User talk:Plantdrew/Archive 6

Amphicarpy and several Asterid articles

Thank you once again for your evaluations of plant articles. I've been editing some articles lately, which you may want to review. Amphicarpy has now grown beyond a dictionary description. Scolymus maculatus and particularly Scolymus and Gymnarrhena have been substantially extended and have outgrown their stub status. Warionia was reviewed shortly, but after a few further improvements and DYK, perhaps deserves a bit more than "start". Finally, I feel that Gundelia is now a very interesting article, that brings together information from a wide range of disciplines. Could you give me some suggestions as to how we may raise it from C to B or perhaps even A. I mean, when comparing it to all those Banksia articles with FA status, there most be some perspective.

Thank you in advance, kind regards! Dwergenpaartje (talk) 16:15, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

@Dwergenpaartje:. Done. I've rated a couple as B class, and I think Gundelia is basically there as well, but since you asked for specifics, I have a few minor nitpicks. Most importantly, there's no citation supporting the view that there is only one species (and The Plant List has two species; we usually follow The Plant List, so their position is worth mentioning if even it's not strictly followed). A few sections don't have any citations. I corrected some grammar errors, but it would be good if somebody else went over the article and looked at improving some of the phrasing. Thanks for your work on these articles and happy New Year. Plantdrew (talk) 22:54, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Side note; like most WikiProjects, WikiProject Plants doesn't use the A class rating. Plantdrew (talk) 23:01, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the rating, I've done the suggested further sourcing in Gundelia and balanced the text on the number of species as required. Happy New Year to you!

By the way, I note that the taxonomy at Wikispecies is at odds with all literature I have seen, but it does not quote sources, so I'm hesitant to change anything there.Dwergenpaartje (talk) 13:57, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: Concerning the number of taxa, Hind writes: "Kupicha (1975) and Rechinger (1989), in their flora accounts, and Bremer (1994) and Jeffrey [2006] (2007) in their generic treatments, treated Gundelia as monospecific and the apparently wide variation in corolla colour unrelated to gross morphology. Al-Taey & Hossain (1984) studied material in some detail and recognized that Bornmüller's and Tournefort's variants were in fact a second species, G. rosea Hossain & Al-Taey. Vitek et al. (2010) studied much material, especially live, in nature, and came to the conclusion that there are perfectly recognisable units that can be treated as separate species; the genus now has at least three, possibly four species! The typification of the genus by Vitek & Jarvis (2007) anchored the cream/yellowish corolla'd plants as typical Gundelia tournefortii, a corolla colour that can be found throughout the species distribution—alongside that of the darker corollas. Whilst there is little doubt that there is a significant variation in corolla colour I have one observation, and that stems directly from the writing of this article. Işık Güner's colour plate is from material collected in Turkey (from near Ankara), a considerable distance from the nearest similar coloured corolla'd taxon provided with a name by Vitek et al. (2010) — Gundelia aragatsi Vitek et al.; Işık Güner's plant is most certainly G. tournefortii. Clearly, much more detailed studies are still needed into this complex.". Kind regards, Dwergenpaartje (talk) 13:28, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Ooh, that's a nice summary from Hind. Any chance of paraphrasing a little more of that into the article? I'm ready to to upgrade it to B-class for now though. Plantdrew (talk) 05:11, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I'll give it a go. Thank you so much! Dwergenpaartje (talk) 11:51, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Pachyphytum oviferum

Hi again. Ran across this article, part of which reads like gardening instructions. If you want to tag or just fix. MB 02:54, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I'll take a look at it. Plantdrew (talk) 03:12, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

That was quick! MB 05:48, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Neophoca - (not) monotypic

Resolved

You're entirely right, I did miss the extinct species. However, using all measures, the extant species is WP:PRIMARYUSAGE, with the extinct secondary (the qualifier for disambiguation+hatnotes). Furthermore, the extinct isn't mentioned in Sea lion at all, making the redirect useless for the few people looking for it and this was the very reason I initially missed the non-monotyopic status. IMO the best solution would be to change the redirect to the primary species (the extant - without monotypic tags) and change mention of the extinct to a hatnote in that article (e.g., {{for|the extinct species from Pleistocene New Zealand|Neophoca palatina}}). Of course one could also start a genus article, but it would likely remain one of those single-sentence articles (+taxobox+species list). Would you object to redirect to extant+hatnote for extinct, or do you have an idea for a better solution than the current, highly unspecific redirect? Cheers, 80.62.117.252 (talk) 13:42, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

If you reply, please do it here (keeping discussion together). I'm watching. 80.62.117.252 (talk) 13:44, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

As I'm sure you've seen, this has been dealt with by someone starting a genus page. Cheers, 87.49.147.25 (talk) 15:03, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

I've looked at Australian sea lion and it looks as if the October 2015 expansion resulted in some problematic content - original research and contradictory claims. I don't know enough to fix these myself without spending time on a literature search. Lavateraguy (talk) 14:06, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Re: Plebejus hesperica

Hi, Plantdrew. Happy New Year!

I notice you reverted my move of Plebejus hesperica back in June. The reason I undertook this move is that the naming conventions for fauna specify that the most common vernacular name is to be preferred.

That said, I find Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna)#Use the most common name when possible somewhat confusing, not to say contradictory: it cites WP:COMMONNAME as its basis for preferring the vernacular name, but WP:COMMONNAME says nothing about preferring vernacular names: it simply mandates using the most name commonly used name in English.

As to the original question of whether Plebejus hesperica is more commonly used than Spanish zephyr blue, I have no opinion and defer to others' better-informed judgment. But on the larger question, don't you think Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) should harmonize with WP:COMMONNAME and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (flora)? -- Rrburke (talk) 16:03, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Speaking as one who has mostly edited plant articles, I agree that WP:NCFAUNA confuses the two meanings of "common name" (i.e. 'the name most commonly used' and 'the vernacular name') and that it would be better if it were worded like WP:NCFLORA, but I would be amazed if there were a consensus for this change. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:30, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Problematic gastropod taxoboxes

Happy New Year!

As you are good at sorting out bad taxoboxes, you might want to look at Arminidae as just one example of some strange gastropod taxoboxes. It seems a never-ending task to keep taxoboxes in good order.

As an aside, I've made a minor change to the way that taxon links appear in automated taxoboxes. Previously, you would see something like "†Megacheira (?)", with the † and (?) inside the wikilink. Now it's formatted as "†Megacheira (?)", with the † and (?) outside the wikilink, which seems to me more how it would be done manually in running text. See, e.g., Actaeus (genus). I wonder if anyone will notice? Peter coxhead (talk) 12:26, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Megalopyge opercularis'

Please do not delete the section about popular references to the comparison between Megalopyge opercularis and Donald Trump's hair again without giving proper reference. You stated that the photos and videos of the Trumpapillar are not of Megalopyge opercularis but each article referenced attributes it to Megalopyge opercularis. See LiveScience for instance. If you intend to press your opinion that it isn't Megalopyge opercularis you will need to provide references validating your opinion. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Earthfirstbiologicaldiversity (talk • contribs) 19:49, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

For another reference, little is actually known about the geographic distribution of Megalopyge opercularis. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18344102 If you would like to claim that the biologist that identified the species in Peru as Megalopyge opercularis is indeed not Megalopyge opercularis could you please provide evidence? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Earthfirstbiologicaldiversity (talk • contribs) 20:01, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

Antarctic fishes

I think this should be singular, so would be appreciated if you can move Antarctic fishes over redirect Antarctic fish. JMK (talk) 08:36, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Reference errors on 21 January

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Divaricating plant category

You appear to be removing the category "Divaricating plants" from many (most ?, all?) articles to which it has been applied. Can you please provide a rationale for this. I established the category and have also found it very useful when identifying small twiggy shrubs here on the Banks Peninsular. It is a term in widespread use in New Zealand and it is used as a diagnostic feature in Flora of New Zealand. Your comments would be welcome.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   04:54, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Taxobox cleanup opportunity

Hi, if you're looking for more taxoboxes to clean up :-) I've come across some like the one at Nalacetus that have a {{Harvnb}} template as the value of the authority parameter. Apart from the use of a primary source for the authority, it displays without the comma that is standard for ICZN authors. I've cleaned up some as I passed them, but I'm currently on a mission to sort out species taxoboxes that use {{Automatic taxobox}} instead of {{Speciesbox}}. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:25, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:, I'll look into the {{Harvnb}} more thoroughly eventually; I caught a few as part of some other work. I came across another weird way to do authorities; see Category:Taxon authority templates. There's a handful of articles using these templates, which link to articles on taxonomists from their abbreviation. Some of the linked articles are on Wikipedia, others on Wikispecies. I think all of these templates should be delinked and deleted.

Great work sorting out the species taxoboxes; I'd noted {{Automatic taxobox}} using |binomial= on my taxobox cleanup to-do list, thanks for clearing that out. Plantdrew (talk) 04:06, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Query re placement of authority in species taxoboxes

There seems to be an oddity in where the authority is placed in a taxobox for a species, depending on how it's coded.

• If you use {{Speciesbox}}, then |authority= and |binomial_authority= are equivalent, and place the authority in the "binomial box" (as at e.g. Allium unifolium).
• If you use {{Automatic taxobox}}, perhaps because the species is placed in a section or subgenus, then |authority= puts the authority in the species line (as at e.g. Acer palaeorufinerve), but |binomial_authority= behaves as it does in {{Speciesbox}}, putting the authority in the binomial box (as at e.g. Halictus? savenyei. This means that it's possible to have two different authorities for the species by using both parameters, which is clearly undesirable.
• If you use {{Taxobox}}, then |binomial_authority= puts the authority in the binomial box (as at e.g. Agaricus bisporus), but |species_authority= puts in the species line (as at e.g. Cucurbita maxima). Again, this could allow two different authorities; I haven't found an example, but some pages do have both parameters so the authority appears in both places (as at e.g. Neocorynura electra).

Where is the authority for a species supposed to go? In the body of the taxobox, in the binomial box, or both? Or should editors be able to choose? Do you know if this has been discussed anywhere?

If the answer is not that editors can choose, then the taxobox templates need to be fixed. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:50, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

The taxobox at Dracovenator raises the issue of monotypic taxa; it looks a bit odd to me to have the authority in the body of the taxobox for the genus but not for the species. Um... Clearly this whole issue needs wider discussion, but I'd welcome your views first. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:16, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

(Butting in. Sorry about my lack of other infobox work in spite of promises, I've been absent a lot more than expected due to health reasons.)

My gut feeling is that the proper location for the binomial authority is the binomial box, even if just to avoid good-faith-but-clueless editors adding the authority of every single taxon listed in the infobox as well. No clue if there's ever been any discussion, though.

Regarding monotypic taxa, there is the additional issue that even though genus and species authorities usually are the same, they don't always are—e.g. if the species was originally described under a different genus and later transferred to its own genus by someone else, though also if the genus originally held more than one species and all but one of them were transferred out to different genera. I've got no examples ready at the top of my head, but I've seen cases of both when it comes to Lepidoptera. As we use a single article to serve both subjects, at least in case of monotypic species the taxobox should ideally allow for two different authorities if necessary. (Though, much as with authorities of synonyms, it's always possible to work around it by simply adding it as Authority, year. Not ideal, though). This really is mostly an issue because at some point it was decided that monotypic species and their genera (sensibly) ought to share a page. (Not like there is enough content to support two separate articles without most of it duplicating each other in most cases) Using a taxobox there is a bit of a compromise between using a species-level and a genus-level taxobox, since adding both would be incredibly silly if ostensibly correct. Alternatively, it might be an option to create a {{monotypicspeciesbox}} which allows for both a binomial box and a genus box, so that both authorities can be given without one of them ending up in the infobox-body and one in the separate box. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 20:19, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Actually, via |parent_authority=, |grandparent_authority=, etc., all the automated taxoboxes allow authorities for all the monotypic taxa treated in a single article. The issue, as you point out, is that if the authority is put in the binomial box it looks odd because the others aren't. One argument against putting the authority there is that the extinct dagger normally appears only in the main part of the taxobox, so the binomial box might be seen as literally just for the binomial. Clearly we need a wider discussion, but I was trying to find out whether there had been any previous discussion. I've only been working intensively with taxobox code in the last few months. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:55, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Ah, yes. Those parameters only work for the autoboxes, though, yes? I'm not as well-versed in the automatic taxoboxes as in the 'plain' ones and I suspect you're more intensively familiar with both kinds anyway, at least from the technical side of things.

True about the extinct dagger, and a good point.

Yeah, it's one of those awkward aspects about monotypic genera and their sole species occupying the same article. Not the only one, redirects to monotypic genera (and esp. their categorization and tagging) results in some awkward solutions as well.

Wider discussion would be good. I did a bit of quick digging for you and the closest match I could find for the discussion you're looking for is this one from May 2016. Probably you're aware of that one, since you participated in it, though. Otherwise, I mostly found off-hand mentions and a bunch of 2007 and 2008 discussions across various WikiProjects under the Tree of Life umbrella that are/were halfway applicable. Well-possible I overlooked something, though. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 23:19, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:, apologies for my recent unresponsiveness. I'm not aware of any previous discussion beyond the May 2016 one @AddWittyNameHere: linked, where I suggested that higher ranks should have there own binomial box style boxes to set off the focal rank of the article and it's authority (recognizing that monotypic taxa represent a difficulty for achieving a consistent format).

Monotypy aside, in my opinion, the species authority should be in the binomial box, and editors shouldn't be able to choose otherwise. Looking into Automatic taxoboxes/Speciesboxes using |binomial_authority= and Taxoboxes using |species_authority= is on my taxobox cleanup to-do list. Plantdrew (talk) 05:02, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, I think that regardless of where is the best place to put the authority, taxoboxes should be consistent. So my inclination is to fix the code for now so that authorities always go in the binomial or trinomial box where present. Then we can try to have a wider discussion on this issue, although few editors currently seem interested, and if there's a different consensus, that can be implemented.

I've almost finished working through unnecessary and unused species taxonomy templates, then I'll try to get back to this. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:54, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Peter coxhead If/when such a discussion gets started, please do ping me there? Consistency would be good, if possible—though I'd be willing to settle for merely a limited number of different acceptable formats a bit like ENGVAR and MOSDATE and such. (And yeah, sad thing that probably the main difference between this conversation and a wider discussion will be the venue it's held and maybe one or two more participants). AddWittyNameHere (talk) 16:30, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Ursus Dolinensis

Thanks for your Expert support! I am actually not from the Bio department, i am more in history and Geography and did many caves lately. This is where i came across the Ursus. All the best Wikirictor 01:11, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Me again, Ursus deningeri and Ursus etruscus have also the "Tribe" classifier, which i guess don't belong there either.All the best Wikirictor 01:15, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

I have inserted the See also sections to counter the the Orphan tag of U. dolinensis. Now only the Atapuerca Mountains article links to U. dolinensis. I know, See also lists are rather unpopular. Do you have a better idea to unorphan it? All the best Wikirictor 02:05, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

OK - i made an entry into the Ursus (genus) article, which BTW has the red "Tribe" in it. All the best Wikirictor 02:13, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

@Wikirictor:, apologies for not responding right away. Thanks for your work on the bear articles. With rare exceptions, taxoboxes should only display minor ranks below the next highest major rank of the subject of the article. However, people often create taxoboxes for species by copy pasting the taxobox from the genus, and end up including some minor ranks that should be in the genus article but not in the species article. Major ranks are the KPCOFGS that you probably learned a mnemonic for at some point. So a genus article such as Ursus could include minor ranks between family and genus (such as subfamily and tribe). Species articles could include minor ranks between species and genus (such as subgenus), but not minor ranks higher than genus. Plantdrew (talk) 03:28, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Culture article in Tree of Life

Hi, did you mean to put Living things in culture in the Tree of Life project? If so it has a wider scope than I imagined, could be a good thing. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:37, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap:, yes, that was intentional. But I didn't intend to apply a particularly wider scope. TOL is mostly a forum for discussion of issues that cut across it's daughter projects. Beyond that, it's a collection of tagged articles on the science of taxonomy and nomenclature. But it does include some articles that are above the scope of the daughter projects; eukaryote, life, organism. I figured living things in culture fits in with those. Plantdrew (talk) 03:18, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

OK, I see. If that's what the project wants, that's of course fine. It seems to me that it goes beyond the eukaryote-life-organism scope, which doesn't extend in the direction of culture, but projects are free to choose their own boundaries. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:24, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation question

Hi, here is one that may be "up your alley". I was going to try to disambiguate Green Apple, but most of links are talking about the generic usage "any green cultivar of apple". Not sure of a good way to handle this. There isn't a section in cultivar of apple specifically about green apples. Any suggestions? MB 04:29, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

@MB:, I think what is really needed is an article on green apple flavor (or just disambiguation to that red link). Most of the links to the dab page are artificially flavored candies and beverages, and don't have much to do with apple cultivars that happen to be colored green. "Green apple" could also refer to unripe, sour apples from any cultivar, regardless of color at maturity (the band name "Green Apple Quick Step" is a reference to diarrhea caused by eating unripe apples). It's not clear to me whether artificial green apple flavoring is supposed to be inspired by unripe apples or a ripe green skinned apple that stays somewhat sour (e.g. Granny Smiths). Ethyl valerate is apparently one of the main ingredients in green apple flavoring, but there are other apple-flavored chemicals such as pentyl pentanoate and green apple flavoring is usual sour, so I assume has an acid (perhaps malic acid) included as well; there's not a one to one link relation the flavor and a single chemical. We have articles on artificial butter flavoring and blue raspberry flavor, a dab page at strawberry flavor, a redirect with artificial banana flavor, and wintergreen is sort of about a flavor, so there would be some precedent for a page on green apple flavor.

Aside from the artificially flavored stuff, I see a few links to the dab page on wines with a natural green apple flavor. Per acids in wine, those links could perhaps go to malic acid (and the green apple link from "acids in wine" itself could be changed "unripe apple"). Plantdrew (talk) 02:59, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I did a lot of searching and learned a lot. You can buy green apple flavoring from many sources, and it seems to be added to e-cigarettes and is either an intentional or unintentional flavor in home-brew beers. I couldn't find enough info to cite as sources for a article on green apple flavor. I could probably write a stub based on Original Research summarizing what I can glean from searching. I think I found some other chemicals besides those you mentioned above too. I could not conclude if it was meant to taste like unripe apples, or ripe Granny Smiths. (I'm not sure if there is much difference, and since it is not a "standard" flavor - that is probably a distinction that doesn't matter).

I've gone ahead and changed the links in the wine-related articles to "green (unripe) apple". I think this is better than linking to malic acid in context.

For the candy/soda articles, most of them have lists of flavors that link to the actual fruits (e.g. lemon, orange) - not to an article on an artificial flavoring. (The exception is the blue raspberry flavor you mentioned). I think these can link to Granny Smith because that is the most common green apple and certainly has a sour/tart taste. I think this is better that ~20 red links to green apple flavor. MB 05:01, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

@MB:, personally I'd rather the red link to green apple flavor; linking Granny Smith feels a bit like Original Research. But it's up to you. Another option is just to unlink all the various candy flavors. Most people know what common fruits like lemons and oranges are. We don't (I think) usually have links in articles about brands of potato chips to the different flavors, probably at least in part because potato chip flavors tend to be combinations of things that are only notable in combination as a potato chip flavor; we don't have an article for sour cream and onion. Plantdrew (talk) 21:24, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I just found that in List of Skittles products, green apple is linked to apple. I think that is the best solution. Apple is generic enough to cover it. I agree linking any of these fruits is probably over-linking and not really useful. But there are a lot of links in all these candy/soda type articles to lots of flavors and if I went through the trouble of unlinking them they will probably get relinked eventually.

