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Category:Taxa by...

I hope I'm not creating a hornets nest, but I thought i'd try to bring some order to the category listed. So initial discussions with a couple of involved editors regarding the topic suggested since we are dealing with taxa, then the category link page should link to the scientific name, whether that is a redirect or an actual article page. So if the article page uses a common name, i.e. Fin whale, then the taxa author category link should be found with the scientific name redirect (Balaenoptera physalus, not with the actual article page of Fin whale. I agree taxa is scientific in nature, not vernacular, but my problem is maintenance. So for example, lets take Blue whale. It has a tax link for just the common name article. Others have links to both...Are people ok with duplication? In that case, The tax author may have more links (and a count) higher than the author has actually discovered. If only scientific names are used for the link, then if an editor becomes interested in adding category links to articles (like me for instance), and sees the common name article does not have a link, and i add it, then those interested would revert, i think causing a lot of maintenance issues moving forward. Also, many current common name articles have category tax author links, so a lot of work would need to be done to make the redirects up to date. There is also a problem with monotypic taxa, with species, genera, or families for instance, having redirects to the actual article. In those cases, I've been adding the tax author links to the redirects since tbey don't have actual articles. In addition there are categories for animal, plant and general tax authors. There is a preference for keeping the general one, and eliminating the plant and animal ones? I also know categories in general are all over the place regarding maintenance priorities, with some in better shape than others.. i'd be interested in any feedback. Sorry if i am causing issues.....Pvmoutside (talk) 18:39, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

