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Taxobox and Taxonbar conflict, etc.

Rain forest shrew has a Taxobox that gives order Eulipotyphla, while its Taxonbar navbox gives order Soricomorpha. I suspected one would redirect to the other, but they're separate articles.

I'm skeptical there's much utility in providing a navbox all the way back to the order level; family would probably make more sense. If I'm reading up about leopards and ocelots, I'm way more likely to want to navigate to Cheetah and Jaguarundi that to articles on mongooses and seals and wolves. The connection between felids (or whatever) and the rest of their entire order is generally too tenuous for a navbox (see criteria at WP:NAVBOX).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  18:48, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately that's the problem you get sometime with duplicating info in different formats. Hopefully whoever makes edits follows thru and updates all pages and formats, but many times its not. You do the best you can......Pvmoutside (talk) 20:09, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
The taxonbar is the thing under the navbox. That said, I hate these navboxes. They're a maintenance burden, and they are NOT being maintained (hence the Soricomorpha/Eulipotyphla inconsistency). I dislike the incoming link clutter they produce. They probably would be more useful to readers (and would produce less incoming link clutter) if they were limited to families, but I don't see much point in encouraging the creation of more of these navboxes. Mammals are the only large group of organisms with widespread usage of footer navboxes. Plantdrew (talk) 19:57, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
the taxonbar is the autobox that populates external links like EOL,ITIS, WORMS, etc. which I think are OK....however the taxon template below that (i.e. Template:Buteoninae) are the things not getting maintained and which I also dislike Plantdrew........less is more as they say.......Pvmoutside (talk) 22:21, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
I also echo Plantdrew's dislike of the taxon template/navbox at the bottom of the page. Certainly order-level navboxes can be unwieldy and un-necessary. Loopy30 (talk) 23:13, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Seems like Template:Soricomorpha needs to be redeveloped into Template:Eulipotyphla. It also seems that order-level navboxes shouldn't be used at the genus or species level, and that narrower navboxes should exist (where absent) for families and genera within mammals. Maybe there's a way to generate skeletal ones from the Taxbox data we already have? I'm skeptical that "no navboxes" would be accepted, since there are too many editors convinced that navboxes are a vital form of navigation.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  20:14, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Family would be a better rank than order to build navboxes around. But there are some very large families that would still have pretty unwieldy navboxes. I don't expect to see most of these deleted, although quite a few genus level footer navboxes have been deleted over the last couple of years. My argument there is that genus navboxes are particularly useless as you can usually get a list of species in a genus via either a single genus category, or a list in the genus article. Lists of species in a family may be split across several genus categories or articles.
Another wrinkle is that red-links are discouraged in navboxes. I'm sure exceptions would be made for organisms navboxes, but for most groups of organisms, Wikipedia's coverage of species is far from complete. Wikipedia has had essentially complete coverage of bird and mammal species since 2007 (basically all bird/mammal species have IUCN red-list assessments, and PolBot automatically created articles for IUCN assessed species in 2007). Plantdrew (talk) 20:39, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Wouldn't worry about redlinks; they're permitted in a navbox when it's for a complete "set" of things and some of the articles don't exist yet. Species qualify as members of a set for these purposes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  21:46, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Hundreds of pages use the Template:Soricomorpha so I think a simple temporary solution to the conflict bewtween the information in the navbox and taxobox would be to change the title of the navbox template to remove the rank order. While it is still dealing with an obsolete taxon, the title "Extant species of Soricomorpha" would avoid the confusion.   Jts1882 | talk  10:46, 16 November 2017 (UTC)
Done.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  18:57, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Template:Taxonomy/Craniata change requested

There's an edit request, at Template talk:Taxonomy/Craniata#Template-protected edit request on 23 November 2017, to change the parent taxon to Olfactores. Wanted to get some review of that before I implement it, since sometimes these requests are wrong.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  23:55, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

