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To do

  • http://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Bot/taxobot/taxobot.php?taxon=Ant  Done
  • unranked_ordo -> unranked; per rosaceae & higher – not desired (for automatic child rank generation)
  • Check case of user-provided input
  • Detect taxon (as at Ant / Giraffe_weevil)
  • Creating page at unusual location? e.g. Giraffe_weevil
  • Pre-filling via trinomial and subspecies, e.g. @ European dark bee
  • Problems at Apis mellifera too.
  • @ Marrella
    • Link extraction broken (parent = arthropoD)
    • Binomial should only apply to species (not to genus)
  • Redirects at Template:Taxonomy/ for redirects
  • Taxobox climbing broken, e.g. Salmo when no taxobox available for 2 ranks above start.
  • Multiple levels in one taxobox: e.g. Salmonidae
  • taxon list template for super-generic taxa , e.g. Ecdysozoa
  • Parent of trinomial, e.g. Italian bee
  • Display problems caused at Dioon_purpusii (first pre-existing taxon was plantae) (?)
  • Prefill new taxa

{{resolved}}

Bug reporting

I've reported several bugs with Taxobot's toolserver here. And I'm sorry to say that I'm not seeing the benefit of using it quite yet. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 00:38, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

{{resolved}}

User:Taxobot/children/

An unrelated database analysis threw up this. Looks a bit suspect, possibly a glitch in a template. Is it as intended ? - TB (talk) 23:04, 17 December 2010 (UTC) {{resolved}}

Wikipedia:Database reports/Transplanted user templates

Any way to make this bot contribute to template space directly? This page (Wikipedia:Database reports/Transplanted user templates) is now basically stuffed with Taxobot pages. 134.253.26.9 (talk) 23:14, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Eventually, but this will require a bot request for approval – a lengthy process that I feel it's premature to initiate whilst I'm still experimenting with implementation. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:59, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

I was about to come here with similar concerns, namely User:Taxobot/children/template causing tons of things to show up in Wikipedia:Database reports/Articles containing links to the user space. I'm not really sure what this template does, but I do know that articles shouldn't be linking to userspace templates. If this template is required, it should be moved to template space. VegaDark (talk) 08:56, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Template_talk:Automatic_taxobox#Taxobot. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 13:55, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

{{resolved}}

Why is taxobox creating tribe articles for Fabaceae outside of Faboideae?

Acacia should not have its subfamily removed and replaced by its tribe. Fabaceae, along with some other plant families, uses subfamilies. The tribe can be added, but it should not replace the subfamily in Fabaceae. Only in the Faboideae are tribes used extensively, but the Fabaceae articles should not have subfamilies removed.

I was argued down thoroughly when I wanted to include too many parent taxa, but now the automatic taxoboxes are randomly selecting which parent taxa should be included? Or is there some reason to it?

Please don't let this bot override human editing decisions about what taxa should be included in the taxonomy box. --Kleopatra (talk) 20:07, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

That's a good question; I think that others will benefit from the answer so I've written Template:Automatic_taxobox/doc#How_do_I_change_the_taxonomy_that_is_displayed.3F.Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 23:35, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
That's incomprehensible jargon, and it does not answer my question, but merely tells me to spend 55 hours trying to figure out how to edit the template. How about instructions? --Kleopatra (talk) 03:15, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm sorry that you feel that way. Please forgive me for being confused; I clearly need the problem spelling out to me in more detail. Which instructions in particular do you require? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 22:29, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Good question...if there's a specific part that you need addressed immediately I'll focus on that part before doing the rest of the tutorial stuff. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 19:36, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

So, I have a taxobox at Acacia that automatically displays this taxonomy, for some unexplained reason:

  • Order: Fabales
  • Family: Fabaceae
  • Tribe: Acacieae
  • Genus: Acacia

What it should display is this:

  • Order: Fabales
  • Family: Fabaceae
  • Subfamily: Mimosoideae
  • Tribe: Acacieae
  • Genus: Acacia

or this:

  • Order: Fabales
  • Family: Fabaceae
  • Subfamily: Mimosoideae
  • Genus: Acacia

All members of the Fabaceae should display subfamily always. Of the three subfamilies:

  • Caesalpinioideae
  • Mimosoideae
  • Faboideae

the Faboideae should use tribes, but they are not often used in the other two subfamilies. This is the case with a number of the photosynthetic eukaryotes outside of Plantae, that some subclades are used in certain taxa but not in others, so let's assume that we display subfamily always and tribe only in the Faboideae. This will help me with the oddball eukaryote clades.

