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Synonyms lists: alphabetical or chronological?

Just wondering if there's any consensus on how synonyms lists should be ordered. I have been arranging them chronologically, from earliest to latest (with names published in the same year sorted alphabetically), but I'm not sure if this is the "correct" way and I couldn't find any guidance on the matter. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 05:06, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

  • Consensus is difficult because of the way different codes include years (or not), and the availability of pre-sorted alphabetical lists from the taxonomic authority. See previous discussion here. Esculenta (talk) 14:21, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
    Cheers for the link! I'm a stickler for consistency between articles so I was really hoping some of the WikiProjects under ToL had come to a consensus, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:56, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
  • I don't think we need a consensus to do it a particular way. I also think it's better to have shorter lists of synonyms that people might be aware of rather than a complete list of obscure names. When I add a full list I tend to follow the source order. Overall, I think it best to leave it for particular projects to decide if they want a standardised approach.  —  Jts1882 | talk  15:27, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
Myself, I very, very strongly prefer, and advocate, chronological order. There are some real benefits to seeing the history of a name, and alphabetizing makes it far more difficult to see the history. For example, if a name is published spelled a certain way, and then three later authors publish three different misspellings, then it is confusing when the misspellings appear ahead of the correct spelling in the list. Chronological order makes these things more obvious, and they happen a lot. Chronological order also makes it more obvious when one or more of the names in the "synonyms" list are OLDER than the name being used as valid. That also happens quite often, and it sometimes points to errors in the Wikipedia article (e.g., from a misattribution or wrong year given in GBIF, of which there are hundreds upon hundreds of examples). Dyanega (talk) 15:40, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
This is my reasoning for using chronological order as well. In my opinion, while alphabetical order looks very nice and neat, chronological order is more informative for readers. It is somewhat less helpful in contexts where the publication year is not given (as in botany), but even then I still think it provides better context to the reader than alphabetical order. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:40, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Principle of priority

I noticed that Chhandama (talk · contribs) started the new article priority (biology), and merged the old content from the Principle of Priority article, effectively erasing the contribution history of previous users. Surely this isn't the correct way to do things? Esculenta (talk) 16:03, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Surely not, and the whole set of actions was not discussed prior to doing it. That wasn't especially considerate. Dyanega (talk) 16:34, 31 July 2024 (UTC)
History merge now done. @Chhandama: please avoid manual copy paste moves - see Wikipedia:History_merging Shyamal (talk) 05:19, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
Is the scope different? Generally the article titles should avoid disambiguation terms where possible.  —  Jts1882 | talk  07:53, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
"Principle of Priority" is the title of an article (23) in the ICZN (although principle is not capitalized in the table of contents in the online version, it is capitalized in the TOC of the print version). The ICNafp has "LIMITATION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF PRIORITY" as a header in a couple of places, but mostly just talks about "priority". Capitalized "Principle of..." is an ICZN thing; the ICNafp describes principles, but doesn't really formally title them. Articles on principles were downcased following Talk:Principle_of_coordination#Requested_move_5_November_2021 (coordination is one zoological principle that doesn't have any equivalent in the ICNafp).
I don't think it is necessarily wrong to cover equivalent ICNafp and ICZN concepts in articles titled "principle of...", but I could see an argument for dropping "principle of..." (I'd prefer (taxonomy) over (biology) as a disambiguator if that is done). Principle of coordination, Principle of homonymy and Principle of typification are current article titles, and now are inconsistent with priority (biology). Plantdrew (talk) 15:58, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

CarabCat hijacked site.

CarabCat is a database of members of the ground beetle family Carabidae. It is used by Catalogue of Life, GBIF, and others. Their site, www.carabidfauna2.net, has been compromised and its links now direct users to various unrelated sites of questionable reputation. Links to the CarabCAT URL above are shown on the Catalogue of Life and other sites, and it is the target for at least one CarabCat DOI.

Wikipedia has quite a few articles with references that include the CarabCat URL. (I'm probably responsible for a good number of them.) I think the link and/or references should be removed.

Things like this must happen fairly regularly with Wikipedia. Is there a procedure to fix this? I guess one or more of the following might be in order:

1. See if the makers of the CarabCat database can fix the site, assuming they still own the domain.

2. Remove all the links to CarabCatfauna.net (the old site, 2017) and CarabCatfauna2.net in Wikipedia articles.

3. Remove all the references containing links to CarabCatfauna and CarabCatfauna2 in Wikipedia articles.

4. ????

5. profit.

I can get rid of the references using qBugbot, but I thought there might be someone who has already done this and can take care of it faster, without waiting on me to add the function and get it through the BRFA. Any recommendations?