I'd say, as a rule of thumb, having an article (not just a redirect) for a clade should be prerequiste to inserting that clade into the taxonomic hierarchy. Having an article doesn't guarantee inclusion (there's a whole bunch of articles about constantly shifting hypothesized clades at the root of eukaryotes that aren't included in the taxobox hierarchy). Requiring an article would also take care of (at least for now) the arthropod/euarthropod thing. Plantdrew (talk) 00:51, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

List of brackishwater and introduced fish of Sri Lanka

I found this list the other day, and in my opinion, the list name is too ambiguous and not very helpful to readers. I thought of moving the page to List of introduced fish in Sri Lanka, and I can add an incomplete tag.....I did also reach out to the original author and they are OK with any title move.........any other suggestions on what to do with this list?......Pvmoutside (talk) 01:15, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

IUCN Red List website not serving dois

At the moment, on all the assessments I look at the IUCN Red List website, the doi field is empty and the html has "display:none;" set. e.g. http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/167968/0. Yet it was there when I updated article Congo tetra on 23 November. Anyone else noticed this? William Avery (talk) 22:44, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

I noticed that ~16:45 on 1 December 2017 when trying to do a status-update run, when it coincided with some routine maintenance of other APIs/their main page. Their citation API is the only part I've noticed to remain offline, but it's probably/hopefully temporary.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:12, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
Thank you. I was wondering if it was a blip or just affecting a few pages, but it seems not. William Avery (talk) 23:19, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
And it's back up! (@William Avery:)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:18, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Strophurus elderi

I created the above article today, and linked an image from Wikimedia Commons. The image has a copyright watermark (and there are a few others on commons for the same species)......If I remember right, watermarked photos are not generally allowed.......since commons hasn't deleted them, and looks like they've been there for a while, and looks like the image creator was the one who took the photo, and uploaded and watermarked the image, am I to assume the images are OK for both Wikipedia and Commons?.......Pvmoutside (talk) 20:01, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

It seems to be OK. If you look at the description page for the file, it has a notice about the use of watermarks. In short, watermarks are discouraged but not prohibited. Plantdrew (talk) 20:46, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Thanks Plantdrew....Pvmoutside (talk) 21:45, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Color scheme for taxobox template

There is a proposal to simplify the taxobox color scheme at Template talk:Taxobox#Refined proposal. Please weigh in if you have an opinion. Kaldari (talk) 05:55, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 7 – 15 December 2017

Facto Post – Issue 7 – 15 December 2017

A new bibliographical landscape

At the beginning of December, Wikidata items on individual scientific articles passed the 10 million mark. This figure contrasts with the state of play in early summer, when there were around half a million. In the big picture, Wikidata is now documenting the scientific literature at a rate that is about eight times as fast as papers are published. As 2017 ends, progress is quite evident.

Behind this achievement are a technical advance (fatameh), and bots that do the lifting. Much more than dry migration of metadata is potentially involved, however. If paper A cites paper B, both papers having an item, a link can be created on Wikidata, and the information presented to both human readers, and machines. This cross-linking is one of the most significant aspects of the scientific literature, and now a long-sought open version is rapidly being built up.

The effort for the lifting of copyright restrictions on citation data of this kind has had real momentum behind it during 2017. WikiCite and the I4OC have been pushing hard, with the result that on CrossRef over 50% of the citation data is open. Now the holdout publishers are being lobbied to release rights on citations.

But all that is just the beginning. Topics of papers are identified, authors disambiguated, with significant progress on the use of the four million ORCID IDs for researchers, and proposals formulated to identify methodology in a machine-readable way. P4510 on Wikidata has been introduced so that methodology can sit comfortably on items about papers.

More is on the way. OABot applies the unpaywall principle to Wikipedia referencing. It has been proposed that Wikidata could assist WorldCat in compiling the global history of book translation. Watch this space.

And make promoting #1lib1ref one of your New Year's resolutions. Happy holidays, all!

November 2017 map of geolocated Wikidata items, made by Addshore
To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see below.
Editor Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him. Back numbers are here.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:54, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Categorising Ancyromonadida

Ancyromonadida was categorised only in the non-existent Category:Varisulca.

