it down to zero but it keeps popping up. I figure looping these into wikiprojects gets them tracked better and out of the cracks. --Nessie (talk) 02:15, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, my internet is crap right now; will give more detail later. I'll run the stats again around July 1. I was aware there were articles with only a paleo tag. Some might be tricky stem group things (at what point is an amphibious "fish" clade Amphibia?). Some might lack a taxonomic category; double check that when tagging (IMO everything should have a "pure" taxonomic category, if there is a "Jurassic reptiles" cat there should also be a category more specific than reptiles with no time period). @NessieVL:, the palaeontology PetScan search is pretty much what I expected; tons of therapsids (which I'm not quite comfortable tagging as mammals or as reptiles) and temnospondyls (which I'm not comfortable tagging as amphibians). I've been using PetScan to go through the main category and it's subcategories for some of the smaller organismal projects. There are non-taxon articles, and non-articles (Categories especially) that have never been tagged for any project. I was working through arthropods yesterday and finding a bunch of arachnids and scorpions mistagged as insects, some marine crustaceans that had Marine Life, but not Arthropods, and some pathogens tagged only for their hosts. I just took a look at your contributions, and it looks like you're doing similar work for cetaceans (tagging non-taxon articles and categories). Plantdrew (talk) 21:24, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Yea, I'm kinda bouncing around a bit. I also was looking at searches like this for pages in Category:Pterosaurs that are missing {{WikiProject Pterosaurs}}. But then I thought, what about other WikiProjects that we assumed were completed, maybe they have some taxa articles that are misfiled, so I looked at {{WikiProject Cetaceans}}... I have too many browser windows open basically. But yea, there are certain clades you just have to dump in {{WikiProject Animals}} because they don't fit anywhere else. A lot of those therapsids are listed as "species of mammal" on WikiData though. That's a whole other can of worms though. --Nessie (talk) 22:40, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

And there are ~1200 articles on paleontoligical subjects that aren't tagged for WikiProject Palaeontology. Wikiprojects Marine life and Microbiology certainly will many articles on marine/microscopic taxa that haven't been tagged for the project yet. Plantdrew (talk) 02:45, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm on mobile now, or I'd copy the petscan link, but I have been trying to focus on the subset of those that are taxa. So for example in Category:Cetaceans, missing {{WikiProject Cetaceans}}, but have a taxonbar, taxobox, or an r animal with possibilities template. Though at a certain category depth you'll get pests and diseases and stuff. But it's a way to take a bite out of it, atleast. --Nessie (talk) 03:23, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Changes to Emydura victoriae

Heya Plantdrew,

I have recently been an author of a paper that changes the systematics and nomenclature of a number of turtles. I have summarised the changes to the species involved in the edits I have made on Wikispecies here. You will note there a number of diffs to assist. The paper in question is as follows:

• Kehlmaier, C., Zhang, X., Georges, A., Campbell, P.D., Thomson, S., & Fritz, U. 2019. Mitogenomics of historical type specimens of Australasian turtles: clarification of taxonomic confusion and old mitochondrial introgression. Scientific Reports (2019) 9:5841 | doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-42310-x.

This paper is also relevant to a number of pages here on wikipedia however I am concerned about NPoV and OR so am wary of editing this all myself here as I was on Wikispecies where I brought attention to it in the Village Pump.

Several important changes include the separation of Emydura victoriae and Emydura australis a page you have edited in the past. Also the declaration of Chelodina oblonga as a nomen dubium. This required the resurrection of the younger name Chelodina rugosa. We also sank the subspecies Chelodina mccordi rotensis which is part of Chelodina mccordi this later I have already made some recent edits too. Including listing the above paper as a reference, as this was a less dramatic change I went ahead with this last one.

I personally do not think Emydura australis at this point warrants its own page, but it should be listed on the Emydura genus page as a valid taxon at least and separated out of the Emydura victoriae page.

Anyway the paper in question can be seen above from its DOI, it is open access, it can also be downloaded there as a pdf. Please let me know how you would prefer I proceed.

Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 07:04, 24 April 2019 (UTC)

On which page does Boulenger make the hand-written question mark? cygnis insignis 20:37, 29 April 2019 (UTC)

@Faendalimas:, sorry for the delay responding to you. I'v been in the field with minimal internet access. In my opinion, you can go ahead and make the changes based on your paper. The fact that you are aware of the relevant Wikipedia policies, and are conscientious enough to check before making the edits speaks well of you. Ideally, we would wait until any taxonomic changes proposed in a particular publication are reflected in a secondary sources; that is largely because we want to be sure that any such changes are accepted by the relevant specialist community. However, you are in a better position than me (or any other editor) to judge whether any of the changes proposed in your paper are proving to be controversial or not generally accepted by other turtle specialists. If there are any opposing taxonomic viewpoints, and you can summarize them fairly without giving undue weight to your own viewpoint, there shouldn't be any problem with your making updates to Wikipedia based on your own research (since you have published your research, it is not "Original Research" in the sense used by Wikipedia). Plantdrew (talk) 20:48, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

query

List_of_Major_Vegetation_Groups_in_Australia - is a sea of red, and IBRA has a large amount of half started portions - MVG - which is the most useful - from where your sit - are they both valid still, or is one more relevant than other, or what...? JarrahTree 00:12, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I have no idea. It looks like the different systems were promulgated by different incarnations of Australia's Department of the Environment; I'd guess bureaucratic politics may have more to do with the different systems than any purely biological considerations. Plantdrew (talk) 00:28, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

no problem, the answer that I got from Melburnian suggests that both are valid groupings and worth working on 0) thanks for your reply JarrahTree 04:38, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

"taxon" or "species"/"genus"?

I notice you are swapping the single taxon paramater for separate species/genus parameters in speciesboxes. Is that preferable? If so, why - in case of synonymy? Should it be noted somewhere as the preferred option? Cheers! --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:41, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

(I see the doc it says it "slightly reduces the processing needed") --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 15:46, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

@Elmidae:, at this point I try to keep it consistent with predominant usage for a particular group, if I'm already editing an article for other reasons; for plants it's mostly species/genus, but for fish it's mostly taxon (and that status quo has mostly developed from the preferences of individual editors most responsible for converting articles in that group to automatic taxoboxes). I (among others) prefer species/genus; it works when a genus template requires disambiguation (taxon doesn't work in this circumstance), and is consistent with the infraspeciesbox and subspeciesbox templates which do not work with a taxon parameter. Peter coxhead (among others) prefers taxon; it is consistent with automatic taxobox. There isn't a preferred/consensus option at this point. Genus/species is currently used in 82,000 articles and taxon in 60,000. Plantdrew (talk) 22:14, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks! --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 00:21, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

My mid-term goal is to ensure that all the taxoboxes that deal with sub-genus ranks can always accept both |taxon= and separate genus/species/subspecies/etc. parameters, so that it's becomes merely a style issue, of no great importance either way.

I monitor the various error-tracking categories for automated taxoboxes and the articles in which they appear. One of the most common errors I correct is when editors change a manual taxobox to {{Automatic taxobox}} and use a rank-named parameter, e.g. leaving |genus= instead of changing to |taxon=. Even such an experienced editor as Plantdrew sometimes does this. :-) If we could consistently use |taxon= it would seem simpler to me. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:09, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

See this edit for a typical example. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:04, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Hmm. Box seems smart enough to turn it into good output, at least. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:15, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

In the absence of a taxon it uses the page name.   Jts1882 | talk  17:11, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Which might lead to hickups, I see. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 17:18, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Crested jay

An FYI....I created the Taxonomy template for the jay. It is monotypic in the genus Platylophus, which is also a plant. I didn't know if you wanted to change the template.....Pvmoutside (talk) 13:57, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside:, the plant already had an automatic taxobox. If I'd been doing it, I would've made a taxonomy template with a disambiguation term for the bird, but it doesn't really matter. Are you finished with automatic taxoboxes for birds? There are a few manual taxoboxes left, but it's pretty much all non-taxa (common names), fossils, or disputed taxonomic status. I did a few of the fossils; wasn't sure if you were planning to do any more work in the area. Plantdrew (talk) 17:43, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

getting close, still have about 400 to review, but many of them aren't birds...i'll let you know when I'm done... Probably in a couple weeks...…Pvmoutside (talk) 17:50, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Arthropod-borne diseases

The discussion of Arthropod borne diseases is a complicated subject. The arthropod article makes no mention of Lice and Typhus. Historically Typhus was a very important disease that could destroy entire armies and is transmitted by lice. The louse is an insect and presumably belongs here. I would also like to add that the place of Mosquito-borne disease seems under-emphasized. These three subjects have their own Wikipedia pages but I do not see them mentioned. I may have, as I often do, missed them. If they really are not mentioned here they should be. I would like advice before changing the page. The arthropod page mentions Ticks but not the Tick-borne disease page. I am not trying to turn this page into a medical dissertation, but these are important interactions between humans and arthropods. Mentioning them only requires references to the associated links. The page's author is welcome to add these links. Nicodemus (talk) 15:29, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

@Oldsilenus:, it wouldn't hurt to add the links you suggest. Please feel free to do so yourself. However, we aren't going to list every arthropod borne disease on the arthropod page; diseases listed should be a few of the most "important" ones. Also note that insect has a similar section on disease transmission. The section in the arthropod article on interactions with humans should not have extensive discussion of insect-transmitted diseases; insect borne diseases should be given coverage alongside diseases vectored by other arthropods (e.g. ticks and mites). If you wish to point out other issues with medical content on Wikipedia, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine is a better place than my talk page to address medical content issues. Plantdrew (talk) 18:12, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

@Plantdrew:, Thanks. It took me a while to find your page again. I do not want to add an extended discussion, I just think that those links should be there. In medicine they are called arthropod borne diseases. If the links exist on the insect page I will rethink how to handle this. Thank you. Nicodemus (talk) 15:09, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Balanococcus cordylinidis

Hello, something odd has occurred here. There was a page for Balanococcus cordylinidis which was in mainspace but was not ready so I moved it to Draft:Balanococcus cordylinidis advised the creator and requested CSD r2 for the automatically created redirect. There were reference errors in the page which was what drew my attention to it but when editing out the error message (stray ref tags) by editing the appropriate section I found myself editing the template which is I think, what you have just moved. Trying to edit the page by clicking 'edit source' only produced the 'top', no sections. In some unusual way, the template seems to have been used to create the original page. Point is, are there clean ups or 'office actions' which need to be performed here? Cheers. Eagleash (talk) 20:25, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

@Eagleash: I don't think there is any further 'office action' type cleanup needed (at least, as long as you think the article as it stands now is ready for main space). Certainly a strange sequence of events here though. The template was deleted very quickly after I moved the page to article space (I was trying to find the appropriate CSD for the template, and it was already deleted by the time I figured out which CSD to use). Plantdrew (talk) 20:39, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes having looked at it again, I think there's only the extraneous draft. I've left a note at the creators page re g7 (or it will go g13 in due course). I think the page is improved now you've 'had a do of it'! There seem to be two separate editors involved in the various creations. Best regards. Eagleash (talk) 20:49, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