given the overwhelming response over the weekend, in about a week i'll start with Linneaus and convert any common name pages and change them to the scientific name redirects. I'll also start changing the ones I've done starting tomorrow….,I hope it doesn't create maintenance issues....Pvmoutside (talk) 00:13, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
Just looking at Mammals described in xxxx makes it seem pretty apparent that common names vastly outnumber the scientific name redirects. I had to click through several years to find a scientific name, and it was a duplicate (both the common name and the redirect were included in the category). Categorizing redirects is more of a hassle, as I often add categories to articles that I'm reading if I notice they're missing. I very regularly add common names to both "Taxa named by..." and "___ described in xxxx", so if it's consensus not to do that, I'll just have to make a mental note to stop doing that. Sounds like a pretty big maintenance burden to go through all those categories and swap taxa from their common names to their scientific names, though...Enwebb (talk) 00:25, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
Scientific name redirects for the few plants that have common names as titles are almost all categorized with a described in year category {see e.g. Category:Plants described in 1753), although the common name title is also often so categorized. My interpretation of WP:INCOMPATIBLE is that it is more appropriate to place the taxon described categories on scientific names of taxa (be they redirects or not) rather than common name article titles. While it is somewhat of an issue, I'm not very concerned about duplicating the category for a plant scientific name redirect/plant common name redirect target when plants are using scientific name titles 99+% of the time (I would also argue that outside of large mammals and birds, Wikipedia should be using scientific name titles for ~98% of animals, and the category system for taxa is largely set up under the assumption that scientific names will be titles).
Side note: I'd encourage anybody following ToL to enable a distinction between redirects and directs article links. There are a couple scripts and gadgets that do this. I copied a simple script to User:Plantdrew/common.css that makes redirect links green. Being able to easily distinguish redirect/direct links should make it easier to analyze the issue discussed in this thread. Plantdrew (talk) 04:14, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
Enwebb....yes, it's a pretty big task, but i don't mind chipping away at it. As they say, better now than later. Luckily, they are all in categories, so not the most critical area to keep in good standing. Only bad thing is category titles will be mostly invisible for common species articles, all bird species, and most mammal species as you and plantdrew point out….Pvmoutside (talk) 13:31, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
it was also mentioned this was talked about in the past. Can someone post the link to the past discussion if its not too much trouble....Pvmoutside (talk) 16:36, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
Some previous discussions touching on categorizing redirects versus articles: User talk:Stemonitis/Archive43#Categorization of Onion, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Archive 33#Categorizing taxa vs. common_names, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Archive64#Request for comments: categorizing monotypic redirects
Early discussions of "described in year..." categories: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life/Archive_22#Categorizing_scientific_discoveries_by_year?, Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life/Archive_25#Category:Species_by_year_of_formal_description
Most recent discussion: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life/Archive_36#Category_year_of_formal_description. I'm sure I've missed some others; there are certainly some relevant threads in WP:PLANTS, and possibly some other subprojects. Plantdrew (talk) 18:12, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
thanks plantdrew….the questions i have is it seems category year of formal description categories seem to use the article page, whether that is a common name page or a scientific one. I'm not sure how that relates to the tax authors, but a brief discussion would be helpful there. Also, there was a discussion on helpfulness for the described in year category but not one on tax authors. One reason I can think of for value of tax author categories is to know which ones have articles written about them, and which ones don't, found in a central location.. Any discussion on this?....Pvmoutside (talk) 18:50, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
There really isn't any previous discussion of the taxon author categories, which are fairly new. But the issue is the same with taxon author/described in year categories regarding whether these categories should go on scientific name redirects or common name titles. I would think that there are no taxon authors that have a category, but not an article about the person (creation of categories seems to be focused on more prolific taxonomists who are more likely to have a dedicated article). I don't think categories are a good way to identify taxonomists lacking articles. Lists such as List of authors of names published under the ICZN area better way to identify missing taxonomists (although the existing lists are far from complete Plantdrew (talk) 19:39, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
plantdrew, so if you're argument is taxon authors and described in year categories should be organized the same, then i would argue the authors should be categorized by article page, whether that is common name or scientific name, since that is how described in year pages are currently organized. If your argument is both should be by scientific name, then that is 2 big projects it would take forever for if done manually, unless a bot could be created to do both, whicb i have no skills to do. All the described in year categories would essentially need to be recategorized for all common name species...i may be able to handle tax authors, hot so with described in year..... Pvmoutside (talk) 22:59, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
@Pvmoutside: no, it's not the case that by article page, whether that is common name or scientific name, ... is how described in year pages are currently organized. As Plantdrew has noted, it varies by project, but plants are usually categorized at the scientific name, whether that's the article or the redirect.
Categorizing by the author of the taxon name is considerably more complicated than categorizing by year of first description, because of the difference in the way that transfers between genera and hence new combinations are handled in the different nomenclature codes, and the need to deal with replacement names. As far as I can see, none of these issues have been properly dealt with, so the "taxon author" categories are basically a random collection of articles, with no coherent rationale. I don't myself think they are worth spending time on unless someone is prepared to write comprehensive guidance on how they should be used. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:35, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
Peter, as of now there are 1450 tax author categories and growing. The pages linking to each author vary, are still usually at the beginning stages, but can be as many as 2,684 pages (Carl Linnaus) or 439 pages (George Albert Boulenger). Also, I initially omitted tax author category names on the new reptile species articles I was creating. Another editor would add them. Now is probably a good time to set some standards... Pvmoutside (talk) 10:19, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
I was asked for input, so here it is. I am familiar with gastropods only. There is for example Category:Gastropods described in 1927, the main information that the category brings is the number of species described in the certain year. No categorization of redirects is needed in this case. As of the Wikiproject Gastropods all articles are usually categorized once under its article name. This is also the case of other categories for gastropods. No special maintenance is needed. I would not recommend over-maintenance. - Personally I do not need categorization of redirects in other Wikiprojects, because it is not useful for me. What I want to know is the real number articles in a certain category. Keep it simple. Thanks for attention. Cheers, --Snek01 (talk) 11:06, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
My view is pragmatic: categorizing by article page is more practical because the article page is the normal point of entry for both readers and editors. It requires extra effort to navigate to redirects. Moving categories to sci-name redirects sounds like a lot of work for no obvious gain. However, if a redirect is already categorized, I do not see it as a problem that a taxon is categorized two times. Nobody expects categories to give accurate counts (for various reasons), and the typesetting already distinguishes between redirects and articles. The only case when categorizing redirects is warranted are monotypic taxa. Micromesistius (talk) 12:54, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
I also think few people will even look at the redirects, and think it makes more sense to have the categories at whatever place the subject is covered under. But I have no strong feelings about it. FunkMonk (talk) 12:59, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
I've been thinking how to respond to this. All I can think to say is that I think all redirect pages should have categories. This is an important way to include them in maintenance tasks without them being abandoned to the orphanage. Theoretically editors could exclude redirects from their PetScans by screening out articles that use redirect templates. I don't think the average reader will be confused by seeing more than one entry for an article on the category page. I think this would actually be what a reader would expect, as glossaries and indices usually have multiple listings for the same item. The article count for a category for a family may not tell one an accurate number of genera in that family, but that would rarely be the case even excluding redirects. If one needs a count of genera in a family, you need to look at the family's article. --Nessie (talk) 15:22, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for all the input everyone. So it looks like the counts don't really matter for categories. What I think I'll do is add taxa by categories to article pages, and leave the ones on the scientific name redirects. I may or may not have the time to add new ones on the redirects. I hope that works for everyone...Pvmoutside (talk) 18:50, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
Sounds fine. While I continue to believe that scientific name titles/redirects are the most appropriate place for these categories, I don't think it's worth the time and editorial effort to remove any of these categories already present on common name titled articles and add them to redirects. Plantdrew (talk) 18:54, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Article creation