I will place it instead in Category:Excavata. I'm not sure if this is the best option, so maybe someone with more expertise can check it out. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:14, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Recruit new editors for your project?

Happy new year! I've been building a tool to help WikiProjects identify and recruit new editors to join and contribute, and collaborated with some WikiProject organizers to make it better. We also wrote a Signpost article to introduce it to the entire Wikipedia community.

Right now, we are ready to make it available to more WikiProjects that need it, and I’d like to introduce it to your project! If you are interested in trying out our tool, feel free to sign up. Bobo.03 (talk) 19:58, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Species at GA review

The article species is a GA nominee and will benefit greatly from all participants here to identify gaps and help in improvement through additional review comments. Shyamal (talk) 08:44, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 8 – 15 January 2018

Facto Post – Issue 8 – 15 January 2018

Metadata on the March

From the days of hard-copy liner notes on music albums, metadata have stood outside a piece or file, while adding to understanding of where it comes from, and some of what needs to be appreciated about its content. In the GLAM sector, the accumulation of accurate metadata for objects is key to the mission of an institution, and its presentation in cataloguing.

Today Wikipedia turns 17, with worlds still to conquer. Zooming out from the individual GLAM object to the ontology in which it is set, one such world becomes apparent: GLAMs use custom ontologies, and those introduce massive incompatibilities. From a recent article by sadads, we quote the observation that "vocabularies needed for many collections, topics and intellectual spaces defy the expectations of the larger professional communities." A job for the encyclopedist, certainly. But the data-minded Wikimedian has the advantages of Wikidata, starting with its multilingual data, and facility with aliases. The controlled vocabulary — sometimes referred to as a "thesaurus" as term of art — simplifies search: if a "spade" must be called that, rather than "shovel", it is easier to find all spade references. That control comes at a cost.

SVG pedestrian crosses road
Zebra crossing/crosswalk, Singapore

Case studies in that article show what can lie ahead. The schema crosswalk, in jargon, is a potential answer to the GLAM Babel of proliferating and expanding vocabularies. Even if you have no interest in Wikidata as such, simply vocabularies V and W, if both V and W are matched to Wikidata, then a "crosswalk" arises from term v in V to w in W, whenever v and w both match to the same item d in Wikidata.

For metadata mobility, match to Wikidata. It's apparently that simple: infrastructure requirements have turned out, so far, to be challenges that can be met.

To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see below.
Editor Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him. Back numbers are here.
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 12:38, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Separating synonyms

Moved, as suggested, from an earlier discussion.