@Eagleash:, I think there is a course instructor (Jon Sullivan) who is creating stub pages for student editors who may not yet be autoconfirmed and thus able to create articles on their own (although if that's the case, I'm utterly puzzled how Ecol202cabbagetreemealybug managed to create a template). Plantdrew (talk) 21:01, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Aha; no it's a mystery to me too. Eagleash (talk) 21:26, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

There are some other articles around with the same odd section structure (e.g. "Distribution" having sections "Natural global range" and "New Zealand range", all in title case) – the instructor's Wikipedia expertise seems to be limited! They are mostly very badly written. Is this one really fit for mainspace? Peter coxhead (talk) 05:38, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

No. An instructor's misunderstanding about content creation? Appropriate submissions in a course, perhaps, but not as article content. Anything similar would be more appropriate in the draft namespace. cygnis insignis 11:36, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Here's another example: Eccremocarpus scaber. I'll fix the taxobox but the rest is way off the WP:PLANTS template. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:36, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, student editors frequently don't follow the format we use. I don't think that (or other issues) necessarily means their articles aren't suitable for main space. Inexperienced editors in general have issues with their articles, but are able to publish them in main space. Perhaps the review process for coursework should be more intense, but that requires experienced editors to step up and volunteer for that role. Plantdrew (talk) 21:59, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

At a glance I see little wrong with the second example, but I pay little attention to the plants template. Maybe I should keep my head down. cygnis insignis 22:42, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Template. Various other organismal WikiProjects have some guidelines on article structure/layout, but they are sometimes hard to find. Plantdrew (talk) 23:37, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Aves auto taxoboxes and speciesboxes

I've completed the run through all of aves adding auto and speciesboxes. There are some not added for disputed taxonomies, non avian taxa, and partial taxa. I've kept a copy of the petscan run, looks like just over 300 left over. I'll keep an eye on it moving forward. Any idea how petscan adds taxa for new articles, at the top?, at the bottom?.....thought you'd like to know....Pvmoutside (talk) 16:43, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside:. Wow, congratulations on getting that done and thanks for letting me know. Petscan lists new articles at the bottom (by default; the sort order can be changed). Plantdrew (talk) 18:35, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Move Amphiprioninae → Anemonefish

Given the consensus on Amphiprioninae is to move it to Anemonefish, do you know the proper process to make that a formal nomination? Find bruce (talk) 10:07, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

@Find bruce:, it shouldn't be necessary to make a formal nomination for anemonefish as the title. The person closing the move is supposed to read the arguments put forward in the discussion and evaluate them (not just count Support and Oppose). Move requests can be closed with a conclusion to move to a different title than the one initially proposed, if compelling arguments are made for a different title. While the initial closure of the move request wasn't handled properly, I'd expect the next closer will pay more attention to the arguments being made. However, you should edit your bolded comment on the talk page to better reflect your preferred outcome (i.e., change "*Oppose" to "Oppose move to clownfish, Support move to anemonefish..."). Plantdrew (talk) 17:36, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

speedy delete Category:Taxa named by Allan Cunningham

Plantdrew, i cant find the place to nominate the above for speedy delete. It is duplicated with Category:Taxa named by Allan Cunningham (botanist). All articles have been moved and the category is now empty.....Pvmoutside (talk) 13:07, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside:, I've added the appropriate deletion template, but for future reference it is {{Db-c1}}. Plantdrew (talk) 17:53, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for Contributing and I might need help

Plantdrew thank you for helping out the article I was working on. Also I'm a bit in a pickle with the picture for Gemylus albovittatus. When I started the page I found scientific papers that had pictures of G. albovittatus, I tried to make a wiki wizard to use. As soon as I uploaded it was deleted because of Copyrights; I put the option "Found on Internet" cause I'm not familiar with the copyright system. If you know a way to keep the photo up in wiki fair use contact me on my talk page ASAP. --PrimaLInnstinct (talk) 10:14, 31 May 2019 (UTC)

		The Golden Stag Beetle Barnstar
		For contributions to WikiProject Beetles, I award you this Barnstar. Congratulations Plantdrew!

Acacia provincialis

Help! I just created an article for Acacia provincialis, and could find a tonne of references for it on the usual sites, but the name also appears as a synonym for Acacia retinoides. Now I'm not so sure if A. provincialis is current, what do you think? Is there a definitive site you use for current names? Hughesdarren (talk) 02:28, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Specific answer: do a search for "Review of Acacia retinodes and closely related species, A. uncifolia and A. provincialis (Leguminosae: Mimosoideae: sect. Phyllodineae)" by O'Leary (I'm having trouble making a direct link, but I get a PDF as the first search result). According to that paper, A. provincialis has been widely misidentified as A. retinodes, but both are good species (and theWikipedia article on A. retinodes should be checked to ensure it isn't conflating the species).

General answer: For current names I check POWO first, but by no means rely on it exclusively. I don't have a good sense of the strengths and weaknesses of the various Australian databases, but in general, I'd trust them over POWO for Australian taxa. APC and APNI both reflect O'Leary's paper. For Acacia species in particular, [World Wide Wattle is probably the best database (and it reflects O'Leary). Plantdrew (talk) 03:13, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Cheers, thanks for taking the time to check it out. I was 99% sure it was but had just enough doubt that I wanted to check. Thanks again. Hughesdarren (talk) 03:17, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

may you?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procerosaurus may you help me?--Bubblesorg (talk) 21:11, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Comment - I happened to fix this up before realizing that it was previously redirected as a synonym, which appears to be correct; reinstated redirect. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 21:43, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

species ID

Hi, Plantdrew - I was hoping you (or someone you know) could help us identify the correct species of bubble coral surrounding the feather duster in the taxobox image at Sabellastarte spectabilis. The discussion is on my User talk:Atsme#Coral question. Thanks in advance...^Atsme _Talk 📧 21:00, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I know nothing about coral ID. Plantdrew (talk) 18:06, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		Pour l’ensemble de votre travail sur Wikipédia. —Cote d'Azur (talk) 10:17, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Plantdrew (talk) 17:18, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Endorsed, if I understand it, I'm very appreciative of your contributions. cygnis insignis 07:10, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Monotypic genera

Sir... Going through all the tqxonomists has opened up some issues regarding the taxa themselves. I've noticed, particularly in fish, that articles on monotypic genera typically default to species rather than genera. Should I try to change them? Also, I noticed an editor omitted parent authorities, again mostly in fish, when they created speciesboxes for species in monotypic genera, particularly if the genus author and the species author are the same. I've been adding those back as i see them....Pvmoutside (talk) 00:40, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside:, monotypic fish genera tend to have binomial titles on Wikipedia. That is due to a couple fish interested editors who didn't follow the guidance of WP:MONOTYPICFAUNA. With your extended move privileges, you can move the articles to genus titles, as the usually consistent practice on Wikipedia. Vernacular name titles may also be available, and I know you prefer them, but please check that vernacular names are more commonly used than scientific names of fish genera. Plantdrew (talk) 05:33, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside: "Also, I noticed an editor omitted parent authorities, again mostly in fish, when they created speciesboxes for species in monotypic genera, particularly if the genus author and the species author are the same" That would refer to me, if the parent authority and the binomial authority are the same then surely it is otiose to have both because if the genus is not the one which the species was originally placed in then the binomial authority would be in parentheses. I am not keen on the policy of using the genus name for the article title in respect of extant monospecific taxa, but I do follow it in article creation. If the species has a common name on FishBase then I will use that and move the article to the common name used by FishBase. The IUCN use some unusual common names, often non English, so I only use FishBase as a reference for common names. Quetzal1964 (talk) 05:46, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

It is useful to use the parent authority name together with the specific name authority, even if they are the same. Often the year may be different, as were many of the omitted parent authorities, but also it distinguishes those where the information was complete versus those where someone may have inadvetentently omitted one.....It looks more complete with both listed....Pvmoutside (talk) 10:24, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes, it's certainly not going to be obvious to readers that a parent authority was intentionally omitted as redundant just because the binomial authority lacks parentheses, especially when Wikipedia doesn't always get parentheses right (there are people editing Wikimedia projects who don't understand the meaning of parentheses and misapply them; I did some editing on Wikispecies back in 2008 and an Admin (!!!) was asking why some authorities had parentheses and others didn't). Also, it is possible for there to be a non-parenthetical binomial authority that is different from the genus authority. In a multi-authored paper describing a new genus and species, different authorship credits can explicitly be given for the genus and species (a possible scenario for this would be where the collector of the type specimen recognized that it was a new species and is co-credited with species authorship, but an expert in the family decided that a new genus was warranted and is the sole author of the genus). Plantdrew (talk) 18:08, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

I strongly endorse Plantdrew's comments. We should be explicit and not require readers to assume from the omission of the genus authority that it will be the same as the species authority. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:55, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

I was firmly opposed to the practice, an override of what is the foundation of binomial nomenclature, so perhaps bias in thinking there seems be more compliance than endorsement as it has been implemented over the years. It still feels weird to do it. cygnis insignis 07:07, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Why is it an override of what is the foundation of binomial nomenclature? There are various circumstances in which the authorities will not be the same. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:55, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

It think that Cygnis insignis meant the use of the Genus name for monospecific taxa was "an override of what is the foundation of binomial nomenclature" rather than my habit of only quoting the binomial authority where that and the genus authority are the same.Quetzal1964 (talk) 20:18, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Ok, but that makes no more sense to me. A species is necessarily a member of a genus (and for plants the second part of the binomial is just an adjective modifying the genus name), so in this sense the genus is prior to the species. Actually, it seems to me that it's an arbitrary choice. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:36, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Yep, just what I meant, apologies for the confusion and thanks to my interpreter (would pay Quetzal1964 to do that if I could). I'm trying to remember an odd monotypic genus I wrote about recently, a very curious taxonomic history, will return when I recall what it was. And try to recall the biologist who gave an hour-long talk on why using two names was a profound shift in taxonomy. cygnis insignis 20:41, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Atya lanipes

Hi - It's been some time since our first encounter, which I believe was here. :-) Thanks for all your help and, more generally, the botany expertise you bring to WP.

Contacting you this time because another editor, whom I value very much, made an edit here which, while I neither agree nor disagree with it (it's beyond my expertise), I believe may not be using the right source to support the statement that "Atya lanipes" is known in Puerto Rico as "chágara". It seems to me that the FWS source used (this one here) is saying that Atya lanipes is known in PR as "jonga". My observation is that, while the source also mentions "chágara", if I understand that FWS one-pager correctly, what it is saying is that A. lanipes is also called "chágara" in some other places, not specifically in Puerto Rico.

Can you check out the FWS one-pager and let me know which view is right? If you agree the source does say the species is known as "chágara" in PR, then I will be satisfied that the article was updated with correct sourcing. But if you think, like me, that the FWS 1-pager doesn't specifically say it's known as "chágara" in PR (or that it can't be deduced from it), then I would like to contact her so we can either find the correct source or that we remove "chágara" from the list of "also-known-as" names in the A. lanipes article.