Did you see in Flavor it says: "The ubiquitous "green apple" aroma is based on hexyl acetate." No link to anything here. Not well sourced either. MB 01:43, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@MB: I agree, a simple link to apple is a fine solution. I hadn't seen hexyl acetate as being a green apple flavoring chemical. I think there are some people who'd like to know what chemicals go into artificial green apple flavors, but yeah, any article I could produce on that would be mostly a "stub based on Original Research summarizing what I can glean from searching". Personally, I'd like to know what the heck goes into kiwi-strawberry flavor, which has always struck me as an unusual combination. Anyway, thanks for your work getting disambiguation links cleaned up. Plantdrew (talk) 04:40, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

I just found another soft drink Ramune with a big list of flavors, most of which were liked to various fruits and foods and things. In addition to Green Apple, there is a link to Mystery flavor. Do you know of a plant a that tastes like that? MB 04:03, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

@MB:. A plant that tastes like mystery? Haha, no. The mystery flavor I'm familiar with is mentioned at Dum Dums (lollipop); mixed flavors at the transition between batches of an artificially flavored product. I'm not sure that a soda (Ramune) would have the same batch flavor transition issues of a hard candy (Dum Dums), but with other Ramune flavors including Disco Dance, Bubble and Flaming, I don't think all the flavors really need to be linked (and the Dums Dums flavors are kind of overlinked right now as well). Plantdrew (talk) 04:17, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I once did a participatory experience at an art event with a theme devoted to synasthesia where I was offering people shots of artificially flavored vodka and inviting them to identify the flavor. I had grape, orange, cherry and pineapple flavored vodkas that were originally clear, but I'd added purple, orange, red and yellow food colorings to them. They were not colored in the corresponding order. Grape was red, rather than the customary purple. I would tell people what flavors I had and let them know that the color didn't correspond the flavor. It was amazing how difficult it was for people to identify the flavor when the color cues were off. Plantdrew (talk) 04:34, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I was unaware of mystery flavor Dum Dums. I'm not sure if the mystery flavor Ramune is static or if it changes like the Dum Dums. I did unlink it as you surely saw. I've since found that AirHeads has a White Mystery flavor that is also from batch changes. And Peeps have yearly mystery flavors (not mentioned in article, but here [1]). Should we start an article on this (e.g. Mystery flavored foods)? MB 05:13, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

@MB: It's an intriguing subject, but I'm not sure there are sources that tie together mystery flavor as a phenomenon across multiple brands. Plantdrew (talk) 05:38, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Default number of parent taxa displayed in an automated species taxobox

Please see Template talk:Speciesbox#Default number of parent taxa displayed for a question about the default number of parent taxa to be displayed in an automated taxobox for a species. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:23, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Pinus rigida example follow-up

As we seem to be the only editors currently working on taxoboxes in any depth, I'd like to run this past you first. No hurry to reply!

I see two self-consistent approaches to autotaxoboxes for species.

1) If a species uses simple binomial nomenclature and has its genus as its parent, don't create a taxonomy template for the species and use {{Speciesbox}}. In all other cases, create a taxonomy template and use {{Automatic taxobox}}. (The requirement for "simple binomial nomenclature" deals with virus taxonomy and cases like Deinodryinus? aptianus.)

2) If a species uses simple binomial nomenclature and there is one and only one rank between it and its genus, don't create a taxonomy template for the species and use {{Speciesbox}}, putting that rank in the call. In all other cases, create a taxonomy template and use {{Automatic taxobox}}.

In case (2), to deal with any single intermediate rank, not just subgenus, {{Speciesbox}} could be given new parameters, perhaps |parent= and |parent_rank=. I wouldn't have e.g. |subgenus=, |section=, |subsection=, etc. because editors would then be tempted to use more than one of them.

Personally, I much prefer the simplicity and clarity of (1). This would mean fixing all occurrences of {{Speciesbox}} with |subgenus= and then removing the parameter from the template. It's a little tricky to search for such occurrences, but I can easily add a temporary tracking category to {{Speciesbox}}; I think there are well under 100 cases.

What do you think? Peter coxhead (talk) 12:00, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, given that you've lately being working on collecting species level taxonomy templates for possible deletion, I would've thought you would want to go with 2. If taxonomy templates below genus are fine with you, I'm fine with 1. I will say that it took me a long time to realize that {{Speciesbox}} existed separately from {{automatic_taxobox}}, and my enthusiasm for the automatic system has gone way up since I realized that the most common use case involved using speciesbox without necessarily needing to create any taxonomy templates. Of course, that's presuming a template for a genus exists; it might not, but if taxobox naive editors were comfortable using speciesbox in general with the assumption that somebody else (you, me, ???) would patrol an error category for missing taxonomy templates, I think that would still be an improvement.

There were 47 articles using Speciesbox and |subgenus= at the start of February. There's often no need to hassle with tricky regex searches for occurrences. Use the Template Data Error Report for the various taxobox templates (e.g. Speciesbox); the template data report is what I've been working off in all my recent "taxobox cleanup" edits. I'm willing to create taxonomy templates for infrageneric ranks if you want to go with 1 and deprecate |subgenus=. Plantdrew (talk) 05:08, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Responding to your "it took me a long time to realize" bit, I think that part of the problem was that all the documentation talked about the "automatic taxobox system", thus stressing the use of {{Automatic taxobox}}, when actually, since there are more species than other ranks, {{Speciesbox}} is the most used. I try now to use "automatED taxobox" or just "autotaxobox".

In view of your comments, I'll think again about allowing one parent taxon in {{Speciesbox}}; it would reduce the need for species taxonomy templates even further. There's also the issue of how to handle virus species – there could be some way of indicating the genus in these cases. Um... Peter coxhead (talk) 17:36, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Having thought about it, and tested out some possible approaches, I decided to be bold and go ahead as explained at Template talk:Speciesbox#New parent parameter. (There seems little point at present in trying to get wider discussion on taxobox issues; when I've tried there have been very few reactions.) Peter coxhead (talk) 16:39, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: That looks good, thanks for working on it. On another note, take a look at Speirantha in edit mode. It's a monotypic genus where the type species is being treated as a synonym. As far as I'm aware there's nothing wrong with that situation nomenclaturally. But it's going to be a very rare that a speciesbox would need to hold a type species that's different from the binomial (a synonymized type is rare to begin with and only is an issue for speciesboxes when the genus is monotypic). I don't think it's worth adding support for |type_species= to speciesboxes, but I'm not sure what the best solution is. Go with a regular automatic taxobox (which then needs a taxonomy template for the species)? Use a regular taxobox? Just put a note of "(type species)" in the synonymy section of the speciesbox?

An additional complication is that it looks like S. gardenii (the type) should actually have priority over S. convallarioides, but WCSP and Flora of China both have S. gardenii as a synonym. I have no idea what's going on with that. Plantdrew (talk) 20:32, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Um... This whole business of "type species" is dubious under the ICN, as has been discussed before. Art. 10.1 ("The type of a name of a genus or of any subdivision of a genus is the type of a name of a species") is very clear that there's no such thing as a "type species". The type of a genus name is the type of a species name. However, it's a widely used term, so we're stuck with it.

I'm not sure why anyone wants to put the type species in the taxobox, to be honest. Why does it matter so much that it's worth adding to the taxobox that the type of the genus Speirantha is the type of the name Speirantha convallarioides (which I think it is)?

I'm certainly not in favour of adding support for this parameter to {{Speciesbox}}; it's complicated enough already.

Re the priority issue, the situation as I understand it from the information in the WCSP is set out below. (Initially I was mislead by IPNI which isn't quite right.) I've now added a "Taxonomy" section to the article.

• The species in question was first described by Hook in 1855 as Albuca gardenii. So whatever happens thereafter, the epithet with priority is gardenii.
• In 1875 Baker, on the basis of a different type, described Speirantha convallarioides and the genus Speirantha. So whatever happens afterwards, the type of Speirantha convallarioides is the type of Speirantha.
• Baillon in 1894, in a footnote, synonymized Speirantha gardenii =Albuca gardenii and S. convallarioides. As soon as they were synonymized, the epithet of S. gardenii has priority. But as S. gardenii has a different type to S. convallarioides and this is not the type on which the genus Speirantha was described, it doesn't become the "type species".

So I think the correct name is S. gardenii and the "type species" is S. convallarioides. I noted this against the synonym.

Peter coxhead (talk) 23:25, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Caytoniales

Normally I'd expect Caytoniales to be at Caytoniaceae, but contrary to the incorrect reference given at the latter article, there's little or no mention of the family in the literature. However, it does seem to be a monotypic order, so only one article is needed and the taxobox adjusted to show bold for both levels, I think. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:32, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:. Well, there may be more families. This book mentions that Corystospermaceae and Peltaspermaceae may be recognized families in Caytoniales and there's no Corystosperm* or Peltasperm* genera listed in the current articles. And there's a genus in Caytoniaceae not in the Caytoniales taxobox. Clearly Wikipedia is incomplete in listing genera. Fossilworks is also (not surprisingly) also incomplete and doesn't even list Caytonia in Caytoniaceae. With the Caytoniales being 8 times more common than Caytoniaceae on Google Scholar and with the sources in the article using the order in their titles, I'd be kind of inclined to IAR and keep it at the order title even if the order turns out to be monotypic; it just doesn't seem right to cite a source that talks about Caytoniales and change that to a statement about Caytoniaceae.

Current practice with regards to handling monotypy is OK for achieving consistency, but I don't think it always yields the best title. Consider Symbion; this genus is probably most notable for being at the bottom of a long chain of monotypy that terminates with Cycliophora, which was for a time the "most recently discovered animal phylum" (and which might still hold most recent status if salami-slicing to avoid paraphyly based on molecular evidence is discounted; the only other hyped possible new phylum since then I'm aware of involved Dendrogramma). Cycliophora gets a lot more Google hits than Symbion and is only slightly behind in Wikipedia page views. If the article were at Cycliophora, I'd bet total page views would increase. With Cycliophora in mind, Caytoniales might be a better title anyway. Plantdrew (talk) 04:23, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

(edit) OK, I didn't think Peltaspermaceae and Corystospermaceae would be blue-links. Still not confident that I understand the classification here enough to be confident merging Caytoniales to Caytoniaceae.Plantdrew (talk) 04:30, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

No, I definitely wouldn't merge Caytoniales to Caytoniaceae; I agree that this is a justified exception, because the family has little or no mention in relevant literature. I would suggest simply redirecting Caytoniaceae to Caytoniales. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:41, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Genus dab pages

Is there a style guide of any sort for genus disambiguation pages? Looking at Ervilia, there are a couple of elements that give me pause. One is that the only entries are red links, mentioned in blue-linked articles. They conform with WP:DABRED; but it looks odd to have only red links at the beginning of each line.

I also wonder about the name and year after each entry, such as "Turton 1822". I know enough about biology to tell genus and species in a scientific name, but I am unfamiliar with much else in style or terminology. Considering that dab pages are meant to be for quick navigation, as opposed to information, I have to ask: are those name-year phrases necessary to tell which article is which? I would think that the parenthetical "plant" and "bivalve" would be enough to differentiate.

I'm getting to know dab pages pretty well, but these seem like stylistic outliers. — Gorthian (talk) 04:38, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

@Gorthian: There's no particular style guide for genus disambiguation pages.

I'll admit having only red links at Ervilia looks weird. I added the red link for the plant because previously the dab page didn't even mention that Vicia/Ervilia was a plant, a fact that will almost certainly be apparent in contexts where Ervillia needs disambiguation. The red link could be avoided with rephrasing the dab page entry. However, I think that if a plant link to Ervilia is disambiguated, it would be better to have the result be [[Ervilia (plant)|Ervilia]] than [[Vicia|Ervilia]]; the latter is less transparent, and may turn out to be a wrong link if later taxonomic opinions decide that Ervilia is not in fact a synonym of Vicia. Another solution to the plant red link is just to create a redirect. I'll do that.

The authority "Turton 1822" is unneeded here; I wouldn't have added it myself, but I wasn't inclined to remove it once it was already present. The majority of our genus disambiguation pages don't include the authority, but the majority are disambiguating one animal and one "plant" ("plant" in this context includes plants, algae, fungi and some other organisms traditionally thought to be such). It's entirely permissible for an animal and a "plant" to share a genus name. However, having two or more animals or "plants" sharing a genus name isn't allowed. Citing the authority is the normal practice in taxonomy to disambiguate ambiguous genus names in the same kingdom. When a genus name is shared within a kingdom the oldest use takes precedence, so including the dates is helpful. See Suarezia for a case where 3 animal genera (and one plant) needed to be disambiguated. Plantdrew (talk) 16:06, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Turning Ervilia (plant) into a redirect makes the page look much better, though I'm afraid it still might get targeted as a misinterpretation of WP:TWODABS. And now I know not to worry about the authority too much. I appreciate the time you took to make these explanations; thank you! — Gorthian (talk) 21:18, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Another tidy?

Shouldn't the section at Lime (fruit)#Plants known as "lime" be a separate SIA? Peter coxhead (talk) 09:19, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:, hmm, I need to think about this and do some research. I had in my head that Citrus aurantifolia was the "common" lime in US markets (also globally?) and key lime was a cultivar(s) with smaller and rounder than usual fruit. But apparently the "common" lime is Citrus latifolia (USDA nutrition data in lime (fruit) is for C. latifolia, so at least I need to sort out if there's any basis for my having thought C. aurantifolia was the "common" lime. Google thAnd of course the taxonomy of cultivated Citrus is a nightmare that I don't have a firm handle on.

It's interesting linguistically. The etymologies of lime for Tilia and Citrus are totally unrelated. Then there's Spanish lime, which shares the citrus etymology by analogy (it's not a citrus, but fruits are sour and green); I don't think it would ever be referred to as "lime" with no qualifier (neither would Surinam cherry, Java plum or Rose apple). Wild lime is a Rutaceae, but doesn't have lime like fruits; and the title "wild lime" probably itself should be a SIA.

I'm inclined to get rid of anything at lime (fruit) that isn't a citrus (sensu lato). Tilia is best handled along at the lime dab page. I'm not yet sure if it's worth keeping the non citrus/non Tilia entries and making a SIA. And although they are citruses in the broad sense, some of the Australia limes are really weird looking and I'm not quite sure if they'd ever be called "limes" with no qualifier (I'm only familiar with Australian finger limes from their use being used in stock photos for exotic looking fruits in dubious weight loss advertisements). I'll think about it some more before I do anything. Plantdrew (talk) 22:39, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I was well aware when making the suggestion above, and leaving the work to you :-), that this is a difficult area, both as regards the application of English name and the taxonomy of Citrus and related genera. But anything you can do can't fail to be an improvement. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:12, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Siganus rivulatus

Firstly, thank you very much for all your hard work reviewing new articles on organisms, you seem to be ploughing a lonely furrow there. You reviewed the article Siganus rivulatus which I started and classed it as Start Class, I wondered why? Some of the other fish articles I have drafted are shorter but you classed them as C Class articles. Thanks again. Quetzal1964 20:17, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964: Thanks you for all the excellent articles you've contributed. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I reviewed S. rivulatus. I do think it should be C class and will change the rating. I'm going to blame force of habit; 95% of the new articles I see are stubs, 4% might be start and articles deserving C or better are rare enough that sometimes I forget that higher ratings are an option. Honestly, B-class might be appropriate for some of the articles that you've produced, but rating something as B-class is supposed to involve a more detailed review than I am usually willing to spend time on. Plantdrew (talk) 22:54, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Spider taxonomy

Re your edit to Template:Taxonomy/Salticidae: I've been reluctant to include many ranks between family and infraorder for spiders, because the classification has been changing so rapidly. Although the latest papers do recognize a clade Dionycha, and do put Salticidae in it, it's not the same as the classically recognized Dionycha, and the article at Dionycha was significantly out of date ("Trionycha" has long been discredited for example, and the cladogram was based on a 1991 source). I've hastily updated it by removing clearly wrong material, but it needs expanding with up to date information. Yet another item on my "to-do" list! Peter coxhead (talk) 11:02, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: would you prefer to remove Dionycha from the Salticidae template? If you don't think the classification is stable enough, that's fine with me. I put in because I'm finding genera and species including it as zoosectio and I felt like that information should be preserved somewhere (just not anywhere below the family level). Plantdrew (talk) 18:00, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

My view has been as per Spider taxonomy#Classification above families, since there's no reliable secondary source for classifying spders above family level. You can get clades from primary sources, but they don't always fit together and being based on sequenced genomes have limited coverage. Even the current best source for Dionycha, now used in the article, doesn't actually give a list of families. I've pieced one together from the article's table of contents, but even so some families are said not to be monophyletic and hence are doubtfully placed.

So on balance I think I would leave out Dionycha at present.

The articles you found need fixing: there seem to be no refs for the classification; I've never seen Dionycha given a rank in any recent publication; other groups shown are even more problematic. Leave it with me – I'll look to see if there are any more recent sources first. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:18, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

P.S. if you're interested, the most recent more or less comprehensive classification of spiders is from 2005 here. The articles you found don't even seem consistent with that, and a a lot has been done in the last 12 years. The same problem arises as with plant higher classification: researchers publish phylogenies with clade names but no ranks, and if there were ranks, it's hard to see how they would fit together. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:27, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: OK, I'll leave it to you. If Dionycha is a flag indicating there are likely other problems in the classification, the following are other spider articles where I've removed it and other minor ranks without checking on other aspects of the classification: Thomisus onustus, Sibianor aurocinctus, Bavia, Thrandina, Langona, Saitis, Zeuxippus, Philaeus chrysops, Philaeus, Zacorisca, Amerila, Paracles, Lyssomaninae, Zorinae, Bianor, Portia schultzi and ‎ Habronattus. Plantdrew (talk) 03:27, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Unitalicized article titles and a couple other things.

I'll attend to that.Many thanks for the clear explanation.All the best Notafly (talk) 21:14, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation - Lotus

Hi again,

Two articles about fragrances (La Nuit de Bohème and Secret Wish Magic Romance reference Lotus as a component. I doubt this could ever be tracked to a specific species, it may even by some generic/synthetic manmade equivalent (much like green apple). Would you think it reasonable to just use Lotus (plant) here. I think other articles link to Lotus (genus) or Lotus (plant) when they are not intending to identify a particular species.

Also, on the Lotus DAB page (under Botany), it lists Nelumbo nucifera which probably isn't necessary since it is already in Lotus (plant) (which redirects to List of plants known as lotus). Why should the Lotus DAB page have this one species an not the others? However, Lotus (genus) is in the list of plants too! But that should probably stay. Nelumbo nucifera may be special too because it is the redirect of Lotus flower.

What do you think of this for the Lotus botany section (always using the form that starts with lotus even if it is a redirect). Does it make it clearer?

• Lotus (plant), various botanical taxa commonly known as lotus
  • Lotus (genus), the specific genus lotus
  • Lotus flower, a species commonly known as lotus
• Lotus tree, a mythological plant

@MB: That would be an improvement for now. I've been intending to look through incoming links to lotus (plant) for awhile, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Some links could be redirected to a better target, and ultimately I'd like to retarget lotus (plant) to the lotus dab page to ensure that new any links find the appropriate article. Figuring out what plant is supposedly represented in various fragrances will be a challenge though. Plantdrew (talk) 06:01, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

OK, I've made that change to Lotus. Good luck going through the incoming links to Lotus (plant) when you get to it. Thanks. MB 06:40, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Diptera pages

Hello again I began the Diptera pages to compliment Janet's splendid photos beginning with the Irish species. I have to go back to all to correct lapses and add more on biology etc and put synonyms in the taxoboxes. I will define the categories more closely at the same time.If you look at Hydrophorus oceanus you will see that Hexapoda has gone and the subfamily is added ( a personal judgment and I don't mind if it's removed).You are right about Heteromyza a careless error.All the best and many thanks. Notafly (talk) 11:56, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

What to do when the databases disagree?

Many thanks again for all your help editing the new pages that I have been setting-up for significant plant species in Cat Tien National Park. I have been working on one important endemic species here called Colona evecta (Malvaceae: Grewioideae) ... or should that be C. erecta (Pierre) Burret (as in the Plant List and 8 accessions in the Kew herbarium catalogue)?

Swedish WP uses C. evecta, quoting COL, as do all the Vietnamese text books (putting the author as (Pierre) Gagn.). There will obviously be a need for a redirect page as a partial solution, but which one should be the main page do you think? Roy Bateman (talk) 14:48, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

@Roy Bateman: Thanks for creating the new pages. As a general rule of thumb, Wikipedia follows the Plant List when other databases disagree. But The Plant List does have some errors and C. erecta looks like it may be an error. Actually, it looks like most of the databases have some sort of error with this species. It apparently was originally described as being in the genus Columbia IPNI has Colona evecta Burret and Columbia evecta Pierre. Tropicos has Colona erecta Burret and Columbia evecta Pierre. The Plant List also has a record for Columbia evecta Pierre. I think the underlying error for all of these stems from Index Kewensis omittting "(Pierre)" from the author citation for Colona evecta. I have no idea how Vietnamese textbooks are getting Gagn. as the combining authority.

As best I can tell, this should be Colona evecta (Pierre) Burret as at COL. @Lavateraguy: is a Malvaceae expert and might have a better idea what's going on with this species. Plantdrew (talk) 18:51, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I can't help you with this one - when I set up my database online access to data on south east Asian floras, and on grewioids, was rather sparse, and this species is missing from my database. (I'm not sure how I missed the name, but even the name is missing.) It looks like I now have a little work to do, with a Vietnam checklist now available.

A possibility is that Colona evecta (Pierre) Gagnep. is a nomen superfluum - Burret (1926) and Gagnepain independently transferring the species from one genera to the other. However Gagnepain's 1943 paper is now available at RJBM, and it doesn't mention this species (it just describes a number of new species), and IPNI only has the one paper on the genus by him.