I would like there to be a way in which if {{Speciesbox}} is used to provide the taxobox for an article about a monospecific genus, the synonyms for the genus (if any) and the synonyms for the species (if any) are separated. This can be achieved easily by adding "subheadings" to the list of synonyms, but a standardized way of doing it would be good. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:07, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Completely agree with @Peter coxhead: here, a way of both automating, and standardising the presentation of synonyms, both generic and species would be a major improvement to the taxobox. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 18:06, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Peter, if you do come across a "standard example" of listing synonyms for both a species and its monotypic genus in the taxobox, please post it here. In the past, I have just made something up like Sombre greenbul (monotypic genus Andropadus). 'Cheers, Loopy30 (talk) 16:39, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
@Loopy30, Faendalimas, and JoJan: My idea is that just as {{Speciesbox}} has both |authority= and |parent_authority=, we should add |parent_synonyms= + |parent_synonyms_ref=. Then rather than putting the genus and species synonyms in one 'box', when |parent_synonyms= was present, there would be a 'box' headed "Genus synonyms" followed by a 'box' headed "Species synonyms". I suppose there could also be |grandparent_synonyms=, etc. if there was any demand for this.
I can work up a revised version of {{Speciesbox}} if the idea has any support. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:51, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I would support this its a major improvement and synonyms are important. Refs for the synonym is also needed as opinion can differ. I would suggest that in the docs for the {{Speciesbox}} should be explanation, with examples, of good references for a synonymy. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 00:45, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
Yes, a modification to the species template to produce a standardized compartment for separate genus and species synonyms would be an improvement to the present ad hoc arrangements. Thank you Peter. Loopy30 (talk) 13:10, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
This modification would indeed be appropriate, if one sticks with the present recommendations for monotypic genera. However, I still think it would be much better, in case of a monotypic genus, to create separate articles for each taxon. If the major databanks such as Zoobank (Amborella and Amborella trichopoda) or WoRMS (Dicathais and Dicathais orbita ) work this way, why shouldn't we ? The same goes for NCBI, GBIF, iNaturalist, the Australian Faunal Directory and probably many others. Why should we work otherwise ? Even wikidata makes a distinction between a species and its monotypic genus: see e.g. Indoplanorbis and Indoplanorbis exustus. And to compound the problem thus created by the present recommendations, species of a number of monotypic genera are described under the title of the genus and not of the species, see: Indoplanorbis. Looking at Category:Monotypic mollusc genera, this example is not the only one. We can make all the recommendations we want, but, in the end and in the interest of the occasional contributor or future contributors, the simplest solution is to use the same rules for all the taxa and not making exceptions for monotypic genera. (remember: Occam's razor). JoJan (talk) 16:08, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
I have to disagree with JoJan, as monotypic taxa with separate species articles serves no purpose here. There is no reason to separate these articles, as their content would simply be duplicated. I strongly agree with previous commenters that separating genus and species synonyms would be a good idea, it would help keep a standardized look on articles that normally have large collapsed (or not) lists in the taxonbox, for both the genera and the species. IJReid {{T - C - D - R}} 16:52, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
Agree with @IJReid: here, these other sites are presenting data, Wikispecies is another example that will list all monotypic ranks. But Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, its scope is broader, but too many pages saying essentially the same thing for no other purpose than a page name that follows phylogeny is redundant. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 20:55, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
It's not necessary that the content would be duplicated -- the page about a species could be about the species, but the page about a genus would be include information about who decided to make a new genus and on what grounds, its phylogenetic relationship with other genera in the same (sub)family, other species which had previously been classified in this genus (when they were added, when they were removed, and on what morphological, genetic, etc., grounds), which families the genus had been historically classified in, the etymology of the generic name, the type species (maybe a now-invalid synonym was designated), synonyms of the genus, etc. This sort of information is often present in pages about genera, but can be neglected when the article solely focuses on a monospecific genus's sole species (e.g., when there is a common name for the species), instead of writing both about the genus and the species. (To be clear: I'm not arguing that we should break from having a single article for both the genus and its sole species -- just that the information be included and that ideally all monospecific genera be treated similarly -- contra The exception is when a monotypic genus name needs to be disambiguated. The article should then be at the species, since this is a more natural form of disambiguation. which makes some articles on monospecific genera about the species instead of about the genus, causing inconsistency in the taxonbox and in overall article structure of articles which should pattern together.) Umimmak (talk) 19:48, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
There are many monotypic genera, at least on the bird side, that redirect articles of the monotypic genus to the species page (see Pine grosbeak and Pinicola for one I just did following other articles). If a change in format or adding monotypic genus articles when species articles are available, I would oppose that as the current format seems to work well. There is a small controversy regarding how far up the taxon chain one uses the monotypic genera or the species for the article name, but that also seems to work pretty well. In that case, an article rename is the preferred change rather than creating duplicate articles. Regarding synonyms, I noticed that differing authorities list the same synonym for some species (I've been finding them mostly in reptiles lately). On a manual basis, I've been trying to list the earliest non-duplicative synonym available, but if the process is automated, I'm guessing using the same synonym listing multiple authorities isn't a problem?....Pvmoutside (talk) 21:02, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
  • I strongly disagree that we should arbitrarily split various ranks that all pertain to the same species. First, it is extremely redundant, and second, it just creates more work, we have to add information to two or three articles (if we split a family or subfamily which includes a monotypic genus), instead of simply having a centralised article where all the information can be collected. Likewise, it does the readers a huge disservice that they have to chase links to get a full picture of what is effectively a single topic. Who would such a split benefit, other than the most ardent taxonomists? FunkMonk (talk) 22:25, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
I agree with FunkMonk, he described it very good. --Snek01 (talk) 22:11, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Template taxonbar on genus article for monotypic taxon