The significance of all of this is that another article, La muñeca menor, is now using the pic of Atya lanipes and associating it with the subject of a Puerto Rico short story by Rosario Ferre. So, if the FWS source isn't stating the species goes by that common name in PR, we should not propagate the error to the La Muñeca article.

Your guidance is much appreciated. Mercy11 (talk) 00:03, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

@Mercy11:, the only common name for Atya lanipes that is definitively supported by the FWS source is "jonga" (from an image caption). I did not read the FWS source as saying any of the common names given are used in other places and not Puerto Rico. I suspect that "guábara", "chágara", and "jonga" are all used in Puerto Rico (I don't see the US FWS making an effort to list common names from other Spanish speaking parts of the Caribbean). I also suspect that all 3 of those names are used for Atya lanipes as well as other large freshwater shrimp species in Puerto Rico, but the FWS source doesn't clearly say this. This source says that "chágara" refers to Atya scabra (as well as giving descriptive definitions that could apply to other species). With at least 3 Atya species in Puerto Rico and only about 12 freshwater shrimp species in total, perhaps "chágara" refers to Atya, but I doubt it refers to one particular species. I wonder whether guábara"/"chágara" might be of Taino etymology. Plantdrew (talk) 02:01, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Haha, thanks for your reply, and no wonder I was so confused myself! I am just gonna ask The Eloquent Peasant to take a look at my concern here and your response. Hopefully she can contribute her own opinion. It's not a biggie for me, but forgive me if I am a stickler for exact and factual information - must be the non-botany training in me acting up! Regards, Mercy11 (talk) 02:30, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

A Taino dictionary here lists Cha'gara = n : Small black River Crayfish. Since it's a fictional story, I think any image of any mean looking crayfish would work. Mercy11, feel free to change it as you see fit. The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 02:42, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Not a biggie for me either way; I was just confused all around. Plantdrew, what do you think, leave it alone or change the pic at the short story and/or text in the article? You are the botany pro - pls advise. thx, Mercy11 (talk) 03:35, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Botany doesn't give me any expertise with crustaceans. I'd suggest only including the common name "jonga" in the Atya lanipes article. An illustration of a chagara would be good for the article on La muñeca menor. I think it might be best to use a photo of Atya scabra, but I'm not finding any photos I like with a Wikipedia compatible license. I suppose the photo of A. lanipes could be retained, but the caption should make it clear that chagara might refer to other species. Plantdrew (talk) 16:27, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks.  Done The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 13:19, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

@The Eloquent Peasant: The way you worded it now looks a lot cleaner. Thanks. And thanks for writing La muñeca menor; I didn't know about that short story. (Thx, of course, to Plantdrew also.) Mercy11 (talk) 05:05, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

@Mercy11: I wasn't surprised when you bought it up because I did struggle with how to set that up. I wanted an image but didn't know which particular crustacean could be the infamous chágara. But I lie, I was shocked and surprised that you found that particular detail and I'm glad you bought it up. We know it's important because people Google "chágara" and they quickly see a picture of the Atya lanipes. I think Puerto Ricans see anything that resembles that crustacean and call it a chágara, good eating. Soooo, it was good to clarify it and I thank the botany ex----oh--- Asking a botany expert about crustaceans did make me chuckle, though! You did it twice. My GF got a degree in Botany and then could never find a job to pay back her college loans. Mercy11, I didn't write the article of La muñeca menor. I only spent some time updating it when I was in no mood to do prose because it'd been nominated for deletion and a kind hearted person was sweet enough to alert the PR Project group about it. See you around! --The Eloquent Peasant (talk) 11:56, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

Smiley Award

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WildChild300 (talk) 19:31, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

International Society for Plant Pathology

@Plantdrew: Would you be willing to create a page for the International Society for Plant Pathology (https://www.isppweb.org/)? Thanks in advance Kandymotownie ν) 20:12, 24 June 2019 (UTC)

Just a heads up

Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spiders#Location foul-ups Sesamehoneytart 20:51, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Francis de Laporte de Castelnau

Here's a crazy question.....as i go through the tax authors, this tax authority is sometimes listed as LaPorte, sometimes as Castelnau for the same animal order. Should I leave them as is, and note the category , or change them to one or the other...i haven't figured out yet which is more common....Pvmoutside (talk) 21:03, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside:, very good question. Short answer, I would follow the sources (but I realize the sources may vary). What all did he describe? Fishes, beetles, plants, anything else? I'm trying to figure out which databases would be relevant. Nomenclator Zoologicus was probably the best hope of establishing standard author abbreviations for zoologists, but that didn't happen. Nomenclator Zoologicus mostly has him as LaPorte, occasionally as de LaPorte and rarely Laporte de Castelnau (and it would be worth checking the printed version of NZ against the database to make sure the database is faithful to the print). I'm suspicious that he may be credited differently in ichthyology than entomology. The thing to do is check Fishbase, Catalog of Fishes, and WoRMS and see if they are reasonable consistent (looks like he may be "Castelnau" in ichythyology). I'm not immediately sure what entomological databases would be appropriate to consult. And it would be worth checking ITIS (and some other all taxa databases) to see if he's credited consistently across fish/beetles.

I wouldn't change authority credit on Wikipedia for the sake of standardizing until we've looked into it further (and if there is in fact a different standard between fish and beetles, we should reflect that) Plantdrew (talk) 22:03, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

I think you are right about a different abbreviation for different organisms. Fish get "Castelnau" on Fishbase, ITIS, IUCN, WoRMS (presumably following Fishbase), GBIF and IRMNG. Beetles get "Laporte" on ITIS, IRMNG, GBIF, WoRMS, fossilworks and Bugguide. I tried over a dozen species/taxa from the category and several Taxonbar links for each (>30 items) and found no exceptions. ITIS, WoRMS, IRMNG and GBIF use different names for the respective organisms.   Jts1882 | talk  08:49, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

thanks jts 1882 and plantdrew….so i'll keep them both. My only question now is do i leave two listings on the taxa named by pages, one for LaPorte and one for Castelnau, but linking them both to the one page, or do i choose one? I'm leaning to the former.....Pvmoutside (talk) 11:36, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside:, I'm not sure I understand what you're asking here. Category:Taxa named by Francis de Laporte de Castelnau uses the full name, so both LaPorte and Castelnau are represented. I approve of your recent edit to the article on the person. Just put that information (LaPorte for insects, Castelnau for everything else) as a description in the taxa named by category page. Plantdrew (talk) 16:25, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Systema Vegetabilium

Hello Plantdrew,

Any help you can give with fixing the ipni refs. (or anything else) in this article would be greatly appreciated by me. Gderrin (talk) 00:52, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

@Gderrin:, I'll see what I can do. Were the IPNI links ever working for you? IPNI sometimes has issues where valid links stop resolving, a situation which may persist for several days.Plantdrew (talk) 15:52, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks - I think the problem is my ignorance - how to ref. a publication in IPNI. Doing it like a plant name doesn't seem to work. (The links work for me, but not from the article.) A tech. problem maybe? Don't want to waste your time. Gderrin (talk) 21:34, 4 July 2019 (UTC) Fixed now. Gderrin (talk) 23:00, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

Cultivar names and trade designations

Could you please have a look at User:Peter coxhead/Cultivar names and trade designations? I find myself explaining all this quite regularly, so I thought it would be useful to collate what you and I wrote, and perhaps move under WP:PLANTS if you agree. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:54, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

I added a little bit about genericization. I wasn't quite sure where the best place to insert it was. Do the examples I chose work well in British English? (I'm particularly worried that Kleenex might not be the generic term for facial tissue in the UK). I wanted one example of a redirecting trademark (Viagra/sildenafil), one trademark with a separate article from the generic product (Kleenex/facial tissue), and one completely genericized trademark (Heroin). Plantdrew (talk) 15:56, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

No, I don't think that Kleenex does work in the UK; neither I (nor perhaps more relevantly my wife) uses "Kleenex" generically. How about google and web search? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:02, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Photoshop? More here.   Jts1882 | talk  17:12, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

From the article Jts1882 linked, I'm partial to Velcro/hook-and-loop fastener if that's pretty universal in English. Otherwise, Google/google (verb) could work (Photoshop (verb) is a redirect). Plantdrew (talk) 18:32, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Creekshell

I found this and it gives me a red link. I don't want to start a species article because I have no idea what this is or what to do with it.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:42, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

looks like the Carolina creekshell is Villosa vaughaniana. --Nessie (talk) 14:29, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 15:29, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

References

naming of names

A story. I was being shown around a forest by family that included two young girls, they conducted the proceedings and pointed out the flora and fauna as we went. "This snake lives here", standing next to a tiger, "lets go now, its waking up" (good advice, if it woke up grumpy). I wanted to show off by mentioning a spider that no-one has heard of, only found in the local area, the nine or ten year old listened politely then said, "yes, but that is not the name, it was changed". She told me a name and when I checked it was current, because the species was reassigned to a new genus since I had learned about it. She knew that, because she was reasonably bright and allowed to follow her interest in the local environment. Like your comments, the conversation gave me hope that people (in the real world) know these are merely interesting and more or less useful names, not territory in some culture war. Best regards, cygnis insignis 01:06, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

@Cygnis insignis: That's a great story. I'm still gathering my thoughts for a a SUPPORT comment. A question: what does goanna mean? Are there Australian Varanus species that AREN'T goannas? Are there non-Australian species that ARE goannas? If it's not a matter of range and/or regional English, what characteristics make something a goanna or not? The goanna article doesn't make it clear to me. Plantdrew (talk) 01:30, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

It is a loose term for a mid sized varanid, and very commonly used in general conversation, sort of synonymous with lizard. Goanna might be a used for a colourful allusion, as a nickname, and is the name of a well known band, it probably does not have currency outside Australia. There was a general association with something desert peoples eat, a sort of ready meal if you found its track. Reptiles did not get attempts at formalisation of common names in Australia, unlike birds and unsuccessful attempts for mammals, I want to fix the goanna article, but it looks like a fluffed up disambig (or paraphylogenic taxon) 'article' to me. I don't know why the removal of the taxobox has not been objected to, for the reasons I don't follow or think is some slippery slope. cygnis insignis 01:49, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Harold Cogger in the standard text Reptiles and Amphibians of Australia (1983), under family Varanidae, says "Generally known in Australia as goannas, elsewhere they are usually known as monitor lizards." cygnis insignis 05:01, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

So goanna should be merged to monitor lizard? --Nessie (talk) 12:11, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

That seems the appropriate approach if goanna is just an Australian name for monitor lizard, unless the Australian species cluster in a subgenus, which doesn't appear to be the case.   Jts1882 | talk  12:27, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

And if someone instead proposed, which I am not, to make the goanna page a good then feature article, by cutting and pasting "goanna" content and adding a "paraphyletic" taxobox … it would be easier to draft what I mean, enter the wikicup, but that would exceptionally pointy and is not why I'm here. What I am describing has real examples, which I prefer not to link. Anyway, I'm out of this now. Regards to all. cygnis insignis 13:26, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Phallostethinae

Surely the correct category for this is Phallostethidae? It is a subcategory of Phallostethidae, your edit removes from the list of subcategories of Phallostethidae. Normally I would just revert the edit but I am interested in your reasons why. I may learn something.Quetzal1964 (talk) 19:20, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964: The Phallostethinae article should certainly be in Category:Phallostethinae (as long as that category exists). See Wikipedia:Categorization#Eponymous_categories. However, that guidance doesn't take a stand on whether or not the article should also be included in Category:Phallostethidae. My impression (influenced largely by categories for plants) is that taxon articles don't appear in categories for their taxonomic parent, when an eponymous category exists. However, I am surprised to see that the guidance on eponymous categories and (Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Categorization) doesn't actually advise against including in a parent category. Plantdrew (talk) 20:15, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "removes from the list of subcategories of Phallostethidae". Category:Phallostethinae is a subcategory of Category:Phallostethidae. Plantdrew (talk) 20:15, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Okay, but going by Wikipedia:Categorization#Eponymous_categories Phallostethinae should be in both Category:Phallostethinae and in Category:Phallostethidae. I haven't been including eponymous categories as I thought {{cat main|Phallostethinae}} covered that. I have been ordering the fish categories at taxonomic levels so Category:Phallostethidae only has Category:Phallostethinae as a sub category but contains the articles Phallostethinae and Gulaphallus and Category:Phallostethinae only has the sub category Category:Phallostethus and the three articles for the subfamily's constituent genera. I think this is in line with what you are saying you do with plant categories.