So, I go to find out how to change the automatic taxobox. That's what I want: instructions. The issue is getting subfamily to display in the genus article, Acacia, and not getting tribe to display. These are my directions:

"By default, the template displays only the taxonomy necessary to give context to the taxon in question. This includes any major taxonomic ranks: that is, Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species; and any levels between the taxon in question and the first major rank above it."

The taxon in question in the Acacia article is Acacia, the genus. The default then, is that it will display family, the first major rank about genus. So, this information is not helpful to the subfamily-always in Fabaceae, tribe-only with Faboideae issue.

I keep reading. "To display minor taxa above the first major-ranking taxon, increase |display parents= (default = 1, meaning "immediate parent only"). See example above." The template in question for the taxon in question is Template:Taxonomy/Acacia. I go to that template. According to the instructions given, to display minor taxa above the first-ranking major taxon, is not my issue.

But, no, wait, is that the right option? Shouldn't I have dichotomous choices, to display either minor taxa below or above the first major-ranking taxon? Okay, that's not a choice, so I go with the next line, anyhow.

I want to display minor taxa below the first major-ranking taxon, so the next instruction must be what I am after: "To force a given taxon to appear in all its children's taxoboxes, add the line "|always_display=true" to its taxonomy page."

So, let's see, I should then add always true to the Mimosoideae taxobox template? By now, I am totally lost because of the fact that the instructions are no longer dealing with displaying the taxonomy at issue, the Acacia, but, I have hours and hours to spend reading the directions and correcting the time-saving automatic taxoboxes. And, if I spend a few more hours at it, I might get somewhere. So, I want always display in the Mimosoideaa automatic taxobox to fix the display of tribe instead of subfamily in the genus Acacia article.... Except that the immediate parent of Acacia is its tribe, which really doesn't add any information to the taxobox; so, should I delete that?

Okay, let's see, I think I can add the always display lines to the Mimosoideae and Caesalpinioideae automatic taxobox templates. And always display to Faboideae and to all of its tribes. But, again, because the taxon I am dealing with is Acacia, it's not obvious from the directions that what I really should be editing is the Mimosoideae template. But, okay, I'll add it. Does it matter where I add it? It doesn't say, so, by this point I don't care, but I'll assume it doesn't, and I'll just add it as the last line of code inside the double brackets. But does it need this now that the genus has been hard coded? Well, other genera of the subfamily should have just the subfamily and it should always show, but will this make it always show in the genera articles for this subfamily if there is a tribe also? Is that what this always display actually does? Anyway, I no longer care. I will just edit the templates and see what happens, then revert if it doesn't work. --Kleopatra (talk) 20:53, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I think what it will do is always display in the tribe articles. But it will be a long time since there are tribe articles, and they don't matter in this subfamily, so it will do nothing. So, back to the question, how do I get the subfamilies to always appears in all genera article for Fabaceae? --Kleopatra (talk) 20:56, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
You'll find that adding |always_display=true to Template:Taxonomy/Mimosoideae (on any line, it doesn't matter what order any of the parameters are in) will cause Mimosoideae to display on the taxobox for all descendent taxa, regardless of their rank. I'll go document that now in the tutorial I'm working on while I'm thinking about it. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 22:39, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
Is there a never display for the tribes, then? Or I can just delete them? --Kleopatra (talk) 23:26, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
Tribes by default only display on subtribe, infratribe, and genus level taxoboxes. If you have a tribe you need to hide from one of those, we'd need to develop code to override the forced display of the immediate parent. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 02:02, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Doesn't "|display parents=0" do the trick? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 02:38, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
I don't know. I tried it. We'll see if it works. --Kleopatra (talk) 03:15, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Huh. I learn something new every day...wasn't aware that was an option, Martin, but it looks like that will definitely do the trick. Also-- not sure if you knew this, Kleopatra, but the {{automatic taxobox}} makes the {{italictitle}} template obsolete since it can detect that. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 03:26, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
Mine still shows the tribe at Abarema. Yes, I know about the italic title. --Kleopatra (talk) 04:06, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
I've fixed it with this edit per Martin's suggestion. This desire to hide the tribe intrigues me...any particular reason for doing this? Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 15:40, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
There's no "desire" to hide the tribe, they're just not really used except in the one subfamily. Why include them in the taxobox? There are many other infrataxa that can be used, should I add those in addition to tribe? You could fill the average taxobox up with another additional dozen levels of taxonomy. Do they belong just because they exist? If I wrote an article on one of the Faboideae genera, I would probably include the tribe, and I would probably create a credible stub on the tribe.
This started when someone created a taxobox for Acacia where the tribe was added and the subfamily was removed. You didn't ask why the subfamily was removed, but just accused me of wanting to "hide" the tribe. Go ahead and add back the tribe, and superfamilies, and suborders and whatever else you want. --Kleopatra (talk) 04:27, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm not saying it's wrong, I was only wondering what your logic was. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 03:38, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