I was curious if there is a strategy to deal with taxonbar templates on genus-level articles when it is monotypic and incorporates information about the species. For instance the genus Sinochasea is about both the genus and the species Sinochasea trigyna, which is a redirect. I didn't immediately find documentation about how to deal with this, but perhaps I am overlooking it. Thanks! --TeaDrinker (talk) 14:41, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

If there are two entries in Wikidata, then you can link to both, as per Template:Taxonbar#Multiple Wikidata entries – the examples are for synonyms, but the logic applies to any situation in which there are multiple Wikidata entries for one taxon article here. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:29, 17 January 2018 (UTC)
Ah, that makes good sense. Thanks! --TeaDrinker (talk) 19:05, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Converting {{IUCN}}s to {{Cite journal}}s

I'm pretty sure I can do this, as long as all of the key {{IUCN}} parameters are sterilized; namely, |id=, |date=/|year= (published or assessed), |title= (accepted name or synonym), and |author=/|assessor=, which I've already done moderate sterilization on, and that they match the most recent output of the citation API for a given |id=. I just wanted to gauge the project's interest of doing so.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:25, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: I'm not quite sure what you've been doing with regards to updating IUCN status. Am I correcting in assuming that you have now updated everything (or at least everything where there is a straightforward match between the taxobox binomial and the IUCN binomial) to have the current IUCN status and status system? Assuming that is the case, I'd love to see (in this order):
  1. Polbot IUCN citations [(bare refs & sources)] not using a reference template updated to use Cite journal (see e.g. Schefflera palawanensis)
  2. Citations with versioned IUCN templates (e.g. {{IUCN2009.1}}) updated to use Cite journal
  3. Citations with the general {{IUCN}} converted to Cite journal (as you are proposing here)
I realize the first case might be more tricky than cases where a reference template is already used. If you're only interested in working on the last case, I'd still be most appreciative, but I think the first two cases ought to be a higher priority. Plantdrew (talk) 21:19, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
Plantdrew, I'm only ~20% done updating the straightforward-match pages (due to a combination of IUCN server maintenance and semi/tangent gnoming sprees). It'll probably take about a month to get through the rest of them, as long as the IUCN servers stay up most of the time.
Polbot left a comment on every page it created, and there has been minimal effort to remove those comments, correct? If so, I can easily prioritize in the order above.
As for Schefflera palawanensis, my (semi-automated) solution would be to first add a |status_ref= instead of filling in the bulleted source in the Sources section. Yes, bare refs are hard enough to parse, but bare sources are even harder to find, even when only deviating slightly from a common format. After I see enough of these, though, I'm sure I can eventually convert most/all of them too (if and only if they match the most recent IUCN citations, of course), so I'd move those into my priority #4.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  03:59, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Much appreciated, Tom! --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 06:17, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
Tom.Reding, unfortunately, I've been removing the Polbot comments from pages I've edited over the last 6 months or so, and updating IUCN citations hasn't been part of my workflow. However, the Polbot comments are still present on many articles. Dates that Polbot downloaded IUCN data (e.g. "Downloaded on 23 August 2007.", "Downloaded on 20 July 2007.") could perhaps be used as search strings when the comment has been removed. Plantdrew (talk) 02:22, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
Ok, as long as there's some reliable means of identifying. So my priority #1 would more accurately read "Citations on Polbot pages updated to use Cite journal".   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:43, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
I had to try several different searches a few times before they stopped crashing on me...because Polbot created 116,485 articles. I don't know of an easy way to get all of them without grabbing 500 at a time, so I'll just stick with running about a dozen levels of recursion on Category:Species by IUCN Red List category as a starting point. I might be able to start in the next week/few days.
Is there a way to retrieve a non-current IUCN citation? Right now, I'll only be able to {{Cite journal}}-ify cites/ref/sources which have parameters matching the most recent IUCN citation. I don't know what the % of non-current WP cites is, but if I can grab old IUCN cites I should be able to convert the vast majority of them.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:26, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
I don't think so. You can get the historical assessments but it only returns year, status and code. The citiation would be a nice addition. The only way of getting the older citations I can think of is using the internet archive, which would be fine for a particular case (e.g. lion) but probably impossible to automate as the url included the date and time they captured it.   Jts1882 | talk  10:46, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