I opened a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Palaeontology#Guidelines_on_article_creation, for those with an interest in notability. cygnis insignis 04:49, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

A possible Science/STEM User Group

There's a discussion about a possible User Group for STEM over at Meta:Talk:STEM_Wiki_User_Group. The idea would be to help coordinate, collaborate and network cross-subject, cross-wiki and cross-language to share experience and resources that may be valuable to the relevant wikiprojects. Current discussion includes preferred scope and structure. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 03:04, 26 May 2019 (UTC)

Cryptomonads

There's a move discussion that could use some more voices Talk:Cryptomonad#Requested move 25 May 2019 --Nessie (talk) 14:00, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Arthropoda or Euarthropoda

I'm trying to start a conversation at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Arthropods#Arthropoda or Euarthropoda. Any input would be appreciated. Thank you. SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:47, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

The {{Taxonomy/Pancrustacea}} template uses Euarthropoda as parent, so all crustaceas and insects use Euarthropoda. Other arthropod groups use Arthropoda as the parent. The changed was made in 2017 and sparked the earlier discussion. As the proposal has seen little acceptance, I think it should be changed back. I'm tempted to do it now, but as you've started the discussion I'll wait until there is some more response.   Jts1882 | talk  09:46, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

A proposal for WikiJournals to become a new sister project

Over the last few years, the WikiJournal User Group has been building and testing a set of peer reviewed academic journals on a mediawiki platform. The main types of articles are:

  • Existing Wikipedia articles submitted for external review and feedback (example)
  • From-scratch articles that, after review, are imported to Wikipedia (example)
  • Original research articles that are not imported to Wikipedia (example)

Proposal: WikiJournals as a new sister project

From a Wikipedian point of view, this is a complementary system to Featured article review, but bridging the gap with external experts, implementing established scholarly practices, and generating citable, doi-linked publications.

Please take a look and support/oppose/comment! T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 11:09, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Taxonomy template for synonyms?

Quick question: are taxonomy templates in use for synonyms, and if not, do we care enough to delete them when present? I ask because I just created Template:Taxonomy/Procerosaurus before realizing that this was a synonym. CSD y/n? --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 21:55, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any synonyms with automatic taxoboxes (PetScan is down right now, if it wasn't I'd do a search through Category:Obsolete taxa). Most articles on synonyms don't have any taxobox, but there are a few with manual taxoboxes. I don't care enough to seek out any taxonomy templates for synonyms and take them to TfD; especially as it's possible that some may be useful in the future (there are a couple cases of lumping of plant families where the pendulum seems to be swinging back towards splittting). If somebody else wants to make an effort to find truly useless synonym templates, I'd support that at TfD.
However, in this particular case, since it'll be easy for you to get it deleted by CSD:G7, just delete it. Plantdrew (talk) 01:17, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
Right ho. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 02:37, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

Wikimedia Discord has a Biology Channel!