Bob Webster (talk) 05:36, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Wouldn't the references be accessible using the wayback machine? I'd recommend making a request at Wikipedia:Link rot/URL change requests Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:48, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
The old site also seems to be redirecting to questionable sites, so we need to removed the active urls. If we assume the site owners will fix it, then we shouldn't remove the references entirely at this stage. I found 876 pages with "carabidfauna2.net" (none with "carabidfauna.net"). It might be possible to get a bot to comment out the url's or add archive link while we wait to see if the site is resurrected. I can't remember what information the pages had. If minimal taxonomy they might just rely on checklistbank and CoL, which a number of more specialist datbases are doing recently.  —  Jts1882 | talk  08:16, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk: As the citation guru, can you help with this?  —  Jts1882 | talk  08:20, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
First do step 1 above and tell the site owners about the problem.
All of the results listed in the 876 pages appear to use doi:10.48580/dfqf-3dk which works for me. So, if the site owners cannot or will not get control of their site, step 2 above seems in order. I guess I gotta wonder why that url is in the citation in the first place. If you are sourcing a particular claim in a wikipedia article to an entry in the database why not link to that entry?
If memory serves, Editor User:GreenC has a bot that can fetch an archive of http://www.carabidfauna2.net/. But that might be problematic because links in archived snapshots link to other archived snapshots (which may or may not have been captured). Still, if this is considered to be worthwhile then someone should sort through the snapshots at https://web.archive.org/web/20170815000000*/http://www.carabidfauna2.net/ to find the best pre-hijack snapshot. I see little benefit to doing this.
Further, if this template is representative of the checklist citations (are they all the same?), it is malformed:
{{Cite web |access-date=2023-03-04 |title=Carabcat Database |date=2021 |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |volume=5 |issue=2 |publisher=ChecklistBank |url=http://www.carabidfauna2.net/ |doi=10.48580/dfqf-3dk |doi-access=free }}
{{cite web}} does not support |volume= and |issue=; what are those supposed to refer too? |date= is out of date; current version is dated 2023-11-24 (see doi:10.48580/dfgnm)
If there is to be an effort made to 'fix' these citations en masse, a true and correct template should be formulated and then all instances of the existing templates should be replaced. Better in my mind is to replace each existing template with one that links to the appropriate entry in the database.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:08, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Would a {{hijacked}} (analogous to {{broken}}) be useful in this context. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Meh. Do we really need to invent a new template, its associated category(ies), rules for its use, write its documentation, etc? At fewer that 1000 articles, hardly seems worth the effort. And all that such a template would accomplish is the application a salve on the problem leaving the cure for someone else at some later time – yeah, I know, that is the wikipedia way of doing things...
—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:35, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I hadn't noticed that all the urls were to the home page. There are two forms of the citations, the one above with 43 uses and another with 833 uses.
The website recommends using CoF to get most of the information and had a simple page to query the database (at checklist, now usurped). I don't think there was a url linking to the search results. Iirc, you had to enter the search terms in a rather unintuitive way using a sortkey. If there is no permalink it might be better to replace them with a CoL citation.  —  Jts1882 | talk  13:23, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
There archived pages at archive.org: the Checklist search page and the FAQS instruction page.  —  Jts1882 | talk  13:38, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Did you try using that archived Checklist search page? When I tried, it purportedly went looking but returned nothing. I even tried their %BATES% example which returned nothing. This is akin to what I wrote above (3rd paragraph).
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:54, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I tried to do some searches and got a blank. This to be expected as the search calls the php file. Presumably the archive is of the output.
As linking the records is not possible, even if the site is restored, perhaps the best way is to link to CoL, with a citation like these:
{{Cite web |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |title=''Anthia'' (''Anthia'') ''artemis'' Gerstaecker, 1884 |work=Carabcat Database |url=https://www.catalogueoflife.org/data/taxon/5VD3Z |access-date=2023-03-04 |via=Catalogue of Life }}
Lorenz, Wolfgang. "Anthia (Anthia) artemis Gerstaecker, 1884". Carabcat Database. Retrieved 2023-03-04 – via Catalogue of Life.
{{Cite web |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |title=''Anthia'' (''Anthia'') ''artemis'' Gerstaecker, 1884 |work=Carabcat Database |url=https://www.catalogueoflife.org/data/taxon/5VD3Z |access-date=2023-03-04 |publisher=Catalogue of Life }}
Lorenz, Wolfgang. "Anthia (Anthia) artemis Gerstaecker, 1884". Carabcat Database. Catalogue of Life. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
How appropriate is it to treat CarabCat as the |work= and link to the CoL record, with CoL indicated by |publisher= or use |via=?  —  Jts1882 | talk  15:45, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Either will work though I think WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT applies. If we are citing the Catalogue of Life entry for Anthia, then mention of Carabcat Database is not necessary. So:
{{Cite web |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |date=2021-07-29 |title=''Anthia'' (''Anthia'') ''artemis'' Gerstaecker, 1884 |website=Catalogue of Life |url=https://www.catalogueoflife.org/data/taxon/5VD3Z |access-date=2023-03-04 }}
Lorenz, Wolfgang (2021-07-29). "Anthia (Anthia) artemis Gerstaecker, 1884". Catalogue of Life. Retrieved 2023-03-04.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:11, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Trappist is correct the solution is create a best-practice citation, replace all the existing. Should not be difficult, if someone can design a best version citation. It appears the DOIs link has the needed information. The URL is toast though, no web archives. -- GreenC 15:35, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I had an edit conflict and have partially ansered this in my reply to Trappist above,with possible citations combining the CoL and CarabCat references. Most of the instances I checked had CoL and CarabCat references together and defined in the {{reflist}}. Combining them might be possible.  —  Jts1882 | talk  15:49, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
For a bot conversion, given this:
{{Cite web |access-date=2023-03-04 |title=Carabcat Database |date=2021 |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |volume=5 |issue=2 |publisher=ChecklistBank |url=http://www.carabidfauna2.net/ |doi=10.48580/dfqf-3dk |doi-access=free }}
It would probably need something like this:
{{Cite journal |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |journal=Catalog of Life Checklist |publisher=ChecklistBank |title=Carabcat Database |date=2021 |volume=5 |issue=2 |doi=10.48580/dfqf-3dk |doi-access=free }}
Lorenz, Wolfgang (2021). "Carabcat Database". Catalog of Life Checklist. 5 (2). ChecklistBank. doi:10.48580/dfqf-3dk.
