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Archive 64

Need for the "Species Latin name abbreviation disambiguation pages"

This series of disambiguation pages was created between 15-10 years ago Category:Species Latin name abbreviation disambiguation pages by now blocked editor Neelix, and I dont think anything has been done with it since. New species have article pages now, but are not represented in the disambigs, extant species with no article were included, but extinct species are missing, and no updates have happened as splits/synonymizations/depreciations have happened. I feel the whole lot is much more work then its intended benefit and should be deleted. Thoughts?--Kevmin § 17:07, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Wow. Somehow, in decades and tens of thousands of edits, I never came across these, or if I did, didn't realize how extensive the categorization was. These would be an absolute nightmare to keep updated and accurate, given how many taxa change generic placement, and it seems like most wouldn't have many articles that link TO them. The first one I picked at random, A. maxima, lists 12 names (one redlink), and has zero articles that link to it, not even the 11 names that have articles. Moreover, no one should be putting abbreviated scientific names directly into links. That really seems worthless. Dyanega (talk) 17:45, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

I am quite fond of lists of interesting things, but I am unable to think what real benefit these categories dispose on Wikipedia. Donald Albury 18:11, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Also wow from me; I was aware of C. elegans (disambiguation) but didn't know so many of these had been made. I'm going to be contrary and suggest possible uses for these pages:

• disambiguation of common abbreviated binomials (see C. elegans above), a scientific literacy function since taxonomic abbreviations are extremely common in scientific literature
• historical research value – older scientific literature often uses abbreviated names, and these pages could help researchers tracking down species mentions in archival materials
• linguistic/etymology – shows which descriptive terms taxonomists frequently use (like "elegans", "vulgaris", "officinalis", "communis"), which gives insight into the historical practices of taxonomic naming
• educational value: helps students understand the meaning and patterns behind scientific naming conventions (e.g., why so many species are called "vulgaris" or "australis")

Maintenance is an issue, but I think a single purpose bot could be made to partly clean up the existing pages, and have a maintenance function to scan new species article titles for binomial names, extract abbreviated forms, and update relevant disambiguation pages (or produce a weekly report of potential changes that need to be made).

Instead of focusing on the state of the pages as they are now (incomplete and sometimes outdated), think of what else it could be used for if it were up-to-date, complete, and regularly maintained?

• research prioritization: could help taxonomists identify naming conflicts before assigning new names to species (hello hemihomonyms). If they see many species already share an abbreviated form, they might choose a different epithet to reduce potential confusion in the literature
• literature mining aid: could assist in developing better automated tools for extracting species mentions from scientific literature, by providing a comprehensive list of possible species for each abbreviated form
• historical trends analysis: with complete data including dates of species descriptions, could reveal patterns in naming conventions over time and across different taxonomic groups.

Esculenta (talk) 20:56, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

• Trends for whom though, Keeping in mind a portion of your suggestion leans very close to or falls into WP:OR.--Kevmin § 21:05, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  What portion is that? I'm suggesting possible uses of a theoretical up-to-date, well-maintained system of abbreviation disambiguation pages. Esculenta (talk) 21:09, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  Lets look at your points closer.

  "disambiguation of common abbreviated binomials" Its a poor source that doesn't give a full binomial at the first usage, and if it doesnt, is consulting a random disambiguation page here really what should be encouraged?

  Historical research value – see reply to the first point and note that its compounded by the high likelihood of generic placement changes.

  Point three we already have a list of the common specific names.

  For point four, see point three.

  Whom will be doing the updating and maintaining, which would include the addition of hundreds of thousands of abbreviations (see List of prehistoric cartilaginous fish genera for just the shark relatives that are missing) unicellular organisms (see the species list at Bacillus for one missing genus of bacteria) and all the outdated jr synonyms, homonyms, and rejected names in plants, fungi, prootists, and animals. I have enough problems keeping up with the numberous synonyms that paleobotany generates (see the synonym lists in the eudicot species entries at Paleobiota of the Green River Formation, European formations area even more convoluted).