 Working this now; should be fun.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:59, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

 1st priority done, unless they escaped my Polbot-filter. 5636 bare sources converted on 5635 articles, out of a total of 11,374 Polbot articles found under Category:Species by IUCN Red List category. 2nd & 3rd priorities found on those pages were taken care of, if possible.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  05:53, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

 Working priority #2. I've made a large edit to The World's 25 Most Endangered Primates, replacing 36 {{IUCN2008}}s, and would appreciate/feel more comfortable if I knew someone more knowledgeable vetted it; positive/negative feedback welcome.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:08, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Recently I've noticed some citations (1, 2, 3) using the fine print at the top of the IUCN page as the title of the citation, instead of the much larger text right below it (which, to me, is the rightful title), i.e. |title=Nilopegamys plumbeus (Ethiopian Amphibious Rat, Ethiopian Water Mouse), instead of |title=Nilopegamys plumbeus for IUCN #40766. What's the desired option here?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:46, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: I would think the large print title of the page is preferred as the smaller fine print version is effectively a text pointer associated with the id number (#40766) in your example. However the document and proposal for listing will have the large print title. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 19:01, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

 Mostly done with all 3 priorities after a little over a month, aside from ~800 exceptions/malformed authors/manual checks/etc., which will take me ~just as long to go through, so I'll post an update (probably final) now right after the bulk of my edits.

IUCN Template Transclusions
2017 Dec 21 		Transclusions
2018 Jan 19 		∆
{{IUCN2006}} 773 618 -155
{{IUCN2007}} 91 46 -45
{{IUCN2008}} 2,489 1,787 -702
{{IUCN2009.1}} 129 83 -46
{{IUCN2009.2}} 372 192 -180
{{IUCN2010}} 487 136 -351
{{IUCN2010.1}} 89 44 -45
{{IUCN2010.2}} 83 37 -46
{{IUCN2010.3}} 156 77 -79
{{IUCN2010.4}} 169 76 -93
{{IUCN2011.1}} 115 68 -47
{{IUCN2011.2}} 203 112 -91
{{IUCN2012.1}} 74 48 -26
{{IUCN2012.2}} 335 110 -225
{{IUCN2013.1}} 418 105 -313
{{IUCN2013.2}} 988 276 -712
{{IUCN2014.1}} 420 51 -369
{{IUCN2014.2}} 467 146 -321
{{IUCN2014.3}} 905 297 -608
{{IUCN2015.1}} 76 27 -49
{{IUCN2015.2}} 64 27 -37
{{IUCN2015.3}} 14 6 -8
{{IUCN2015.4}} 18 8 -10
{{IUCN}} 21,385 14,369 -7,016
Totals 30,320 18,746 -11,574
Total {{IUCN/x}}s converted to {{Cite journal}}
({{IUCNx}}s all call {{IUCN}}; avg=1.11 templates fixed/page) 		7,802

I wish I'd taken the first snapshot right before I started, instead of after completing priority #1s 5 days in, but priority #1s only included ~108 collateral template-conversions.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:43, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Edits to Turtle.