-- GreenC 16:16, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Carabcat Database is not a journal. I still think that it is wrong to link to only the Carabcat Database or its landing page at Catalog of Life; that is like citing the whole of Encyclopedia Britannica for a single bit of information. Essentially you are saying to the reader: 'Here are 50,000 pages; you find the right one.' Don't do that. If Carabcat Database/Catalog of Life supports statements in one of our articles, cite (and link to) the appropriate place in the database; omit Carabcat Database/Catalog of Life cites else.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:11, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps I'm mistaken about this, but my recollection was that the Carabid Database was not public access anyway; for various reasons, at various times, I tried to retrieve information about carabid names using the Wikipedia links and always ran into a "subscribers-only" wall. If I'm not wrong, then those links should probably have been removed from Wikipedia a long time ago. Dyanega (talk) 22:01, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
I can't speak to whether or not Carabcat Database/Catalog of Life has previously been locked away behind a paywall. I can say that there is no en.wiki prohibition against the use of paywall-protected sources; they are cited all the time. At the moment, Catalog of Life does not appear to be so protected. Go to https://www.checklistbank.org/dataset/3/source/1146, scroll down to the Contributions heading and choose one of the links in that section and follow it. I've tried several and not hit any paywalls.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:38, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
My mistake - I was thinking of this website, which is subscribers-only, and has (or had) links in Wikipedia which could not take you past the home page, and therefore useless. Dyanega (talk) 00:23, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
The cite journal links |title= to the DOI page, it's flagged as open source, which seemingly contains the contents of the/a database. If something has a volume, and issue, and it's not a journal, what is it? Not a rhetorical question. However I note the DOI page has no volume and issue thus unclear what the volume and number refer to. -- GreenC 23:57, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Using just the doi (or its url equivalent) is the 50,000 pages problem that I mentioned before. We should not do that. Instead, we should link to the specific page at the Catalog of Life website (because that is where we got the information – presumably). So {{cite web}} with a specific url as I suggested earlier.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 01:03, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Ah sorry I misread the DOI page, thought it was specific to a certain Carabidae (beetle), but is the entire catalog. Your proposed solution looks great. How did you determine the identifier 5VD3Z? -- GreenC 01:14, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Nothing special, I just copied it from this post to use as an example of WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT. Perhaps Editor Jts1882 can answer your question.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 02:10, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
I found https://www.catalogueoflife.org/about/colusage and https://github.com/CatalogueOfLife/coldp -- it looks promising but I can't make sense of it. -- GreenC 04:00, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Yes, that is rather confusing as a complete introduction to the system. One day I hope to decipher it.
There are several ways of getting the CoL ID, for manual editing or programmatic.
  • The Col ID is usually available in the {{Taxonbar}} at the bottom of the page (easiest for manual edits).
  • This ID is taken from Wikidata, so a bot could get the ID from Wikidata. These are not always up to date, when a new CoL source has been used, but the CarabCat ones were last updated in 2021 so should be OK (the ones I checked were).
  • Most of the Carabcat citations are part of a pair of references that are defined in the {{reflist}} in a standardised way (presumably they were produced programmatically), with a CoL citation (<ref name=catlife>) followed by the CarabCat citation (<ref name=Lorenz2021>). It might be possible to extract the CoL ID from that wikitext.
That said, I'm thinking the best way of replacing the CarabCat citations would be to link to the Checklistbank entry, with Checklistbank as publisher:
{{Cite web |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |title=''Anthia'' (''Anthia'') ''artemis'' Gerstaecker, 1884 |work=Carabcat Database |url=https://www.checklistbank.org/dataset/1146/taxon/208583 |access-date=23 July 2024 |publisher=ChecklistBank }}
Lorenz, Wolfgang. "Anthia (Anthia) artemis Gerstaecker, 1884". Carabcat Database. ChecklistBank. Retrieved 23 July 2024.
This has the advantage that it links to a specific version of the source checklist, not the latest version as in the CoL entry. The disadvantage for updating existing citations is that the ChecklistBank ID is different from the CoL one so would have to be obtained manually or via the API.  —  Jts1882 | talk  08:28, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
User:Jts1882: Thanks for the information. Looks like first obtain the CoL ID (easiest from taxonbar), go to that URL, where the CLB ID can be found in the page. -- GreenC 20:56, 24 July 2024 (UTC)
One thing I've just realised is that neither http://www.carabidfauna.net/ nor http://www.carabidfauna2.net/ have been hacked. Both links land on the home page and the Introduction link is still valid. The problem is that two of the links on the page link to the old site http://www.carabidfauna.com which has been usurped. As a result following Checklist or CarabMap take you to an unexpected place which has nothing to do with Carabcat.
This doesn't change anything about the above discussion, as we don't want to send people to a page with dodgy links, but I thought I'd clarify the problem. The new site doesn't seem to have access to the database, so there is little value in the link over using CoL or ChecklistBank.  —  Jts1882 | talk  08:09, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
I created a template to cite CarabCat and link to ChecklistBank using the checklistbank ID:
{{Cite taxon|carabcat|title=''Anthia'' Weber, 1801 |id=208436 |access-date=1 August 2024}}
Lorenz, Wolfgang (2021). "Anthia Weber, 1801". CarabCat. 03 (08/2021). ChecklistBank. Retrieved 1 August 2024.
If the Carabcat site gets fixed (I've email Wolfgang Lorenz), the citations can then be updated in one place. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:48, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
Personally, not a fan of these custom link templates because they invariably create hidden link rot. We are better off with standard templates like cite web that are supported by a wide variety of tools and bots. What can and usually does happen, the site changes it's URL structure, but not all the URLs are migrated to the new structure, or some have different structures. Thus updating the URL structure in a central template results in some URLs that are broken. Many times I have had to delete custom template and replace with CS1|2 so they can be correctly managed with standard tools. -- GreenC 14:26, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
The template does use cite web and CS1/CS2.  —  Jts1882 | talk  15:18, 1 August 2024 (UTC)
User:Jts1882: Yes under the hood it uses the CS1|2 engine. A bot or tool that wants to operate on cite taxon needs to be programmed to recognize how it works eg. that the first unnamed parameter carabcat has meaning (it's non-standard). It requires custom bot code. And since there are thousands of custom templates, bot ops skip them, it's impractical to program and maintain. Over time, link rot and other problems set in for lack of automated maintenance. This is why standard generic citation templates like cite web and cite journal are preferable, it reduces complexity and makes automated maintenance more available. These templates become isolated islands, evolving on their own into beautiful creatures, ultimately fragile and prone to failure if not extinction (I've killed off more than a few that became intractably broken due to changes by the remote site, converting them to standardized cite web or cite journal). -- GreenC 16:21, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (species)