A search for "Colona evecta" Gagnep. finds a 1972 French paper, documenting the species' presence in Cambodia, so there may be some question as to whether it is endemic to Vietnam. The ascription to Gagnepain is also in the report of the Czechoslovak Vietnamese Exhibition on Nam Cat Tien (1989); that's a plausible source for later Vietnamese usage (or it may come from the 1972 flora referenced therein). Lavateraguy (talk) 00:37, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

It's not just this sort of issue that is a problem, but taxonomic restructurings are a big headache, such as moving sections out as a separate genus. The various databases are in various states of being or not being caught up. HalfGig talk 01:00, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@HalfGig: well, databases that aim to present a single definitive taxonomy shouldn't be instantly updated with every new taxonomic proposal. It's fine to be out of date for awhile to wait for consensus to emerge in the taxonomic community. Although, the problem with The Plant List isn't that it's taking a measured approach to new proposals; it's that it isn't being updated at all. Plantdrew (talk) 03:50, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Just a comment on The Plant List. Don't forget that it's been dodgy from the start when either Tropicos or WCSP in review is involved. TPL's algorithms for extracting information from Tropicos were poor, and resulted in names being listed as "accepted" when they weren't. I think because of cuts in government funding, Kew hasn't released the families in "WSCP in review" yet, so we can't check for any updates since 2012. Databases in other areas have problems too. (Yesterday I was writing about a spider based on the World Spider Catalog; I didn't understand their taxonomy, so sent them an e-mail; this morning the entry has changed and I had to move the article and rewrite parts!) At least for Malvaceae we have an expert to hand, thanks to Lavateraguy. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:34, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I seem to have started quite a discussion here! Thanks again for all your help and comments: for better or worse (I am an ignorant entomologist and not great at editing WP), I have set up the page and redirect under C. evecta. The Vietnamese know this term and refer to Pierre's original, with his illustration copied in CCVN ... I will endeavour to take some pictures of actual plants here ASAP. Roy Bateman (talk) 04:29, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Regarding the page, Lomatium Plummera, What does TPL stand for? Does your reference provide descriptive information distinguishing Lomatium Donellii and plummerae as two species? Sleepwalkerpm (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:12, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

@Sleepwalkerpm: TPL is The Plant List, which as discussed above, has some problems handling names sourced from Tropicos; perhaps I ought not have mentioned it at all. The original description of both species (scroll down one page for L. plummerae) distinguishes them (obviously). The Jepson Manual and California flora web resources mention L. plummerae, but not L. donnellii (aside from Calflora's report of the synonymy given at USDA PLANTS). The Oregon Flora Project checklist mentions L. donnellii, but not L. plummerae. If these are the same species, it looks like Oregon and California botanists disagree about which name to use, each preferring the name based on the type collected in their state. Tropicos shows that Hitchcock & Cronquist had L. donnellii in their 1961 flora of the Pacific Northwest, and L. plummerae in the 1984 version. GRIN does treat L. plummerae as a synonym of L. donnellii. I'm going to take a look at Hitchcock & Cronquist in the library tomorrow, and will see what else I can track down from there. L. plummerae and L. donnellii may well be synonyms, but ITIS/USDA PLANTS/GRIN don't cite a source that resolves their equal priority (being published simultaneously). Plantdrew (talk) 02:31, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

If they are synonyms, then Lomatium donnellii has priority, being published on p. 231 as opposed to p. 232. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:49, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:, "page priority" isn't a thing. Many people think it is a thing, it was a thing in the pre-ICBN American rules, and was very briefly a thing in the ICZN. Priority of simultaneously published names is determined by the First Reviser (ICZN term, but a similar concept is described in ICN Article 11.5). It's possible that the First Reviser was operating on pre-ICBN rules that had page priority or that they used page priority as a rule of thumb in selecting which species should be the synonym. All else being equal, if I had to guess, I'd expect the name with page priority would be the accepted name. But that's not guaranteed. Taxacom has some posts discussing page priority, including this one by a Wikipedian.Plantdrew (talk) 15:31, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks – this was clearly an error on my part. I've certainly seen this argument used as justification for selecting the first name to appear in a publication, but I didn't know that it wasn't actually in the ICN. It shows the importance of checking any statement about the codes against the codes themselves! Peter coxhead (talk) 11:11, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

@Sleepwalkerpm: Having checked several florae, it's pretty clear that L. donnellii is an Oregon/Idaho species that doesn't occur in California, and L. plummerae is a California species that doesn't occur in Oregon. I can't find anything aside from the US government databases that suggests they are synonyms; note that USDA PLANTS and ITIS share their data, while GRIN is independent, and usually very reliable, but has no source for the synonymy. The most recent paper on Google Scholar that mentions both species is from 1938 and maintains them as separate species. Plantdrew (talk) 15:31, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks for Taxobox Osborne 17:46, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

@Osborne: Thanks for the barnstar, and thank you for your work creating articles on algae species. Plantdrew (talk) 17:18, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

A bit of help, please!

I created Category:Euastacus for the species in the genus, what I want to ask, that if an article is written with a common name title instead of the binomial name, should the category sortkey have the species or the common name. Murray crayfish is appearing under A because I did the former but I am not familiar with this area much so I thought you should know (I've seen you on almost all plant species pages I've edited, so if my assumption is wrong, please forgive me). --QEDK (愛) 16:25, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

@QEDK: Practice varies across different groups of organisms and is often not standardized within a particular group of organisms. Insects and reptiles often don't use sort keys at all in genus categories. Birds usually have sort keys by common name with the more general part of the common name given first (e.g., "crayfish, Murray" would be following the style for birds).

That said, in groups where most articles are titled by scientific name and a handful have common names, the usual practice seems to be not having a sort key for common name titled articles. A scientific name redirect may be placed in the category as well, with the appropriate sort key (I've added Euastacus armatus to the Euastacus category)

Thanks for creating Category:Euastacus. When adding a new, more specific taxonomy category, the broader parent category should be removed. With Category:Euastacus existing, Category:Parastacidae should be removed from Euastacus species. I'll take care of it, just letting you know for future reference. Plantdrew (talk) 17:36, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Gotcha! Thanks a lot. :) --QEDK (愛) 19:10, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Dipogon lignosus

Can I ask a favour? I have written an article on Dipogon lignosus and redirected Dipogon (plant) to the new article. I'd be grateful if you could have a look at them and just make sure I have "done it right", should I have amended the talk pages more? (talk) Quetzal1964 21:19, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964:, your expansion of the article looks great. However, when you want to swap a redirect with an article, you shouldn't cut the content from the article and paste it into the redirect. You should take it to WP:RM#TR and have the page moved. The talk pages are fine, although some people prefer to leave project banners on redirects (if you blank |class= and |importance=, most project banners will automatically detect that a redirect is a redirect); but it's certainly better to remove the banner than leaving class and importance values on a redirect. Category:Monotypic Fabaceae genera should be on the page for the genus (regardless of whether it's a redirect or an article), not the page for the species; see WP:INCOMPATIBLE for more information on this. Plantdrew (talk) 22:57, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Quetzal1964 20:59, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Wonder how you did that!!

Well, please understand I'm not complaining or taking issue. But BOY, I wonder how you managed in just a few minutes to go through and systematically edit a whole lot of changes that I plodded through a couple of hours to accomplish! I refer to your editing my "Syagrus (palm)" to "Syagrus (plant)." BTW, I did it because there's a beetle genus called Syagrus. Wikipedia has no article on the genus, but it does have articles on about ten or so species in that genus. And in the taxo boxes, the genus name always linked to an ancient Greek poet, which has a hatnote to the palm genus (or was it the other way around--I don't remember now). Uporządnicki (talk) 16:13, 14 March 2017 (UTC) @AzseicsoK: I'm just going through "What links here" at Syagrus (plant) to change the links. Well done moving the plant to a disambiguated title to accommodate the poet and the beetle genus. It's just that (plant), not (palm) is the standard way to disambiguate plant genera (there are a few exceptions, but it's (plant) at least 95% of the time). Plantdrew (talk) 16:33, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, that's how I did it. I'm just mildly blown away at how fast you did it. Uporządnicki (talk) 17:08, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

What Palm goes to a Greek poet? That might be important to an issue I am having. Kethertomalkuth (talk) 17:14, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

@Kethertomalkuth:, the most symbolically important palm in the Classical world would be the date palm (also see palm branch for a more general discussion of palms as symbols). Plantdrew (talk) 17:29, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

@Plantdrew:, Thanks. I am new at Wikipedia work so I'm just copying your tag there. Let me know if it's wrong. I sure know a lot about date palms. The Greek poet is of particular importance to my research on a Greek urn and a Palm that has broken parts.

Bunchosia

Ok, there are three different species going by the name of peanut butter fruit. Do you not see a problem with that? The scientific sources do not deal with common names, only the technical names. It is Bunchosia glandulifera that is overwhelmingly called peanut butter fruit and was also the first to be identified (Nova Genera et Species Plantarum (quarto ed.) 5: 154. 1821[1822]). It would have been the first to be brought to America and Europe and earn the name peanut butter fruit. Only because it was misidentified as B. argentea do you now think that B. argentea has the name peanut butter fruit. As mentioned, B. argentea is totally wild, uncultivated, available absolutely nowhere except in the jungles of South America. These fruit are not endemic to English speaking countries, except Guyana and possibly Belize, and so names have been adapted from Spanish and Portuguese. The mountain qualifier is used for B. argentea and the word friar for B. armeniaca (which was corrupted into monk). As for B. maritima it is called peanut butter fruit in Portuguese. http://www.colecionandofrutas.org/bunchosiamaritima.htm Tell me, who decides the common names for species that have no official names yet? PametUGlavu (talk) 08:19, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Nothing to say, huh? Please, where are your sources that all three of those Bunchosia species have been named 'peanut butter fruit'? Come on, cough up. By the way, do you do this for every fruit? Hey I saw Monstera deliciosa has 11 different common names in the article, and other species have more, why don't you come to the rescue? Or do you just focus mainly on streamlined efforts of disambiguation that have some precedence and decide to regress to a primitive status quo of corrupted and unsourced nomenclature? PametUGlavu (talk) 10:23, 17 March 2017 (UTC)

@PametUGlavu:. Nobody decides the common names for species that have no official common names yet. We don't just make up new common names for Wikipedia. The names "friar's peanut butter fruit" and "mountain peanut butter fruit" appeared nowhere on the internet until you added them to the articles ("friar's plum" and "mountain plum" do exist elsewhere on the internet but are much rarer than their Spanish equivalents). If B. maritima is well known in Brazil as "Fruta da Manteiga de Amendoim" that might be worth mentioning in the article and it may be appropriate to provide a translation into English. But it's not appropriate to make up English names for Wikipedia just by translating names from other languages. The names need to be used in English in other sources before we add them to Wikipedia.

I don't doubt that B. glandulifera may be widely misidentified as B. argentea, but I'm having trouble finding any reliable sources that say so; the best I've found is this, otherwise it's a bunch of chatter on tropical fruit forums. That source says, regarding B. argentea, "In English, we call it Peanut-Butter Fruit", even while noting that it is not cultivated. You added leaf characters that distinguish B. argentea and B. glandulifera and that was helpful. It would also be helpful to mention (in both articles) that the species are frequently misidentified (especially if there's a good source for that claim). Making up new common names is not helpful. Plantdrew (talk) 16:45, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Cleaning up

Ah, what would we all do without you going round cleaning up after us? (In this particular case, completing the WikiProject tagging I forgot.) Thanks! Peter coxhead (talk) 20:55, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks for doing some clean up after me related to the Bunchosia discussion above. Does this seem like a reliable source?

Assessment

Hi, I would like to hear about your views on assessment of taxa where very little information is available. The case in point is Parhoplophryne, which I had assessed as "C", invoking the logic of the Croughton-London rule of stubs, whereas you reassessed it as being "Start" class. I know that the Croughton-London rule of stubs is not an official guideline, and the discussion here is not about a stub, but I think more in general that potential availability of information should be reflected in the assessment. In the case of Parhoplophryne, which is only known from its holotype collected 90 years ago and is quite possibly extinct, the available information is fundamentally limited. In such cases, I think it is fair that the bar for "C" or whatever class is lower than for taxa where much information is available. Cheers, Micromesistius (talk) 02:32, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

@Micromesistius:. My bad. I saw that it was a very short article, but missed that it is only known from a single specimen. I know about the Croughton-London rule, and I think species known from a single digit number of specimens are textbook examples of the Croughton-London rule. I can't remember what it was now, but I rated an article on a grass species known from a single specimen as B-class, that was only slightly longer than Parhoplophryne. The holotype for the grass had been sequenced recently, which clarified its generic placement (and provided a reference that made it possible to write a decent, if short, article). Am I right in thinking that preservation techniques for herps often make it difficult to extract DNA? Plantdrew (talk) 17:03, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps this issue should be mentioned in the Tree of Life assessment instructions? Yes, extracting quality DNA from formalin-preserved specimens is difficult. Cheers, Micromesistius (talk) 00:15, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@Micromesistius: Perhaps, but there's some variation across ToL daughter projects in terms of how much information may be available on species with few known specimens. Paleontologists often have single specimen species, but they study the hell out of that specimen (Dinheirosaurus is a known from a single specimesn, but has a lengthy GA-class article). Being able to recover DNA can make the difference in whether a single specimen species has been informatively studied in the 21st century or remains a century old description propagated through a fifty year old morphology-based revision and various checklists and databases since then.

Honestly, though, if there is a secondary source (not the primary source for something described last week) providing the number of known specimens for a non-paleontological species, that fact alone could justify Start-class as poorly known species under the Croughton-London rule. "Foous barus is a species of animal in the Fooidae family known from two specimens". Throw in a reference, taxobox and a category, and that's basically a Start class for a poorly known species, given that Wikipedia has plenty of stubs on well-known species with no more content than that. Plantdrew (talk) 02:50, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Liza (genus)

I have drafted an article in User:Quetzal1964/sandbox on the mullet genus Liza. According to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes editors are supposed to follow Fishbase for taxonomy. I started from trying to start an article on Liza carinata and this led me into the issues over the taxonomy of the mullets. I noted that you assessed the article for Planiliza but according to the guidelines there either should be no article or that article should be clear that this genus is not accepted by the source relied on by Wikipedia. I would be glad of your thoughts on the matter. (talk) Quetzal1964 20:18, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964: Hmm. Well, there seems to be quite a mess. Did you notice Liza (genus)? It used to be an article, now it's a redirect. Fishbase is a good source, but the decision to follow it for taxonomy hasn't been discussed in years. I don't know if Fishbase takes a measured approach to new taxonomic proposals, waiting to see whether they are widely accepted (this is good in my opinion), or whether they just don't update at all or are very slow to update (this would be bad). There are a handful of fish editors who are very quick to adopt new proposals, so Wikipedia isn't always following Fishbase anyway.

Catalog of Fishes is much quicker to include new references (while still taking a somewhat measured approach to taxonomy). CoF accepts both Liza and Planiliza, but list the type species of Planiliza as being in Liza. Given that Catalog of Fishes is badly confused and there's no sign of taxonomists agreeing at present, I think the best approach for Wikipedia for now is to include articles on both genera with some notes about the taxonomic disagreement. For Mugilidae, maybe revert the genus list in the taxobox so it follows Fishbase and explain how Durand's research differs with Fishbase's classification in the body of the article? Plantdrew (talk) 21:31, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

It is a mess. I think I will start with replacing the redirects on Liza (genus) with my new article, reverting the redirects on any members of Planiliza then editing the article on Mugilidae to revert to the old genera as per Fishbase as you suggest and making the uncertainty over taxonomy clear. I'll then write a stub, at least, for each genus and make it clear in them what their position is in any "proposed" taxonomy. I also note that the World Register of Marine Species largely seems to follow the older taxonomy and it is, in my experience, usually not as conservative as Fishbase. That should keep me occupied for a while!. (talk) Quetzal1964 07:13, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964: As far as I know, WoRMS follows Fishbase for fishes. I'd be interested to know if you find any places where Fishbase and WoRMS disagree. Plantdrew (talk) 16:49, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

I have replaced the redirect with the article in my sandbox and reworked Mullet (fish), I hope that does something to clarify the "mess". Quetzal1964 11:06, 25 March 2017 (UTC) (talk)

Polysiphonia elongella

Thanks for adding the "Taxbox" - I don't know how to do it. I would be grateful however: P. elongella is not included in the list under "Polysiphonia" - I was doubtful about adding it. Thanks.Osborne 09:24, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

@Osborne:, Algaebase lists P. elongella as an accepted species (see here), so I've added it to the list of species on the genus page.

I usually create taxoboxes by looking for another species in the same genus, and copy-pasting the taxbox there while changing any appropriate details (binomial, authority, etc.). Plantdrew (talk) 16:49, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

SIA needed for "Candelabra cactus"

"Candelabra cactus" is a name used for a variety of cacti (and some non-cactus succulents) – including Jasminocereus thouarsii, which is where I noticed the issue. It should definitely not just redirect to a Euphorbia species. Maybe you could look into an SIA, if you have time among all your other tidying up! Peter coxhead (talk) 11:21, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Jews Mallow

Hello, I was asked a question last week about a plant which I identified as Jew's mallow. So I looked up wiki and found a redirect to Corchorus olitorius. Which unfortunately is not kerria japonica, which I have always known as jew's mallow. Googling I see there is a mixture of the two plants coming up as jew's mallow. It would seem there is a problem here because we aren't mentioning the Kerria under this name. Sandpiper (talk) 09:56, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

The impression I have is the Jew's mallow originally applied to Corchorus olitorius (and perhaps some other jute species) and arose from both it and some species of mallow being used as leaf vegetables in a small way in the Middle East. When Kerria japonica was first described it was mistaken for a Corchorus (based either on a non-flowering specimen, or on the double form, so the author was unaware of the rosaceous flower of the single form), and as a consequence of that the name Jew's mallow also got attached to Kerria. As Kerria is grown in Britain, and Corchorus isn't the name is more often used for Kerria. Lavateraguy (talk) 17:50, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Faheatas article

The Faheatas article is an obvious hoax - a copy of the text of Archaeoceti with a new name. I've tagged it for speedy deletion. Blythwood (talk) 00:04, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

@Blythwood:, thanks for catching that. It was pretty sloppy of me to miss it. Plantdrew (talk) 03:33, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

No worries. One thing I've learned from NPP is to watch out for things that don't add up. In this case the big surprise was a new account posting a gigantic article (complete with complex formatting like phylogeny tables!) in its first edit - I've learned that that's almost always a banned editor coming back with a new account or some kind of hoax taking content from another page to make it look plausible. Blythwood (talk) 08:23, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

R from alternative scientific name switches

It's absolutely trivial to set up extra switches/subcategories for {{R from scientific name}}, and I'll happily do it on request. (Which is not to discourage you from applying for template editor status and doing it yourself!) All that's necessary is to decide on the two pieces of text to substitute for "an organism" and "organisms" and to create the category "Redirects from alternative scientific names of ..."

Presumably there's no point for groups that are almost all at the English name, like birds and mammals. Looking at invertebrates in Wikipedia:WikiProject_Tree of Life#Scope and descendant projects, possibilities seem to be:

• Molluscs – to use for those not covered by the more specific subgroups
  • Bivalves
  • Gastropods
  • Cephalopods
• Arthropods – again for those with no more specific subgroup
  • Insects
    • Lepidopterans (or should it be butterflies and moths?) – they make up a huge proportion of the entries in Category:Redirects from alternative scientific names
    • Beetles – ?
  • Spiders – already exists

I note there's no WikiProject for crustaceans, but this wouldn't stop there being a subcategory.

However, the real question is "what use are these (sub)categories?". There are enough plant editors at the moment to be able to do some maintenance of Category:Redirects from alternative scientific names of plants. I find Category:Redirects from alternative scientific names of spiders useful from time to time (and it's not a very big category). But who would maintain and use other categories if they were created? Peter coxhead (talk) 18:59, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Peter, yes, I know it's pretty easy to add switches; I was added "fish" before the template was protected (and back when my non-plant editing was more focused on fishes rather than, well, the entire tree of life). I did apply for template editor a few days ago, but was denied because I haven't been doing things by the book. Apparently I need to mock-up changes in the sandbox and formally request edits a few times before I can get the template editor right; asking on your talk page doesn't cut it, but you can expect to see some formal edit requests from me in the next few days.

Generally, I think switches should correspond to WikiProjects. To the extent that there's an active editor base for a particular group of organisms, it usually corresponds to a WikiProject. Crustaceans is a bit of an exception as WikiProject Arthropods effectively is WikiProject Crustaceans; there aren't very many articles on myriapods or non-spider chelicerates. From what I've seen, several of the editors who are adding the Rcat to Lepidoptera do occasionally work on plant redirects, and are adding the switch. I'm in the habit of adding (nonfunctional) switches corresponding to projects on any redirects I edit, and I've noticed a few cases where other editors have done likewise. I think if support for more switches were added, most of the gnomes who bother with rcatting scientific name related redirects would start making use of them going forward.