It's not logic, it's practice. As I said above, when I first commented, "Fabaceae, along with some other plant families, uses subfamilies. The tribe can be added, but it should not replace the subfamily in Fabaceae. Only in the Faboideae are tribes used extensively." I don't work much in the Fabaceae, so I don't know what the reason is behind the practice. --Kleopatra (talk) 05:03, 12 January 2011 (UTC) {{resolved}}

Bug report: Deprecated taxon template modified by task 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Taxonomy/Dictyoptera&diff=next&oldid=398142427

Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 23:03, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Task one won't be run again. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 23:00, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

{{resolved}}

Taxobot 2 playing up

I seem to recall that this sort of thing is what I blocked Taxobot for, so I'm not very happy with Taxobot's sock-puppet Taxobot 2 carrying on the bad work. I think we can all see what's wrong here, can't we (cf. this)? --Stemonitis (talk) 18:15, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

This was not a bot error, but a result of bad input by the user implicated in the edit summary (in this case, me). It's nothing to do with the addition of authorities, which pertains to a different bot task (and accordingly, a different account). Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:13, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Either way, closer attention is needed, but I think that message has been understood. --Stemonitis (talk) 19:43, 14 February 2011 (UTC) {{resolved}}

"Unable to log in"

This is my first attempt since the automatic taxobox template has been updated to use the toolserver. 

Edit summary: +Taxonomic info from "Existing taxobox"; User: [[User:|User:]]

Session was not initiated by valid user; edit will not be completed

I did have "Bob the Wikipedian" entered in the username field on the initial page. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 21:50, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Oddly, the second one I tried worked. Looks like a wonderful tool. Just a shame I couldn't complete it the first time. I'll keep you posted if this happens again. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 21:57, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

It happened again. Resolved by hitting "BACK", then reloading the form page. This involves resending the article name and username data via the Resend Data button, and requires the user to re-enter all taxonomy data. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 03:11, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

"You've linked..."

Taxonomy exists at Actinobacteridae. [Article] [Talk] [Taxonomy template]
Thank you! You've linked Actinobacteridae [Article] [Talk] [Taxonomy template] to the tree of life.