  The next three points are all OR territoty though, and also WP:Crystalball that people would even use the pages that way. Everyone here has mentioned they knew of 1 of the random pages, but not that there are hundreds of them. Ive been on wiki for over 15 years and in the time since the disambiguation pages were created, I have rarely visited any of them. Additionally disambiguation pages do not get sorted upwards in google results so you will not see them unless you actively type "Pantera (disambiguation)". How are the hypothesized researchers and students finding these pages in the first place given the depreciated search status on search engines?--Kevmin § 23:27, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

  • ""disambiguation of common abbreviated binomials" Its a poor source that doesn't give a full binomial at the first usage, and if it doesnt, is consulting a random disambiguation page here really what should be encouraged?" What's "random" about going to Wikipedia and entering "A. maxima" if you read it in a poor source and want to find out what species it is? Where else is a layperson going to figure this out?
  • "Historical research value – see reply to the first point and note that its compounded by the high likelihood of generic placement changes." see my response to your point; in the hypothetical up-to-date, complete, and regularly maintained disambiguation paged Wikipedia I'm talking about the synonyms are listed on these pages.
  • "Point three we already have a list of the common specific names." Great! Too bad a reader can't tell get a full list of species with htese names, even even tell how often these "common" names have been used historically. And how was it decided what was common?
  • "For point four, see point three." ditto my response to point 3
  • "The next three points are all OR territory though" Of course they're OR, as I explained already, these were possible use cases. "Patterns and Evolution of Species Epithet Usage in Biological Nomenclature: A Cross-Taxa Analysis from 1758–2024" would be a lot easier to write in the alternate universe.
  • "Whom will be doing the updating and maintaining" as I said already, these kind of tasks are not difficult for a bot. Esculenta (talk) 00:22, 24 October 2024 (UTC)
  • "Additionally disambiguation pages do not get sorted upwards in google results so you will not see them unless you actively type "Pantera (disambiguation)"." Wrong. I went to Google, searched for "A. maxima", and the dab page was the second hit. Esculenta (talk) 00:22, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Honestly I was very skeptical about this but after reading through your points I really like this proposal. I am happy with maintaining these pages for those purposes. — Snoteleks (talk) 17:29, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

As someone who spends all day researching scientific names, I can vouch for such an index of abbreviations being something I would never use, and given that there are nearly 2 million valid published names (plus over 3 million more that are junior synonyms or unavailable), with approximately 100,000 unique species epithets, I would anticipate that making the system anywhere near complete would be one of the most monumental tasks in WP history. If people have that kind of time, then they should be spending it turning redlinked taxonomy articles into actual articles, not making a half-baked index. I can think right now of only three scientific names that are very commonly referenced only using the abbreviation of the genus: T. rex, E. coli, and C. elegans. If there are other taxa that have these same abbreviations, then yes, by all means, let's give them disambiguation pages. But no one, researcher or lay person, is going to come to Wikipedia trying to research "What is "A. maxima?". If they did, but can't already tell from context, then that's a problem that WP isn't actually going to solve. Dyanega (talk) 23:52, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Making Wikipedia anywhere near complete will be one of the most monumental tasks in WP history; creatinga script to update and maintain a set of index files would not be. Esculenta (talk) 00:34, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I do think there is at least some value in creating disambiguation lists for common abbreviations, and my only real gripe with them is in relation to issues with maintenance and quality control, so I'm very interested in your idea to develop a script to manage these lists. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 01:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with Esculenta that there is some potential use. If someone sees the name (say reading a newspaper or website) and puts it into Wikipedia search they get a result. They may not be complete, but maintenance is not a problem. If a species gets moved, redirects should handle that. Someone looking for A. maxima that is now known as B. maxima would end at relevant article. I wouldn't advocate creating such a system from scratch (a lot of work for limited use), but the pages already exist (no work needed for the limited use). I see no benefit from deleting them. One of the benefits of Wikipedia as an encyclopaedia is its massive capacity and ability to host information that is of use to few.  —  Jts1882 | talk  07:01, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree with User:Dyanega on the futility of this. Search engines would anyway pick up the "A. maxima" via the taxobox text as pointed out by User:Esculenta. Would suggest that we ignore and add a guideline to avoid any further addition. Shyamal (talk) 07:17, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree that "If someone sees the name (say reading a newspaper or website)" then that abbreviated name could be considered in common use and would definitely warrant a disambiguation page to avoid any potential confusion to the reader. However, this practice should be limited only to those species that are actually referred to by an abbreviated name (such as T. rex, E. coli, and C. elegans) in external sources.