There is of course the enormous growth in use of these rcats over the last couple years, and there may not be much enthusiasm for revisiting these redirects soley to add a switch for a subcategory. I wonder if a bot could be employed? The Article Alerts report somewhat recently started listing Redirects for Discussion based on WikiProject banners on the talk page of the redirect's target. So somewhere out there, there is code that knows how to associate a redirect with a WikiProject. Maybe a bot could make use of that. Plantdrew (talk) 20:07, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, when we get the categories set up, it will certainly be worth making a bot request. Won't work for crustaceans, though. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:44, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

When making some fixes after the addition of the new switch for crustaceans, I noticed that the table at Wikipedia:WikiProject Arthropods#Assessment statistics doesn't show redirects and categories. I know that I got extra rows added to other WikiProject tables, but I don't remember offhand how it's done. Presumably they should be added? Peter coxhead (talk) 09:34, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

You can get categories with "QUALITY_SCALE = extended", but redirects need "QUALITY_SCALE = subpage" with an appropriate subpage (e.g. Template:WikiProject Turtles/class); if going with subpages, "FQS = yes" enables the extended categories and "redirect=yes" enables redirects. There are a bunch of ToL projects that don't even have the extended categories; ToL itself, Lepidoptera, Mammals, Marine life, Fungi, Extinction, Cephalopods and Arthropods. I'll look into enabling extended categories where the templates aren't protected. Plantdrew (talk) 15:53, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Ah, yes, it begins to come back!

Where are the redirects to alternative scientific names of crustaceans? I only managed to find one to start populating the category. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:46, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Category:Redirects from synonyms is where I'm finding crustaceans for now. Plantdrew (talk) 17:27, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Ah, right. There are some spiders there too, I see. I'd never looked into this category. One of the entries raises the issue we've discussed before: Araneus scenicus redirects to Zebra spider. Araneus scenicus is a synonym of Salticus scenicus, whose article is at the English name (doubtfully in my view, but ignore that for now). So I re-tag it with {{R from scientific name|spider}}, but unhappily, thinking yet again about "R from alternative scientific name to common name". Peter coxhead (talk) 21:36, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, I ran across a few of these as well. I went with {{R from alternative scientific name|crustacean, also unhappily. Given that we chose different solutions it might be worth bringing up "R from alternative scientific name to common name" at ToL (as far as I can remember, it been just you and I discussing this, maybe with some input from Paine Ellsworth on Rcat template talk pages). I see SchrieberBike is apparently going with alternative scientific name (see Bassaris itea). William Avery might be skipping these; I don't see any alt scientific name to common name redirects in his recent edits, which cover ground where he should be encountering some. AddWittyNameHere is working in areas where common name titles are pretty rare, I don't see any recent edits where she would have had to deal with this. Plantdrew (talk) 22:04, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I looked at Bassaris itea and that must have been a copy-paste error on my part. I meant to use {{R from scientific name}} and I think (hope) that's what I usually use in that case. I've fixed it.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:19, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

On further looking at it, I may have been thinking that since I wasn't going from the current scientific name, but from a synonym, that {{R from alternative scientific name}} may have been the right one. It is a redirect from an alternative scientific name, but clearly that template is designed to go to another scientific name. I guess it is not clear to me what to do in that case.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:25, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike: It's not clear to any of us. Both of the templates display text that is incorrect in some way when the target is not a scientific name. Should there be another rcat template for these cases? Plantdrew (talk) 02:08, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, I think there probably should. The consequence of not having one is that different editors quite reasonably use different R cats, which is not helpful to anyone. An alternative is that one of them should have their explanatory text changed. {{R from scientific name}} currently produces "From the scientific name of an organism: This is a redirect from the scientific name of an organism (or group of organisms) to the vernacular ("common") name." Neither "the" is correct. Better would be "From a scientific name of an organism: This is a redirect from a scientific name of an organism (or group of organisms) to a vernacular ("common") name." Peter coxhead (talk) 07:08, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I've been bold and made the change I suggested immediately above. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:47, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: "The" to "a" is an improvement. Here's a thought; rather than a new template, add a second switch to {{R from alternative scientific name}}. Second switch would take values "scientific" or "vernacular" (if left blank it would default to "scientific") and display different text when the target is a vernacular name. I don't think it should do anything different with regards to categorization, although the category description should be changed to account for targets being vernacular names. {{R from alternative language}} could serve as a model; it was changed to add a second switch to describe the language of the target. The monotypic taxa rcat templates might also take a second switch to account for vernacular name targets. Plantdrew (talk) 16:02, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I was going to pick up this suggestion, but I forgot. To be quite clear, the idea is only to change the displayed explanatory text and not the category. So {{R from alternative scientific name|plant|vernacular}} would display "This is a redirect from an alternative scientific name of a plant to a vernacular name". What would you do with redirects from alternative scientific names to monotypic taxa at the vernacular name? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:18, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: Yes, my idea was just to change the text and not display a different category (though the text displayed on the category itself would also need to be changed). I'm not sure what to do about alternative scientific names for monotypic taxa at vernacular names. I think in most cases it doesn't really matter; the vernacular name usually covers multiple ranks. The exception might be vernacular names that include a translation of the specific epithet; those would pretty clearly apply just to the species. {{R from alternative scientific name|plant|monotypic}} would be good for alternative scientific names redirecting to monotypic taxa that are at the scientific name. Plantdrew (talk) 16:28, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Bot to fix entries in Category:Redirects from synonyms

Looking through this category, it's not easy to see that a bot would work, since there are different kinds of redirects involving organisms there.

• Acarian → Acari – {{R to scientific name|arthropod}}
• Alosa pontica → Pontic shad – {{R from scientific name|fish}}
• Cinerocaris magnifica → Cinerocaris – {{R to monotypic taxon|crustacean}}
• Platythelphusidae → Platythelphusa – {{R from monotypic taxon|crustacean}}
• Synaedrys densiflora → Notholithocarpus – ?? Synaedrys densiflora is a synonym of Notholithocarpus densiflorus, which is the only species of Notholithocarpus, so this is "R from alternative scientific name to monotypic genus". So which R cat do we use? In another case I used both {{R from alternative scientific name|plant}} and {{R to monotypic taxon|plant}}.
• Banded white-lipped snail → White-lipped snail – stays at {{R from synonym}}??
• Ceylonthelphusa scansor → Perbrinckia – ??

Drat! Peter coxhead (talk) 13:38, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting a bot for this category, as it is indeed quite a mix of different types of redirects. I was suggesting a bot to go through Category:Redirects from alternative scientific names, and adding switches. Plantdrew (talk) 15:49, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

"R from alternative scientific name to monotypic genus", hmm, another complication. I'm not sure what to do there. Maybe two templates is best. I made it through about 350 of the "synonyms" yesterday. I could probably finish off in a week without a bot, although the new Template Data Error Report came out yesterday evening, so I've got that to occupy my time as well. Plantdrew (talk) 16:06, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of List of solitary animals

The article List of solitary animals has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

If done properly, this list will include probably almost all animal species in the world

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. MiguelMadeira (talk) 13:00, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Taxonomy template link parameter

Hi, if you look at the taxobox at Cephalosphaera usambarensis, you'll see that the genus line in the taxobox looks like this:

Genus: Cephalosphaera Warb.

with a circular wikilink, whereas for a monotypic genus it should look like this:

Genus: Cephalosphaera Warb.

To achieve this, |link= at Template:Taxonomy/Cephalosphaera (plant) must be given the value Cephalosphaera usambarensis|Cephalosphaera and not the value Cephalosphaera (plant)|Cephalosphaera, otherwise in the article's taxobox the Wikimedia software doesn't recognize that it's a circular wikilink and so doesn't replace it by bolding. I haven't corrected the taxonomy template because then you wouldn't be able to see the problem.

The general point is that |link= must be set to have the actual article title as the first value, and not rely on a redirect, otherwise the taxobox formatting won't always be correct. (A point I sometimes forget – apologies if you knew this and also just forgot.)

One of the subtle points about automated taxoboxes, possibly not explained in the documentation. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:23, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: thanks for the explanation, but this was an oversight on my part. I know how to set up the taxonomy template to keep circular links from displaying. Just got a little sloppy dealing with an edge case of an edge case (genus monotypic and not at genus title). Plantdrew (talk) 21:35, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

I would probably have assumed it was just an oversight if I hadn't just explained all this at User talk:Quetzal1964#Taxonomy template link parameter. Anyway, explaining it may help me to remember! Peter coxhead (talk) 22:07, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks Osborne 14:32, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Palm Frond

There are 17 articles that link to Palm frond. Most, if not all, mean the actual large leafs of palm trees. Palm frond is a redirect to Palm branch (symbol), a religious symbol which is hardly helpful (e.g. "a machine gun firing as it is situated above the camouflage of palm fronds during the Battle of Guadalcanal.")

I intend to boldly change this redirect. One possibility is Frond which is mostly about ferns, although the lead says some botanists do apply the term to palms also.

Arecaceae only mentions "frond" once in the lead, where it says "Most palms are distinguished by their large, compound, evergreen leaves, known as fronds". This is the best target I have found. There is also a photo of a palm, so any reader would probably easily understand what a frond is from this redirect.

I am surprised that there is no article on palm fronds, given how often they have been used. A quick search turns up lots sources such as:

[2], [3], [4], [5]

And from a website that sells fronds: "They were used whole as thatching to build roofs and walls for houses, the strong mid ribs used to make crates, fences, weapons and furniture and the smaller leaves used as a material for fashioning clothing, baskets, rope and cooking tools."

And a more professional source: [6]

Any comments on the redirect? Do you know anyone who might be interested in writing such an article? MB 04:45, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@MB: I think the redirect could go either to Arecaceae or frond, although without more content discussing palms in frond, I think Arecaceae is a better target. There could be an article about the topic, although I don't know anybody interested in writing it. Plantdrew (talk) 21:26, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

A quick google reminds me that the leaves of cycads are also referred to as fronds, as are non-homologous structures in some algae and fungi. I expect that frond is also fairly widely used for the leaves of a number of groups of fossil plants. Lavateraguy (talk) 13:47, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Taxobox cleanup in Rubiaceae

Hi. Thanks for cleaning up the taxoboxes in the Rubiaceae family. Your help is much appreciated! I do have one remark: in Rubiaceae, tribal level information is quite important for the people working on the family. That is why I add |display_parents to the taxobox. Maybe you can keep this too? Orbicule (talk) 08:56, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

@Orbicule: Thanks for all your work on Rubiaceae articles. I took out the |display_parents because we usually only include minor ranks that are immediately above the subject of the article. Genus articles should display tribes and subfamilies, but species articles usually don't. Subfamilies in Fabaceae and tribes in Asteraceae are arguably as important as Rubiaceae tribes for understanding classification within the respective families, but articles on Fabaceae and Asteraceae species don't usually have minor ranks between genus and family. This is in line with the advice given at Template:Taxobox/doc#Classification (which actually suggests, as an exceptional case, including Bambusoideae on articles for species in that subfamily, although in practice many bamboo species lack subfamily). I'll leave |display_parents in Rubiaceae alone for now, but do consider that anybody who is interested in how the genus fits into the family can readily find that information in the genus article. Is it really necessary to display it on species articles as well? Plantdrew (talk) 21:38, 27 April 2017 (UTC)

Aha, now I understand that there is a difference between the genus and the species articles. I would like to keep the tribal information on the genus articles, but it is indeed fine to omit that information on the species articles. Thanks for the information! Orbicule (talk) 11:04, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for being one of Wikipedia's top medical contributors!

please help translate this message into your local language via meta

The 2016 Cure Award

In 2016 you were one of the top ~200 medical editors across any language of Wikipedia. Thank you from Wiki Project Med Foundation for helping bring free, complete, accurate, up-to-date health information to the public. We really appreciate you and the vital work you do! Wiki Project Med Foundation is a user group whose mission is to improve our health content. Consider joining here, there are no associated costs.

Thanks again :-) -- Doc James along with the rest of the team at Wiki Project Med Foundation 18:08, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Usage of species box for monotypic taxon at both genus and family level

I've been going through hymenopteran families and superfamilies, tidying up and converting to the speciesbox format from the taxobox format to help maintainability in the future. I see on the Amborella page that it is possible to have proper bolding for species, genus and family for a monotypic taxon. I tried a similar transfer with Aptenoperissus, which is the only member of Aptenoperissidae I have the taxonomy pages set up, but the genus keeps redlinking itself rather than being bold plain text. Would you mind giving me a pointer as to what's going on? Thanks! M. A. Broussard (talk) 21:42, 6 May 2017 (UTC)

@M. A. Broussard: the red link was because you had a typo in the generic name at Template:Taxonomy/Aptenoperissus. The rank at Template:Taxonomy/Aptenoperissidae was also wrong, by the way; the rank should be the rank of the taxon in the name of the template, not the rank of the link taxon, where these two are different. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:26, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: Thank you! I was trying to work it out before going to bed, but couldn't get it going. I'm still figuring out the automatic taxobox system, and I appreciate the help. Cheers. M. A. Broussard (talk) 07:53, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Paragramma

A tag has been placed on Paragramma requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section G6 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is an orphaned disambiguation page which either

• disambiguates two or fewer extant Wikipedia pages and whose title ends in "(disambiguation)" (i.e., there is a primary topic); or
• disambiguates no (zero) extant Wikipedia pages, regardless of its title.

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such pages may be deleted at any time. Please see the disambiguation page guidelines for more information.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. -KAP03(^{Talk • Contributions • Email}) 19:01, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Wood Between the Worlds

You recently removed a section of this article, as you should have, since it was unsourced at the time. I've since restored it with citations. Aurum ore (talk) 03:27, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Comment from Sleepwalkerpm

I read your favorite Wikipedia page. Do you remember the critic commented that the plant's location was insufficient data for an encyclopedic entry. (I'm not pointing at the L. Plummerae and L. Donnellii which I misspelled in my previous talk.) After recently reading about Mimosa pudica, a rapid moving plant, I surprisingly discovered it nearby.

After reading that page, I want to post the image and location to proof it grows here but I was also wondering if I showed you a picture, would you be able to identify the plants growing around it? I don't want to just mention the location in the caption. That's useful information to botanists, right?(I could include a landmark (a movie theater) in the back but I don't want the plant poached. What are your thoughts on that as well?)Sleepwalkerpm (talk

@Sleepwalkerpm:, I'm a little confused, you have a photo of Urena lobata (my favorite page), or a photo of Mimosa pudica? And you want to post the location to prove where it grows, but you don't want to mention the location in the caption? You're free to upload pictures with or without location information. Location is useful information, but not required. Mentioning a landmark is likely overspecific (and if you're worried about poaching, that narrows down the location too much); city name is useful, while still being vague as to precise location of the plant.

You can post a link to the picture here on my talk page and I can try and identify the surrounding plants. Plantdrew (talk) 16:58, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Wow!

I see you are in the top 100 contributors to Wikipedia! And via activity that is substantially useful to the project, rather than, say, mainly correcting spelling and punctuation like some other top contributors. I can only say how much I appreciate your work. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:39, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

I knew I had to be getting close to breaking the top 100, but I hadn't looked at it recently. Thanks for noticing that for me. And thanks for all your work here as well (especially templates). Plantdrew (talk) 20:56, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

Faith restored

In using empty WikiProject templates when creating articles I basically know nothing about, in the hopes that someone who does will come along shortly and fix me. I started with a picture, and birth/death dates, and I swear it took 20 minutes just to figure out which Johannes Scheuchzer I was actually looking at. Tip for the Scheuchzer family, be more creative in your names. TimothyJosephWood 22:20, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

@Timothyjosephwood:, thanks for creating the article. I don't know if you came across him, but there's yet another Johann(es) Scheuchzer. He lived from 1738-1815, and has the botanical authority abbreviation "Scheuchzer. f." ("f." indicates he's the son of somebody, probably the guy whose article you created). No Wikipedia articles on him yet, but he does have a Wikidata item, d:Q21607893. Names in this family are a nightmare. Plantdrew (talk) 22:37, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

As it turns out, there is a German library who is uploading images en masse to Commons. Contributions can be seen here. There's about 17,000 of them. If you want to start working your way forward from the earliest, I've started working my way backward from the latest. They're fairly random as far as I can tell, although I've been knee deep at least today in people mostly from Switzerland. But they are overall exceptionally good quality scans, probably higher resolution in many cases than the originals. I would keep a keen eye on de.wiki, since a lot of them seem to have articles there but not here. TimothyJosephWood 00:29, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Assessments

Hi Plantdrew: I'm a new WP:FUNGUS member, having recently become obsessed with lichens. My current project is Physcia caesia, which you recently assessed as C-level. I'm interested in taking it to the GA level, and wonder if you can tell me what I'd need to add to get it there. (I've taken bird articles through the process, but never plants or fungi.) I know the lead needs expansion. What else would you suggest? Thanks for any help you can give me... MeegsC (talk) 16:27, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@MeegsC: I'm not really involved with the GA/FA processes at all, I just do initial assessments of new articles. Casliber would be better to ask about fungus GAs in general. Although I suspect he'll be the one to take on the review when you make the formal GA nomination. I'll take an informal look for now and will comment further on the article talk page. Plantdrew (talk) 00:44, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Plantdrew! That's exactly the sort of thing I was looking for... MeegsC (talk) 05:23, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Huge thanks for everything

I don't know if you have be watching my talk page, but I sort of got into with Yamla, the admin who blocked me back in March. I am not really familiar with how admins react when they get slammed pretty hard, but he seamed to take it pretty hard and well I am not entirely sure if he might retaliate with a another block. Just in case this ends my WP career, I wanted to take the time thank you for all the help given me over the last few months and especially for sticking up for me during my block in March. I very much appreciated that effort. Take care! --71.81.74.166 (talk) 17:43, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

@71.81.74.166: yeah, that's probably not going to work I've been watching your talk page and took a look at your activity today after you messaged me. I thought your response to Bromly was warm and your initial response to Yamla was fairly civil (the second less so). If you were going to get blocked, I think it would have happened already (and would've been totally unjustified). Seeing your message to Ritchie333, I think you'd be safe to register account, as long as you establish a substantial edit history in other topics before venturing back to basketball. With a registered account it will take a Check User request to link your account name to your (allegedly tainted) IP, and there will be more eyes on the CU than just Yamla's.

Aside from your talk page, I've also been keeping an eye on the sock puppet investigations for LewisTheSock. He comes back every 10 days or so with a new account. I'm convinced he's not the sock puppet master (Dereks1x) he was originally accused of being. It's an interesting individual who is so inspired to contribute to Wikipedia that they continue to try for years and across dozen of accounts in spite of a Kafka-esque bureaucracy that will never let their contributions stand until they confess to a crime (being Dereks1x) that they didn't commit. Perhaps at some point I'll put my neck on the line and suggest that Lewis be granted an account that won't get blocked.

I hope your watching my page to see my response, since I'm pretty sure my attempt to ping an IP will fail. Plantdrew (talk) 03:02, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Hmmm. That's very interesting. You suspect Lewis and his socks are innocent as well. You mentioned a concern that the admins may have got something wrong a long time ago. So the Lewis socks are not socks of the original offender, and are not vandals themselves? This is disturbing, and if it's true, it's a damn shame. Thanks for the advice on creating a new account. I will probably do it before making any more actual article edits. I will keep an eye on your page and the sock puppet investigations. --71.81.74.166 (talk) 03:25, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Good luck. I'd like to know your account name if you'd be willing to share that (you can use the email function to do so privately). Plantdrew (talk) 21:45, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

Subdivisions of botanical genera

Article 21 of the ICN says "The name of a subdivision of a genus is a combination of a generic name and a subdivisional epithet. A connecting term (subgenus, sectio, series, etc.) is used to denote the rank." So the taxobox display should be as it is now at Ribes aureum, i.e. with the abbreviated genus name present for all ranks below genus. To achieve this, the taxonomy templates are set up as at e.g. Template:Taxonomy/Ribes sect. Symphocalyx. (One of the changes I made when converting to Lua was to allow the correct formatting of subdivisions of botanical genera in automated taxoboxes; previously all the link text in the taxonomy template got put in italics whereas the connecting term should not be italicized.) Peter coxhead (talk) 06:51, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: Yes, but see recommendation 21A where it has Astragalus (Cycloglottis) contortuplicatus. Infrageneric ranks (subgenera from here on for simplicity) are a headache and I'm mostly avoiding working with articles that have them. To the extent that I do work with articles that have them, I try to leave the taxobox looking mostly like it did before, which is what I did with R. aureum. Most (but not all) of the articles with subgenera, both plants and animals, just give the name of the subgenus; no parentheses, no genus, no rank.

I think there are three distinct situations where a subgenus would be mentioned. The ICN addresses two of them, and the ICZN address just one.

1 Discussion of the subgenus as its own entity. ICN is clear here with 21.1 and example 1; ICZN doesn't discuss this at all. In practice, looking at a sampling of botanical literature, I see that the genus is frequently omitted after the first mention of the taxon. It's "Carex sect. Ovales" at first mention, but after that it's just "sect. Ovales" (in some contexts, even the rank is omitted). Abbreviating the genus as in "C. sect. Ovales" seems to be quite uncommon.

2 Indicating the subgeneric placement of a species in running text. Both ICZN and ICN advice putting the subgenus in parentheses in the middle of the binomial.

3 Indicating the subgeneric placement of a species in a hierarchical table (e.g. a taxobox). To me this seems to be in-between case 1 and case 2; we link to the subgenus as an entity in its own right, but the overall context is about the species.