If the taxon template already exists, I'd prefer to see a message stating it has already been linked, not one that says I've just linked it. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 23:49, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Downtime

It would seem the Taxobot has been down for a good amount of time now. I click the first "Submit" button and the page attempts to load, and after a few minutes, the page finally gives up loading, but returns no errors, just a white page. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 00:27, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Up again. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 00:40, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Down again. Is perhaps my query for Aplacophora crashing it? That's been the first one to crash both times it's gone down. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 00:43, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
Aplacophora seems to be the bot-crasher. I'll leave this one uncreated for the time being until you work out what's wrong. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 01:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Source

When no taxobox can be found as a source, the "Data source" text field should not load the words "existing article". Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 03:08, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Default Enter_pressed event

The default "enter_pressed" event should be pressing submit button, not the following link to the Bot's userpage. I typically hit enter if I've typed something in one of the fields. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 04:32, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Crashing

It appears the bot crashes if the target taxon has an article but no taxobox. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 06:38, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Cannot create incertae sedis taxa

Display in ALL children: false
Taxon: Incertae sedis (Alphaproteobacteria)
Display text: Incertae sedis
Link to: Incertae sedis
Rank: ordo
Parent: Alphaproteobacteria
I've verified the above: true
Data source: WikiSpecies

Please match the requested format: The taxon's complete name, e.g. Uca speciosa (crab).
Please match the requested format: The taxon's name, as it will be displayed in the taxobox, e.g. U. speciosa.

Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 21:19, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Similarly, "Dictyoptera (cohort)" is invalid as a taxon parameter. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 23:09, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Minor cosmetic issue

When the taxobot displays the taxoboxes for Culicidae, the synonyms and diversity appear before the authority, and there is no opening set of braces to match up with the end of the synonyms/diversity. This is not hurting anything; it just looks quite broken. Perhaps knowing this will help locate the source of another problem. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 22:41, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Actinobacteridae

What is the reasoning behind this automatic taxobox? The bacteria articles on wikipedia include mixed and incomplete taxonomies from various sources that often disagree with the current nomenclature, in addition to the fact that the taxoboxes don't always match the wikipedia article. This article is a case in example, and I disagree with the structure of this automatic taxobox, and I don't have days to read up on the current taxonomy of Actinobacteridae to correct it, but suborders are more commonly used, I wouldn't use the phylum, and the orders are incomplete, as are the suborders.

Doesn't it say somewhere than "no information is better than the wrong informaation?" I think cementing the wrong information and making it harder to quickly edit is worse than the wrong information also.

--Kleopatra (talk) 21:13, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

That taxonomy was formed using already-existing taxoboxes on Wikipedia; any error in that taxobox would lie in prior editors' edits, not ours. If you have a correction to make, please correct it. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 23:36, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
It would take me a month of research in high level eubacterial phylogenetics to correct this. --Kleopatra (talk) 00:10, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
By the way...how's the protist classification coming along? I've deliberately left them alone so you can work out the bugs. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 23:37, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
I will look, correct classes and orders in some, add references, then post a list. --Kleopatra (talk) 00:10, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Down

While implementing taxoboxes, the template-generator toolserver appears to be down. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 04:50, 26 November 2010 (UTC) {{[[Template:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]]}}

Has the wizard for creating templates been taken down entirely? I don't see it when I go to http://toolserver.org/~verisimilus/Bot/taxobot/taxobot.html Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 00:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Yep, it doesn't work at the moment; and I'm not sure that it's the best way of rolling out taxoboxes. This is a discussion that needs to be had at some point, but it seems that the best way to roll out taxoboxes across a group is to start at the top and work down; otherwise inconsistencies creep in that are much more difficult to resolve. I've had good success with this approach with a number of the minor phyla, that either use auto-boxes or now have the back-end templates in place ready to go. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:49, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Hmmm. Doesn't really suit my needs, but I'm glad it's useful to you. I might play around with it sometime, but bottom-up seems to be much more reliable for what I'm doing, which is adding one child taxon at a time to the already-existing parents. The top-down approach certainly would require more specific referential material to create new templates. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 21:46, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
If you're adding one child at a time to parents that exist already, then does the bot (which often runs quite slowly on the Toolserver) really save you much time over the manual process? Does the importing of taxonomy from existing taxoboxes help much, or not? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 22:31, 8 January 2011 (UTC)
Actually, that's the biggest advantage of it. Without that tool, I have to navigate to the article and leave the original taxobox there while automating it. But don't change it back just for my cause. It stopped working around a month ago, so I've been making do. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 19:34, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Multiple authorities listed

The bot shouldn't add a new authority if:

  • The |authority= is already set {example)
  • |binomial_authority= is present.