Unless a source does not actually first spell out the full genus name or complete binomial before referring to the species, then we should not be the first to do so. Let us not forget that the only reason to abbreviate the genus name at all was to save time for the manual typesetters, an archaic practice rendered moot by modern word processing and printing technologies. Loopy30 (talk) 13:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

Wikidata has abbreviations for most (all?) species. If somebody wants to do some kind of data-mining (as opposed to reading an encyclopedia article), they can go to Wikidata.

Aside from T. rex, E. coli and C. elegans, which do often appear in written works without ever being written out in full, I can imagine situations where somebody might encounter an abbreviated without the full genus. Maybe they have a single page torn out of a physical book, or have a limited view of pages in an digital book (as is often the case with Google Books). But if their context is limited, are they even going to be able to figure out which species on a disambiguation page is the one they are looking for? Maybe their source mentions that C. elegans is a copepod; there are 7 C. elegans copepods on the dab page, and they'll need to know the order as well to find a particular one (and if the source says "small crustacean" instead of "copepod", they're never going to find it). Disambiguation pages are supposed to be navigational aids, helping readers of an encyclopedia find the topic they are interested. I think there is very little demand for navigating from species abbreviation to species article, and whatever demand there might be is poorly served by this set of disambiguation pages. I don't think it is really possible to better serve people looking for the full name of a species if they have limited context; what context they have could be any number of things: family/order/class, marine/freshwater/terrestrial, parasitic/free-living, a continent where it occurs, etc. And we're not going to list all of that possible context for every species on a dab page. We can't even be sure that the species somebody is searching for has a Wikipedia article at all. Now, the pages don't have to be dab pages; they could be "list of species that can be abbreviated as C. elegans", but I don't think such a list would be encyclopedic.

However, the problem isn't really the species abbreviation dab pages. I dislike them, but I've made a couple myself by converting redirects to an obscure species to dabs that list less-obscure species with the same abbreviation. The species abbreviation redirects are the real problem. They were created haphazardly, with no concern for whether other species shared an abbreviation, nor whether the abbreviation redirect pointed to the least-obscure species (i.e., the "primary topic" in dab-speak).

Category:Redirects from scientific abbreviations has 957 members. I would guess that most of the pages in that category are in it because I put them there myself, and that most of them are ambiguous for multiple species (although maybe not for multiple species with Wikipedia article). Most of them were created by User:Caftaric/User:Nono64/User:NotWith (a single person), with User:Neelix maybe also having contributed a substantial number. I have not systematically gone through redirects created by Caftaric, but I would guess there are thousands more that aren't in the "Redirects from scientific abbreviations" category.

If somebody does think species abbreviation dab pages are worthwhile and wants to make more of them, you can start with User:Certes/Reports/Species redirects which lists ambiguous species abbreviation redirects. Plantdrew (talk) 00:51, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Not sure how general this is, but looking at the Wikidata items for the first few items on User:Certes/Reports/Species redirects, they are bot created and only exist as Wikimedia disambiguation pages because of the pages on English Wikipedia.  —  Jts1882 | talk  06:59, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

The first three entries in Certes list were converted from redirects into disambiguation pages a couple of days ago (perhap Kevmin noticed that and it led to this thread starting). Most of the entries on Certes list are still redirects and aren't in the "Redirects form scientific abbreviations" category. When I mentioned Wikidata, I was referring to short name (P1813); most species have this property populated with the abbreviation. 15:19, 25 October 2024 (UTC) Plantdrew (talk) 15:19, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Since I see Caftaric/Nono64/NotWith and the C. elegans (disambiguation) page was mentioned here, believe I should make some comments of my own on this subject since it seems tangentially related to this discussion (also wow, I had no idea there were so many more of these disambiguation pages) and I don't think Caftaric's C. elegans-related editing has ever been significantly discussed on-wiki before if at all.