Thanks for the response, I knew I was right to ask! Quetzal1964 (talk) 08:48, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964:, plants generally have only the eponymous category, and not the parent category, which is what I was following when I replaced Phallostethidae with Phallostethinae. The eponymous category guideline don't say articles should be in both eponymous and parent categories; it leaves that open with "editors should decide by consensus which solution makes most sense for a category tree". If you've established having fish pretty consistently in the parent category, I'm fine with that.

{{Cat main}} gets you back to the article from the category, but to get from the article to the category requires the article to be in the eponymous category. When I come across a taxon article that lacks a taxonomic category, I usually go to the parent taxon and use the category there. If that parent taxon article isn't in an eponymous category (where that category exists), I would end up categorizing child taxa one level higher in the hierarchy than they should be. Plantdrew (talk) 16:59, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Nsenene

I noticed your comment in your sandbox - (Nsenene move to Ruspolia baileyi (redirect intentionally not created at preasent)? Or split out a species article? Split best perhaps; sources that give a scientific name to the food use Ruspolia nitidula, perhaps incorrectly.") and I want to see what you think. I just used a 2016 journal article to help expand Ruspolia nitidula and the peer-reviewed journal article says "The nutritional and commercial potential of the edible grasshopper (Ruspolia nitidula, nsenene in Luganda)". However, another journal article says "Ruspolia differens (Serville) (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae, Conocephalinae) (its common names including ‘African edible bush‐cricket’, ‘edible grasshopper’, and ‘nsenene’)" I'm not sure if R. baileyi and R. nitidula are one and the same, or really what to think. SL93 (talk) 03:21, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Same genus name in different parent taxa

I just happened upon this: the bryophyte family Bartramiaceae contains a genus Bartramia [2]. I had already set up a template for the family [3] (for Conostomum tetragonum), but when trying to set up Bartramia pomiformis and Bartramia halleriana I find that there already exists a template for the genus [4] - only it's for a monospecific plover, the Upland sandpiper. So we'd need to set up a distinct genus template for the bryophyte that displays the same name. I don't know how to do that, and can't find it in the documentation. Could you provide a quick pointer? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 00:35, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

The taxonomy template will need to have a disambiguatory term when there is another genus withthe same name. I've set up Template:Taxonomy/Bartramia (plant). Note that the link line should have a pipe so the disambiguator doesn't display in the taxobox (the default behavior where the link line is automatically filled from the template name won't be sufficient). When a template is disambiguated, you must use |genus= and |species= in a speciesbox. |taxon= will not work. |genus= should include the disambiguator. This situation is why I prefer to to use genus+species rather than a taxon parameter in speciesboxes.

If I had been setting up automatic taxoboxes for the bird, I would have made the taxonomy template as "Bartramia (bird)". If a genus is disambiguated against another genus, I prefer to have both taxonomy templates disambiguated. However, one could occupy the base title, and other editors may go this route. Plantdrew (talk) 04:20, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, got it. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:33, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Redirect categorization

Hi, as you may have noticed, I've been trying to sort out pteridophyte articles to match PPG I, or at least include its taxonomy as in the text.

Because PPG I is definitely a "splitter's" system, I keep running into an issue I seem to remember we've discussed before, namely redirects from species synonyms to the (now) monotypic genus. An example is Osmunda claytoniana, which PPG I calls Claytosmunda claytoniana, the sole species in Claytosmunda. So I labelled the redirect as both "from alternative scientific name" and "to monotypic taxon" (changing my mind a couple of times). I still feel it's not quite right, but I'm not sure what else to do. Anyway, I thought I'd mention it again. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:23, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I've never come to a conclusion that satisfies me. I'd long left such redirects uncategorized, but realize that's a bad idea as nobody else is likely to check on these redirects any time soon (and as redirects are increasingly categorized, nobody is likely to expect that any are uncategorized). For awhile I was using {{R to alternative scientific name}} ("to" not "from"), as it was barely used at all, and I could check the transclusions to find species synonym redirects to monotypic genera in the future pending a better solution to how to categorize them. I think I mentioned doing that to you before. But lately other editors have been using that template for general redirects to/from alternative scientific names (no monotypy involved), so the transclusion list is no longer a very useful way to group species synonym redirects to monotypic genera. Most recently I've just been using "from alternative scientific name", but haven't been very happy with that.

I think using both "from alternative scientific name" and "to monotypic taxon" might be the best way to go. At least it makes it possible to find all redirects of this type with a category search in PetScan. Plantdrew (talk) 17:03, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Well, it's what I did last, after changing my mind several times. I suppose there could be "R from alternative name to monotypic taxon", but using PetScan is, I think, better – intersectional categories are generally a pain. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:18, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

I just came across Euprionocera notabilis, a binomial synonym redirecting to a monotypic genus that had rcats for "from alternative scientific name" and "to monotypic taxon" by AddWittyNameHere in 2018. AddWittyNameHere hasn't been actively lately, but previously did a lot of work with redirect categories in Lepidoptera. So somebody else has been following the "from alternative scientific name" and "to monotypic taxon" scheme already. Plantdrew (talk) 01:50, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps this approach should be documented somewhere, at least so we can refer to it rather than repeating this conversation? Peter coxhead (talk) 02:19, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Claytosmunda might not be monotypic if (the fossil) Osmunda claytoniites is considered. I converted most ferns to speciesboxes a while back, but skipped some genera where there seemed to be some disagreement about whether to split them (or just recognize subgenera/sections), or where sources that supported splitting (and cited by PPG) failed to enumerate which species went where. Thelypteris, Blechnum, Osmunda and Cyathea are genera I skipped. If I remember correctly, PPG cited a paper from the 1970s that recognized sections in Cyathea for assigning species to segregate genera recognized by PPG; that's a little too old for me to trust that the species were correctly placed in sections/segregate genera. Plantdrew (talk) 17:26, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I noticed the extinct species, but it does not seem to have been transferred to Claytosmunda, and some current sources don't use this genus anyway; PoWO currently uses Osmundastrum, so if it were transferred anywhere, it might not be to Claytosmunda. PPG I, as we've discussed before, has the great advantage of giving a consistent set of higher ranks, but the fine splitting at some lower ranks does seem to be resisted by others. It's the opposite to APG, whose merged families are resisted (Hyacinthaceae is still widely used, for example). It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I now have a full listing of PPG I for ferns at User:Peter coxhead/Work/PPG#Polypodiopsida, by the way. It needs a bit more checking. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:18, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Shibataeinae

Hi, I'm not quite sure what you were intending at Shibataeinae, but the taxobox was flagged in the error-tracking categories, so I restored a functioning one. If it's only historically recognized, should there be a taxobox? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:41, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:, I intended to restore it to a (functioning) manual taxobox in order to flag it as needing further attention in my future searches for grasses with manual taxoboxes. I'm just getting started with grass automatic taxoboxes and still trying to wrap my head around the state of the classification. Wikipedia is apparently following Soreng et al. 2015. There is a more recent publication, Soreng et al. 2017. Both have elements I dislike. Soreng 2015 includes supertribes in a subfamily with three tribes (Bambusoideae), which seems pretty silly, especially as Arundinarieae is in a monotypic supertribes, and only has one subtribe, adding two (in my opinion) unnecessary ranks to the classification. Soreng 2017 drops supertribes in Bambusoideae, but add new supertribes elswhere, as well as introducing supersubtribes (a rank not supported in taxoboxes). As I work through the grasses, I will likely seek a second opinion (yours or WP:PLANTS) on some issues. Shibataeinae should probably just be a redirect to Arundinarieae. Plantdrew (talk) 15:31, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Well, all I can say is that if I am ever asked about support for "supersubtribes" in any kind of taxobox, my response will have to asterisked! Peter coxhead (talk) 16:42, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

What about "supersubtertribes"?   Jts1882 | talk  19:12, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

@Jts1882: sigh... What's wrong with "clade"? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:23, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Supersubterclade?  :) --Nessie (talk) 19:30, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Indeed, what's wrong with clade? It's pretty obvious Soreng's group wants to name every node in the cladogram (the whole 2 supertribes for 3 tribes things), as well as throwing in a bunch of redundant monotypic micro-ranks to "balance" non-monotypic micro-ranks in less pectinate areas of the cladogram. Plantdrew (talk) 19:42, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

solicit

If you agree, explain why moving Mulga snake cum King Brown snake might be better placed at the binomen. Or justify choosing one common name over the other, if that is your inclination. And how are you? ~ cygnis insignis 15:16, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

@Cygnis insignis:, sigh. I'll comment over there, but I don't think it's a great case for the binomen (that is, not a great case for challenging the presumption that scientific names are essentially deprecated). From what I'm seeing, king brown snake is a better title (i.e. more commonly used) than mulga snake or Pseudechis australis. It was at the scientific name title from 2006-2017. In 2017, Casliber moved it from the scientific name to the less commonly used vernacular name "mulga snake", followed by a recent move to "king brown snake", the most commonly used vernacular name (which does beat the scientific name in a WP:GOOGLETEST). That does however point to a widespread problem (especially for fishes); vernacular names titles for species aren't necessarily the most commonly used vernacular names, and in many cases scientific names are more commonly used than any vernacular name. Pseudechis guttatus should not be at the title blue-bellied black snake; spotted black snake is more commonly used. Vernacular name titles (especially in fishes, but also for herps) largely aren't selected with any regard for which vernacular is most commonly used. Plantdrew (talk) 04:56, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

From my internet searches, I get the impression that king brown snake/mulga snake is likely familiar to many Australians interested in nature, and it's fairly well known that both vernacular names refer to a single species. A United States parallel would be Agkistrodon piscivorus, fairly widely known as both cottonmouth and water moccasin.