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 04:56, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Here's another example: [1]. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 05:11, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
I question whether Taxobot should be finding authorities at all. Finding a realible source for authorities can only really be done manually, and there will often be bad alternatives available somewhere or other. It should absolutely not be overruling authorities already provided by an editor, and replacing it with a whinge category. Authorities should always be sourced (ideally in the text, where it should also be discussed), and Taxobot is not doing this. The whole task needs to be looked at again. What is this for, for instance? Ugh. --Stemonitis (talk) 08:21, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Apparently, Taxobot is also incapable of distinguishing genera and species. This must stop. --Stemonitis (talk) 08:24, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Another (serious) problem. Between User:Taxobot and User:Smith609, the article on Mucor has been compromised. The authority used to be listed, correctly, as "Fresen." After those two edits, the reader is given no information, and editors are given the choice of two options, both wrong. Fungi are covered by the ICBN, which has different rules from the ICZN. Dates are not included, and author names are reduced to standardised abbreviations where appropriate. Whatever source Taxobot is using is clearly not reliable. I have therefore blocked Taxobot, since its edits cannot be trusted. --Stemonitis (talk) 08:41, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
OK, I've reviewed Taxobot's last 50 edits. Apart from one or two articles, all the ones where Taxobot is not the last editor are because Taxobot has been reverted. All in all, that makes it about 25 obviously bad edits, and around 25 where it's not obviously wrong (but the information could still be inaccurate). I think we can all agree that a 50% error rate is excessive. Someone will have to go through the remainder of Taxobot's recent run and clear up all the dross. It may also be worthwhile checking the 50% that weren't obviously bad, in case further errors have slipped through. --Stemonitis (talk) 09:51, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Which ones have you checked? I will be glad to check. --Kleopatra (talk) 15:54, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
I've checked all of them now, I think, but only for obvious errors like repeated information. I have my concerns about the data source used, so all the newly authorities should ultimately be checked manually by a knowledgable editor, but that's a very large amount of work. I don't think there's any straightforward work left. --Stemonitis (talk) 16:09, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
I'm not good with animals, except for some of the lower phyla, but I'll check what I can. Can we post a list and cross them out or something? I am concerned about a bot adding authorities, but with the reference included it might be okay. --Kleopatra (talk) 04:22, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
Really sorry about the inconvenience; I'd disabled the test for existing parameters during testing, and hadn't realised that I'd not enabled it again. As before, the bot will now leave well alone any taxoboxes that already contain authority-related parameters. Given that this has been fixed, the "bad edits" listed above will not be repeated. Where there are multiple authorities (e.g. when the bot cannot distinguish between genus and species), the bot doesn't display any to the reader until a human has selected the right one.
Before I start it up again, I'll make the bot display the authority source as a reference in the authority parameter. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 23:03, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for that, Martin. I am, however, still concerned about the data source: it seems to contain a significant proportion of bad data. I am assuming from the hidden links that Taxobot has been including that the source is the Global Names Index, which I would consider a very unreliable source for authority information. ITIS would be more reliable for authorities (it contains a few mistakes, and is woefully incomplete, but is generally accurate where it has authority information), and a well-curated source like WoRMS would be great where available. GNI is only in beta, and appears to contain names scraped without human input from anywhere and everywhere. (If I see a GNI reference in an article, I do my best to replace it with something reliable.) I would consider it the least appropriate source for this task. Would it be possible to have Taxobot look elsewhere? --Stemonitis (talk) 07:03, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
As I understand it, the GNI already incorporates information from ITIS and WoRMS (see http://gni.globalnames.org/data_sources). As you've seen, the bot only adds an authority where it is unambiguous: that is, where any record in WoRMS agrees with other sources. Otherwise it lists the possibilities in a hidden comment. I would understand this to be the best way to ensure that only reliable information is presented to WP's readers: if there is another data source that disagrees with WoRMS, then no data will be included without human confirmation, making it harder for errors to creep into WP. Do you think that there is any way of improving on this? Better still, is there a low-labour way of estimating the accuracy of the data that makes it into WP? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:19, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
The problem is not that GNI doesn't include things, it's that it includes too much, including typos, outdated taxa, outright errors, and so on. It is not limited to high-quality data. Until an editor has manually linked an article to an external database (e.g. with TaxonIds), I don't think you can assume that a taxon with a similar name in GNI is the same one. Taxobot hasn't yet encountered the fact that taxa under different codes can have the same name, for instance (want to guess the authority for Oenanthe or Iris?), and there are all sorts of other quirks that no-one will think of until they crop up in practice. The only way to be sure is to limit the data we include to that which has been seen by a human and accepted as good. That could be an editor here, a contributor to WoRMS (and note that not all WoRMS pages have been curated yet; I should have mentioned that before), or someone on another site, but I think it's a step that cannot be excluded. The answer to your direct question then is no, there is no easy way to do this. That's why I doubt whether a bot can perform the task at all; a lot of human editors find it very difficult, and all make mistakes (myself included). To be honest, I don't see any advantage in having a bot flag an article that it can't provide an authority for by putting it in a cleanup category. An editor still has to find some external grounds for choosing an authority to add, so the bot hasn't helped at all. There might be an advantage in flagging articles without authorities, but that's quite a different task, and must encompass thousands of articles. --Stemonitis (talk) 18:42, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
It would be interesting to have some data here.
What is the error rate in GNI - and given the bot's conservative strategy, how many errors would the bot introduce? (I'm not aware of a single error having been reported yet.)
What is the error rate in Wikipedia? Given that few of Wikipedia's editors are experts in classification, I would be very surprised if there there were fewer errors in Wikipedia at large than in GNI.
The bot has one key advantage over human errors - it consistently labels the added authorities with the data source. (I added this function after your previous comment.) Most of the manually-added authority information in WP is unsourced, and thus unverifiable - I for one am guilty of adding authority information obtained via Google from external sites without conducting a thorough review of their correctness. Given that manually-added authorities are likely to be more error prone and unreferenced, surely it is better for a bot to record where it sourced the information, making it easier for readers and editors alike to assess the validity of the authority information that appears in a taxobox? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:51, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
I wouldn't like to set a precedent in which GNI is considered a reliable source for taxon authorities. It includes botanical style citations for animals (because that used to be common practice in zoology, too); all the examples I've checked recently include mutiple variants, some of which are trivial (comma before date or not, authors initials included or omitted), but some are not; and there are other problems, too. Do you intend to program an engine which can reliably detect that "Linneaus" [sic], "Linnaeus", "Linné", "Linne", "Linn." and "L." refer to the same person, but "Linn.f." does not, or that "Milne Edwards" and "H. Milne-Edwards" may or may not be the same person (and countless similar examples)? Judging from a small number of crustaceans I've just searched for, unless you can combine slightly different orthographies of authorities, there will be almost no data left to include. All these problems derive from the architecture of the Global Names Index, which is (deliberately) to include any form of a name seen in a wide range of literature, and that is exactly the problem here. The source to be used for a task like this is one which includes a single, reliable, confirmed authority, not a collection of anything that has been printed at least once.
In principle, I agree, the practice of providing a good citation for every authority on Wikipedia is a welcome one. I would recommend it to any editor, and it is admirable that Taxobot should implement it. My main problem is with the data source. (I wonder if there would be support for a bot task which adds references to existing manually-added authority data.)
I don't think it's entirely fair to compare the error rates for bots and humans directly. Humans are much more accountable and edit at a much lower rate. If a human starts to introduce errors, they can usually be engaged in discussion before anything too drastic happens. With a bot, it can have got through thousands of edits before anyone spots a problem. Our standards for bots have to be much higher than human editors. Particularly with taxonomic stub articles, which may not be seen by a human for weeks or months after the bot's edit, the error rate has to be reduced to the absolute minimum. It may be that no-one has reported any errors, but maybe no-one with the necessary expertise has looked. --Stemonitis (talk) 16:49, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
Well, how about we let the bot do the small number that don't include different orthographies? This accounts for many of the minor taxa that I routinely create pages for, so it should allow the bot to have some utility, even if it does limit its scope. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 00:15, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Taxobot 7 creating nonsense