An RfC to adopt a guideline regarding the notability of species has been opened at Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to adopt this guideline. C F A 💬 00:03, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Taxonomy used in WikiProject Fishes

I have put forward a proposal to change the taxonomic authorities used by WikiProject Fishes the proposal is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fishes. Quetzal1964 (talk) 07:33, 13 August 2024 (UTC)

Upcoming International Botanical Congress vote on "offensive" binomial names

This has been rolling along for a while, but the vote happens this week (see the recent Nature story) there are two main proposals that are being voted on:

  • 1. Replacing "caffra"-related names (which are etymologically related to an ethnic slur) to derivatives of "afr" (affects around 218 species)
  • 2. A proposal to "create a committee to reconsider offensive and culturally inappropriate names."

I'm not a botanist or involved in the botanical taxonomy community, so I'm not sure what the broader mood within the community is about whether these proposals are likely to pass (they appear to require a 60% supermajority). Obviously there are a group of quite vocal botanists who have made their voice known repeatedly on this issue, the question is whether there voices represent that of the broader botanist community. There does seem to be substantial (around 50%) support for renaming "caffra" related taxa in preliminary polling according to the Nature article, so the issue is worth keeping an eye on. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:13, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

The Botanists seem to be taking a different approach to the AOS where they are openly discussing it rather than imposing it without consulting members. They are proposing changes only to a few particularly egregious names, compared to removal of all bird eponyms from common names, although they are going further by looking at the scientific names, which the AOS is not addressing at this stage.  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:19, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
As someone who has some foot on the botanical community, I guarantee the general mood is against. A compendium of over 1,000 international botanists came together and expressed their opinion on this Bioscience article, which is summarized in this Twitter thread. Basically, we want a universal stable taxonomy, which means we don't want to retroactively change the species names due to subjective socially guided perceptions as it is supposed to be completely separate from social perceptions, and changing it would be incredibly risky for every practical effort of conservation. However, the article also emphasizes that we as taxonomists have a responsibility to name new species in an appropriate manner, and even give representation to local ethnicities, cultures and languages. — Snoteleks (talk) 15:41, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
See (126) Proposal to add a new Article 61.6 to permanently and retroactively eliminate epithets with the root caf(e)r‐ or caff(e)r‐ from the nomenclature of algae, fungi and plants (wiley.com) (square brackets in title replaced by parentheses to avoid breaking WikiPedia syntax).
This is a rules hack - treating "caffra" etc. as orthographical variants to be corrected. This is not etymologically the case, and even somewhat of a stretch semantically - Cis/Transkei is rather narrower than Africa, even if afric- names often referred to South Africa, or other parts of Africa, rather than to the whole continent, but it's not greatly disruptive. (The Nature article is slightly wrong - caffra -> afra (not affra).) I suspect that much opposition will be to the precedent rather than to the proposal.
But there's not really much to discuss here - either it passes and WikiPedia changes the titles of a score or so articles, and the spellings of a few synonyms, or it doesn't pass, and WikiPedia doesn't have to make any changes.
I note that there are 4 names referring to Kafiristan (rather than the more recent Nuristan), and these are all relatively recent (one from 2018), and aren't fixable by this rules hack. Lavateraguy (talk) 20:52, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
I essentially agree with Lavateraguy. Nothing for Wikipedia to discuss as we don't get a vote on this. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:18, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
The "afr" vote has passed [1], so we will need to get around to changing the affected articles. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
The search may be helpful. And perhaps this search.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:29, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
"caffra" is too narrow - it would miss "caffrum", "caffer" and "caffrorum" and some other variants. See IPNI for a list of relevant names (excluding fungal and algal names). (There are remarkably few false positives - on a cursory skim a few names honouring Caflisch and Cafes (sp?). Lavateraguy (talk) 22:34, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
Ok, try this one.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:49, 18 July 2024 (UTC) 23:01, 18 July 2024 (UTC) (revised for fewer false positives)
Shouldn't we wait for secondary sources to adopt the changes?  —  Jts1882 | talk  19:38, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
My understanding of past discussions is that we have generally deferred to the opinions of the ICN and ICZN over those of secondary sources. The IBC vote has direct power over the ICN, so isn't it effectively equivalent to an ICZN ruling, or an I mistaken? Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:55, 18 July 2024 (UTC)
The last day of the Shenzen IBC was July 29th, and per our article on the ICNafp, that is the day that the Shenzen edition of the code was ratified. The Madrid IBC hasn't even started yet (the nomenclature meetings occur prior to the opening of the main event, and still have a day to go). The Madrid IBC ends on the 27th. There is at least one name that will become a later homonym which will need to have a replacement name published.
Where things are at right now is equivalent to a media organization calling an election for a political candidate, before the election results are certified, and before the candidate takes office. Plantdrew (talk) 01:06, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Before we jump into any conclusions: 1) the Congress hasn't even ended yet. 2) The change will be implemented from 2026 onward. 3) There was also a vote to allow the rejection of new species names (given after 2026) that are derogatory. Let's not make any changes before that date. — Snoteleks (talk) 13:22, 20 July 2024 (UTC)
Are there any potentiel conflicts with any of these name changes? It seems like such a broad stroke for there not to be any preexisting afr- names already in these clades. awkwafaba (📥) 03:21, 19 July 2024 (UTC)
Of the subset of these names which are currently accepted there is one which clashes with another name. There is an available synonymous name available, with the result that Plantago cafra is changed to Plantago capillaris. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:17, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