Would it be accurate to say that many Australians have heard of "mulga snakes" and "king brown snakes" and are aware that both of those vernacular names refer to a single species? Plantdrew (talk) 05:08, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

A thoughtful answer is what wanted to solict, and now see better where we arrive at different conclusions.

Both names are used in the literature, Harold Cogger elevated Mulga snake over King Brown (c. 1980s, because it is a "black snake" [Pseudechis]) in the standard text on reptiles, so I am going to hazard a yes to "names are familiar". In popular culture the animal is name checked for a large bottle of beer, a King Brown, so there is that amplification in currency [fwiw]. What it is called in less populated areas would usually involve an expletive, they are greatly reviled at mine sites and crop farms, the peoples who lived in these regions before that had names for an animal they knew intimately and conveyed a name and information to anyone who thought to ask. As noted in the article, the treatment for evenomation is different, making Pseudechis the first word in the article might be justified by a vital bit of information. That bit is argumentative, so I should not be surprised at the opposes. What I am more concerned with is npov, that any and every notable name be provided with context and not elevated or extirpated in vox pops by the otherwise unconcerned. Shall I go on? ~ cygnis insignis 07:06, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

I added some info here and there, if that makes this any more interesting. More often than not, both common names are used since at least 1956. The taxon itself is poorly resolved, a pop was elevated to species and acquired the common name spotted mulga snake (only). ~ cygnis insignis 06:40, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Fungi taxonomy templates

Hi Plantdrew, do you know what the standard name is for making a fungi related dab taxonomy template? Is it Template:Taxonomy/Genus_name (fungus) or Template:Taxonomy/Genus_name (fungi)? I am going to move Corticium (so that it doesn't conflict with Corticium (sponge)) and I can't find an example easily. 'Cheers Loopy30 (talk) 13:17, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

@Loopy30:. Use (fungus); disambiguators for taxonomy templates use the singular form. If you ever want to see what parenthetical terms are used in titles for a particular WikiProject, try a modification of this search. Plantdrew (talk) 15:41, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, singular was my first guess but I couldn't confirm it. Loopy30 (talk) 21:51, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Size forcing for maps in taxoboxes

Hi, sorry for reverting your removal of the pixel size parameter in two articles, but I had originally added it because the taxobox main images are very narrow in these articles (because they are vertical), which is controlled by the upright parameter. The problem is, when adding this to the main image, it is inherited by the range map below, which therefore becomes just as narrow, and therefore incomprehensible at such a small size. But any alternative solutions are very welcome. It seems to maybe be an unforeseen technical issue. FunkMonk (talk) 14:08, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

All the images (including range maps) use |upright= by default so the behaviour is expected. The documentation says |range_map_width= is deprecated and that the optional parameter is |range_map_upright=. I've never understood why the |upright= parameters are preferred.   Jts1882 | talk  14:35, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, I'll use that instead (didn't know it existed). As for why they are called "upright", no idea... FunkMonk (talk) 14:54, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

@FunkMonk:, I apologize for the uninformative edit summaries. The width parameters are deprecated in favor of upright parameters, as Jts1882 said. I didn't think the 230px value was doing much to make the map display larger (220px is supposed to be default if no other image scaling is specified), so I removed scaling altogether, rather than replacing with the preferred upright parameter.

The rang map displaying so small when no scaling parameter is given seems to be a bug. It appears the value in |image_upright= is being applied to the range map as well. The range map should display at default size if there isn't a scaling parameter. There aren't very many articles that have both |range_map= and |image_upright=, so this behavior has been previously overlooked.

My understanding it that width parameters are deprecated because it's not very appropriate to specify a precise pixel width when readers are viewing articles across a large range of screen sizes (and on devices that may ovveride Wikipedia's pixel scaling anyway). Upright parameters were originally developed to scale images with a very tall, narrow aspect ratios (i.e., things standing "upright" such as skyscrapers or leg bones), but also can scale very short/wide images. Plantdrew (talk) 22:51, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, "upright" is unhelpful as a parameter name, and |upright=0.7 looks very odd to me; "scale" would be better. However, "upright" is the current standard nomenclature for images outside taxoboxes.

When widths in pixels were the norm, it made sense for the default to be the same width for all images. However, on reflection it doesn't make sense for the default to be the same scaling for all images, whose original sizes may be different. I suspect this was my mistake in converting the taxobox templates from "width" to "upright". If no-one else does, I'll fix it when I have time. However, the immediate answer is to put e.g. |range_map_upright=1. Peter coxhead (talk) 02:20, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Ah, it makes more sense to pass a default for all images when using a fixed pixel width. I think the change (for each range map) needed in {{taxobox/core}} is from ...

{{#invoke:InfoboxImage|InfoboxImage|image={{{range_map}}}|size={{{range_map_width|}}}|sizedefault=frameless|upright={{#if:{{{range_map_upright|}}}|{{{range_map_upright}}}|{{{upright|1}}}}}|alt={{{range_map_alt|}}}}}

... to ...

{{#invoke:InfoboxImage|InfoboxImage|image={{{range_map}}}|size={{{range_map_width|}}}|sizedefault=frameless|upright={{#if:{{{range_map_upright|}}}|{{{range_map_upright}}}|1}}|alt={{{range_map_alt|}}}}}

... or even simpler ...

{{#invoke:InfoboxImage|InfoboxImage|image={{{range_map}}}|size={{{range_map_width|}}}|sizedefault=frameless|upright={{{range_map_upright|1}}}|alt={{{range_map_alt|}}}}}

Are there any undesirable consequences of this change? A seting of |upright=1 should give a reasonable output, if not optimal. Range maps shouldn't be too elongated. These changes are hard to test.   Jts1882 | talk  06:15, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

I've implemented what was suggested above at St. Croix macaw. Take a look here for what happened to the map before:[5] FunkMonk (talk) 11:57, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

The code change above is not seemless. If, as in Felidae, the image uses |upright=1.3 it relies on the upright parameter to scale the range map to the width of the taxobox. The code change leaves a small range map. I suspect there are far more examples where changing the default will change the display of the taxobox than cases where |range_map_upright= needs to be set because of an unusual image aspect ratio.   Jts1882 | talk  12:38, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

let me know

when you have a diptera project tag up and running that is read by rater - as I would be interested... the thing is do you want parallel tags for insects and diptera (assuming someone will create something?) - or just diptera by itself ? JarrahTree 14:15, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: I already see {{WikiProject Diptera}} (with correct spelling) show up in Rater. I think it could use an update to the templatedata though, as it's not populating all the options yet. --Nessie (talk) 14:50, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

@JarrahTree:, my inclination would be tag for both insects and diptera. I think it is unlikely that WikiProject Diptera is going to end up being very active. I tag beetles for both insects and beetles, as WikiProject Beetles has failed to develop into a place with much discussion of beetle articles. Even WikiProject Insects is pretty quiet; discussion there certainly aren't frequent enough to require subprojects to keep talk page activity down to a reasonable level. However, there are a couple reporting tools for WikiProjects that don't work when WikiProjects have very large numbers of articles tagged, which would be a reason to leave the insects tag off and only use a subproject.

We can now tag articles for the 4 largest insect orders, but current practice is inconsistent. Beetles are mostly tagged for insects+beetles. Lepidoptera are mostly tagged only for lepidoptera. Hymenoptera are divided across two task forces (and last I checked, most non-ant hymenopterans aren't tagged with the task force). Plantdrew (talk) 23:21, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

thank you for your reply -

VIP problem with diptera is inadequate tweakings of project tag which means is it is not fully functional for a project assessment...

I think from what you have said that dual tagging is fine - and I can relate to the usefulness of it... but note the points that you make. JarrahTree 12:53, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

vis a vis banksia - there seems little point to initiate anything of importance/class on the talk page side for the banksia project, as the oz biota and plants already are in that game - but I have decided that the plants tag needs to be in there, and we (whoever I can get in on this) need to be one the road again for photos of the under-described items - there are lot of banksia one liners, worse than a californian comedian... JarrahTree 05:19, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: I've been thinking that WikiProject Banksia should get rolled into WikiProject Plants. I've been looking at Template:WikiProject Idaho as a model. The Idaho template is a wrapper that puts articles into WikiProject United States, with WikiProject Idaho as a subproject. Template:WikiProject Banksia could be treated in a similar fashion, wrapping Banksia as a subproject of Plants. I need to look into what edits need to be made to the relevant WikiProject banners, but I'd advise not adding WikiProject Plants to Banksia articles, pending revision of the banners. There are a bunch of Banksia articles that don't have WikiProject Australia banners, which should be added. Plantdrew (talk) 05:35, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Sorry - I would appreciate that it didnt get rolled into plants, I personaly think it is much better into oz biota - I dont mind re-adjusting tags - it is uniquely australian, and as a consequence a subsuming into plants is over kill... JarrahTree 08:12, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

I think it would be much more appropriate that This article is supported by WikiProject Plants (marked as Low-importance) inside the banksia tags should be This article is supported by WikiProject Australian Biota - it would be much more sense to be inside the Oz project, and as a reason that there are in time the possibility of similar subject/plant groupings that can be unassessed equivalents of task forces - there are some which really do deserve the attention and level of work to input that would reflect the initial stages of the banksia project entailed... . The biota project is large enough (and is likely to double in size in the next twelve months), to have task forces that have the same level of quality input and overview that hesperian put in to banksia, would actually be very inspiring to those who slave along with no thanks or acknowledgement at all, to get the oz biota project beyond the mess it was about 2 years ago... To subsume into plants is missing the point of the origins of the banksia project completely. JarrahTree 08:26, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: articles like Banksia are, first and foremost, plant articles, and as such should conform to the guidance, including section layout, of WP:PLANTS. By all means mark them as also supported by WikiProject Australian Biota, but this is not a substitute. There are very significant differences between plant and animal articles, including in the taxobox – for example, the taxonomic hierarchy for Banksia is based on APG IV, as agreed by WP:PLANTS. The taxonomic hierarchies for Australian birds need to be based on guidance at WP:BIRDS. And so on. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:19, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

I will just walk away from anything to do with banksia and what could or not be done, when I see a gauntlet of plant project non negotiables, life is too short - the project was started by people I knew personally in real life, and I felt that they had something there, they were people with whom I respect their efforts here on wikipedia, I dont want to waste time on having to negotiate with non negotiables, too much to do to get lost in something like the portal slaughter. cheers JarrahTree 13:24, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: nothing in Wikipedia is "non negotiable". I don't see how being included in WP:PLANTS causes any problems for the Banksia article – if you see any, then let's discuss them at Talk:Banksia. As it stands, Banksia is an excellent example of a plant article, which as far as I can tell follows the guidance in every respect. It ought to be possible to upgrade it to featured status without too much work. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:51, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

It does not smell like negotiation at all - I have said very specifically, a preference is that banksia is potentially under the australian biota. Banksia is a project for heavens sake, I am not sure where or what you are looking at. You give me no confidence we are anywhere talking about the same thing. Good night. JarrahTree 13:59, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: ok, I see that I wasn't being clear above, because of the article I was talking about and the wikiproject both being called "Banksia". I was trying (but not clearly enough) to use the Banksia article as an example of how it doesn't seem to cause any problems to have WP:WikiProject Banksia under WP:PLANTS, and that if there was some reason why this article suffers from being treated as a "plant" article, then it could be raised at the article's talk page, just as it could for any other article. Can you please explain why you think that treating articles within WP:BANKSIA as also WP:PLANTS articles causes problems? Peter coxhead (talk) 23:58, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Peter, sorry real life takes me out off the computer to take the time at this point... JarrahTree 00:16, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

I for one would never wish to be party to some ad hoc conversation on a talk page that would in any have any affect upon or in way undo or affect the status of the content and time and effort that went into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Banksia_articles_by_quality_log period. JarrahTree 00:32, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

That "articles by quality log" is especially lengthy today, because the WikiProject Banner Template had been flagged as "inactive" for the last 3 months, which had the effect of supressing WikiProject Banksia quality/importance assessments. I removed the "inactive" qualifier from the banner template yesterday (and JarrahTree removed an inactive flag that was on the main page for the project). The fact that the quality statistics table was blank for 3 months with nobody noticing doesn't speak well to the activity level of the project.