It has recently come to my attention that not only is there a highly active Wikimedia Discord Server, it also has a #wpbiology channel! See Wikipedia:Discord for more details.

There is now a link to this on the WP:BIOL main page, but I also wanted to advertise it here. I would love for more people to join, and I hope it will prove a major resource to us going forward as we improve WP:BIOL and its subprojects. I cannot emphasize how refreshing it can be to talk in real time (or even in voice channels!) rather than in talk pages.

Come join! Prometheus720 (talk) 05:35, 14 June 2019 (UTC)

Category:Taxonomy templates

Hi, right now the category has more than 59 thousands templates. Speaking for other language Wikipedias, every project would need to import these 59 thousand templates. Is there no other way or simpler way to do the taxonomy infobox, or if there's already talks going on about it (on Wikidata or something), could anybody point it out for me? Thanks. Bennylin (talk) 15:03, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

@Bennylin: are you asking with regards to the Indonesian Wikipedia, or are there other languages you're concerned about? Most Wikipedia language versions are using some form of {{Taxobox}}, which doesn't require the 59,000 templates. Indonesian Wikipedia predominantly uses Taxobox, although there are a few articles there that use {{Speciesbox}} or {{Automatic taxobox}}, which do require the templates. The advantage of using the versions with templates is that it keeps the taxonomic hierarchy consistent, and the taxonomy can be updated for a large number of taxa with a small number of edits. However, there is no reason the Indonesian Wikipedia can't continue to use the Taxobox that doesn't require additional templates. English Wikipedia is currently the only language version where Automatic taxoboxes are widely deployed.
Different languages have different implementations of the taxobox. The Catalan Wikipedia gets the taxonomic hierarchy directly from Wikidata, which may be a good solution for keeping taxonomy up to date in languages with a small number of editors. Plantdrew (talk) 16:57, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: Yes, in Indonesian Wikipedia I was asked to help importing the templates, but most of our articles used taxobox, with newer ones translated recently uses speciesbox (we uses en.wp heavily as translation source). If we are going to switch to speciesbox, what are our options regarding the templates? Particularly, my question is, when the community created these templates, did they consider that other Wikipedias might need to import these templates, and why don't they make a simpler templates? (I'm thinking about languages templates in Wiktionary that are grouped together into 26 templates).
Thanks for the pointer to Catalan Wikipedia, I'll head over there to take a look. Bennylin (talk) 14:25, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
@Bennylin: well, if you do switch to Speciesbox, you will need to import the templates (or create them locally). The taxonomy templates are pretty simple; they usually only hold 3-4 pieces of data. They weren't designed with any particular effort to make them suitable for other languages, but I'm not sure how they could be simplified (the most complicated part is getting Speciesboxes to work at all in a new language; and they seem to be working in Indonesian). Speciesboxes weren't used much on en.wiki prior to September 2016, so if you go back to an older version of en.wiki article, you should be able to find a manual Taxobox that you can copy over (although the taxonomy might be somewhat outdated in that case). The Cebuano, Waray and Vietnamese Wikipedias have more taxa than does en.wiki, and they use manual Taxoboxes, so they might be another source you could use if you want to copy existing manual taxoboxes from somewhere. Plantdrew (talk) 19:21, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
A couple of points:
  • The automated taxobox system relies on Lua being available, since it uses modules. My understanding is that Lua isn't deployed in all language wikipedias.
  • Wikidata deliberately doesn't take a position on which of multiple possible classifications is correct. Hence more than one parent is given for some taxa. It's then arbitrary as to which one gets followed when picking up a complete classification from Wikidata. So although in most cases Wikidata works as a source of a taxonomic hierarchy, in some cases it doesn't. Where sources differ, different language wikipedias can, and do, legitimately use different classifications in taxoboxes (e.g. for spiders, the English Wikipedia normally relies on the World Spider Catalog, whereas the German Wikipedia sometimes uses Schmidt's Die Vogelspinnen).
Peter coxhead (talk) 06:23, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments. Bennylin (talk) 14:25, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Newsletter?