We are already getting IPs making changes, and I think that without a firm position on why they should be reverted they should be allowed. (I've made one move. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:28, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

If they're not official yet as other commenters have suggested, then I moving the articles is jumping the gun. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:50, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
Agreed, we shouldn't be making the changes now. We make the changes after the relevant sources make the changes (IPNI, POWO, etc.).  —  Jts1882 | talk  10:22, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
As I read the proposal in Taxon, the change would be to Dovyalis afra, not Dovyalis affra. I believe the double-f spelling to be an error introduced in press reports.
"61.6. Epithets with the root caf[f][e]r-, such as cafra, caffra, cafrorum, and cafrum, are not permitted in the nomenclature of organisms covered by this Code. Where these epithets were used in validly pub-lished names, they are to be treated as orthographical variants that are tobe replaced by epithets with the root af[e]r-, such as afra, afrorum, and afrum, respectively"
Lavateraguy (talk) 11:10, 21 July 2024 (UTC)
There's a very good reason that these changes should not yet be allowed: we don't have a reliable source to confirm the new names. As Plantdrew stated above, the IBC hasn't even finished yet, and the exact name changes have not been published - we only have the general rule by which the new names will be decided. This is absolutely jumping the gun and antithetical to WP:V. We should be waiting until the new names are confirmed and published via IPNI/WFO etc. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 11:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

I disagree. The nomenclature session is all over bar the shouting (which is taking place here). The plenary session of the congress, invariably so far, simply ratifies what the nomenclature session has decided, and that will take place on the 27th July. These are not name changes but corrections "32.2. Only one variant of any one name is treated as validly published: the form that appears in the original publication, except as provided in Art. 60, 61, and F.9 (typographical or orthographical errors and standardizations), Art. 14.11 (conserved spellings), Art. F.3.2 (spelling of sanctioned names), and Art. 16–19, 21, 23, and 24 (rank-determining terminations)." and "61.1. For homotypic names, variations in spelling, as well as other cases of variations (compounding or inflectional forms) dealt with in detail in Art. 32, do not represent nomenclatural novelties." and "PRINCIPLE VI The rules of nomenclature are retroactive unless expressly limited." Thus, if wikipedia reverts the well-intentioned changes from people who want to correct its errors until such time in the possibly quite distant future when other databases have summoned the power to correct the very large backlog of their errors, wikipedia will get a poor reputation among knowledgeable people. However, I won't bother contributing further to this discussion or workload as it appears futile. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 04:39, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Can we at least wait until the Congress is over, when the amendments apparently come into effect? Also the claim that Wikipedia will get a poor reputation among knowledgeable people is curious given that Wikipedia doesn't have much of a reputation for factual accuracy anyway. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:44, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
The code, as it exists today, does not yet have a provision for correcting the spelling of caffra epithets. I'm sure it will have that provision on the 28th. I don't expect it will be the "quite distant future" before ANY database reports the changes; I expect it to be a matter of weeks (I do expect it may take years for ALL databases to be updated). We've had discussions before about fixing spellings that the codes deem incorrect where there are no sources with the correct spelling. I remain deeply uncomfortable about correcting spellings on Wikipedia where the correct spelling doesn't (yet) appear anywhere in the literature or databases.
Wait at least until the Congress is over (at which point the spellings become officially correctable) if not until there are sources that use the corrected spellings. Plantdrew (talk) 16:38, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Erythrina afra and Dovyalis afra are now live at IPNI. POWO has yet to follow suit, but I doubt it will take long. Right now IPNI has just 14 records for this epithet that start with a "c". Plantdrew (talk) 00:09, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

And now IPNI is down to 0 records with a "c". Plantdrew (talk) 16:05, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Affected articles

Given that the vote will apparently be in effect by the end of the month [2], I thought I would collate an (probably incomplete) list of effected species articles:

There will obviously be genus articles that will also need to have species names changed. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:14, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