Changing the WikiProject Banksia banner template to a wrapper for WikiProject Plants shouldn't have any impact on the status of of Banksia as a WikiProject. If a template wrapper works like I think it will, it would make articles tagged with the WikiProject Banksia banner show up in Article Alerts (and other WikiProject based reports) for both WikiProject Banksia and Plants (Banksia tagged articles currently do not show up in the Article Alert report for Plants). If template wrapping the project banner doesn't work like I expect it might, I'm not interested in pursuing it further. Plantdrew (talk) 01:12, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that JarrahTree 01:22, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Previous accounts

Previous accounts. Thank you for your kind comments on my "articles" (correct name?). You have been most helpful in your additions and adding "tasxobox" etc. Such is beyond me! I ma now writing under username Phycodrys as I have just upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 am still wondering how to work it!! Do you wish a list of articles I have written or articles under previous usernames? Some sort of crash forced me to log in under the username " Gelidium" before that it was Ceramium (I think).I will see if I can give you any information you require - just let me know. Thanks. Regards.Phycodrys (talk) 18:23, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@Phycodrys:, just put a note on your userpage reading something like:

"I have previously edited Wikipedia with the accounts User:Osborne (contributions) and User:Gigartina (contributions)."

Include any other accounts you have used. There is no account for User:Gelidium, and while there is an account for User:Ceramium, no edits were made with that account.

There's no need for a list of articles written under previous user names. But if you would like to list all the articles you've started, I can help you find them. Plantdrew (talk) 19:53, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Many thanks for your advice. I have added a note as you advised in my user page. I may have confused username and password! I will be grateful if you can assist me finding articles I have started. With thanks. Phycodrys (talk) 18:33, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Why

Why make a change that adds nothing and changes nothing[6] while you are at it please if you want to do such editcount adding meaningless changes please tag them as minor so we can filter them out of our watchlists. Gnangarra 03:53, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

@Gnangarra:, I'd replaced the template producing the taxobox with a template that functions differently. While the output to the reader was identical in those cases, not everybody would regard the switch to a different way of producing the taxobox as "minor". Plantdrew (talk) 04:11, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Speciesbox and nothogenera

Hi, I think that it was you that originally alerted me to the fact that {{Speciesbox}} couldn't handle species within nothogenera. Fixing it has been on my to-do list for ages, but it didn't seem a priority. Prodded by the issue raised with hyphens in genus names at Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system#Binomial trouble on Pseudo-nitzschia australis, I've now updated Speciesbox. (Right now there's a small bug – the automatically completed name of the taxobox is not italicized correctly – which I'll fix a.s.a.p.) There are articles on species in nothogenera which could now be converted to an automated taxobox. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:48, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for getting that working. I'll look at converting to automatic taxoboxes at some point in the near future. Plantdrew (talk) 14:22, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Fish monotypic taxon

Hi, I'm aware from the past that fish articles don't seem to follow general guidance, so I thought I'd ask you if Ophthalmolebias ilheusensis should be at the genus. (I ran into it because the taxobox showed up in an error category.) Peter coxhead (talk) 20:32, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

The species list at Ophthalmolebias follows Catalog of Fishes (as does Simpsonichthys and presumably the other former subgenera mentioned in the Simpsonichthys article). Fishbase seems to be the de facto standard, but of course I don't know enough about the disputed taxonomy in this particular case to know whether Fishbase or Catalog of Fishes has more consensus. Following Fishbase with a monotypic Ophthalmolebias will require editing several other articles to produce a consistent taxonomic view on Wikipedia.

In general, I think fish ought to be consistent with the rest of ToL in using genus titles for monotypic genera. But fish articles as a set are very consistent in not using genus titles for monotypic fish genera (the contents Category:Monotypic fish genera is a mix of titles largely using binomials or vernacular names; the contents if tge subcategories of Monotypic fish genera are mostly titles of genera, but are they are largely redirects).

Leaving Ophthalmolebias ilheusensis at that title with a polytypic Ophthalmolebias requires fewer edits to maintain a local consistency with regard to the disposition of Simpsonichthys. Leaving Ophthalmolebias ilheusensis at that title with a monotypic Ophthalmolebias requires fewer edits to maintain a local consistency with regards to the use of binomials for titles of monotypic genera. Take your pick, more edits for a broader consistency or fewer edits for local consistency. Plantdrew (talk) 03:28, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I see another editor has been bold and moved it. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:59, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Bookmarks

I keep mine safe, online, in Pinboard (website). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:45, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

A goat for you!

For your work on Netta Elizabeth Gray.

Stuartyeates (talk) 22:33, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Anolis cuvieri

Hi Plantdrew: >This article< has received a lot more attention than I ever imagined it would with lots of editors editing the page since created and even since after you gave it your blessing here. Now someone is complaining here about a redirect to it. I did what I could to contribute my opinion, but this field is not my forte and my motivation when I created the article is merely documenting what was present at Toro Negro. IAE, I included the discussion link in case you want to comment since the submitter mentioned "someone with more familiarity with this field", and appears willing to settle for a valid source. If you can't get to it, that's fine too -- I am not even sure it's worth our times. Greetings, Mercy11 (talk) 22:44, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Collinsia sparsiflora

Hi Plantdrew. A friend of mine stumbled across the article Collinsia sparsiflora and noticed that the taxobox in the article incorrectly listed the plant in the animal kingdom. I looked at the article's history, and it looks like the error was introduced as a result of this edit that you submitted back in March 2019. I've partially reverted the edit, but do you think you could take a look at the edit again to see what might've happened? Thanks! Mz7 (talk) 04:12, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

There is a genus of spiders, Collinsia (spider), so two taxonomy templates {{Taxonomy/Collinsia (spider)}} and {{Taxonomy/Collinsia}} and the latter had been placed in the spider hierarchy. I think it is fixed now. The two spider species and dozen or so plant species seem OK.   Jts1882 | talk  06:08, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Ah, great. Thanks for your help, Jts1882! Mz7 (talk) 09:31, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

This raises again the question of whether the taxonomy template should always be disambiguated when the taxon name is used in more than one nomenclature code. The tradition seems to have been either to leave the most commonly found name alone and disambiguate the other, or to leave the first created taxonomy template alone and disambiguate the later one. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:42, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

I had that same thought when making the corrections. Would the existence of {{Taxonomy/Collinsia (plant)}} instead have prevented the error being introduced (through this edit). The absence of {{Taxonomy/Collinsia}} would have given pause for thought. The editor who changed the template might have created a new template, which would have added redundancy but not have introduced an error. It makes sense to avoid disambiguation in the article titles where possible, but the taxonomy templates are not visible to the reader. Perhaps the undisambiguated template should be a disambiguation page.   Jts1882 | talk  10:02, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

When I'm creating new taxonomy templates, I routinely disambiguate if there is a genus under another code (well, provided that Wikipedia has a disambiguation page or hatnote that mentions genera under multiple codes; I'm not going to e.g. Catalog of Life to check that there is another genus not yet mentioned on Wikipedia). In this case, there was the pre-existing {{Taxonomy/Collinsia}} I had to deal with. It seemed potentially confusing to have the plant at the undisambiguated title Collinsisa but with a disambiguated taxonomy template, while the spider article was at a disambiguated title, but had an undisambiguated taxonomy template. Basically, I think the template name should match the article title with regard to disambiguators (unless a genus is disambiguated against a topic that isn't another genus; then the base title can be used for the template).

I don't like the idea of leaving the first created taxonomy template alone when it leads to a mismatch in presence/absence of disambiguation for the templates/articles as was the case for Collinsia. I'm more comfortable with giving the template an undisambiguated name when there is a major difference in size of the genera (not sure if this is exactly what Peter meant by "most commonly found name"; I'm thinking more in terms of favoring disambiguating the template for a monotypic genus when that genus name is also used for a genus with say, 400 species).

Jts1882, I'm not sure your suggestion would've prevented the error. Editors can always come up with ingenious ways to screw things up if they're not being careful. User talk:Plantdrew#Speciesbox problem is a case where there was a (plant) taxonomy template, but not an undisambiguated taxonomy template, and the editor did create a redundant template. Template:Taxonomy/Ensifera was converted from an insect suborder to a bird genus at one point. Making undisambiguated templates into disambiguation page may have some merit. Plantdrew (talk) 21:07, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

OK, just came across an identical case to Collinsia; Heteropogon/Heteropogon (fly). Plant at base title with hatnote (currently with manual taxobox). Insect disambiguated with automatic taxobox using the undisambiguated template. Peter, Jts1882, what do you think I should do to automate the plant taxobox? Plantdrew (talk) 23:35, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

The easiest solution is to create a disambiguated plant template, which would create a mismatch between a non-disambiguated article and disambiguated template. This is the reverse of the fly situation, which is particularly confusing, so it would be clearer to move the article to a disambiguated name to match the template. I think I would do this.

If you also want the template to match the fly articles, there are two options. To make all disambiguated, which would involve changing the fly template and editing numerous fly speciesboxes. To match at the non-disambiguated name would require an article page move to the undisambiguated name, which would have a redirect after moving the plant article and also might have secondary redirects to deal with. I lean to the former (everything disambiguated) if the fly status quo is to be changed.   Jts1882 | talk  06:37, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Some comments (based on my current views, which have changed over time):

• WP:DAB is clear that multiple disambiguated titles should only be used when there is no primary topic. So there are cases where the taxon name should not be disambiguated.
• There's a difference between disambiguating a taxon name because of a non-taxon use, and disambiguating a taxon name because the same name is used in different codes.