This is nonsense. Why is the bot creating this? Moreover, why is it recreating previously (recently) deleted material? — This, that, and the other (talk) 11:04, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I have a question-- what triggers the bot creating this? As far as I'm aware, Taxobot only does what it's explicitly told to do, though the means by which it receives its instructions aren't quite clear to me. The taxon template {{Taxonomy/Dinosauroid-Spherulitic Basic Shell Type}} had been deprecated over a month before the bot recreated the children template, so this has me puzzled as well. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 23:02, 21 February 2011 (UTC)
The bot creates a Template:Child taxa/XYZ subpage for each Template:Taxonomy/XYZ page. I'm not aware of this causing any problems, or of any advantage of deleting templates in Template:Child taxa/ space. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 17:57, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
The problem is deletionists vs. a bot. It would be appropriate for the bot to recognize when a taxon is not used (inclusion in the Category:Deprecated taxon templates is a good indicator of this) and delete the corresponding child template (not to be recreated again). Otherwise, the bot will be edit warring forever with the deletionists. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 02:17, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
Unless the deletionists don't delete the templates? (The simplest solution is usually the best.) Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:58, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
.... Well, I'm going to go ahead and delete the deprecated taxon template itself, as it's actually just a wording deprecation rather than a different name (I'll let you decide how to handle the child template). It should be simple enough for people to find the correct one in the future. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 16:51, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Child taxa/Life