should we make a category to better keep track of these? We could make it hidden if need be. Category:Taxa affected by Article 61.6 at the International Botanical Congress? -- awkwafaba (📥) 16:40, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Umm, all of the articles in your list are found in the search results that I linked above. The search results also show most (all?) articles that link to the articles in your list. Is the any real need for a separate, hand curated list?
—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:07, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
The search results include animals that aren't affected by this decision.
The list above is, in fact, a complete list of affected plant species articles (and monotypic genera). I've taken the list from the appendix to the proposal and made it into wiki links at User:Plantdrew/Article 61.6. This doesn't include algae or fungi. It does include red-links, and all the red-links I've checked so far are linked from genus articles (or lists of species in the genus).
Citron melon is accepted as Citrullus amarus by POWO, so that could be changed right now. 17:54, 22 July 2024 (UTC) Plantdrew (talk) 17:54, 22 July 2024 (UTC)
Cheers for assembling this list. I'm sure lots of text within genera articles will require updating when the new names are published, but it's good to know that the number of actual articles needing to be moved is relatively small. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:23, 23 July 2024 (UTC)
Given that we are well into August now and that the major databases seem to have been updated, what's the sentiment on updating at least the effected species articles? Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:16, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
IPNI, POWO and GRIN have been updated. Since we usually follow POWO, I think it is time to update the articles. IPNI and POWO maintained their record IDs, but changed the spelling. GRIN has created new records for the new spellings. Plantdrew (talk) 15:39, 7 August 2024 (UTC)
I see that some of these taxa have already been dealt with - many thanks for moving those pages @Hemiauchenia :) It seems that Protea caffra, Ximenia caffra, Mimusops caffra, Erica caffra, Combretum caffrum, and Encephalartos caffer are the only ones left. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 05:25, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
I think they're all done now. I was going through User:Plantdrew/Article 61.6 and the above lists. There seem to be a number of non-plant taxa with these names as well, so I expect we'll have to do this again sometime. awkwafaba (📥) 21:43, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
OK, after gnoming a bit more, seems like a lot of links out there to the more pejorative names that should be updated, if anyone wants to help. awkwafaba (📥) 22:39, 13 August 2024 (UTC)
There are also potentially redlinks involved. (I dealt with Grewia afra a few days back.) Lavateraguy (talk) 08:06, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
And it seems that not all article name changes were accompanied by a check of "what links here"; I've just found a remnant Senegallia caffra.
The epithet also occurs in image file names. Lavateraguy (talk) 08:23, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
There are several remaining tasks:
  1. Update incoming links to species articles
  2. Update incoming links to red-linked species
  3. Create new redirects for existing synonym redirects
Red-links can be found on my Article 61.6 page, and most of them are also linked from lists of species in genus articles. If the sourcing for a list of species in a genus article is more than a couple years old, it would probably be good to just update the list of species as a whole ({{Format species list}} make it easy to produce an updated formatted species list).
Afrosciadium afrum has several synonym redirects for the "c" names. Redirects for the "c-less" version of those names should be created. I think the "c" synonyms should be tagged with both {{R from alternative scientific name}} and {{R from misspelling}}.
I do have intentions of working on this, but it may be awhile before I get around to it. Plantdrew (talk) 16:02, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Another hijacked site

I came across a source in a moth article (Aithorape roseicornis) just now, and it also looks like it's been hijacked - "www.learnaboutbutterflies.com". I've deleted it, but I suspect that this source may have been linked on more than just this one article, and now this URL appears to direct people to soft porn or gambling or some such. If someone knows how to scan for links to this site and remove them, that would be great. If there's a better place to report this sort of thing, I have no objections to being educated about the procedure for future reference. Dyanega (talk) 15:57, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Deleting references when the url is dead or unfit is discouraged. When url rot occurs, step one is to seek out an archive snapshot. Archive.org has two snapshots of the unfit page; here is one of them. Because there is an archived snapshot, the citation should be modified to use the snapshot. In cs1|2 templates that reference should be rewritten:
{{cite web |title=Dognin's Satin |website=Moths of the Amazon and Andes |url=http://www.learnaboutbutterflies.com/Andes%20-%20Aithorape%20roseicornis.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180516175309/http://www.learnaboutbutterflies.com/Andes%20-%20Aithorape%20roseicornis.htm |archive-date=2018-05-16}}
"Dognin's Satin". Moths of the Amazon and Andes. Archived from the original on 2018-05-16.
This search suggests that there are about 180 articles that include http://www.learnaboutbutterflies.com.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:52, 25 July 2024 (UTC)
@Trappist the monk: this is a slight tangent, but for the url-status parameter, is there a practical difference between "unfit", "usurped" and "deviated"? Thanks, Cremastra (talk) 14:28, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes. See |url-status= documentation. These examples show the difference in rendering (unfit and usurped render the same way; unfit shown):
{{cite book |title=Title |url=https://example.com |archive-url=https://archive.org |archive-date=2024-08-14 |url-status=unfit}}
Title. Archived from the original on 2024-08-14. Retrieved 2024-08-14.
deviated:
{{cite book |title=Title |url=https://example.com |archive-url=https://archive.org |archive-date=2024-08-14 |url-status=deviated}}
Title. Archived from the original on 2024-08-14.
—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:59, 14 August 2024 (UTC)
Ah, thanks. Cremastra (talk) 16:50, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

Dyanega: These should be reported to WP:URLREQ, which is a bot that follows the usurpation process outlined at WP:USURPURL (manually demonstrated by TTM above). Yesterday I completed a batch of 29 usurped domains. I can add this one to the queue, for the next batch once there are enough domains (it's easier to do them in batches). BTW this site is part of the WP:JUDI gambling empire, they have usurped 100s if not 1000s of domains across all Wikipedia sites. -- GreenC 18:48, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks very much. Dyanega (talk) 21:56, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Merge Request Northern Green Anaconda into Anaconda

I have tagged the Northern green anaconda for merge into the Green Anaconda page due to the developments in its taxonomy. See the Talk:Northern_green_anaconda#Latest_paper_just_out,_synonymizing_akayima_with_murinus_-_next_steps? for details. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 02:58, 22 August 2024 (UTC)

Bacterium redirect categories

Module talk:Science redirect § Edit request 2 April 2023 didn't get enough discussion to come to a consensus, so I thought I'd restart the discussion here.