I'm not sure what the best format it is. Recommendation 21A is no help for when two infrageneric ranks need to be displayed. Article 21.1 isn't strictly followed; taxonomists go with simpler formats if they're writing extensively about subgenera. Plantdrew (talk) 21:41, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

I offer no views on "zoological" names in taxoboxes. Running text is, I agree, different from taxoboxes; I certainly support abbreviating the formal name in running text once the context is clear. It would be excessive to keep repeating the genus and rank when writing about subgenera, but the taxobox is a 'one off'. 21A isn't relevant to a taxobox in which successive ranks are being displayed; it specifically concerns the 'complete' name of a species when the rank between genus and species is to be shown as well, i.e. it says don't write "Astragalus subg. Cycloglottis contortuplicatus" without the parentheses, which is obviously sound advice, because the specific epithet then looks as though it applies to the subgenus. Taking the ICN's second example, 21A would apply to the last line if we had something like this in the taxobox:

Genus: Astragalus

Subgenus: A. subg. Phaca

Species: A. umbellatus

'Binomial' name: Astragalus (Phaca) umbellatus

A sound reason for not doing this is, as you note, is because it doesn't work with more than one rank between genus and species (any more than it would do with more than one infraspecific rank). Peter coxhead (talk) 06:28, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

In article categories, does the word fruit include fruiting species?

Hi Drew,

I just started populating Category:Fruits originating in South America, and I'm wondering whether it's best to include only articles devoted to a fruit, or also to include articles in which the subject is the fruit-bearing plant.

In creating the category, I followed the example of the other "Fruits originating in…" categories, but I wanted to confirm that these particular categories are desirable (i.e., appropriate in scope and not redundant). Many thanks! —Ringbang (talk) 15:54, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

@Ringbang: There are very few articles on fruits that are separated from articles on the plants that bear that fruit (grape/Vitis and carambola/Averrhoa carambola are among the exceptions); there are more where a single article uses the common name for a fruit and the plant that bears it, as with jabuticaba. The categories should include articles at scientific names as well as common names, but should probably only include the common name for the fruit when there is a separate article at the scientific name for the plant that bears that fruit.

However, I'm not sure these categories are desirable. At the very least, they need clarification and refinement. Is "fruit" being used in a botanical sense or a culinary sense? I would think culinary (a couple categories explicitly limit them to fruits edible to humans), but eggplants and tomatoes are included, which most people would consider to be culinary vegetables. Yet plants with human edible seed bearing structures (botanical fruits) that aren't among the familiar types of culinary fruits (botanical berries, pomes and drupes, basically) aren't included in any of the categories; wheat and walnuts produce edible (botanical) fruits. Neither the botanical nor the culinary definition of fruit is used very consistently in these categories.

Membership in these category is also pretty heavily biased towards domesticated/cultivated/crop plants, with just a handful of the thousands of potential members that are wild-growing (and "edible" for the wild plants is a continuum running from "harmless and tasty" to "unpalatable without adding lots of sugar" and ultimately "you could eat it, but you probably shouldn't").

I think Category:Crops by continent (which might be better as Category:Crops by continent of origin) can handle the origin. A Category:Culinary fruits would be a useful complement to Category:Fruit vegetables (perhaps better as Category:Vegetable fruits?). I'm not sure that categories for culinary fruits/fruit vegetable crops by continent of origin are necessary at this point, but the current situation of having an ill-defined "fruits" by continent of origin isn't working. Plantdrew (talk) 04:27, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

@Ringbang: I'd like to endorse Plantdrew's comments. In terms of WP:AT, the issue is precision: "The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects". Titles like "Fruits originating in ..." simply don't meet this test. So the first step should be to clarify which meaning of "fruit" is intended, and change the category title accordingly. Then you can consider whether dividing by continent of origin is useful. Peter coxhead (talk) 05:38, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

@Plantdrew and Peter coxhead: Thanks, guys, you spoke directly to my misgivings about these categories.

Re. Category:Crops by continent: This category contains Category:Crops originating from Africa‎, which in turn contains Category:Fruits originating in Africa‎. I second the "Culinary fruits" qualifier you suggest, Drew. But were you proposing to merge (for example) Category:Fruits originating in Africa‎ into Category:Crops originating from Africa‎, and then to qualify them as fruits by adding Category:Culinary fruits? Or to rename Category:Fruits originating in Africa‎ to Category:Culinary fruits originating in Africa‎?

The description for Category:Crops by continent reads "continental location of the native plants origin". I take this to mean "Continent to which the (wild) plant is indigenous". Might that differ from the continent of first cultivation, as implied by subcategory names like Category:Crops originating from Africa‎?

Re. dividing by continent: I think this is desirable as long as we distinguish between geographical continents and botanical continents, both in the category hierarchy and category descriptions.

Category:Fruit vegetables: It used to be called Category:Vegetable-like fruits, and I find the name-change rationale dubious. Is this category based entirely on US convention? If so, I'd like to add it to Category:US-centric as a first step. —Ringbang (talk) 04:58, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

@Ringbang: I was thinking of having e.g. Category:Culinary fruits and Category:Crops originating from Africa (thus merging Category:Fruits originating in Africa into crops from Africa). I don't think the crops by continent categories are large enough that they need to be broken down into subcategories. Although I guess Category:Culinary fruits could get pretty big. It could really go either way.

"Might that differ from the continent of first cultivation?" It might, but that's going to be very rare. The main example I can think of is Hevea brasiliensis which is in fact in the South American crop category (where it's native) and not the Asia crop category (where first successfully cultivated). To me "crops originating from Africa" sounds like it could cover plants native to Africa that were first cultivated elsewhere anyway.

It would be good to clearly indicate which continent definition (botanical/geographical) is being used.

Is "fruit vegetables" US-centric terminology? On second thought, it sounds OK to me as does Category:Root vegetables and Category:Leaf vegetables, but I am from the US. I'm open to other possible names for these categories. If the US-centricism is related to Nix v. Hedden that ruled that tomatoes are vegetables, keep in mind that the EU has ruled that carrots are fruit. Plantdrew (talk) 20:05, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Okay, it sounds like I should refrain from making any category changes for now.

I looked for deltas between Category:Edible fruits and Category:Culinary fruits, and it looks like this category could be renamed with minimal adjustments. The dodgiest thing I noticed is the wholesale inclusion of Category:Berries. Category:Prunus is also in Category:Edible fruits. At least one of its taxa, Prunus subcordata, has an article that doesn't mention a culinary tradition per sé, although it does have one (attested by Moerman's Native American Food Plants et al.).

My concern about "fruit vegetables" wasn't just the potential US-centrism, but the lack of definitions for fruit vegetable and vegetable-like (which invites a de facto Western-centrism). Whether the scope of these terms is cultural or legal, we should determine and articulate that scope. —Ringbang (talk) 20:33, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Universal Chalcidoidea Database

This seems to be rather unstable, I get lots of broken links and red type when I use it. I think this may be because I do not clear my cache and cookies or it may be undergoing maintenance. Do you have this issue? If not, why not? Quetzal1964 (talk) 20:12, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964:, the Chalcidoidea database has also been giving me lots of broken links and red type the last couple of days (at least since the Grahamia discussion started up). It was working much better three weeks ago when we were discussing Arunus/Pradeshia/Eulophinusia. Hopefully it will be repaired soon. Plantdrew (talk) 20:19, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Seems to be working okay today. Quetzal1964 (talk) 16:13, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Small request

Can I make a small request that when you create a new taxonomy template, if you make a mistake, or if a taxonomy template is needed at a higher level, then ideally finish with a null edit, which prevents the template from appearing in Category:Automatic taxobox cleanup. Without a null edit, taxonomy templates take days to disappear from this category, which I try to check daily, but it's somewhat time wasting if the templates are actually ok. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:19, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:, sorry, I didn't realize taxonomy templates lacking a parent template when created would show up in the error category (I thought it was just tracking articles, not templates). When I know (or strongly suspect) a parent template will need to be created, I do save it prior to the child, but I've been a bit lazy about going back and null-editing the child once I've saved it and found I unexpectedly needed to create a parent as well. Plantdrew (talk) 05:47, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Actually you've flagged up a good issue; it might be worth tracking problems with articles and taxonomy templates separately, although it would mean more categories to monitor. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:50, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

Melittobia australica

Hi, me again, you rated Melittobia australica as a start class article but I want to understand why. In my view the rating is correct and I want my understanding confirmed. I think that despite the length of the article that the fact that there is not image and only five references mean that it cannot be a C Class article. Am I correct? Quetzal1964 (talk) 12:14, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964:, your understanding is basically correct as far as I'm concerned. Keep in mind that the quality rating is fairly subjective, and other people might interpret things differently then me. When there is no image, I'm very reluctant to rate articles on species higher than Start class; an image provides far more information/context to readers than a description section (even a well written description section is likely to be heavy on technical jargon). On length alone, M. australica is perhaps close to C-class, but I'd like to see more balance between the sections; 3/4 of the article is "biology" and the description is pretty minimal (though again, an image could make up for a minimal description). Number of references isn't a big factor for me in rating; I think M. australica could probably use more references, but I've seen very short stubs with 8-10 references, and articles on newly described species (where there is only one published scientific reference) could reach C-class with few references. Plantdrew (talk) 16:51, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

I found an image, the paper Antonino Cusumano; Jorge M. González; Stefano Colazza; S. Bradleigh Vinson (2012). "First report of Melittobia australica Girault in Europe and new record of M. acasta (Walker) for Italy". Zookeys. 181: 45–51. doi:10.3897/zookeys.181.2752 has an image (Figure 1) which is CC BY 3.0. Quetzal1964 (talk) 20:00, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Links in headings

How to put links into an article like List of Arecaceae genera isn't clear to me, but the MoS does say that there normally shouldn't be links in headings (see MOS:HEADINGS). I've been reprimanded in the past for putting links in headings – apparently it messes up screen readers, among other issues. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:08, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Toast sandwich

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Spread the goodness of toast sandwiches by adding {{subst:Toast sandwich for you}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message!

-🐦Do☭torWho42 (⭐) 08:12, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

OrphanReferenceFixer: Help on reversion

Hi there! I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. Recently, you reverted my fix to Gray mouse lemur.

If you did this because the references should be removed from the article, you have misunderstood the situation. Most likely, the article originally contained both <ref name="foo">...</ref> and one or more <ref name="foo"/> referring to it. Someone then removed the <ref name="foo">...</ref> but left the <ref name="foo"/>, which results in a in the article. I replaced one of the remaining <ref name="foo"/> with a copy of the <ref name="foo">...</ref>; I did not re-insert the reference to where it was deleted, I just replaced one of the remaining instances. What you need to do to fix it is to make sure you remove all instances of the named reference so as to not leave any .

If you reverted because I made an actual mistake, please be sure to also correct any reference errors in the page so I won't come back and make the same mistake again. Also, please post an error report at User talk:AnomieBOT so my operator can fix me! If the error is so urgent that I need to be stopped, also post a message at User:AnomieBOT/shutoff/OrphanReferenceFixer. Thanks! AnomieBOT⚡ 04:57, 5 July 2017 (UTC) If you do not wish to receive this message in the future, add {{bots|optout=AnomieBOT-OrphanReferenceFixer}} to your talk page.

Barnstar for you!

	The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
	While patrolling recent changes, I saw you working tirelessly on taxobox cleanup. I've done infobox cleanup, and it's a boring and repetitive task but it's so important. Thank you for the hard work! Marianna251TALK 21:40, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

New move request for New York

In case you are still unaware of this discussion, there is a new discussion for renaming New York to New York (state). As you participated in the previous discussion on this topic, you may want to express your opinion in the new disussion. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:23, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

QUESTION...WHY IS SHEEP PAGE LOCKED?

one plural for sheep is a Band, which 1000 head of sheep or more, however unable to add this information as page locked. Yet it says you edited it last, so maybe you can add this for me?

Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.159.251.114 (talk) 10:36, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

"NE" IUCN category in taxoboxes

Hi, thanks for all the taxobox cleanup work! I noticed you removed the fact that Triturus anatolicus has not been evaluated by the IUCN from its taxobox. I actually think this is a useful piece of information, rather than not knowing whether it was perhaps evaluated and this info just isn't included. Is there a guideline/recommendation on this? Tylototriton (talk) 12:29, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

@Tylototriton:, there's no guideline or recommendation on this. I'm generally opposed to including NE as a status. It's impossible to source. The best we can do as far as sourcing goes is including a link to a search of the IUCN database that returns no results. But there are other reasons why a search for a particular binomial might return zero results aside from it not being evaluated. It might be included as a synonym in a broader species concept that has been evaluated. It might be a newly described species with an IUCN evaluation, but not yet included in the IUCN database. Wikipedia might be using different genus concepts that IUCN isn't tracking as synonyms.

I also think it's misleading when we say NE/IUCN3.1, given that there are thousands of Wikipedia articles on taxa that haven't been evaluated by the IUCN3.1 criteria, but have IUCN2.3 evaluations.

And if non-evaluated IUCN status is specified, why not specify (an absence of) status in every other system as well? TNC, Endangered Species Act, etc. Plantdrew (talk) 20:44, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

OK, these are reasonable points. I hadn't thought about the issues of older systems, synonyms etc.Tylototriton (talk) 06:51, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Removal of reference from taxobox

You made an edit on 5 July 2017 to Common bottlenose dolphin whereby you removed a reference to Mammal Species of the World in the taxobox. This reference was being used as a source for the subspecies listed. It seems to me that any listing of subspecies would require a reference to substantiate the list. What was the logic behind removal of the reference?

t

Plantdrew can make his own reply to your question, but one problem with inserting a reference in the value of |subdivision_ranks= is that it makes checking for the validity of the value of the parameter more difficult. It's been on my mind for some time that there's a parameter |synonyms_ref= which can be used to insert a reference to support a list of synonyms, but there's no parameter |subdivision_ref= which can be used in the same way to insert a reference to support a list of subdivisions. Having such a parameter would separate supplying the rank name from supplying a reference. However, it's not a trivial task to alter {{Taxobox/core}} and every taxobox template that uses it, and so far there hasn't been a demand for it. The view seems to be that any list of subdivisions in the taxobox is just a summary of a list in the text, which will be referenced. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:36, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

In this particular case, outside of the taxobox, there is no mention of the subspecies at all. Jameel the Saluki (talk) 10:22, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Magallana

I thought I'd let you know I used the genus Magallana for a newly formed genus of oysters. I saw that it was used as a redirect to Tropaeolum, but could not find any reference to Magallana's use in the plant genus, other than it being a redirect. Since Pacific oyster is a significant species as a food item, I thought I'd use the genus name for the page.....let me know if you think differently......Pvmoutside (talk) 02:20, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside:, Magallana is a plant genus, but it's regarded as a synonym of Tropaeolum these days. I don't have any objection to converting a redirect that is a genus synonym in one kingdom to an article on a valid/accepted genus in a different kingdom. A hatnote might be warranted in some cases, not sure if it's necessary in this case (given the number of pages in Category:Genus disambiguation pages and the ratio of synonyms to accepted names in taxonomy, I'd guess there would be a good thousand genus articles where the genus name is used in a different nomenclatural code, but is regarded as a synonym).

I'm not really a fan of mass-creating redirects for generic level synonyms. The chance of ambiguity is just too high. Yesterday I came across Devillea pointing to Guzmania. The Devillea that is in synonymy with Guzmania is a junior homonym, but there's an accepted genus Devillea in the Podostemaceae. And as it happens, there's a junior homonym Magallana plant genus in the Winteraceae family. It's pretty much sheer happenstance that Magallana was created as a redirect for the Tropaeolaceae genus first, rather than the Winteraceae genus. Plantdrew (talk) 16:38, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Endorsing and adding to Plantdrew's points: there has been a reluctance to include the authority in an article title, but if editors really want to create redirects for relatively obscure junior synonyms, there's a strong case in my view for including the authority in the title of the redirect, thus avoiding these ambiguity problems. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:21, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Barnstar for Plantdrew

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		For you diligent assessments of new articles on behalf of WikiProject Mammals. William Harris • (talk) • 10:07, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Arctocephalus forsteri requested move discussion

Plantdrew, I just set up the RM discussion on the talk page. Bot should have page ready within the hour.....Pvmoutside (talk) 13:32, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Merger discussion for Monotypic taxon and Monospecificity

Articles that you have been involved in editing—Monotypic taxon and Monospecificity—have been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Nessie (talk) 18:51, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

use of common name for species

Plantdrew, I saw you moved some amphibians from vernacular to binomial names and cited the use of the binomial name was more commonly used as your justificatation. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) states something a little different:

"When what is the most common name in English, or the veracity of that most common name, is so disputed in reliable sources that it cannot be neutrally ascertained, prefer the common name most used (orthography aside) by international zoological nomenclature authorities over regional ones. When there is no common name or no consensus can be reached on the most common name, or if it isn't clear what taxon the common name refers to, use the scientific name."

That statement in my interpretation says use common name whenever possible, unless there is none or the common name is ambiguous. It said nothing about popularity. I see those amphibians have more than one common name, so without doing any background checking, those common names may have equal value and be in fact ambiguous, but that's not what you wrote. I also know Wikipedia says its statements should serve as guidelines, not rules that must be adhered to. Given all of that, since I have plenty going on, I won't revert the amphibian titles, but I thought I'd send you both the WP fauna guideline, and my interpretation, so we try to avoid future conflicts. Thoughts?....Pvmoutside (talk) 05:10, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) cannot override WP:AT, which says that Wikipedia generally prefers to use the name that is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources. If the most frequently used name is the scientific name, then that is the most common name. "Common name" in WP:AT does not mean "vernacular name", although it is frequently misinterpreted to do so. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:50, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside:, you make many excellent contributions, but I vehemently disagree with your interpretation of NCFAUNA, and your moves from scientific to vernacular names.

There are at least three places where use of vernacular names of animals as article title is addressed. You've quoted NCFAUNA, Peter has quoted AT, and then there's WP:TOL which says In cases where there is a formal common name (e.g. birds), or when common names are well-known and reasonably unique (e.g. "Cuvier's dwarf caiman"), they should be used for article titles. Scientific names should be used otherwise.. The text at TOL is neither a policy or a guideline, but is another example of the sometimes contradictory language concerning this issue. A few individual projects also have additional guidance on use of vernacular names as titles, such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Rodents, which says The vernacular name should only be used as the article title when it is used in a significant proportion of reliable sources and has thus entered common usage; otherwise, the scientific name should be the article title.

While NCFAUNA can be read to strongly prefer vernacular name titles over scientific ones, "english name wherever possible" is going beyond even what NCFAUNA says (to say nothing of AT); NCFAUNA explicitly allows for use of scientific name titles even where "English" names exist. And we don't use English names whenever possible across Wikipedia; the city previously known in English as "Leghorn" is at Livorno. Medical articles routinely use technical terms as titles rather than their "common" equivalents. Patella, not kneecap. Sildenafil, not Viagra.

The majority of animals don't have any vernacular names, and are small obscure things that don't live in English speaking countries and are of interest only to specialists. Birds are a very special case, where the vernacular names are regulated by a global committee of specialists, and even small drab species are of some interest to amateur birdwatchers.

Wikipedia should use article titles that are accessible to readers. There are absolutely cases where vernacular name titles are preferable to scientific name titles. And while Wikipedia purports to be a general interest encyclopedia, no general encyclopedia in history has included entries for 350,000 taxa of organisms. I'm not at all convinced that there is a general audience reading articles about rare rodents from Madagascar; the likely audience of most articles on organisms are specialists in organismal biology, and that goes for other topics as well; there are plenty of molecular biology and mathematics articles with titles that are incomprehensible gibberish to me.

The amphibian articles I recently moved from scientific names back to vernacular names were previously moved by Gigemag76, who was banned for moving articles to vernacular name without discussion. In the last five years, you are the only other editor I've seen moving large numbers of articles away from scientific names. Gigemag76 appears to have invented some of the vernacular names; I can't find any mention of "Mongu shovelnosed frog" or "Aural horned toad" in sources that aren't Wikipedia mirrors. I believe it is important that vernacular names for obscure organisms be sourced, and that the follow the formatting used in the source (yes, I would capitalize IOC names). It is absolutely not Wikipedia's job to invent vernacular names out of thin area, or standardize formatting of vernacular names of related species when formatting isn't standardized in sources.

It's probably time for an RFC on NCFAUNA. NCFAUNA originally only covered mammals and birds, and was expanded to cover all animals with no discussion of increasing scope, or what sources should be used for vernacular names of other animals. Plantdrew (talk) 21:38, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Plantdrew, I enjoyed reading your response and agree with most of it. I'd prefer using scientific names over vernacular ones, but naming statements are very often contradictory as you mention above. Wikiproject Mammals and Rodents are even contradictory. As you mention, many taxa don't even have a vernacular name, the problem is how to address the ones that do. Having a "well known" vernacular name is an arbitrary statement. What may be well known to some person, may be not to another. I try to use vernacular names when there is agreement over the main resource of the species in question, (Fishbase for example in Fish, the IUCN in many higher level organisms, and we know about birds) I'm not sure how to tell otherwise. Of course going to a scientific name standard would be clearer, as has been done on the plant side, but I'm not sure how much consternation that would get across projects(I remember all the trouble the birdproject went through for downcasing for example).