So there are at least three cases to be considered:

1. Equally known taxon names in multiple codes, so both need disambiguation terms. My view: disambiguate the titles of all the taxonomy templates to match the articles.
2. Taxon name disambigated because of a non-taxon use. My view: make the undisambiguated taxonomy template the main one, but also create the disambiguated one using |same_as= so it doesn't matter which editors use in the taxobox. (Using |same_as= is generally better than a redirect, because editing a template with a name beginning "Template:Taxonomy/" triggers some code which can fill out the content and so may confuse inexperienced editors.)
3. One primary topic is a taxon name so it's not disambiguated; the same name in a different code needs disambiguating. My view: as for (2), make the undisambiguated taxonomy template the main one, but also create the disambiguated one using |same_as=.

This should both work and keep WP:DAB editors happy that we aren't creating disambiguated titles unnecessarily. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:37, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Data-deficient genus

Hi, Plantdrew. In this edit, you removed the IUCN classification from a genus taxobox. I realize that it's a bit unusual to have an IUCN status for an entire genus, but the entire genus is very little-known, which is why there are not species articles for its three members. All three species are data deficient, and one was only just formally described this year. What would be an appropriate way to include this information? HLHJ (talk) 15:25, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi, @HLHJ:. I think the appropriate way to include this is to put it in the Conservation section in the body of the article, which allows a more nuanced discussion than the taxobox. Indeed, B. bairdii is already mentioned there as being data deficient (although this isn't properly referenced). Add that B. arnuxii is also data deficient, reference both to IUCN. I'm not seeing any designation of conservation status in the paper by Yamada et al. describing B. minimus, and given how recently it was described I think it is unlikely that there are any other publications that would give B. minimus a conservation status. Plantdrew (talk) 02:32, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

You're right, I'm assuming that B. minimus is data deficient on the basis of general ignorance, which is not sourcable. For instance, no biologist has ever reported seeing a female one, even dead, which would make it hard to assign a conservation status. HLHJ (talk) 03:19, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Alarming instance at IPNI

Welp, IPNI is apparently getting some information from Wikipedia now. On IPNI, Mark Alan Hershkovitz has a birthdate of 1946. Wikipedia's coverage of him started in late 2010 on the Spanish Wikipedia, where he is listed as having been born in 1958 in the infobox, with a 1946 birthdate and receiving a doctoral degree in 1966. The 1958 birth date was added to Wikidata in 2014. At some point the infobox used in the Spanish Wikipedia began pulling the birth date from Wikidata. In 2017, the infobox was switched to a different template that used Wikidata, but could apparently override with local values (which ended up exposing a local value of 1946 birth date). Spanish Wikipedia is still giving the implausible 1966 PhD date with the 1946 birth date. Herskovitz actual received his bachelor's degree in 1981, and PhD in 1990, which is more plausible if he was born in 1958 than 1946. What especially concerns me is that if the 1946 birth date on IPNI was harvested from (Spanish) Wikipedia after 2014 when the 1958 date was on Wikidata, it seems that IPNI chose a more difficult route to source data from Wikimedia. Wikidata isn't any more reliable than other Wikimedia site, but it is the "easy route". If IPNI has going the more difficult route, I'd imagine a human might have been more involved, and I'm concerned they didn't notice the implausibility of a PhD at the age of 19/20. Plantdrew (talk) 01:41, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

humans?

you have mail JarrahTree 03:52, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, I treat my Wikipedia listed email as a black hole, I should probably just turn it off. I take it this is about Wimpus acting up again on Latin etymologies?Plantdrew (talk) 04:23, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Tireless Contributor Barnstar

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		Great job on all the flora / fauna articles and taxoboxes that you have made over the years. Keep up the good work! — Sagotreespirit (talk) 12:53, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Murray River turtle page move

Do you have a source for this move? The Emydura macquarii page says it's called the Macquarie River turtle. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 10:44, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

@Sun Creator:, I'm not sure what you want to see sourced. Reptile Database lists Murray River turtle as a vernacular name. The vernacular name Macquarie River turtle is less commonly used than Murray River turtle, but can also be sourced (e.g. South Australian Museum). Plantdrew (talk) 16:59, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Thank you, I've updated the Emydura macquarii article with sources. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 17:48, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Assessment of Alsophila spp.

If you have time, I'm aware that many of the articles on species of Alsophila are classed as stubs, but aren't. I don't have time to look at this right now. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:06, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Automatic taxobox

Are you a fan of converting taxobox to automatic? If so, you might like to help convert the remaining turtle articles. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 15:02, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

@Sun Creator:, I'll take a look. I did convert a large number of turtle articles to automatic taxoboxes. Any remaining turtles with manual taxoboxes I at least briefly reviewed, and intentionally skipped as potentially tricky. I'm reluctant to convert to automatic taxoboxes when there isn't an authoritative taxonomic database, or a taxonomic working group such as TTWG that produces a consensus classification that I can use to source the classification given in automatic taxoboxes. For fossil taxa, there generally isn't a good database/working group (Fossilworks has some issues).

As I said, I didn't necessarily look into cases of remaining manual turtle taxoboxes in any great depth. Looking at a few now, I'm coming across various issues.

Pneumatoarthrus; taxobox gives family as Protostegidae, but the genus is not listed in the Protostegidae article. Should the genus be added to that family article, or is it possibly placed in a different family (Protostegidae is correct according to FossilWorks, but I'd like a better source).

Tacuarembemys; paper describing it is behind a paywall for me. Do the authors give a more specific placement than Testudines?

Banhxeochelys; taxobox gives family as Geoemydidae. In the original description, it's placed in Pan-Geoemyidae, and is sister to Geoemyidae. Pan-Geoemyidae lacks an article, and I'm not interested in writing one myself.

Anyway, I'll look at the remaining manual taxoboxes in more detail. Some may have issues with a simple resolution, in which case I'll convert to automatic taxoboxes. If the issue is more complex (or requires a paywalled article, or entails a new article for a clade), I'm inclined to leave manual taxoboxes in place. Plantdrew (talk) 16:41, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, the references are the hard part. It's slowed me down, encountering accessible references, paywalls etc. There is one extinct turtle checklist. Here is the reference which might come in useful:

{{cite journal|authors=Turtle Extinctions Working Group (Rhodin, A.G.J., Thomson, S., Georgalis, G., Karl, H.-V., Danilov, I.G., Takahashi, A., de la Fuente, M.S., Bourque, J.R., Delfino, M., Bour, R., Iverson, J.B., Shaffer, H.B., and van Dijk, P.P.)|url=http://www.iucn-tftsg.org/wp-content/uploads/file/Accounts/crm_5_000e_fossil_checklist_v1_2015.pdf|title=Turtles and tortoises of the world during the rise and global spread of humanity: first checklist and review of extinct Pleistocene and Holocene chelonians.|journal=Chelonian Research Monographs. 5(8):000e.1–66.|doi=10.3854/crm.5.000e.fossil.checklist.v1.2015|year=2015}}

The above checklist only covered turtles that are extinct during Pleistocene and Holocene, so around the last 3 million years, which covered perhaps zero of the remaining turtle articles to be converted. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 17:23, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

For Tacuarembemys the paper says Testudines incertae sedis. --Nessie (talk) 19:03, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

Monotypic fish genera

Plantdrew,...I was looking through the species tagged in category:monotypic fish genera, and there are a very large number of binomials. I've been nipping at them to convert to genus pages, but I thought I'd let you know to see if you wanted to join in the fun, or know of anyone who would be interested in helping...….Pvmoutside (talk) 22:03, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

I'm not interested in joining in, but I recall that this was discussed in the past and WP:WikiProject Fishes seemed to be opposed to the general policy of using monospecific genus names as titles. There's also the perennial issue when projects have a high proportion of their articles at English names: the English name of a monospecific genus will naturally be that of the species. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:49, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside:, I'm not an extended mover, so I can't do much to help. I've been aware of monotypic fish genera largely being at binomial titles. I did go through the subcategories (Monotypic ray-finned fish genera, etc.) a few months ago to insure that at least the category was on the genus title (regardless of whether it was a redirect or not).

Peter, I haven't found any actual discussion about using binomial titles for monotypic fish genera. NCFAUNA actually suggested using binomials from 2008-2010. That was quietly changed as not being inline with the usual practice of using the genus title. I'd guess fish in 2010 (and earlier) were an exception in using binomials, and fish editors never got the message about using genus names. I don't think there has been any opposition with fish editors, just a lack of awareness. Plantdrew (talk) 00:05, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Plantdrew...I'll then keep nipping away at the monotypic genus fish articles, but I'll post a note to the fish project just to be safe.....Pvmoutside (talk) 16:49, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Automatic taxobox parameter(s)

Because I generally use |taxon= rather than |genus=+|species= in Speciesboxes, I think I'm less likely to leave "genus" in an Automatic taxobox when I convert to it, as you did here. On the other hand, as we've discussed before, there are advantages to the |genus=+|species= approach in Speciesboxes, since it's needed for disambiguated genera. The difference between the parameters for the two kinds of automated taxbox does regularly catch editors, though.

I've been wondering whether to allow |genus= in an Automatic taxobox. Doing it properly would require checking that |species= wasn't present (to catch the error of using Automatic taxobox instead of Speciesbox) and also that the taxonomy template had the rank as genus. This could be done, I think, and would avoid some errors (and also save me the time I spend fixing |genus= → |taxon= errors showing up in categories like Category:Automatic taxoboxes relying on page title‎). Any thoughts? Disadvantages? Peter coxhead (talk) 14:09, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

I make other errors converting to automatic taxoboxes (e.g. failing to turn |binomial_authority= into |authority=), but I search for them periodically and correct them myself. I don't think my preference for genus+species in Speciesbox is much of a factor in leaving "genus" in Automatic taxoboxes, given other errors I make (getting interrupted in the middle of an edit probably plays some role). I don't look at the taxobox cleanup categories as often as you do, but even if you stopped checking the "relying on page title", I'd catch |genus= → |taxon= errors at least in the monthly template data error report, if not sooner.

Allowing |genus= in an Automatic taxobox could lead editors to expect that parameters for other ranks are supported. I'm not sure how complicated it would be to add support for other ranks, but I don't see any advantage to doing so. Marking a parameter as "required" in Template Data allows a search for missing values in the monthly error report. If the same result can be accomplished with different parameters, the missing value report gets cluttered with pages that are using the "other" parameter (of course, the taxobox cleanup categories you've set up also catch missing values, and on a basis more frequent than monthly).

In short, I don't think allowing |genus= is worthwhile, unless you can elaborate on "would avoid some errors". Plantdrew (talk) 19:13, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't see any strong reason why automatic taxobox should support |genus= over |family= or |order=. While converting, one usually has to strip the wiki-formatting. In theory the automatic taxobox could check for all the allowed ranks and use the lowest (stripped of wikietext), but that would leave a lot of irregular taxoboxes. Using |taxon= is cleanest and simplest. If anything, I would remove |taxon= from {{speciesbox}}. Then it could simply be subsumed into an expanded {{automatic taxobox}} with pseudocode:

IF GENUS and SPECIES handle for species ELSEIF TAXON do as current automatic taxobox END

There might be a case for adding this option to {{automatic taxobox}} to allow it to also handle species, in parallel with speciesbox while taxon was eliminated from the latter.   Jts1882 | talk  07:11, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Ok, on reflection, I agree with you both about not adding |genus= to {{Automatic taxobox}}.