For context, taxonomic redirect categories like Category:Redirects from alternative scientific names of insects use Module:Science redirect, which has a fairly limited set of taxonomic categories. Right now, they are:

  • Animals
    • Amphibians
    • Arthropods
      • Crustaceans
      • Insects
      • Spiders
    • Birds
    • Fish
    • Mammals
    • Molluscs
    • Reptiles
  • Microorganisms
    • Algae
    • Fungi
    • Viruses
  • Plants

The proposal is to add Bacteria as a fourth subcategory of Microorganisms. I think it's a good idea, since looking at Category:Redirects from alternative scientific names of microorganisms, most (but not all!) are bacteria. Does anyone else have an opinion on this? jlwoodwa (talk) 20:23, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

@Harrz, Frostly, and Izno: pinging everyone from the previous discussion. jlwoodwa (talk) 20:24, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
Forgot to mention: I think it's good that Module:Science redirect has this limited set, since they're maintenance rather than content categories. I wouldn't support tripling the number of categories here, or adding something like "Squids" or "Cats". I think Bacteria is a good high-level category, on the same level as the existing ones. jlwoodwa (talk) 20:29, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
  • Support. I've been using |bacterium anyway (it's supported by Module:Science redirect/conf, but just puts pages in the microorganism category). However, if this is changed I'm not sure microorganisms should be even a category. Some fungi and algae are microscopic but not all of them, so the algae and fungi categories ought to be moved up a level. But there might be some protists in the microorganism category that wouldn't have any other relevant category. Plantdrew (talk) 20:55, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
  • Support - bacteria & microorganisms both supported by WP:WikiProject Microbiology. Slightly off topic, but WP:WikiProject Microbiology#Scope makes me think "Microorganisms" should be changed to "Microbiology".   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:05, 29 August 2024 (UTC)
  • Support - I was the editor who made the original request, which - if I'm honest - I had since forgotten about, and I think this is definitely something that should have been done with the creation of the module. Why include viruses but not bacteria? Also, it will help with maintenance as all bacteria redirects are currently in the larger microorganisms category, which really should be a diffusion category. harrz talk 01:56, 30 August 2024 (UTC)
  • Support. Frankly I'm shocked that there wasn't already a redirect category for bacteria - it is too large a group to not have its own category. At risk of getting off topic, I agree with the points brought up by Plantdrew and Tom.Reding regarding the microorganism category. A broader rework of these categories may be in order, but putting bacteria in their own category is a good start. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:54, 1 September 2024 (UTC)
  • Support. Obviously bacteria should be a category. A question is whether it should include Archaea (although the name becomes an issue) or if they should have their own category (are there enough authors?). It might be better to reorganise the categories, but the Microbiology project may prefer to keep that category for practical reasons.  —  Jts1882 | talk  07:50, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

Help the Wikimedia Foundation better understand how on-wiki collaborations work

The Campaigns team at the Wikimedia Foundation is interested in learning from diverse editors that have experience joining and working on WikiProjects, Campaigns, and other kinds of on-wiki collaboration. We need your help:

Whatever input you bring to the two spaces will help us make better decisions about next steps beyond the current tools we support. Astinson (WMF) (talk) 18:17, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to modify the fossil range template

The fossil range template, which we use in many taxoboxes, is intended to indicate the age of the earliest fossils of the organism. Moreover, it has an "earliest" parameter which is intended to be used for when the earliest fossil is very separated chronologically from the traditional fossil range. However, for organisms that don't have lasting structures preserved as fossils (such as most protists, which are my main line of interest), this poses a pretty big problem, as the template cannot be applied with its intended use.

However, there is a use that's emerged for protists. For example, the article Obazoa uses this template not to reflect its fossil range, but to reflect the molecular clock estimate of its age. Another, even more interesting example is the article Chlorophyta, where the fossil range template includes both the real fossil range and, through the "earliest" parameter, the molecular clock estimate.

I believe that this should be implemented formally into the template, perhaps by substituting the "earliest" parameter or by creating an entirely new parameter named "molecular" or another similar term. I believe this change would benefit everyone: not only does this benefit taxonomic groups without fossils, but even groups that have a fossil record, such as most animals, have a molecular age that is distinctly older than their earliest fossils.

I don't have any knowledge on how to modify such a template, so I ask other more experienced editors to implement this change if we reach consensus. — Snoteleks (talk) 10:43, 13 September 2024 (UTC)

Are you proposing any change to the output? The output says temporal range, which is agnostic on the dating method. The template {{fossil range}} is a redirect to {{geological range}}. The template {{temporal range}} is another redirect, so you could use that if you don't want the confusing name in the taxobox. Given the output, it might be better if {{temporal range}} was the primary template. The parameter |earliest= could equally refer to the earliest molecular estimate.  —  Jts1882 | talk  14:57, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
I would like for the output to explicitly say the molecular age separate from the fossil age. Currently the "earliest" parameter does not even get displayed as an age number, only the fossil range date is displayed. — Snoteleks (talk) 09:47, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Diffusing by rank

I've been cleaning up some taxonomic categories, and I just realized that I've been implicitly assuming that the main category for a taxon diffuses into its subcategories by rank. For a concrete example, Aphanopetalum is a member of both Category:Saxifragales and Category:Saxifragales genera, and I was about to remove it from the former. Is this correct, or are subcategories by rank non-diffusing? If the latter, we should note this on {{plant taxa category}} and similar templates – most categories are diffusing, so the exceptions should be marked. jlwoodwa (talk) 19:20, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