Regarding the amphibian articles, I did see the IUCN using scientific names for the species you moved, so I have no problems there.

Moving forward, I guess I'll keep on using my standard until a better, non ambiguous naming rule can be developed across the board. If you see any species name I move or create you are uncomfortable with, feel free to contact me at any time to discuss....thanks for your response.....Pvmoutside (talk) 12:30, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

You're one of the primary reasons I just recently came back to continue editing wikipedia (albeit poorly) and one of the reasons I may seek botany as a major in college. Is botany even a major? Anyway you're really cool.

Pagliaccious (talk) 15:35, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

@Pagliaccious: thanks for the kitten and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. Botany can be a major, but it's not a very common one these days. Universities used to split their biology departments by the types of organisms that scientists studied; there might be a zoology department and a botany department, and nobody had any instruments more sophisticated than a microscope. These days universities split their biology departments by the scale of biological phenomenon studied and research techniques and instruments. There may be a molecular biology department, a microbiology/physiology department and an ecology and evolutionary biology department, with all three departments including scientists studying plants or animals. You can pursue a botanical education, but your major may end up being ecology and evolutionary biology. Plantdrew (talk) 21:46, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject Investment

Hey there! Id like to invite you to the WikiProject Investment:

I'd like to invite you to join the Investment WikiProject. There are a lot of Investment related articles on Wikipedia that could use a little attention, and I hope this project can help organize an effort to improve them. So please, take a look and if you like what you see, help get this project off the ground and a few Investment pages into the front ranks of Wikipedia articles. Thanks!

Cheers! WikiEditCrunch (talk) 19:00, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Sinucta muculata

By chance I was looking at the article Sinucta muculata today. It seems pretty useless as it stands and the taxobox does not impress. So then I was searching for the animal online, wondering what on earth it might be, and using my deductive powers. In the end I decided that it was likely to be Synapta maculata, a sea cucumber. The "muculata" part is almost certainly spelt wrong in Durrell's book so I thought the genus might well be too. You can see Synapta maculata here. It is about two metres long and does look quite seaweedish. If you agree with me that this might well be the animal Gerald Durrell was looking at (and he goes on to describe a sea cucumber in the next paragraph), I propose to move the article to the new title Synapta maculata, and incorporate Durrell's description into the article as I expand it. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 19:59, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

@Cwmhiraeth:, good catch. It does seem quite likely that Synapta maculata is the real name for Sinucta muculata. I saw you've already moved and expanded the article. I'm not sure it's worth keeping the passage from Durrell at this point; it doesn't offer much information that isn't already in the article, and I'm not 100% certain that the names do refer to the same animal (I'm maybe 90% certain that they do). Plantdrew (talk) 01:51, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure either, but it does solve the problem of getting rid of the unsatisfactory article you attempted to PROD. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:06, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Morone Mississippiensis

Why do you think or write that yellow bass aren't edible? I have eaten properly prepared fillets for years as have countless anglers and their families. Additionally, the range of the species extend throughout the interior southeast and Indiana. RedStole (talk) 01:36, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

@RedStole:, it wasn't me that changed the text to say they weren't edible, and that has now been reverted by another editor. Plantdrew (talk) 01:52, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Can those be published?

The one I had written, but yet to publish. Artix Kreiger (talk) 22:49, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Artix Kreiger:, sure, you can publish the other Aulonemia species. I don't see any difference in quality between the ones you've already published and the ones that are still in your user space. I do think it would be good if you expanded them a little before publishing; distribution/range is a key fact to add. Plantdrew (talk) 16:19, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Question. after I "moved" them, (why is it not called Rename??), they leave something called a redirect. Are they still in use or are they entirely useless? Artix Kreiger (talk) 12:42, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Are they good enough now? Artix Kreiger (talk) 15:11, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

@Artix Kreiger:, Aulonemia robusta looks great. I made a couple minor tweaks to it. You don't need to worry about the redirect; it's not really useful, but it does provide a record that the article was first created in your user space. Plantdrew (talk) 21:19, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Question. I just created this

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arthrostylidium_angustifolium&action=history

Also there is someone Plantdrew1. I thought that was you. Artix Kreiger (talk) 23:48, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

@Artix Kreiger:, I checked over Arthrostylidium angustifolium and the other two species you just published. Thanks for the heads up about Plantdrew1. That's not me, but I know there's somebody else out on the internet that also goes by Plantdrew (there's a Plantdrew Twitter account that was created years after I signed up for Twitter with a different name and signed up for Wikipedia with this name). Plantdrew (talk) 00:36, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Microtus subgenera

I noticed Microtus has subgenera. Any way to accommodate subgenera in speciesbox or auto taxobox or should I move on to something else and leave them as taxoboxes with subgenera showing.....I haven't heard from Peter, looks like he's taking a break.....Pvmoutside (talk) 15:37, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside:, Peter did reply, but I guess he didn't ping you. I created taxonomy templates for all the Microtus subgenera yesterday, converted species in monotypic subgenera to speciesbox and added subgenus Microtus to the species in that subgenus you'd already converted. Species in the other subgenera (Terricola, Mynomyes, Alexandromys and Pitymys) still need to be converted to speciesboxes if you want to take care of it; the necessary templates are in place.

To include the subgenus in a speciesbox, use |parent=, where the value is the genus followed by the subgenus in parentheses; e.g. "Microtus (Terricola)". See Field vole for an example of how to do it.

But there's nothing wrong with moving on to something else and leaving manual taxoboxes in place. I usually skip over anything that has subgenera when I'm converting plants to automatic taxoboxes. For one, I'm not entirely happy with how subgenera are implemented in automatic taxoboxes (but I still don't have concrete ideas about how to improve it). For two, I find that placement of species into subgenera is almost never referenced on Wikipedia, sources for subgeneric placement are difficult to find, and when sources do exist, they may conflict as to whether subgenera should be recognized or putative subgenera should be elevated to genera. Plantdrew (talk) 16:13, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside: I tend to assume that if people leave a message on my talk page, they then watchlist that page to see if I've replied, so Plantdrew is right that I didn't ping you.

More generally, I agree strongly with Plantdrew about sourcing. It's a pity, in my view, that the norm of including references in taxonomy templates wasn't agreed when the automated taxobox system was created. All the "non-principal" ranks are often quite contentious and not included in many secondary sources, which we are supposed to be using. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:06, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Speciesbox issue

When I tried to use {{Speciesbox}} for a species of a nothogenus, in particular × Astrolista bicarinata, I ran into several problems. The documentation for {{Speciesbox}} explains how to use it for a hybrid species, but not for a species of a hybrid genus. There were two issues when trying to use Speciesbox:

1. The correct italicization wasn't produced automatically; in particular the hybrid symbol was italicized (which doesn't show up in some fonts, but does in the one I use). This can be fixed, I discovered, by using {{Hybrid}} in the link text in the taxonomy template, as at Template:Taxonomy/× Astrolista, rather than just the × symbol.
2. The genus isn't correctly displayed in the taxobox when part of a binomial. In the species line in the taxobox, the code picks the first character in the genus name and so displays "×. bicarinata"; in the binomial box, for some reason just "bicarinata" appears. Fixing this will require changes to the code.

So, a couple of questions for you:

• Do you remember the issue of species in hybrid genera and automated taxoboxes coming up before? I don't, but then I've forgotten other things.
• In your opinion, is it worth introducing extra complexity to the automated taxobox code, with all the potential side-effects that brings, to allow it to cope with species in nothogenera? Or should we just accept that manual taxoboxes need to be used for these probably rare cases?

Peter coxhead (talk) 21:58, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:, I'm not aware of any previous discussion regarding nothogenera and automatic taxoboxes. I don't think it worth the effort/complexity to enable support for nothogenera in automatic taxoboxes. Plantdrew (talk) 00:43, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, rethinking this a little. For A. bicarinata, would an Automatic Taxobox with a |binomial= display properly? In terms of having a character and a space before the genus name, ? Nycticebus linglom is similar. I still don't have a good grasp on the methods discussed at Wikipedia:Automated taxobox system/advanced taxonomy, but maybe it would be possible to set nothogenera up so that Template:Taxonomy/Astrolista/× does the trick? Better to handle the complication be via some weird taxonomy templates, then by modifying the standard behavior for 99% of taxoboxes (modifying the logic that the first space delimits the genus and species would be a nightmare). I don't think it's something you should spend a lot of time and effort trying to solve. Manual taxoboxes work for nothogenera now. Plantdrew (talk) 01:31, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

If you use {{Automatic taxobox}} with |binomial= you can get the binomial displayed correctly, since it's actually in the template wikitext, but there's no "Species:" line. See (temporarily) User:Peter coxhead/Work page#Temp for examples. I doubt it's worth changing from a manual taxobox to this.

I think you have the right answer, though, in suggesting that if this is fixed, the right way is via "/×" variants, because this makes it easier to isolate the code handling the special case from the rest of the system. I'll put it on my "to do" list, with no guarantee that I'll ever get to it! Peter coxhead (talk) 12:44, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Reviewer

Hi Plantdrew. Given that you're assessing a bunch of new articles for WP Plants (etc), would you consider applying at WP:PERM for reviewer privs? Then as you assess an article you can mark it as reviewed and it will depart the queue. Thanks, ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 07:02, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

is there a way for me to not get reviewed as well? Man the notifications are alot. Artix Kreiger (talk) 11:51, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Answered at their page. ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 12:42, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi Plantdrew, I'd concur with User:Hydronium Hydroxide - your botanical experience would make you an ideal New Page Reviewer. I try to keep on top of articles on new species and genera via this 6-hourly updated list. But your experience and interest here would be most welcome. Regards from the UK, 22:15, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

New Page Reviewer granted

Hello Plantdrew. Your account has been added to the "New page reviewers" user group, allowing you to review new pages and mark them as patrolled, tag them for maintenance issues, or in some cases, tag them for deletion. The list of articles awaiting review is located at the New Pages Feed. New page reviewing is a vital function for policing the quality of the encylopedia, if you have not already done so, you must read the new tutorial at New Pages Review, the linked guides and essays, and fully understand the various deletion criteria. If you need more help or wish to discuss the process, please join or start a thread at page reviewer talk.

• URGENT: Please consider helping get the huge backlog down to a manageable number of pages as soon as possible.
• Be nice to new users - they are often not aware of doing anything wrong.
• You will frequently be asked by users to explain why their page is being deleted - be formal and polite in your approach to them too, even if they are not.
• Don't review a page if you are not sure what to do. Just leave it for another reviewer.
• Remember that quality is quintessential to good patrolling. Take your time to patrol each article, there is no rush. Use the message feature and offer basic advice.

The reviewer right does not change your status or how you can edit articles. If you no longer want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time. In case of abuse or persistent inaccuracy of reviewing, the right can be revoked at any time by an administrator. Alex Shih^Talk 03:26, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

thanks

thanks Brunswicknic (talk) 12:54, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

FYI

I have created some drafts. I had copy pasted them, but without the words in the bolded text and template. They are in the Bambusa genus. Artix Kreiger (talk) 19:26, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

oh and a source directly tied to the species as well weren't added. I'll get to them, maybe. Artix Kreiger (talk) 19:29, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

feel free to edit the drafts and publish them. Artix Kreiger (talk) 20:34, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

web based tax references

Plantdrew.....Do you know any good web based taxonomy site that is good with obscure taxa......All the ones I know do a good job with species, genera, families, etc. Having trouble with finding something web based that can help more obscure tax such as subfamilies, sub and superorders, and the like that is up to date and regularly updates....best I can find is ITIS, and barring a better reference tool, I'd like to use it moving forward for just the obscure stuff. I've left a note on the birds and tree of life wikiprojects as well......Pvmoutside (talk) 15:28, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside:, I don't think there's any one site that is great for this. ITIS is OK, but including minor ranks is not a priority there, and there are large areas that haven't been updated recently. ITIS will take whatever minor ranks are given to them by data providers, but it's pretty hit and miss what is included across the tree of life. I used to work for ITIS, and it was a royal pain when we got a data set that placed species in subgenera; 13 years later I see that most of what I worked on hasn't been updated since I left (maybe no update is needed, but they have very small team for keeping everything up to date).

However, where ITIS does include minor ranks that you're trying to address, I think it's an acceptable source to cite. It's admirable that they cite their own sources.

UniProt and NCBI really get into some fine-grained classification with minor ranks, but I know nothing about their data sources, general quality of their data or their update schedule. I do see Uniprot being cited here in some plant articles for placement in tribes. Tree of Life Web Project also gets into some fine-grained classification, but it's clade-based rather than rank-based, and not at all up to date (I just looked at a page that was last edited in 1995).

UniProt and NCBI would probably be OK to cite, I just think ITIS is more transparent with their data sources (and I also have personal knowledge about their process). It may also be worth checking Wikispecies; it's not a citable source, but does have fine-grained classification. Plantdrew (talk) 16:55, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

A lot depends on the group in question. Thus for spiders, where I've mostly been working lately, there are no reliable sources for levels other than species, genera and families, simply because there's no agreement on ranks like subfamilies and superfamilies any more. In many areas I suspect there never will be, because most workers now use clade-based systems and don't assign formal ranks. The real question is why you would want to include non-principal ranks. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:42, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Peter, I'd rather not include them, but some of the ranks in rodents, galliformes, and anseriformes now show subfamilies and tribes. I just want to make sure they are associated with a reference....Pvmoutside (talk) 10:41, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside: ah, right. Well if there's no reliable secondary source, just remove them is my view. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:48, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Petalophyllum help

Hello Plantdrew,

Thanks for patrolling my recently created page on the liverwort Petalophyllum. I've since then realized that info about the 5 species should be included under the genus instead of having their own pages (the differences are too minor, so most of the description would be repetitive). I edited Petalophyllum to include info about each species, but because 2 of the species have their own pages (Petalophyllum ralfsii and Petalophyllum americanum), those should be deleted and redirected to the Petalophyllum page. The other 3 species that don't have pages (P. hodgsoniae, P. indicum, and P. preissii) should also be redirected to Petalophyllum. I don't know if I can do that. Can you help?

Georgialh (talk) 22:48, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

@Georgialh:, I'm not a fan of redirecting species names to genus articles. With P. americanum, there's information on ecology which I think is worth keeping. However, if you want to redirect them, it's pretty simple and you can do it yourself. Replace the article contents with the following:

#REDIRECT [[Petalophyllum]] {{R from species to genus}}

You should also check the talk page and remove any WikiProject importance and class ratings (leave the WikiProject template itself in place; it should automatically assess as a redirect if the class is blank). Plantdrew (talk) 23:31, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello again, Plantdrew,

After thinking about your response, I've decided to leave the species as they are. Thanks for your response, and thanks for the info on REDIRECT!

Georgialh (talk) 01:55, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Weeping Higan Cherry

Hi thanks for fixing the page. Could you by any chance make it so when you type in Weeping Higan Cherry in the search box it automatically directs to the page, or tell me how to do so? Thanks so much Bacardi379 (talk) 23:37, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

@Bacardi379: I made a redirect for Weeping Higan Cherry; in doing so, I noticed that the article title had the cultivar enclosed in curly quotes; I moved to a title with straight quotes. If you want to make redirects in the future, you just need to create a page with the desired redirect title and put the following code it: #REDIRECT [[Target article title]] Plantdrew (talk) 00:11, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Q

is User:Artix Kreiger/Bambusa affinis, good enough for publication? Also, is there a species template for Cephalostachyum? Artix Kreiger (talk) 01:40, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

@Artix Kreiger:, Bambusa affinis looks OK. There wasn't a taxonomy template for Cephalostachyum, but I've now created one. If you intend to work on any other genera in the immediate future, let me know and I'll create the taxonomy templates (eventually I'll just do them for all bamboo genera). Plantdrew (talk) 18:16, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Is this still the case?

"I think my favorite article at present is Urena lobata. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Is it a profound statement about inclusionism/deletionism? Commentary on the (non)-value of stubs? Is it perhaps the most meta article on Wikipedia?” Cheers Robertwhyteus (talk) 01:03, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

@Robertwhyteus: Is it still my favorite article? Yeah, I guess so. Is it any kind of profound encyclopedic statement? Not so much lately. When I added it to my user page, it looked like this. It was almost entirely about Diderot's difficulties in writing about it for the 1751 encyclopedia. It's been expanded to address the plant itself more recently. However, I am increasingly convinced that the widespread assumption among Wikipedians that every species is notable and deserves an article is going to eventually have to face the fact that thousands of species are only known from a single specimen, and there simply isn't anything that a (general audience) encyclopedia can really say about them. Ultimately, Wikipedia stubs on poorly known organisms only serve to displace results from various reliable sources that would be the places the particular niche audience interested in them (specialists in obscure organisms) would be looking at in the first place. Plantdrew (talk) 03:51, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

I agree. I got a bit of flack myself for separating out in A Field Guide to Spiders of Australia the lesser known families to save space, I couldn’t give every family the hero treatment, especially things I couldn’t even pronounce like Gallieniellidae (I have worked hard on that one, it’s not as bad as Micropholcommatidae and that’s Not even the worst. In wikipedia itself I updated the (some) Australian Spiders list to ones I thought were truly notable (culling quite a few). Of course my colleagues weren’t happy because to some of them a) everything is notable or b) how dare to relegate my taxa to the al;so rans down the back ;-pRobertwhyteus (talk) 04:15, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Editing Suggestions

Hey, I've been snooping around Wikipedia for a while now but I've found that I have a difficult time finding things to edit or add to articles on Wikipedia. You, on the other hand, I see everywhere, in botany article page histories, in the recent article changes, and basically seemingly everywhere else I go. What do you suggest I monitor or do to more actively and efficiently contribute to Wikipedia, whether it be editing or creating? Thanks, Pagliaccious 03:48, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page. Plantdrew (talk) 02:28, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Bambusa basihirsuta

I am looking at The Plant List article for Bambusa basihirsuta. http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl1.1/record/kew-398648

It gives multiple synonyms. How do I fit into the species box? The draft is User:Artix Kreiger/Bambusa basihirsuta. Artix Kreiger (talk) 20:22, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

@Artix Kreiger:, as I guess you may have seen there are several ways to do it. You can use {{Species list}} which is usually the easiest method (especially if you're copy-pasting a list from another source). There are many existing articles where each listed synonym uses the manual coding:

*''SYNONYM NAME'' <small>AUTHORITY</small>

That method works fine, but requires more keystrokes to implement than using Specieslist. Plantdrew (talk) 02:42, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

@Artix Kreiger: an advantage of using {{Species list}} (or similar templates for the synonyms of other ranks) is that it ensures that the layout is uniform across articles, and can be changed easily if there were ever a consensus to do so. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:47, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Speciesbox and Automatic taxoboxes

Pvmoutside see Cyprinus hieni. I have been trying to make as tidy speciesboxes and automatic taxoboxes as I can by removing "Italic title" and "name" but in this case and a few others that appears to make the title non italicised. If the name field in the taxobox is not the same as the article title e.g. Cyprinus and "Typical carps" I am leaving the name field in. Is this correct? Also am I missing something with these italics and titles? Quetzal1964 (talk) 07:10, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

The automated taxobox system contains code that tries to determine whether the title of the article and taxobox should be italicised. This doesn't always work, so when it doesn't it's right to do it manually. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:57, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

The species name was not correct. I fixed it and it is now working....Pvmoutside (talk) 12:21, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964:, I remove "name" (and italic title) when the value is a scientific name or blank. If the title doesn't italicize automatically, it's often an indicator that there is something wrong with the taxon name (e.g. a typo or copy-paste error), as was the case with C. hieni. The various taxobox templates differ in how easy it is to break the automatic italicization of the title. It's pretty easy to break with manual taxoboxes, and extremely difficult with speciesboxes (automatic taxoboxes will break italic sensing when there's a value in the "name" parameter, but speciesboxes will not). I usually leave the italic title template in place, even for speciesboxes, if there is a common name in the "name" parameter, just to be safe. Plantdrew (talk) 16:16, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Brachypelma hamorii and B. smithi

I'm still working on this pair of tarantulas, but it's a bit of a mess. The Taxonomy sections in the two articles summarize what I understand at present. B. hamorii was split off from B. smithi in 1997 (a split recognized by the World Spider Catalog). The holotype is a "pet" specimen. For various reasons, individuals of B. hamorii continued to be misidentified as B. smithi. Tarantulas sold in the pet trade as "Mexican redknee" were said to be B. smithi, and the initial IUCN redlisting was on this basis. However, it's not clear to me whether they were actually all B. hamorii (as some sources imply) or were a mixture. The diagnostic features mean that it's impossible to tell from most photos which species it is. The distribution of the two species is disjunct, so origin would be a good guide if they were photos of wild specimens, but all the photos in Commons labelled B. smithi seem to be of pet specimens, so the reality is that there's no way of telling what species it really is. The most up to date pet tarantula websites seem to have decided that specimens sold as "Mexican redknee" are B. hamorii, but some mistakenly imply that B. smithi is a synonym of B. hamorii.