Hi everyone, and sorry for cross posting, as it has been flagged as too long, and having looked I agree, it is also way out of date. I have started major editing of the Turtle I am doing it in steps with a save so that is easier to track what I have done. So far I have done the first paraagraph, still needs some refs, and removed the enourmous phylogeny, that is out of date and plain wrong anyway. I am also going to slash the references, currently it has notes and refs, will make one refs list only that will refer to inlines and remove any unused refs from the bottom. Not done this yet. Would appreciate feedback as I go through it. Particularly from anyone who knows turtles well. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 06:37, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

In what way is the phylogeny plain wrong? The family and above part of the phylogeny, based on Crawford et al (2015), seems to be appropriate still. At least the IUCN Turtle Taxonomy Working Group mentioned it in their 2017 checklist as a valid alternative system using the phylocode, although they recommend taxonomic names that follow the linnean system. I assume the lower divisions, dating back to 2012 are the problem. I can add back a phylogeny based on Crawford or an alternative if you can provide what you consider more appropriate references.   Jts1882 | talk  17:48, 20 January 2018 (UTC)
So we can discuss it I have saved the phylogeny on a subpage HERE as a temporary measure, it is unaltered exactly as it was. I will make some notes about it asap. However, apart from the errors in it based on more recent work. It is also very large and I think a bit of overkill, and removing it has significantly shortened the article. I felt it detracted from the message of the page. Do not get me wrong I am a turtle taxonomist, and associated with the TTWG, I know what they said. However I will point out the errors for you later tonight. I have just arrived home today and need a little time. Cheers, Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 00:37, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
I agree that the large phylogeny is unnecessary and possibly counterproductive as the size makes it harder to see the interfamily relationships. I think a phylogeny showing the relationships between the families would be more appropriate (as in an older version). Then the articles on the families can have the more detailed phylogenies showing the intrafamily relationships (as in Chelidae).   Jts1882 | talk  08:21, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
@Jts1882, Peter coxhead, Sbalfour, HCA, and Plantdrew: I have made some comments on the phylogeny here. Please feel free to add discussion points. Any refs I give I can provide pdf`s if people need to see them. Cheers, Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 16:02, 21 January 2018 (UTC)
side note for those interested as a turtle taxonomist I have an extensive (7gb) pdf library in dropbox on turtle systematics, if anyone wants access am happy to shere the flder. You will need pro version of dropbox due to size. Send me an email if you want it, scott.thomson321(at)gmail.com, cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 17:33, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 9 – 5 February 2018

Facto Post – Issue 9 – 5 February 2018
m:Grants:Project/ScienceSource is the new ContentMine proposal: please take a look.

Wikidata as Hub

One way of looking at Wikidata relates it to the semantic web concept, around for about as long as Wikipedia, and realised in dozens of distributed Web institutions. It sees Wikidata as supplying central, encyclopedic coverage of linked structured data, and looks ahead to greater support for "federated queries" that draw together information from all parts of the emerging network of websites.

Another perspective might be likened to a photographic negative of that one: Wikidata as an already-functioning Web hub. Over half of its properties are identifiers on other websites. These are Wikidata's "external links", to use Wikipedia terminology: one type for the DOI of a publication, another for the VIAF page of an author, with thousands more such. Wikidata links out to sites that are not nominally part of the semantic web, effectively drawing them into a larger system. The crosswalk possibilities of the systematic construction of these links was covered in Issue 8.

Wikipedia:External links speaks of them as kept "minimal, meritable, and directly relevant to the article." Here Wikidata finds more of a function. On viaf.org one can type a VIAF author identifier into the search box, and find the author page. The Wikidata Resolver tool, these days including Open Street Map, Scholia etc., allows this kind of lookup. The hub tool by maxlath takes a major step further, allowing both lookup and crosswalk to be encoded in a single URL.

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:50, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikidata notification list

d:Wikidata:WikiProject Taxonomy/Participants is used to quickly notify all interested project members of Wikidata discussions (it's not automatic; it's only when someone at WD uses a nice template they have, {{ping project}} that you'll get notified). I've added the link to the WP:TREE main page next to the first instance of "Wikidata", since I only happened across this list by accident, and since I only see a small # of WP:TREE regulars on the list.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:58, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Adding Species Stub Articles

I am interested in adding a lot of new stub articles for arthropod species. I can add several thousand of these over a period of a few months, provided I can get a bot approved. (I am hoping this won't present a problem since the bot will be creating new pages instead of altering existing pages, and I can limit the number of new pages per day to something reasonable.)