The categories by rank are a separate, parallel categorization hierarchy; see here for the rationale and details. Esculenta (talk) 19:24, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
I've read that page, but it says that Since, for example, "Category:Xaceae genera" is a member of "Category:Xaceae", the two categorization systems (one by taxon and the other by taxon rank) interact. Would diffusing be one of those interactions? Furthermore, File:Plant categorization comb ideal.svg doesn't show any article simultaneously placed into, e.g., "Category:Xaceae" and "Category:Xaceae genera". If that instruction page is supposed to communicate "never diffuse into subcategories by rank", I don't think it's successfully doing that.
That aside, if there's already a long-standing consensus that Category:Saxifragales genera should be a non-diffusing subcategory of Category:Saxifragales, I'll go ahead and add that information to {{plant taxa category}}. jlwoodwa (talk) 19:34, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
I thought "separate, parallel categorization hierarchy" in the first sentence was clear enough, but it probably wouldn't hurt to mention the non-diffusing aspect. Esculenta (talk) 19:40, 24 September 2024 (UTC)
@Jlwoodwa:, I'm not sure that there is really any Tree-of-Life-wide consensus about how taxonomic categories should work. The WikiProject Plants subpage Esculenta linked is the only guidance about "by rank" subcategories. That guidance is quite consistently followed for plant (and fungus?) articles, and somewhat consistently followed for articles on other organisms.
However, there are large swathes of "other organisms" where "by rank" categories are severely underpopulated, or have never been created.
And there have been editors who have diffused taxa from main categories to "by rank" categories.
Plants with eponymous categories are quite consistently diffused from parent categories. That isn't necessarily true for other organisms. Fish with eponymous categories are usually also included in the parent category (Brama (fish) is in both Category:Brama (fish) and Category:Bramidae).
Category:Gastropod families is one of the older "by rank" categories (and predates the existence of any guidance for plant "by rank" categories). I'm not sure how it was originally intended to be used, but it was being treated as a container category (see Category talk:Gastropod families), which is completely out of step with how "by rank" categories for plants have ever been used. Subcategories of plant "by rank" categories are also only "by rank" categories: Category:Saxifragales genera has Category:Saxifragaceae genera as a subcategory, and a Petscan search to any depth of Category:Saxifragales genera ought to turn up only articles about taxa at the rank of genus. A Petscan search to depth of Category:Gastropod families will turn up articles on families, species and genera.
Aphanopetalum as a member of both Category:Saxifragales and Category:Saxifragales genera is consistent with how articles on plant genera are categorized (barring creation of Category:Aphanopetalum, which I think would be too small (3 members) to warrant a category). If the guidance for plant "by rank" categories is unclear about that it should be amended. I believe the system for plant "by rank" categories is what Wikipedia is generally trending to for other organisms. However, I do think that is messy set of intersectional categories and I really wish Wikipedia had a system of tags rather than categories that often end up with messy intersections (i.e. tag Aphanopetalum as "Saxifragales" and "genera", and tag a person as "American" "female" "Academy award winner" "actor" "20th century" from "New York City" instead of whatever intersectional categories exist for those attributes). Plantdrew (talk) 02:11, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Cyrtoidea, Cyrtida

Order Cyrtoidea and family Cyrtida are presently red links, but probably shouldn't be. Seem to be an old synonym of Radiolaria and a family thereof, as advanced by Ernst Haeckel, well known for complex drawings of their mineral exoskeletons. Period source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Report_on_the_Radiolaria/Cyrtoidea  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:12, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

The Wikisource link isn't working at the moment (site down?), but it seems Cyrtoidea belongs to Nassellaria. Calocyclas, the subject of the Haeckel plate, is placeed in either family Eucyrtidiidae (PBDB) or family Theoperidae (WoRMS). The image File:Haeckel_Cyrtoidea.jpg could also be useful.  —  Jts1882 | talk  07:58, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
@SMcCandlish: I have made so bold as to correct the link in your post. I hope that's OK. William Avery (talk) 08:08, 26 September 2024 (UTC)
Yes, thanks.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:46, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Taxa named after

Hi folks, I have been following some of the discussions on taxa categories (named by, described in year, etc) but don't seem to have come across a categorisation for taxa named after particular people. There are of course the lists under List of organisms named after famous people, but I find these slightly weirdly organised and a rather inefficient presentation. For example it would seem more logical to me to group all the taxa named after the same famous person, but the lists are alphabetical by taxon name (so Attenborosaurus is miles away from Stumpffia davidattenboroughi) and grouped by century of the person's birth, which hasn't particularly helped to make the child lists more digestible. There are also lots of taxa named after people who aren't really 'famous', for example I recently unredlinked Henri Homblé who has numerous taxa named after him (over 100 including those now synonymised) but isn't exactly a household name. It would seem sensible to me to have a category tree of taxa named after people, with subcategories alphabetically by person name. Has something like this previously been discussed / tried and failed / rejected or would it be potentially acceptable / useful? YFB ¿ 22:48, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

At the WP:Lichen task force, we include eponyms in the article about the person, often as a separate section (or subsection in the "Recognition" section if the article is more developed); in this way, the entry can be sourced, and a complete list of eponymy can be made for that person (even if it's full of redlinks), rather than a category which will only have eponymic taxa that Wikipedia has articles on. See examples like Edvard August Vainio or Ove Almborn. Esculenta (talk) 00:51, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
I like that approach too but I thought a category tree might be a useful complement (particularly where there isn't much of an article about the person). However I just discovered https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Eponyms which appears to have exactly what I had in mind. YFB ¿ 01:29, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Notability of accepted nothospecies

A discussion to adopt a guideline regarding the notability of species has been opened at Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)#Proposal to add nothospecies. Ivan (talk) 14:10, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

Is it an RfC? Is it about the guideline, or an amendment to the proposed guideline, or an amendment to the proposed guideline once it passes? You are confusing me, and presumably others. Cremastra (talk) 19:50, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
Ammended "RfC" to "discussion". Ivan (talk) 21:05, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
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