I hesitated over an SIA for "Mexican redknee", but I think you were right.

It's not clear to me what to do about the images in Commons. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:52, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

OK, well I'll leave it to you to straighten out (to the extent that it is possible). Plantdrew (talk) 18:55, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

An issue it raises is the old one that constantly bothers me: the verifiability of images of organisms in Commons. I've added at least three images of plants myself with names based on labels in botanic gardens, which I naively thought were reliable sources, but have since found out that they exchange plants among themselves and buy in from commercial sources without verifying that the names are correct. Almost all the tarantula images are of pets, and so unverified. Just airing a concern; it's not a problem we can fix! Peter coxhead (talk) 08:54, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Coincidentally, I took some photos in a botanical garden yesterday that will be my first uploads to Commons (but I am confident of the ID). I can think of a whole bunch of reasons why botanical garden labels might be wrong. Trusting without verifying the ID from their supplier is one. Labels are relatively expensive, they're not generally going to get updated for changes in genus. We have labels that use pre-ICNCP binomials for plants that are understood to be cultivars. Labels may not refer to the plant that is growing closest to them; that can be a huge problem for photos taken by people who know nothing about botany, but it can trip me up to. There's a bed where the label on one side says Smilacina racemosa and the label on the other side says Smilacina stellatum. Leaving aside the outdated genus, there's only Smilacina racemosa there. I'd guess there may have been S. stellatum growing there at one point, but it died out and S. racemosa took over the entire bed. There's another area planted with a dozen or so species of bulbaceous plants that come up over several weeks in the spring. I know enough to know that something is a crocus, but I don't know which of several crocus labels applies to the species that is blooming at any one time. Labelled plants can die or be dormant and other plants can expand into the area near a particular label. There was a study a couple years ago that lead to sensationalistic claims that half the world's natural history specimens have the wrong name; some of the same issues as with garden labels, as well as some more particular to specimens. Plantdrew (talk) 15:49, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

That's a very interesting link; thanks. Of course, "outdated synonyms" aren't exactly the same as a "wrong name" provided that the possible synonym appears in the synonymy of the currently accepted name. But still, even if you halve the estimate, it's still very high. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:58, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I agree that synonyms (especially homotypic ones) aren't "wrong". That's where they really get into sensationalism. Plantdrew (talk) 16:05, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Actias luna & Monarch butterfly

Why do you keep removing my conservation status edit from Actias luna and Monarch butterfly? I am being honest! The IUCN has classified them as Not Evaluated! No offense but I was thinking about giving you a level 2 "Blanking or removal of content" warning. Pancakes654 21:21, 20 September 2017 (UTC) Pancakes654 21:21, 20 September 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pancakes654 (talk • contribs)

@Pancakes654: Not Evaluated is not a conservation status. There's no point to making special note that a particular fact is not yet known. We don't include death dates as "unknown" for living people. The vast majority of species have not been evaluated for IUCN conservation status. Of those that have, many of the have been evaluated by IUCN2.3 criteria but have yet to receive new assessments under the IUCN3.1 criteria. This is why I particularly object to including NE/IUCN3.1; it's misleading as it could just as well apply to all taxa with known IUCN2.3 statuses. Additionally, NE "status" is really not verifiable. We can't link to a blank IUCN search results page as a citation. And even when the search results page is blank, there's no guarantee that the IUCN hasn't in fact evaluated the species, but has done so using a synonymous name or using a different species concept. There are species that have previously received IUCN evaluations that are now regarded as subspecies; searching for these may result in a blank search results page. Plantdrew (talk) 21:38, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I apologize. Pancakes654 21:42, 20 September 2017 (UTC) Pancakes654 21:42, 20 September 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pancakes654 (talk • contribs)

@Pancakes654:, no worries. I appreciate your trying to help out around Wikipedia, and I know there's a big learning curve trying to figure out how things are done here. There's lots of cases where a non-standard practice (such as NE conservation status) shows up in some sub-set of articles and it can be confusing trying determine whether it a something that should be spread to other articles or eliminated from the ones that have it. I do hope you'll continue working here. 21:51, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

(In a happy and fun manner) Wikipedia is even more confusing than having 100 red m&ms and trying to figure out which is the lightest red! Pancakes654 21:34, 21 September 2017 (UTC) Pancakes654 21:34, 21 September 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pancakes654 (talk • contribs)

Category:Bamboo taxa

Is there a need to add the category to the stubs Im working on? Artix (Message wall) 18:59, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

@Artix Kreiger:, I don't think it's worth adding at all. It might be worth creating a Category:Bamboo species to complement Category:Bamboo genera, and making it so the only thing in "Bamboo taxa" is the subcategories for species and genera. But I'm not sure that's really a good idea either. The whole system with bamboo taxa/genera is highly unusual. There are a few categories for orchid species that are similar. The more usual system is just to put species in a category for the genus, and put the genus category in a category for a subfamily (or family). If there isn't yet a category for the genus, create one.

If somebody is interested in the species within a subfamily, there are ways to search through the genus categories within the subfamily category (these searches won't distinguish genus articles from species articles, but it's pretty obvious from the title whether an article is a genus or a species). Plantdrew (talk) 19:48, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Ok I'll remove them and not include in future stubs. Thanks. Artix (Message wall) 21:12, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Ricinodendron redirect links?

Why did you change the links on the Ricinodendron page that link to mongongo to its redirects Schinziophyton rautanenii and Schinziophyton? Shouldn't the links atleast be piped? I thought linking through redirects was frowned upon. Nessie (talk) 04:09, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

@NessieVL: There's nothing wrong with linking to redirects (see WP:NOTBROKEN). What is discouraged is piping away from displayed text that isn't a redirect towards a redirect. [[Schinziophyton|mongongo]] would be wrong. It is OK to pipe away from displayed text that is a redirect towards an article title. [[mongongo|Schinziophyton]] would be OK. However, as I understand the spirit behind NOTBROKEN, it's perfectly fine to link to a redirect in contexts where the redirect is the more precise concept. If the text is a taxonomic context presenting Schinziophyton as a genus, link to the genus redirect. If it's a taxonomic context for the species, link the Schinziophyton rautanenii redirect. If it's a culinary context about the use of the nuts as food, link mongongo. Plantdrew (talk) 04:34, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Template:Taxonomy/Sanicula

thanks for the quick update to Template:Taxonomy/Sanicula but I think you also need to update the refs= since my ref didn't have that information. Nessie (talk) 18:42, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@NessieVL:, done. GRIN is a good source for placement of plant genera in tribes and subfamilies. Plantdrew (talk) 18:48, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Cultivar names

I see you've corrected the article name "Rosa Constance Spry" to "Rosa 'Constance Spry'". I accept that you're right, and I was wrong to move it to the name you corrected. I was following the example of "Rosa Peace", the only rose cultivar whose name I could recall at the time. But now I see "Rosa 'Constance Spry'", "Rosa 'English Miss'", etc., all with single quotes, and all with Rosa italicised (though the links at Category:Rose cultivars all omit the italics). Can you explain why Peace omits the single quotes? and the inconsistent use of italics? I'd like to be able to get this stuff right in future. Maproom (talk) 06:42, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

@Maproom: Rosa should be consistently italicized, there's a technical limitation in the Wikipedia software that prevents italics in the category listing.

Peace is a trade designation/marketing name for the cultivar Rosa 'Madame A. Meilland'. While there are a variety of permissible ways to display the marketing name, the basic principles laid out in the ICNCP are that the marketing name should NOT be enclosed in single quotes, should be presented in a typographically distinctive way, and should be accompanied by the formal cultivar name. Rosa PEACE ('Madame A. Meilland') is one way to do it. However, we don't really take it that far on Wikipedia. There are several other rose cultivars that are titled by marketing name (e.g. Conquista rose, Julia Child rose, Rosa Iceberg) that aren't accompanied by the formal cultivar name. And many nurseries, botanical gardens and horticultural societies don't follow the rules to the full extant either (e.g. Missouri Botanical Garden) That can make it quite difficult to determine which name is the cultivar name and which names are marketing names. I'm not actually sure that 'Constance Spry' isn't a marketing name.

Marketing names can be trademarked (which provides an additional level of intellectual property protection for plant breeders). I'm seeing some sites where 'Constance Spry' and 'Ausfirst' are presented as trademarks. I'm not seeing any trademark indications for 'Austance', and the way the synonyms are presented by the RHS makes me think that 'Austance' might actually be the cultivar name, but the RHS gives the most prominence to 'Constance Spry'. It's a rather, ahem, thorny issue. I will note that in recent decades the trend is to use impenetrable alphanumeric codes for cultivar names (e.g. the Conquista rose is Rosa 'RUICH1069A') to encourage use of simpler, trademarked marketing names. I'm not sure that that using formal cultivar names for article titles is necessarily the best choice in these cases, although the naming conventions suggest formal cultivar names should always be used. Plantdrew (talk) 15:01, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your helpful and detailed answer. I have changed the way the title of Rosa 'Constance Spry' is displayed, so that Rosa is italicised – I hope this is correct. Maproom (talk) 15:42, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

It's unclear to me where the name 'Austance' comes from; David Austin's own website (and his paper catalogue) only mentions 'Ausfirst'. As far as I'm aware, breeders don't usually give more than one breeder's name (which may also be the cultivar name) to their varieties. Rose breeders typically use the first three letters of their own name for the start of breeders names, so both 'Ausfirst' and 'Austance' comply with this tradition, and it would be curious if 'Constance Spry' were to have two of these names - from the breeder's point of view, this would just confuse things. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 19:03, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

@PaleCloudedWhite: The RHS site cited in the article mentions 'Austance'. I looked at the American Rose Society's publication Modern Rose Varieties 12 to verify that 'Constance Spry' was the cultivar name, but now I can't remember whether both 'Austance' and 'Ausfirst' were mentioned there. 'Austance' shares a syllable with Constance. Perhaps 'Austance' was a breeder's name for further breeding efforts of 'Constance Spry' that were abandoned before a new cultivar was developed? Plantdrew (talk) 00:49, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

An interesting hypothesis. My own experience in the rose breeding world is that a particular breeder's name is applied to one particular variety, and it doesn't subsequently change, nor get used elsewhere - even if the variety is never released publically. I hadn't noticed that 'Austance' is reminiscent of 'Constance'; I'm wondering if someone somewhere (the RHS?) has just made a typo - it would be very easy for someone who had just typed 'Constance' to then type 'Austance' instead of 'Ausfirst', especially if they were distracted by something while doing so. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:18, 16 October 2017 (UTC) (PS the ping didn't work - I suspect this is because you signed your post and fixed the ping in two separate edits)

Blog post confirming trend towards alphanumeric codes. Plantdrew (talk) 01:31, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Category:Bamboo species

I have created this. Is this ok? Artix (Message wall) 16:20, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

@Artix Kreiger:, looks good. I changed the parent category from bamboo to bamboo taxa. 18:20, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Eurybia elvinaEurybia elvina

Hi! Thank you for the assessment of the article! Although, I did not get what you meant by moving my student banner. Can you help me out?Shreenidhipm (talk) 20:52, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

@Shreenidhipm:, you have {{student editor}} before your signature on the article talk page. I got confused, and thought that that template accomplished the same thing as {{dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment}}. The assignment template belongs near the top of the talk page. Once I realized "student editor" was different from "assignment", I moved it back (and I see that your classmate Ecampbell22 has since added the assignment template to Eurybia elvina's talk page). Plantdrew (talk) 20:59, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Policy for not showing intermediate ranks in taxobox?

Hi, I noticed in a few taxobars you removed intermediate ranks; my thought process was that if an article specifically points out membership in a particular taxon, e.g., how the Heterosaccus article mentions it's in the superorder Rhizocephala, then that should be in the taxobox -- especially since its order is still red-linked. Should these never be in the box then? Thanks. Umimmak (talk) 07:40, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

@Umimmak: Minor ranks should generally only be in taxoboxes when between the rank that is the subject of the article and the next major rank. An article on a genus could have ranks between genus and family (subfamily, tribe) but not minor ranks above family. An article on a family could have ranks between family and order. I suppose it makes some sense to have Rhizocephala in the Heterosaccus taxobox since it is mentioned in the article, and since the order Kentrogonida is a redlink (but it would probably be better to have an article on Kentrogonida and replace Rhizocephala with Kentrogonida in the article text).

Inclusion of minor ranks is discussed at Template:Taxobox/doc, which says:

"Taxoboxes should include all major ranks above the taxon described in the article, plus minor ranks that are important to understanding the classification of the taxon described in the article, or which are discussed in the article. Other minor ranks should be omitted.

For example, in the taxobox for the genus Formica, it's appropriate to include entries for tribe and subfamily, since those are an aid to understanding how Formica relates to other genera in the family Formicidae. But it wouldn't be appropriate to include the superorder Endopterygota, since all genera of ants are in that superorder; it isn't particularly interesting at this level."

Plantdrew (talk) 18:57, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Okay that makes sense; I was going off the literature which generally first introduces Heterosaccus and its species as being a members of Rhizocephala instead of members of Kentrogonida. Hence the superorder seemed like a more "fundamental" clade than the order and a clade these taxa are more commonly referred to as belonging in, so I thought that meant it was important enough for the taxobar. But I'll try to remember that guideline in the future. Umimmak (talk) 19:24, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

@Umimmak: Well, there are exceptions. If the literature really ubiquitously mentions Rhizocephala and not Kentrogonida, Rhizocephala should probably be included in the taxobox. But if there is a good reason to show a minor rank in all articles down to the species level, the better way to do it is to add |always_display==yes to the relevant taxonomy template (e.g. Template:Taxonomy/Rhizocephala) rather than using |display_parents= in each taxobox. Note that Template:Taxonomy/Crustacea is set to always display, even though it's a subphylum. And it may well be appropriate to set Cirripedia to always display as well. Plantdrew (talk) 19:44, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Speaking of, do you mind taking a look at that particular taxonomy template? It works fine for the article but the template itself has a weird chain of "Infraclass: Cirripedia; Superorder: Rhizocephala" on the side and I'm not sure why... Cheers Umimmak (talk) 20:17, 4 October 2017 (UTC) whoops I just needed to purge the page, nevermind! Umimmak (talk) 20:18, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Pestalotiopsis microspora subspecies

Pestalotiopsis microspora-- Is Catalogue of Life the only source for subtaxa? Why is IUCN not a sufficient source?Nessie (talk) 23:28, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

@NessieVL:, IUCN would be a sufficient source if it actually had any data on this species. What IUCN has is matching text strings scraped from Catalogue of Life, but IUCN hasn't done any taxonomic evaluation of their own. Notice how the IUCN page has Pestalotiopsis microspora listed twice with different authorships? That's not the IUCN saying there are two species known as Pestalotiopsis microspora, it's a result of the limitations in how they're getting data from CoL.

On another note, I really don't understand the point of putting IUCN status as NE. Not evaluated is not a status, it's the absence of a status. 95% of species haven't been evaluated by the IUCN. Would you put NE status on all of them? I also feel it can be misleading when NE/IUCN3.1 is specified as there are many species that have been evaluated to the IUCN2.3 criteria but haven't been re-evaluated to the IUCN3.1 criteria. And there are other status systems; why single out not evaluated by the IUCN for special mention and not that something is also not evaluated by NatureServe or the ESA?

Putting in NE status seems to me like adding "to be determined" as the death date in the infoboxes for living people (or adding fossil range as recent for extant taxa). Wikipedia doesn't typically make a special effort to point out that a particular fact is not yet known. Plantdrew (talk) 21:38, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't think it's like putting TBD for a death date. If i see an article on a person with no death date listed, I assume they are alive. If i see an article on a species with no status listed, I assume no one bothered to check. The fact being checked is whether a species has been evaluated y/n. In many cases, it is no. That is a fact to post. As is that the species is actually in the system (via CoL), which is displayed in the |quote= part of the refs I post.

Plus I think showing all the NEs shows how biased the IUCN evaluations are in evaluating large pretty species of fauna and flora and neglecting funga, microscopic organisms, parasites, etc. Nessie (talk) 23:09, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

@NessieVL:, well, given that Polbot created articles for a pretty large percentage of IUCN listed species, I assume that if no status is listed it has not been evaluated, not that nobody has bothered to check (and if status is shown, I assume the article is a Polbot creation). Are you really finding a significant number of articles where there is a IUCN status, but it's not listed in the article? And if you want a picture of IUCN biases, you can get that by comparing e.g. List of fungi by conservation status to any of the other lists at Lists of IUCN Red List critically endangered species. Plantdrew (talk) 23:38, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Kaffir

Regarding this edit, can you explain why you think it should link to a redirect instead of directly to Kaffir? Could it perhaps be the case that Kaffir should be renamed to Kaffir (disambiguation) over the existing redirect? I read the policy shortcut you linked but it doesn't make sense to me. If the page we mean to go to is Kaffir, I see no reason to take two steps to get there.  Frank  |  talk  23:46, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

@Frank: Links to disambiguation pages appear in various reports listed at Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links as being in need of repair. Intentional links to disambiguation pages (e.g. in hatnotes) need to go through a (disambiguation) redirect, which keeps them from appearing in the reports of links needing repair. Plantdrew (talk) 00:25, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Ricciocarpos

Thanks for disambiguating to Rosette (botany), but I found that the target page didn't actually deal with the definition of "rosette" that is used in bryology. I have therefore revised the page. Part of the problem in botany is that subdisciplines often use the same words to mean very different things. --EncycloPetey (talk) 17:57, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

@EncycloPetey: Thanks for revising rosette. Yeah, there are a bunch of these. Capsule means something different in bryology than it does for flowering plants. I added a redlink for capitulum (moss) to the capitulum dab page recently. Perigonium is a redirect to a glossary, but the moss sense probably could use an article. Plantdrew (talk) 18:30, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm more likely to (finally) create articles for important liverwort genera /species for the next little while. I have it mind to create a short starter article once each week on a new genus / species. There are very few of them created so far. We'll see whether my schedule permits me to follow through on this plan. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:33, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Buxus Green Velvet

I created the page buxus 'Green Velvet' but I don't know what country section on the page buxus to add the link to the new page to? Bacardi379 (talk) 17:33, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

@Bacardi379:, if you're planning on creating articles on additional Buxus cultivars, make a new section devoted to listing cultivars (cultivars certainly don't belong with any particular country/continent). If you're not going to be creating more, I'd suggest adding "There are many Buxus cultivars, including Buxus 'Green Velvet'." to the cultivation section. Plantdrew (talk) 18:21, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

I have returned

To edit more Artix (Message wall) 01:31, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Awesome. Let me know if you need help with anything. Plantdrew (talk) 01:55, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Removed dab note on blue-tailed skink

Hi, I noticed that you removed the disambiguation link on top of Cryptoblepharus egeriae. My concern is that C. egeriae, while perhaps being "the" blue-tailed skink, is much lesser known than Plestiodon species with that common name. I'd like to find some way to direct people from the C. egeriae page to the list of other species known by that common name; do you have any alternative suggestions? -- Phyzome (talk) 15:46, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

@Phyzome:, I removed the hatnote because the disambiguation page is now at blue-tailed skink. Anybody who types "blue-tailed skink" in Wikipedia's search will land on the disambiguation page which presents both the Plestiodon and the Cryptoblepharus as options. The hatnote was necessary previously, when "blue-tailed skink" went directly to Cryptoblepharus, but people should now be able to get to Plestiodon by the disambiguation page. As far as non-Wikipedia searches go, Wikipedia's Plestiodon fasciatus article is the top Google result for "blue-tailed skink", and the Wikipedia disambiguation page is the second result. Google is still presenting Cryptoblepharus in the knowledge graph summary for "blue-tailed skink" searches, but I expect that will change in a few days as Google reindexes content. If you want to re-add the hatnote, go ahead, but I really don't think it is necessary going forward. Plantdrew (talk) 17:33, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Mmm, that's a fair point about searches -- I think at most I'll just try to work some disambiguation into the article body. Thanks for the response! -- Phyzome (talk) 03:38, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Bambusa template

Hi, i was wondering if you can convert it to a portable template for simple English. Thanks

Artix Kreiger (talk) 01:11, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

@Artix Kreiger:, sorry, I can't help with this. It's not just a matter of creating the relative simple templates that store the taxonomic hierarchy (that's the part I'm good with). There are a couple dozen templates with the more complicated code needed to make the speciesboxes work in the first place. I don't understand those very well, and don't know how to get them working on Simple English Wikipedia. Plantdrew (talk) 02:48, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

sorry for typos. I was on phone. As for templates, I understand. I'll just forgo it. Artix Kreiger (talk) 03:04, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

plants portal tab

OK I can see you object to the usage of plants portal tabs - but I fail to see in your contribs anything that might explain the purging -

also there seems a bit of overkill by removing the country parts of the portal link - it would really help if in WP:AGF you could explain somewhere what you are up to... There is a sense from your edits you dont like botanical issues imposing on plants - but surely such a purge could do with a note somewhere? Otherwise it is taken so easily in bad faith - regardless of the good sense from your side JarrahTree 05:01, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

@JarrahTree:, portals never really took off here. The Plants Portal is moribund; it hasn't had any substantive updates since 2011. It's rarely used (there were ~550 links in article space before I removed any, out of 70,000 plant articles), and not very often viewed (30-40 hits per day).