Is there any interest in a Tree of Life newsletter? I was looking through other WikiProjects with newsletters and became interested in starting one up for ToL. I'm willing to do most of the legwork & all that, but just wanted to check and see if there would be editors interested in reading such a newsletter, which would be the whole point :)

As far as specifics, I think a key component would be a round-up of GAs/FAs in ToL and an overview of any news/changes/discussions among the subprojects. It doesn't need to be very long & probably shouldn't be--I like the length of WikiProject Children's literature's newsletter. Probably quarterly or every other month. Open to feedback/suggestions. Enwebb (talk) 21:55, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

I'd be interested in reading it. There's a lot that goes on here that I don't know about and if it were put together in one place, it would be helpful. Good luck. (I could probably help with copy editing.)  SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:51, 1 May 2019 (UTC)
Subscribe - Sounds like a good idea. Make this more of a community here. --Nessie (talk) 01:25, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
As a minor player here, I probably would benefit from exposure to such information. - Donald Albury 12:31, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
subscribe, a good idea. Would there be any interest in DYK type contributions, or gathering those relevant to the project from the regular DYK queue. I would be happy to wrangle submissions or compose hooks, it's good fun, but rarely offer them to (or look at) the front page. I could always do it as filler, to keep prepared content in reserve for a regular publication schedule. cygnis insignis 16:15, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
That's a good idea. I rarely go to main, and the Article Alert pages don't show the actual DYK facts, just the nominations. Being able to read them all in one page would be nice. --Nessie (talk) 16:40, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
And a less formal way of editors sharing what they are working on? We need not have constraints of main page DYKs. … that freshwater crocs in Northern Australia snag bats in flight as they skim the river for a drink? :) cygnis insignis 17:51, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
Cygnis insignis were you thinking something like an editor spotlight? Enwebb (talk) 15:27, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Enwebb Not exactly, but that is another good idea. I meant like the regular DYK, hopefully interesting to those active in TOL topics, but doesn't necessarily meet the stringent criteria needed for the main page. Maybe a corner of the newsletter with two or three interesting facts, suggested by your readers, but I don't want to complicate the simple proposal with my own ideas. I prefer that your idea gets up and running first, it is a good one. cygnis insignis 15:44, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
I'd be interested in reading it. Plantdrew (talk) 19:10, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
Just so - good idea :) --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 19:44, 2 May 2019 (UTC)
Nice, I'll shoot for a June 1 publication date covering goings-on of April and May. Glad to see there would be interest! Enwebb (talk) 15:27, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
@Cwmhiraeth: You seem to be pretty productive with DYKs. Just want to make sure you're in the loop. --Nessie (talk) 16:37, 3 May 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, I would be interested in reading such a newsletter or contributing to it. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 17:24, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

Striking while the iron is hot, I invite any interested editors to subscribe to the promised newsletter here. Thanks, Enwebb (talk) 00:00, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

I just came across the newsletter. I love it! There are a few newsletters about the place. I wonder whether it could be good to have them linked to or summariced as a regular section of the Signpost? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 11:10, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Evolution and evolvability, happy you enjoy it! They used to do a WikiProject Report but a quick glance through the archives shows that stopped back in 2013. Enwebb (talk) 16:41, 5 June 2019 (UTC)
Excellent newsletter! Thank you Enwebb. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:07, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, Cwmhiraeth! Enwebb (talk) 13:00, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
@Evolution and evolvability and MJL:, that honestly sounds like a great idea. MJL, don't you work with the Signpost? Does that sound like a viable idea? Prometheus720 (talk) 14:49, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Sprucing up ToL talk page templates