Template:Child taxa/Life has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. — This, that, and the other (talk) 05:43, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Taxonomy/Albuginales

Template:Taxonomy/Albuginales has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:00, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Edit summaries for Taxobot #

Could you please take a look at Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard#General notice to bot owners about edit summaries. I'm pretty sure the edit summaries from the taxobots could be vastly improved with just a few minutes'. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:42, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Taxobot 7 odd edit

diff - only one and there are no other edits like it, but thought I should bring it up if it's indicative of a deeper problem. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 15:13, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I've blocked the bot until I can address this: something similar's happening with User:Citation bot. Apparently it's to do with the upgrade to MediaWiki1.18... Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:31, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Proposal of importing templates

Now, Automatic taxobox is used in 7 wikipedias of different languages. I think, in the same way that there are bots that copy and paste interwikis a good idea would be a bot that copy and paste templates of this project in other languages. This tool could create a synergy that would help to widespread the "Automatic taxobox" to important wikipedias like Spanish or Portuguese, that use similar formats to template {{taxobox}} with the names in Latin. At the same time it would reinforce this project here. This template, for example, doesn't exist here and can be imported just copying and pasting. 83.49.231.120 (talk) 12:14, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

This would be great, but it might require some care to avoid introducing inconsistencies. Also, sometimes bizarre features are added to the automatic taxobox system, and it would be bad to copy templates that take advantage of those features to other projects where the automatic taxobox doesn't support those features. It might make more sense to build tooling so that someone can copy missing ones faster. Or even a way to generate missing taxonomies for a particular project. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 20:53, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I don't think it would import inconsistencies if the main templates are previously created here. And they are. An other idea is a bot that import images from templates of the same taxon. If in an another wikipedia they set a file in |image= and the file exists in Commons this parameter could be imported. I also suppose that it could be possible a bot that push up this parameter. If Exemplus ridiculus has an image then Exemplus and Exemplidae could have the same image and import this if the parameter is empty. 193.152.188.114 (talk) 01:17, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Bot Flag

Hi there. This bot is blocked and inactive, as a result its bot flag will soon be removed to try and tidy up our list of accounts with bot flags. If you have any problems get in touch with me on my talk page! ·Add§hore· Talk To Me! 10:47, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

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