What exactly are readers getting out of the portal? A summary of plants in general (if they are interested in plants as a general topic, there's a link to plant in practically every plant related article). A random selection of one of 28 FA/GAs (out of 166), and one of 18 featured photos (out of 172). Five stale DYK hooks. A stale list of Wikiproject tasks and a Wikiproject family tree. An entrance to the plant category tree. A very poorly curated list of related topics (it does include some core concepts, but what the heck is plant perception (paranormal) doing there)? A list of related portals (which are also mostly moribund and incomplete). And a list of sister projects, which don't necessarily have any relevant content on plants (Wikiversity and Wikivoyage links go to non-existent pages).

I get that portals are intended to tie a bunch of stuff together: general info on a topic and core subtopics, featured content, WikiProjects, categories, sister Wikimedia projects. But the result is that most of the stuff on a portal page is not of interest to any given reader. As I see it, portals are a failed experiment on en.wiki (I gather they are more successful on de.wiki). Absent an editorial community that is committed to maintaining portals, they turn into clutter on articles that have them.

The plants portal isn't used in any consistent way. It isn't present on most of the 28 FA/GAs that the portal can display. It's spammed across a very small number of mostly low-profile articles, rather than being consistently present on articles that are of high quality, interest, or importance. Given that status quo, and the generally sorry state of the portal, in most cases, removing the portal as an irrelevant distraction seems to me to be more beneficial than retaining it or working to improve it. Plantdrew (talk) 02:15, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

wow, I was going to remove my talk page item above when I saw your contributions as I fell that it explained itself - I understand the scope issue, (which had been my original problem)

And your answer is very important and I see your reasoning. Thank you so much for your response.

My concern had been that as with insects and other biota items - there is nothing in main cat space to identify whether something is a plant, animal or something else by having the latin name only... now I have read your reasoning - yes I understand, multitude of issues that are not unique to any one project - and yes - inconsistent usage. Sheesh. I can understand your concern. So even if I did trap all the loose ends - as you say it is (along with the diminishing editor numbers). I have heard of portal reduction rumours as well. I had found the tag on main space as a way of clarifying what the item category was. I can also see your point about not wanting to put time into a messy portal. I think I will leave of tagging for a while and think about it. I really appreciate your response. Thanks. Not sure where to go with this - but will take time to think about what next JarrahTree 03:57, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

@JarrahTree:, I'm not sure what your needs are in terms of figuring out what something is (plant, animal, etc.), but I don't understand what tagging with a portal accomplishes that PetScan can't do or pop-up previews can't do. If I want a list of categories for e.g. plants PetScan can do it. If I'm in a random category, I have pop-up previews enabled, so I just hover over one of the entries to find out what it is (I find myself in this situation frequently as I'm tagging new categories for WikiProjects, and the new pages report for arthropods includes entries that could be tagged with one of 5 projects and 2 taskforces). Granted, I guess it'd be a little simpler if there was a portal tag and then I wouldn't need the preview. Plantdrew (talk) 20:44, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Yup - as you observe yourself - at the end of your comment, the conundrum.

But to answer your initial comment 'the need' - not so much a personal issue - the general process of category creation has no 'necessaries' - there are all 'sufficient' conditions - basic - the parent cat, and thats it - any further additions are up to subsequent editors - for much creation... But the problem is, as you have so eloquently stated - a crappy or insufficient portal being referred to might let the whole thing down. And in some cases, but not all only the subject specialists might be aware of the limitations of the portal being referred to.

Thanks for linking petscan! My personal decision is to give portal linking a break for plants for a while, but might come back to it after further investigation... Look2see's idiosyncratic linking to subjects by name or subject in a descriptive sentence might be an alternative JarrahTree 00:25, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

@JarrahTree:, oh, I was totally missing your ultimate purpose. I think I get it now with your reference to Look2see. As I understand Wikipedia:Categorization#Creating category pages it's totally fine to add text that explains the intended contents of the category. And it should be possible in most cases to explain what the category itself represents while doing so. Category:Myrtales of Australia already has explanatory text, although it might be clearer if "flora" was replaced with "plants". For Category:Syzygium just write "Plant species in the genus Syzygium."

I'm not quite sure what to make of something like Category:Runway safety; it really could do with some explanation. Contents are really more "instrument systems specifically designed to enhance runway safety" than runway safety in general. It doesn't include hearing protection, lighting systems, or fences. All of these are elements of runway safety, but are used in other contexts as well. Maybe that category should be moved to a different name. At any rate, I don't think adding the aviation portal really does much to explain the category.

I'll try to add a sentence of explanatory text to any categories I create in the future. Plantdrew (talk) 02:07, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Heheh - runway safety - there is a task force of Aviation for airports... that doesnt have its own separate portal neither does - Occ Safety and Health - a default problem which is very very frequent when some subject areas seem still hardly even developed twelve years in - I mean ships, 'trains, plants - really that gives the larger project a feel like primary school appellations were the rule.

The random dependence upon the quirks of the editing population have allowed some very very weird projects, portals and subject areas that are antithetical to good rigorous systematic understandings of things. And also some very concerted editors introduce unchecked and weird variations on almost everything... but dont let me start JarrahTree 04:20, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Your edit - doesnt really answer the issue in some ways - but then some eds never know who else has discussed the issues - and unless hashed out somewhere at a talk page somewhere... JarrahTree 01:44, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Small world

Plantdrew, I was in Philadelphia a few weeks ago and a local friend pointed out the location of a Franklinia tree to me. She told me a little about their lineage and rarity. Naturally, I had to look up the article on Wikipedia. I was pleasantly surprised to see the last editor was you! Funny how things come around like that. Hope you're doing well. Ckoerner (talk) 14:41, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

@Ckoerner: I'm doing well, nice to hear from you. The Franklinia story is certainly interesting. There's one growing at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Since the meetup, I've started doing far more complex searches in the course of my editing. I'm frequently using regular expressions (coupled with "hastemplate") to find various errors in the taxoboxes of articles on plant and animal species. 20:59, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Taxobox cleanups

Hi, can I ask why you split the "taxon" field into "genus" and "species" e.g. Drakensberg minnow, when carrying out "taxobox cleanup"? My interpretation of the guidance set out at Template:Speciesbox is that for species in non monotypic genera the use of the taxon field is the norm and that splitting into genus and species is unnecessary, and really only expected for monotypic genera. Quetzal1964 (talk) 07:58, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Originally |genus= and |species= were the only parameters. I introduced |taxon= in this version because {{Automatic taxobox}} only uses |taxon=, and I thought consistency would make it easier for new users of automated taxoboxes. (Including me, since I used to forget that |taxon= didn't work with {{Speciesbox}}.) I imagine I updated the documentation too, but I haven't checked on that.

I too have noticed Plantdrew making these changes; personally, I wouldn't change |taxon= to |genus= / |species=. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:57, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964:, well it's something I'm only changing if something else has me editing the taxobox anyway (e.g broken status system for Drakensberg minnow). I appreciate that taxon in speciesboxes is consistent with automatic taxoboxes. But taxon can't be used consistently in speciesboxes; aside from monotypic genera, any cases where the taxonomy template is ambiguous (due to genus name being used in multiple kingdoms) must also take genus/species parameters. The genus/species parameters always work, the taxon parameter may not. And subspeciesbox/infraspeciesbox don't support the taxon parameter at all. Plantdrew (talk) 01:35, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

I take those points, but in the great majority of cases |taxon= does work, and autotaxoboxes other than {{Speciesbox}} and {{Automatic taxobox}} are very little used. But it's not something I care strongly about. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:53, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

As with Peter I don't really care either way, thank you for the explanation. I think I have used {{Subspeciesbox}} once and never used {{infraspeciesbox}}.Quetzal1964 (talk) 08:15, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Taxonomy/Actinaria

I've been struggling over why when a category is added to a taxonomy template, as you rightly did to Template:Taxonomy/Actinaria, it causes errors. (Nothing shows now, even if you look at the old version, because it gets the taxonomic hierarchy from the most recent version.) I still can't work it out.

I've left Template:Taxonomy/Actinaria as a "same as" template. This ensures that if someone does mis-spell the taxon name in an autotaxobox, it will be overridden by the correct spelling. I think it may be worth leaving this taxonomy template there, although we could ask for it to be deleted. What do you think?

Unless and until I can figure out why adding categories to a taxonomy template screws them up, it's best to comment out the content before adding the "unnecessary" category. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:34, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Retaining Actinaria as a "same as" template makes sense. It's a fairly common spelling (though less common than Actiniaria). Thanks for the tip about commenting out the content; I came across another unnecessary template just now, Template:Taxonomy/Paraleucogobio notacanthus. Plantdrew (talk) 17:40, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Fix to location of red pencil icon in autotaxoboxes

I've been aware for some time that when there's no image, the red pencil icon in autotaxoboxes overlaps with the words "Scientific classification" – at least on some browser/platform combinations. Are you a Windows user? If so, could you have a look at Template talk:Edit taxonomy#Test of change? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:15, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead:, I've also noticed this as an issue when the text in |classification_status= gets too long (pencil becomes inaccessible at 23 characters regardless of window size on the machine I'm using now). Hopefully your sandbox version will fix that problem as well. Although frankly, I don't think there's much value in |classification_status= anyway; it's hardly ever used and dubious/controversial recognition of a taxon is better explained in the text. Plantdrew (talk) 17:51, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

The fix I'm suggesting is to set a minimum width for the taxobox, which will automatically be increased when there's an image. The problem is that if the minimum width is set to ensure that "Scientific classification" just clears the red pencil, any longer text will still overlap. Can you give me a link to an article with |classification_status= where overlap is a problem? Peter coxhead (talk) 17:55, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, I guess I didn't quite diagnose what causes the overlap (it's not strictly number of characters). At any rate, the pencil is inaccessible at Dominican green-and-yellow macaw. Plantdrew (talk) 17:59, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. Interesting. At the font size I normally use (I am elderly!), the line wraps, so that "(disputed)" appears below "Scientific classification" and there's no overlap. However, if I reduce the font size I can reproduce the effect you must be seeing. This suggests that forcing a line break before the extra text added by the classification_status parameter might solve the problem. I've now made this change; see the extra test at Template talk:Edit taxonomy#Test of change. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:21, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the time you spent

Tidying up my edits from yesterday on pages/categories related to plane communication. Edaham (talk) 01:34, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Quercus guadalupensis

Should "Quercus guadalupensis" be added to the list of white oaks? Bacardi379 (talk) 01:49, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

@Bacardi379: You mean adding it to List of Quercus species under Section Quercus? Quercus × guadalupensis is a hybrid between Q. macrocarpa and Q. stellata, so it fits into section Quercus. But the list is a list of species, not "species and hybrids". I'd recommend not adding guadalupensis if it's just going to be a one-off addition. If you want to create a comprehensive list of hybrid oaks (maybe in the species list, maybe in an independent list), that would be fantastic. But that would be a large and complicated task. Wikipedia has at least 4 articles on hybrid oaks at present; Quercus × alvordiana, Quercus × macdonaldii, Quercus × morehus and Quercus × warei. They are near orphans and ought to be listed somewhere, but I'm not sure the species list is the right place. Plantdrew (talk) 02:15, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:"In popular culture" content

I've opened a discussion regarding an edit you made to Wikipedia:"In popular culture" content in September without adequate explanation. There has been a low-grade edit war over the content since then, so an explanation of why you removed it would be helpful. Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 18:30, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Species list and allied templates updated

I have today updated {{Species list}}, {{Taxon list}}, and the various allied templates (but not {{Nested taxon list}}) to use an underlying Lua module. All can now take an indefinite number of taxon name/authority pairs as arguments (though I'm not sure that's really a good idea), but perhaps more importantly don't each have a different arbitrary restriction on the number of arguments.

I've tested the templates fairly thoroughly (they're not very complicated as these things go), but as you probably look at more taxoboxes than anyone, if you see any issues please let me know (and revert as appropriate). Peter coxhead (talk) 17:01, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

IUCN3.1 Status as Not Evaluated

Hi, I can see where you are coming from with edits such as this, but I have a terrible habit of reading template documentation, such as Template:Taxobox/species#IUCN3.1, where NE is listed as a valid parameter value. And somebody has coded the template to output that 'Not evaluated'. I suspect the idea of entering NE and displaying 'Not evaluated' is to let the reader know that we have checked the IUCN Red List and found that the species has not been evaluated, so there's little point in the reader checking. William Avery (talk) 21:06, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

I only noticed after writing this that there's a section about it above. William Avery (talk) 21:54, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Speciesbox

Hi Plantdrew. I've been noticing you've been updated species articles to use the speciesbox. I've been thinking about going through insect articles to do the same. However, when I tried to update emerald ash borer, the genus field did not say Agrilus, but instead was filled with {{{1}}}. [7] Maybe it's just late and I'm skimming over the something in the template's instructions, but do you know offhand what's causing that? Kingofaces43 (talk) 05:01, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

@Kingofaces43: the problem was in Template:Taxonomy/Agrilus. (It had an out-of-date format that a bot was fixing last year, but it seems to have missed this one for some reason.) I've fixed it and the page is fine (you may have to do a null edit to see the change if the old version is cached for you). Peter coxhead (talk) 08:14, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Peter coxhead. That's definitely something I would not have keyed in on at first. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:10, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

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Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5/Biological and health sciences/Plants

Hi Plantdrew, just letting you know that a new level of vital articles for a list of 50,000 has been created (not filled yet). There is a subpage dedicated to plants, fungi and other organisms that are not animals with a current allotted quota of 1500 articles. If you have the time, We could use your help in adding articles to the plant section. Thanks! Gizza ^(t)(c) 12:28, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Western Osprey

Plantdrew......both the map and some of the text is technically not correct for this article. The western osprey does not occur in Australasia, where it is replaced by the eastern osprey. Someone disambiguated the osprey article which now causes a few problems. I followed the format of great/western great/eastern great egret, but it looks like western great egret now redirects to great egret, with eastern great egret still a viable page. Perhaps we use that format to make everyone happy?......Pvmoutside (talk) 21:43, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

@Pvmoutside: Well, there is certainly text that is not technically correct in the western osprey article; it mentions Australian populations and extinct species and is thus really about the entire genus Pandion, and hasn't undergone editing to reflect the species split. However, with regards to the map I was going off the text of eastern osprey which says that its range starts (in the northwest) in Sulawesi. Is that text incorrect? The range map for the genus/species sensu lato doesn't have Sulawesi colored in at all. And the range map purportedly for western osprey doesn't show it present to the south and east of Sulawesi.

I can't find any evidence of there ever being a separate article for western great egret. Did you mean cattle egret/western cattle egret/eastern cattle egret? There's a bunch of redirects left behind pointing to cattle egret that should be going to eastern cattle egret. Plantdrew (talk) 22:09, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

no, at one time the IOC recognized western and eastern great egret only, then at one of their revisions merged them both together to fall in line with the rest of the taxonomic world. You may have to look back a ways. When the IOC merged the two, the Wikipedia page merged also, and kept eastern great egret as a subspecies page....Pvmoutside (talk) 22:13, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Mop?

Hey, Do you have any interest in becoming an admin? I believe you are much more qualified than some of the admins out there. NikolaiHo^☎️ 04:32, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

@Nikolaiho:, I'm flattered that you think I'd make a good admin. However, at this time, I'm not really interested in doing the work of being an admin (I mean, I wouldn't mind having admin tools so that in the case that I come across pages that need a history merge, I could do it myself intstead of making another admin do it, but I don't think I'd spend my time monitoring request for history merges). Thank you for your confidence in me. Perhaps I'll change my mind the future.Plantdrew (talk) 20:24, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

I've thought about making the same suggestion. You've helped me on several occasions and I've seen you show a lot of good judgement on this page and elsewhere. I've sometimes participated in the RfA process and it can be brutal. The job itself is hardly a reward; it is important work and I'm glad some people are willing to do it, but my perception is that you are already doing plenty. Keep up the good work. If you ever want to move toward being an admin, you'll have my support.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:49, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

If you ever change your mind, please let me know. NikolaiHo^☎️ 00:27, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Please come and help...

Should MoS shortcut redirects be sorted to certain specific maintenance categories? An Rfc has been opened on this talk page to answer that question. Your sentiments would be appreciated!  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  17:18, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Berlinia korupensis

This page came up on my list b/c it used to have an IUCN status, so I only hesitated slightly when deciding to place it. But I was curious, so I checked a bit further and saw that you recently removed both |status= & |system_status= prior to my edit, so I reverted mine. I also see that the |status_system= was malformed, missing a 2.3/3.1, so I'm still curious - did you remove both the |status= & |status_system= because of mismatch (malformality), or for another reason? I don't want to overstep my bounds with adding statuses where they're not desired.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:20, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding:, my bad. I was cleaning up malformed status systems that lacked a version number. IUCN didn't show up in the taxonbar for this species, so I assumed it wasn't in IUCN, and removed the status. However, I now see that it is actually in IUCN (it's just that the Wikidata item doesn't have an IUCN link), so your edit adding status was fine. Plantdrew (talk) 20:28, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Were they all done with the same "taxobox cleanup" edit summary? I can double check them for significant statuses (> LC).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:59, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: I used a mix of "taxobox cleanup" and "taxobox fix" edit summaries in that series of edits. I use those summaries a lot, and not always consistently, but generally "taxobox cleanup" means I'm removing superfluous parameters and/or standardizing parameter values, and "taxobox fix" means I'm fixing typos that break parameters.

There were 29 articles with IUCN (no version) at the start of the month. I went through 24 of them on 4 December (perhaps you'd edited some of the other 5), in this series of edits, starting with "Snowshoe hare" and ending with "Trachemys dorbignyi dorbignyi". Aside from Berlinia korupensis, I removed the status from Eastern river cooter, Chicken turtle, and Trachemys dorbignyi dorbignyi. And I replaced IUCN with EPBC at Grevillea brachystylis subsp. grandis.

Excellent! Much more manageable than the ~22k "taxobox cleanup"s I found...   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:25, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

No changes found (fyi).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:32, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

Your input sought

Please see Module talk:TaxonList. Thanks! Peter coxhead (talk) 17:35, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Happy holidays

I'm having a merry Christmas and I hope you have a good day today and a happy new year. Thanks for working with me over the past year on Lepidoptera related stuff. Keep up the good work.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:09, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike:, I'm having a nice Christmas, thank you for the holiday greetings. And thank you for all you're work on Lepidoptera; I look forward to working with you in more in the New Year. Plantdrew (talk) 23:57, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

ICZN & type species

HI Drew, what happens when a genus loses its type species? I have been working through the Cyprinidae and could not determine the type species for Semiplotus. CoF has this as Cyprinus semiplotum which is now Cyprinion semiplotum, leaving Semiplotus without a type species. I guess another type species would have to be designated and I further guess that would be S. modestus. I tried looking at the ICZN online but couldn't find what I was after. Any guidance would be gratefully received. Quetzal1964 (talk) 17:00, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

@Quetzal1964:, you're thinking along the right track. However, I think this may just be a mixup at CoF/Fishbase. Vishwanath & Kosygin 2000 is cited by Fishbase as treating Semiplotus semiplotus as a synonym of Cyprinion semiplotus. At CoF, Vishwanath & Kosygin is cited as accepting Semiplotus semiplotus as valid. With the exception of Conway 2011, sources at CoF going with Cyprinion semiplotus are checklists, which I wouldn't give much weight to as taxonomic authorities. CoF has Kottelat 2013 and Yang 2015 treating Semiplotus as a valid genus. Kottelat's work is also a checklist, but I would give Kottelat a lot of weight as an authority. Yang's work is a phylogenetic study. I'll see if I can get full text of any of these papers when I'm back at work next week, but I'm inclined to think that Semiplotus semiplotus may be valid. Plantdrew (talk) 23:23, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I have come across a similar case with Mesonoemacheilus where CoF cites Nemacheilus triangularis Day 1865 as the type species but Fishbase records this species as still named Nemacheilus triangularis while still listing Mesonoemacheilus as a valid genus. I am reverting to the Fishbase species listings as per the guidance at Wikiproject Fishes but occasionally it does not feel right, I'll leave the species list as is for this one. Quetzal1964 (talk) 09:09, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

heya @Quetzal1964 and Plantdrew:, sorry to butt in on this but I can answer this for you. If a species is moved to another genus all its names go with it. If it is type species of a genus (in this case Semiplotus) then the name Semiplotus goes with the type and becomes a synonym of Cyprinion the genus that any other members of the former genus Semiplotus are contained in now has to be given the next available name. A genus cannot loose its type species, the name goes wherever the type goes and the clade that had the name looses the name when it looses the species, either its next available name must be resurrected, or it is now an unnamed genus if there was no other synonyms. The authors that did this should have dealt with all this and if they did not they have been highly negligent. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 20:13, 30 December 2017 (UTC)