With the increased focus on article assessment, spurred in part by rater, it seems to be a good time to look at our patchwork of WikiProject talk page templates. The features are inconsistent across the board and that makes it harder to maintain articles. Also as more editors use tools like rater the talk templates are increasingly the primary way to tag articles that need attention. Below is a table comparing templates and parameters for each project. While not every project could use, say, an audio request template, most of these could be applied to all ToL subprojects. I have been working here and there, adding image request templates primarily, and so have some copypasta code that I shall post later when I have a chance, and we can discuss the finer points. For example, would a basic image request (as most have) suffice, or would adding location parameters for the image request (à la WP:Fish) be better?

Questions:

  • What parameters/requests should be included in all projects where applicable?
  • What additional parameters should be used? suggestions:
    • marking Orphan status?
    • something like {{tl:Type-locality-needed}}?
    • a parameter to denote if an article is for a pest, pathogen, or disease of members of the WP's focus? i.e. could be used on the {{WikiProject Dogs}} template on the dog flea page. This could help maintainers sort out core taxa when performing certain maintenance tasks, as can be done with |botanist= for biography articles that are in WP:Plants.
    • something like {{Cleanup taxon}}?

LMK what you think --Nessie (talk) 15:42, 12 July 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for all the work putting this table together! As far as maintenance parameters go (e.g. orphan, unreferenced) CleanupWorklistBot is still running and generates weekly lists of pages with maintenance tags for participating projects (examples for birds and dogs. List of participating projects), so that may be an easier way to keep track of maintenance problems. Talk page maintenance parameters mean we need to count on editors identifying issues to template both the article and change the parameter, and then those fixing the problems to remove both the template and parameter. Otherwise we get tracking categories that don't reflect reality. The downside of CleanupWorklistBot is that it runs once a week (on Tuesday) so it's not always up-to-date. But I think I'd vote we scrap all maintenance tracking parameters and let the bot do that organizing for us. Happy to be convinced otherwise though. Ajpolino (talk) 16:11, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
I have mixed feelings about maintenance parameters in talk page templates. They have a tendency not to get updated when the article is updated. I regard image needed categories in their present state as basically useless; too many articles that have images are still tagged as needing them, and too many articles that don't have image aren't tagged. However, it should be feasible for a bot to synchronize presence/absence of images and the talk template parameter (the next step would be to have some bot/script go through Commons/iNaturalist and find images for articles that are missing them). On the other hand, putting maintenace parameters on the talk page keeps the article looking cleaner, and may be appropriate for some things that are unlikely to be added anytime soon (audio requests are going to take a long time to be fulfilled).
Orphan status isn't very useful to us. Article should be linked from their parent taxon. Articles linked from a list of species occurring in a protected area may not be orphans in the general Wikipedia sense, but those aren't the important links for ToL.
Type locality isn't very important in my opinion; not many databases list it, and pre-20th century type localities may be very broad.
I do like the idea of a pathogen parameter. Most plant pathogens aren't tagged at all for plants, but I would make an effort to do if a parameter were available.
I'd like to see more parameters for tagging articles with non-taxon subjects. Biographies of biologists, anatomy, physiology, ecology, natural products, Important Bird Areas....Plantdrew (talk) 17:58, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: I don't know about all image request categories, but the ones I try to maintain have very few incorrect flags. You can always use imagechecker to search categories for articles that have images, and FIST is a good tool for finding and importing images for use.. I plan to add links to these on each image request category page (like the current Category:Gastropod articles needing images) and also in the talk page templates (like {{Image requested}}). Adding images improves the encyclopedia, so we should work to make that easier. It would be great if imagechecker were automatic and perhaps rolled in to CWB, and if FIST checked iNaturalist as well. --Nessie (talk) 20:01, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