In my mind, these stubs will serve three primary purposes:

  1. They will give users some idea of the organism, including references and, if available, a photo or two.
  2. They will make online and print references available to users.
  3. Most will contain enough references to make it convenient for editors to expand the article.

The quality of the pages might be a little above average for WikiPedia stubs. I uploaded these pages today as examples. The content was generated locally with what I hope to use later as a bot, and posted manually on Wikipedia. The topics were roughly selected as a random sample over arthropods.

I've made a similar post on the Arthropods Project, and was hoping to get some input from the Tree of Life project as well.

  1. Is this a good idea? Would it be worthwhile for WikiPedia or is this just noise?
  2. What changes should be made to the pages? (Of course there should be more information, but that will come over time.)

Thanks! Bob Webster (talk) 05:04, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Amphibians offer a cautionary example. In 2007, Polbot created an article for all amphibian species that were recognized in the Global Amphibian Assessment a few years earlier, and which were not already in Wikipedia. This resulted in something like 5000 new articles. My hunch is that 90% of these have not seen any substantive improvements, with a large proportion not receiving a single human, non-technical edit — in now more than 10 years! Unless you are convinced that there are enough editors interested in improving the new articles, I would be cautious about adding new stubs that then get forgotten in corners of Wikipedia, and gradually get outdated as taxonomy changes and links rot. Micromesistius (talk) 09:03, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
I share the caution, but it does depend somewhat on the quality of the sources used. For plants, Polbot created a lot of articles based on the IUCN Red List of the time. The list itself contained caveats about the quality of the taxonomy, and, yes, this did result in articles that persisted unchanged for years and became inaccurate (there may still be a few around). One useful move is to add the articles to a hidden tracking category, so that if resources in the form of editors do become available, then they can be reviewed. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:36, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
I have some experience sorting out problems with bot-created articles, but I'm only against poorly created bot articles (bot or mass-created by a human). I think what you're doing here (requesting community vetting) is a good idea and definitely a necessary step. If you see any changes made to many of the articles above (as I've just made, running my 'common problems' scripts over them), and incorporate those and other systematic community improvements, and follow consensus-backed restrictions suggested in this discussion, after some reasonably long period (perhaps a month?) into future page creations, I think that would be a net positive.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:29, 19 January 2018 (UTC)
You should add the template {{taxonbar}} to all new articles. This way, anyone in the future can check the validity of the taxonomy of the species. Changes in taxonomy are frequent and without a bot checking such changes in a major database and putting these changes into a list, it will be extremely difficult to keep up with these changes. But the template taxonbar can be a first step. JoJan (talk) 15:00, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
I also like the idea of a bot creating new species, but agree with the cautions of keeping them updated. For example, I've been updating manually fish and reptiles as I see them, and there have been many......birds and to a lesser extent mammals have been updated pretty well......if a bot can run to update any taxonomic as well, that would we fantastic. If the IUCN, the wikidata taxonbar, and the automatic taxonbar/speciesbox can be added to the bot, that would save a lot of time in the future.....Pvmoutside (talk) 15:21, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
I think it is probably preferable to add identifiers to Wikidata rather than statements like "The MONA or Hodges number for Plagiomimicus aureolum" Shyamal (talk) 17:11, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Qbugbot, 20 sample pages

The bot to make stub articles for arthropod species is coming along. It even has a name: Qbugbot. I've made a couple of thousand stub articles and manually posted them. The articles now include Speciesbox and Automatic Taxobox, CS1 citation templates, and a taxonbar. The first online trial was done today for the BRFA, creating and uploading the twenty random articles below. Everything worked fine, except for a minor bug that has been fixed (talk pages were blank for pages with images). Comments, questions, suggestions, and criticisms are welcome.

Bob Webster (talk) 02:47, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

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