There is a case for merging {{Automatic taxobox}} and {{Speciesbox}}, but I would then handle the parameters differently, still allowing both to use |taxon=. Now the underlying code is Lua, it's much easier to do string processing than it was in the template language. So it's easier to extract the genus from Acanthocarpus (plant) preissii, which would allow the optional use of |taxon=Acanthocarpus (plant) preissii. Nothospecies and nothogenera could also be handled in a more consistent way. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:41, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

If we wanted to add a parameter, regardless of an intent to make one taxobox to rule them all, wouldn't |parent= be a better approach? That's what {{virusbox}} uses. --Nessie (talk) 13:36, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

we all have our moments

somewhere above or archived you were guiding me through the nuances of some tagging which never happened - hopefully one day... what has just hit this am is a whole tree of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Amorphea_subphyla and related interconnected items such https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Subphyla and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Eukaryote_subphyla - some time in the past I had very precariously dropped tree of life tags due to the tie in with taxa, but would be very interested in your take on where they really belong in the end.. JarrahTree 01:04, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

whenever... JarrahTree 12:45, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

@JarrahTree:, there really isn't anything better than Tree of Life for categories related to taxa broader than animals/fungi/plants. But I don't think Category:Amorphea subphyla (or Category:Opisthokont subphyla) are very useful in the first place. Both were created by a now-banned editor with a penchant for creating categories for every node in the phylogenetic tree of life. In my opinion, Category:Animal subphyla should be a child of Category:Eukaryote subphyla, and everything that isn't an animal should just be upmerged to Eukaryote subphyla. Plantdrew (talk) 01:36, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

man if I could create a project sorting problems that exist due to now banned editors I would have to look around for life extension programmes (sic) oz spelling

Thanks for your reply, I must get back to that set we talked about previously, some time after times of chaos abate. JarrahTree 02:32, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

I have taken that literally and done it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Animal_subphyla for a start JarrahTree 02:35, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

@JarrahTree: sorry for the late response to your ping. I agree with the above. Usually if a category deals with a taxonomic rank, unless it is hyper-specific, I tend to add WPToL. ToL tends to be a bit of a dustbin whether we want it to or not, e.g. all the Ediacaran biota. Most taxa that are not animal/plants/fungi can usually be put in WP Microbiology, WP Palaeontology, or WP Marine Life, so they atleast have some subproject looking after them. --Nessie (talk) 13:45, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Albugo

I just noticed you added Albugo ipomoeae-panduratae to the category of Peronosporales [7]. Index Fungorum has it in the Albuginales, which is also where the taxobox has it. Since IF isn't always the most up to date, I wanted to check with you before either removing the category or changing the taxobox. Also, thanks for cleaning up the the edits I made to the taxobox! TelosCricket (talk) 20:16, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

@TelosCricket:, I must have copied the Peronosporales category from Albugo (with a taxobox that does show Peronsporales), while overlooking the order given in the A. ipomoeae-panduratae taxobox. Many of the taxonomic databases in the taxonbar do place Albugo in Albuginales, but Mycobank does have it in Peronosporales. I'm not sure which placement is more up-to-date, but from what I've seen it's uncommon for Mycobank and IF to disagree. It's a problem that Wikipedia's taxoboxes for the genus and the species aren't consistent. Make whatever changes you think are appropriate. Plantdrew (talk) 01:03, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

If most of the taxonomic databases place it in the Albuginales, I think I'll make them all consistent to that. TelosCricket (talk) 12:15, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

So, Abulginales was formally described in Thines & Spring. 2005. "A revision of Albugo (Chromista, Peronosporomycetes" Mycotaxon 92: 453. However, according to Thines, the name has been floating around since 1947. MycoBank does have a record for the name; it's just not linked to anything. Will switch all to Albuginales. Thanks! TelosCricket (talk) 13:34, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

"Quoted genera" in taxoboxes

Hi, if you have time, I'd welcome your view at User talk:Loopy30#"Prostherapis" dunni. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:24, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

so if...

you're emptying x by location - you on the way to do same with oz items? a reason? JarrahTree 00:44, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

@JarrahTree:, no, I'm not going to be emptying the Australian ones. That doesn't mean I think the Australian ones are necessarily a good idea, but at least they've been populated fairly systematically. The Chilean/Argentinian ones had a couple dozen random pages in them and seemed to have been abandoned by their creator. Plantdrew (talk) 01:12, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

makes sense - good move, thanks for your answer.. JarrahTree 07:59, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

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Osmundea hybrida

Thank you for the taxobox. However I wonder what you consider about adding the synonym Laurencia hybrid (A.P. DeCandolle) T. ? It was used quite recently (for me!)Phycodrys (talk) 19:20, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

@Phycodrys:, I've now added synonyms. I'd considered doing so when I edited it earlier, but was being lazy and didn't bother (if I'm only going to include one synonym it would be the basionym, and if I'm going to include more than one, I ought to do them all). Plantdrew (talk) 19:38, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Greater amberjack

I have rewritten this article and reclassified it as Start, what do you think? Thanks Quetzal1964 (talk) 21:57, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964:, it's certainly C-class at least. I'm comfortable rating it as B-class. Plantdrew (talk) 22:27, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Atlantic horse mackerel has been rewritten too, what are your thoughts on this? Thanks. Quetzal1964 (talk) 16:02, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964:, re-rated it as B-class. Plantdrew (talk) 23:01, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!

Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Categories in need of diffusion

I happened to catch your most recent userpage edit. Which categories did you have in mind? I've got no shortage of infrastructural maintenance (including, yes, sorting out various partially-diffused categories) to work on, mind, but I could add them to my list of "oh hey this stuff needs doing at some point" if you'd like. AddWittyNameHere 03:26, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

I was thinking about categories that should never should have been created in the first place and which should be deleted, not categories that needed to be populated by a Wikignome. I'm not quite sure what all I encountered recently that prompted me to add that note to my user page, but reading the ANI thread blocking Look2See1 a couple days ago was part of it, and seeing Look2See1's Category:Native grasses of California was the immediate trigger. Plantdrew (talk) 03:41, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Ah, phew. Good, means I can just focus on getting the diffusable stuff (=85% of its contents or so...) out of Redirects from alternative scientific names instead. (It's finally almost down to under 30k now). Ah, Look2See1. One of the three most common names around "problematic Lepidoptera categories", alongside NotWith and Caftaric. Not unusual to see all three of them on a category's history, either. (Or perhaps that should be "all one of them"? I doubt there's that many highly-"productive" folks incapable of listening or seeking consent with a strong focus on taxonomic overcategorization...) AddWittyNameHere 03:51, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

Interesting stat

Wikipedia added about 10,000 articles on taxa from June 2018 to June 2019--that's cool, how do you look that up? And you can also narrow in on specific taxonomic groups? Might be an interesting story for the newsletter. Enwebb (talk) 23:30, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

That is from statistics I've been tracking on use of automatic taxoboxes. 2 July 2018 and 27 June 2019 (as well as April (collapsed) and August 2017, 18 December 2017, and 1 January 2019). But by looking at the total number of taxoboxes (manual and auto), I ended up tracking growth in taxon articles over time. You could probably use the assessment table totals for various Wikiprojects to get a sense of new articles over other time frames. Plantdrew (talk) 00:44, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I wish there was a way to do it without doing so manually, though. As far as I know, there's no way of looking back in time and seeing the number of articles in a project via the assessment table. I started keeping track of monthly counts in the bats task force, but I don't think those numbers exist for most other projects. Do you know if there's a way to query articles based on creation date? Something like, has speciesbox=yes, creation date=after xyz date? That would work well enough (though would miss articles created from redirects). Enwebb (talk) 00:58, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

@Enwebb: you can see earlier totals for a project in the history of e.g. User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Bat. Or is that not what you meant? I don't know of any tools that would facilitate tracking the history/creation date of articles currently tagged for being in the scope of a WikiProject before the WikiProject even existed. I think this maybe more what you meant? (with bats being a project with most articles created before the project was established). Plantdrew (talk) 05:24, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Categories Edible Asteraceae, Edible Solanaceae, etc.

Hi there; could you please explain the rationale for your removals of categories "Edible XYZ" from several species, such as this one?

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tagetes_lucida&type=revision&diff=930379764&oldid=890542435&diffmode=source

Thanks; Rickjpelleg (talk) 12:28, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

@Rickjpelleg:, every article that was in those categories remains in a category (or subcategory) for the family, and for edible plants. Underpopulated categories for the intersection of family+edible aren't very useful. Edibility isn't a binary condition. Plants may have some parts that are edible (apple fruit), others that are inedible (apple twigs), or that are toxic (apple seeds). Or a part may be edible under certain conditions; e.g a particular stage of ripeness (ackee), or by processing to remove toxins (cassava). It's better to have categories that are more specific about edibility such as Category:Leaf vegetables. If intersectional categories are created, there could be thousands of them; what makes "Edible Asteraceae" a more useful category than "Asterales leaf vegetables"? Petscan can be used to search for intersections of categories; here is a search for Asteraceae+Edible plants. Plantdrew (talk) 20:32, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Understood; thanks! Rickjpelleg (talk) 05:18, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

all the best

for the season, trust it is a safe one for you... JarrahTree 23:43, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

Happy holidays to you too. Plantdrew (talk) 00:33, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

very impressed by your profile on TOL - well done! JarrahTree 05:57, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

mind you it is very very close to the quality of the discussions my important informants in java in 95/96 - there is as much left out (if not much more than the reader actually realises) as there is in - there is an art to that (Javanese love the capacity to entertain with speaches that last 45 minutes or so, and one is left none the wiser) - may it serve you well! JarrahTree 06:24, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Input into disambiguation page content dispute

Hi there,

As a recent contributor to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation, I felt that it might be useful to invite you to contribute- as a neutral third party- into the discussion at Talk:Holmes_and_Watson_(disambiguation)#Two_disambiguation_pages.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Ubcule (talk) 18:36, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Happy Holidays, Happy Christmas, and Thanks for all the work

Hey! Just to say it's been noticed that if I (or others) accept an article submitted to AfC you'll often jump them and tidy them up and bring them up to standard. I have actually noticed and appreciated your work for a while but I don't think I've said so before. In a world where most only run people down for every mistake I think it's important to make an effort to point out the good, and it's clear your effort here are a big positive. So keep up the good work, happy holidays, and best wished for 2020... may it bring you and yours much happiness. KylieTastic (talk) 22:09, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

@KylieTastic:, thanks for the acknowledgment, and happy holidays to you too. I do try to keep an eye on any newly created articles about organisms (i.e. after they've gone through AfC). AfC isn't something I pay attention to directly, but you're doing important work over there, so keep it up. Plantdrew (talk) 01:46, 28 December 2019 (UTC)