@NessieVL:, which image request categories are you taking care of? I didn't know about imagechecker, that's a great tool. It says ~7200 plant articles have an image and an image request. That's a lot to work through, and it's bringing up some false positivies (Aechmea geminiflora supposedly has an image and I can't figure out why imagechecker thinks that it does). I'd seen FIST before, but I couldn't get it to work then, and it's not working for me now (am I breaking it by trying to search overly large categories)? Plantdrew (talk) 21:12, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: You'll have to add the image from {{Aechmea-stub}} to the blacklist. Those stub templates are usually the cause of false positives, as many aren't PNGs. I don't go to Category:Wikipedia requested images of plants ( 24,085 ) because it it so huge, and sometimes FIST poops out before getting too far down the alphabet. I usually work on Category:Wikipedia requested images of algae ( 487 ), Category:Wikipedia requested images of marine life ( 3 ), Category:Wikipedia requested images of viruses ( 809 ), Category:Wikipedia requested images of biota ( 251 )... I know those still have high counts, but they're more managaeble atleast. I'll try to hack away at plants when I get a chance. --Nessie (talk) 21:35, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
Cool table, Nessie. I agree with Plantdrew that it would be nice to have a way to differentiate non-taxon articles, as I think that would be useful for parasites/pathogens, as well as biologists. Echoing Ajpolino and Plantdrew regarding integrating maintenance templates into talk page templates, as there are already ways to display all the articles in a project with maintenance templates. I don't think it would be worth maintaining a separate system for little, if any, additional gain. Enwebb (talk) 18:39, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
@Ajpolino and Enwebb: this would be a step earlier. As you say, CWB compiles outstanding tasks, but using these parameters adds the articles to the categories CWB uses. CWB does not puzzle out if an article is orphaned, it looks for the {{Orphan}} template or its equivalent in say a talk page template. CWB needs humans to tag articles, and I am proposing additional ways to do that. Also it doesn't seem notes missing taxoboxes, images, audio, etc.. --Nessie (talk) 20:01, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
I think that we all collectively should take a step back and think about the best way of doing this work going forward. Yes, Rater is nice, and so is AWB apparently if you have access to it. But neither of these tools is sufficient for working on the nearly 6 million articles on enwiki, nor the large chunk of those which are under the purview of ToL and its subprojects. Automation will be key--even if we continue to rate articles by hand, and we should as much as we can, we certainly should be using technological solutions to at least find and curate lists of the manual work we need to do.
I don't think that we need tags like Plantdrew mentioned. Those are redundant to existing WikiProjects, and should be represented by actually tagging those WikiProjects. If we want to be able to see a custom view of where our articles intersect with other projects, we need to start taking a look at Wikidata, SPARQL searches, and category tools, not adding more content tags. There are existing tools to find these kinds of intersections and they are going to become the standard in the future because they require less work than us going in manually and tagging things. In fact, I would recommend that strategy to all WikiProjects. I don't think that any project should have banner tags that correspond to another WikiProjects. We could use pathogen tags, sure, or we could use a pathogen category, or make a ToL taskforce/project called Pathogens.
As for maintenance tags, we need to find ways to avoid having to put these on articles ourselves OR use talk page banners. Optimally we could use bots, scripts, and tools to do as much of this as possible, even if only to come up with a nice list that someone can then operate on with AWB. That image search tool is a good example. There is no reason that we should have to spend our time looking for articles that do or do not have pictures and manually updating them. That's never going to be sustainable--it isn't now and it won't be in a few years when we have 8 million articles on enwiki instead. We need to use that officially and teach new editors how to use it. We might need to try to improve it so it grabs fewer false positives. And we need more tools like it that help ease our burden.
I think several things should be done going forward, including discussing which classes of articles we include in our templates (I'm in favor of excluding A class and including page types such as redirect and disambiguation), finding automated ways to list articles that need maintenance so that we don't NEED tags, improving current tools such as Rater and that image tool, and rolling up inactive WikiProjects into taskforces. If people still wish to work through CWB, that's fine--but our tools should then be used to make a nice list to roll up into AutoWikiBrowser and then tag very quickly with as few false positives or mistakes as possible. Then CWB will be able to see those tags.
I just see a lot of work being duplicated (or triplicated) in the current system. Wikidata integration is just over the horizon, and Wikidata Bridge is already being tested--it's already ON the horizon. Eventually I think it would be best if all of the metadata about articles is stored there, rather than on talk pages or in templates--those should be generated based on what is on the data page, not stored locally on wikis. The key is that whatever system we use, it needs to be accessible to both humans and machines--because if the machines can't read it, we will have to read everything manually, and that's just not a way forward.Prometheus720 (talk) 23:32, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Article alerts

Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Article alerts should be more useful now, and I would encourage people watchlisting this page to add it to their watchlists. For several years, ToL article alerts only issued reports for the small number of articles directly tagged for ToL. It should now be including everything in Category:Articles with 'species' microformats, which includes all articles with any infobox in the Taxobox family, as well as articles with animal breed/plant cultivar infoboxes (and some infoboxes for individual animals?). I hope the new behavior of article alerts isn't too broad (not sure individual animals should be reported), but I think @Enwebb: might find the report useful for future editions of the ToL newsletter. Plantdrew (talk) 05:07, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

I actually just went through all the ToL WPs and created article alerts for those that could have them.
A number of these are waiting on the bot to create the page, but you can still watch a page even if the article is not created. Also some may need fine tuning from someone more intimately involved in a particular project. --Nessie (talk) 16:13, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
Many thanks, Plantdrew. I agree this greatly enhances the functionality and ease of the article alerts (and sure beats what I was previously doing, which was watchlisting a less thorough version of the table that Nessie just posted). Enwebb (talk) 16:39, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
It can still worth watching alerts for individual projects since the ToL alert won't pick up articles on biologists, anatomy and other non-taxon subjects. Plantdrew (talk) 03:38, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Good point--I've since watchlisted the complete table for alerts. Enwebb (talk) 15:36, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

If binomial needs disambiguation

At Crash bandicoot (species), an issue just came up that does not seem to be covered in our guidelines.[1] The guidelines state that if a genus name needs disambiguation, and if that genus is monotypic, it is best to move the article to the binomial. But what if the binomial needs disambiguation too? I moved that article from Crash (genus) to Crash bandicoot (species) following my off hand interpretation of the guidelines, but now I remember we actually have other cases where monotypic taxa with binomials that need disambiguation are at the genus level with parenthesis, such as Smok (archosaur) (to prevent clash with Smok wawelski), and Yi (dinosaur) (to prevent clash with Yi qi). What would be nicest to do in such cases? In the case of both Crash bandicoot, the full binomial is a reference to a game character, and Yi qi means strange wing, so it is the full binomials that convey a meaning (the genus and specific names have little meaning on their own, and are kind of gimmicky), so it would seem nicest to have the full binomials? FunkMonk (talk) 02:53, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I had it the other way, but agree with the move for a principle that is not honoured in article titles: that species names are conceptually the "basic unit of taxonomy" (at least moreso than the genus) and that is the natural title and target of redirects in cases of monotypy. cygnis insignis 03:11, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
The point of using the full species name is to avoid disambiguation. If that's not possible, because both the genus name and the full species name need to be disambiguated, the the article should be at the disambiguated genus. The guidelines says 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. The species is not a more natural form of disambiguation if it needs disambiguating. So there is no exception and default genus level applies. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:56, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

AfD Bulldog breed

I believe this project is an appropriate venue - you are invited to participate at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bulldog breeds Atsme Talk 📧 22:30, 6 August 2019 (UTC)

Capitalization of English species names

Douglas Knapp left a comment here concerning the capitalization of common English names of species, particularly in the List of birds by common name but likely relevant beyond that page. I have no opinion on the issue itself and am bringing it here for a more centralized discusssion. Huon (talk) 16:18, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

He posted the same thing above but has not yet responded to comments received - see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life#Consistency_of_Scientific_names,_especially_in_English. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 16:49, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

Capitalise the first letter, everything else is lowercase, this applies to species that occur in England or anywhere else. ~ cygnis insignis 02:02, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

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