C. elegans (disambiguation) in particular seems to have been some sort of personal project of Caftaric's, as not only had they been building up this list from 2010 all the way up until they were blocked in 2018 (before 2010, C. elegans was simply a redirect to Caenorhabditis elegans), but they also created possibly most of the C. elegans species articles in the list. I'm also aware that Caftaric sometimes created pages for any higher taxa to house these C. elegans species articles, if they were missing. Unfortunately from what I've seen of them since Caftaric was blocked, many of these C. elegans articles are or were stubs, low quality, have incomplete references, are badly researched, and so on. Caftaric also apparently created articles for invalid "C. elegans" species names, as some of these were later deleted from the list (judging by the revision history). They also arbitrarily added a list of C. elegans uses to the Cicindela article in 2017 (diff link) which was still there until I removed it about two years ago now. There may be other instances of these kinds of "C. elegans notes" on other articles, though I have not extensively searched for them.

To my knowledge, they also underwent this same C. elegans project on fr.wiki as well as on Wikispecies.

Monster Iestyn (talk) 22:20, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

New citation template: Cite NatureServe

A long overdue template for citing NatureServe Explorer has been created. Template:Cite NatureServe. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 23:49, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Arachnids by year of formal description

Kodiak Blackjack is creating an Arachnids by year of formal description category tree.

Given the 2018 RfC on limiting the number of branches & layers of the described-in tree, and that several arachnid-related cats were previously CfD'd (ticks & mites), and that I couldn't find any consensus to create an arachnid tree, do we want to crproposed cat deletion: eate an arachnid tree?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  11:02, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Slightly off-topic: shouldn't those 1757 dates be 1758?

The zoological code (4th ed) says:

3.1. Works and names published in 1758. Two works are deemed to have been published on 1 January 1758:

- Linnaeus's Systema Naturae, 10th Edition;

- Clerck's Aranei Svecici.

(There's a 1757 beetle too...)
Kweetal nl (talk) 11:26, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

You're correct; there are no available names in zoology that were, formally, published before 1 January 1758. Regardless of the actual date of Clerck's work, it's considered to be dated 1758. If you want to be super-pedantic about it, the citation would appear "Clerck, 1758 ("1757")", following Rec. 22A of the ICZN. As for proliferation of categories, if these changes are being made without consultation or consensus, then there is a significant chance that some of the new categories are going to be extremely underpopulated. If there's only one species in, say, "Echinoderms described in 1795" then that may be oversplitting. Metrics on category constituencies might be persuasive one way or the other. Dyanega (talk) 14:47, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Have read through the RfC. Was unaware of it before (I did get a couple of notices that some of the categories I was recreating were previously deleted, but the reason given was WP:C1).

My thoughts on creating the arachnid tree: when looking through the categories previously, I saw that a lot of arachnids (mites, scorpions, and ticks especially) would be lumped into "Animals described in XXXX," while spiders got their own category. Which is probably justifiable given the amount of spider species, but having a category tree that encompassed all arachnids at the class level seemed to make more sense than skipping straight to orders.

Re: 1757/58, if we want to put all the 1757-dated species into 1758, I don't have any objections to that. With regards to the beetle, it appears to have been synonymized with Dorcadion crux (Billberg, 1817) judging by the article's reference, so that just limits it to those in Systema Naturae and those in Aranei Svecici. I feel like there should be some categorical distinction between those, but I don't know how we would or if we even should go about that.

Re: categories being underpopulated, this is inevitably going to be true for some years and some taxa. It is also a problem that will eventually solve itself as new articles are created and added to their respective year of description categories. I think that the benefits of having a framework in place for future articles (or poorly-categorized articles) outweigh the downsides of having some be underpopulated... to an extent. If categories at the class level are underpopulated, it doesn't make sense to split it further until there's an actual need for diffusion.

So I'm in favor of an arachnid tree (obviously), neutral on having a spider tree, opposed to anything further (ticks, mites, etc.) for the time being.

— Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 12:30, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding @Kweetal nl @Dyanega Apologies for the pings, everyone. It's been a little more than a week since the last reply, so I'd just like to keep the ball rolling towards some sort of consensus. Any thoughts on the above (and echinoderms/etc.)?

— Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 18:12, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

The default position should be to stop creating new categories, as described in the RfC that you've read.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:20, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Myself, I'm a little more ambivalent, and mostly concerned with the overall hierarchy of categories. For example, I agree with Kodiak that if the only echinoderm category is starfish, that this is bad. I would favor replacing the starfish category with a broader echinoderm category; this wouldn't increase the overall number of categories - it's a net zero - but it'd establish a more useful and logical piece within the hierarchy, and get more taxon articles into a more useful categorization. It's a balancing act, and I would think that so long as the end result is not a much greater total number of categories, that re-organization like this is desirable. Dyanega (talk) 16:05, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

(Previously uninvolved editor) I have to say I am with Kodiak and Dyanega here. Given we are talking about categorisation by year of description and therefore information aimed specifically at people interested in taxonomy, the current system which recognises a taxonomically-arbitrary set of groups (spiders but not other arachnids, starfish but not other echinoderms, etc.) seems bizarre. We should give some weight to the six-year-old RfC quoted above, but only about a dozen people commented. I think there should still be room to propose logical improvements to the system. YFB ¿ 17:35, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Category creation is fine as long as there's vocal consensus (i.e. not WP:SILENT) prior to creation.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:06, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Echinoderms by year of formal description

Same question for Category:Echinoderms by year of formal description.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  11:26, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Same reason for the arachnid tree. We had a few categories for starfish described in <x year>, made more sense to have categories encompassing all echinoderms instead of stranding cukes, crinoids, urchins, etc. in the animals tree.

I would be in favor of deleting the starfish categories for the time being, though - I don't think there's enough volume to justify it at this point.

— Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 12:34, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Etc. by year of formal description

See Category:Described in year with manual category (23) for more (includes some valid cats, like spiders).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:11, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

There, I just screwed the pooch and manually added categories which I wasn't aware were automatically added by the Category described in year template. Mea culpa. Will clean up the mess there later today.

— Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 12:39, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Update: Have fixed all the echinoderm, spider, starfish, and arachnid categories in the maintenance category you mentioned, as well as sponges described in 1814. I didn't have a hand in creating all of the spider or starfish categories, but I fixed their manual category errors while I was going down the list for convenience's sake. Everything left, I had no involvement with.

The bee, bug, cockroach, damselfly, fly, grasshopper, sawfly, and wasp categories seem excessive - again, don't think there's enough volume at the moment to justify diffusing insects beyond the already-existing category trees for beetles, butterflies, and moths.

— Kodiak Blackjack (talk) • (contribs) 15:53, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Category:Taxa by author diffusion

Are Category:Animal taxa by author (2,039) & Category:Botanical taxa by author (1,067) intended to be mutually exclusive from Category:Taxa by American author (533), etc.?

If so, it's unclear which is the preferred destination. Should an American animal taxa author go into Animal taxa by author or Taxa by American author?

If not, Animal & Botanical will need further diffusion into their own nationality layers, which seems overly redundant, complicated, and bloaty.

Both Category:Animal taxa by author (2,039) & Category:Botanical taxa by author (1,067) were created by now-blocked, problem-producing editors in taxonomy-space, so my guess is that they should be deleted in favor of the national categories. Also, I think that having nationality above group makes more sense than having multiple national layers below Animal/Botanical/etc., since nationality-above-group will naturally result in fewer overall categories. There's only 1 nationality category that might need diffusion in the foreseeable future, Category:Taxa by American author (533), which can be done by simply diffusing into whatever the most popular taxa group is for American authors (Animal, Botanical, etc.).

@Smasongarrison, Rlendog, Beland, Phil Fish, Micromesistius, Jengod, Shellwood, Liz, Prosperosity, Surtsicna, NotAGenious, Ethmostigmus, Esculenta, and Quetzal1964: pinging all recent category editors for input.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:37, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I am very not equipped to comment on taxonomy generally BUT I think it's weird to have plants vs animals bc we also need to then consider fungi and kelp and slime molds (whatever they even are) and the whole catalogue of cooties (viruses, bacteria, and all their little friends). So. My thought is just...taxa. Full stop. Don't subdivide by types of taxa. If you want to subdivide the NAMERs of the taxa by century or nationality or what have you, sure, whatever. Good luck and bye! :D jengod (talk) 20:49, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I agree that Animal vs Botanical should be deleted. Some of these namers addressed both plants and animals (and I am sure fungi too) so that split doesn't make sense. I am not convinced we need a nationality split either but that one is at least sensible. Rlendog (talk)

Absolutely - what happens if someone dares to identify both flora and fauna? --Prosperosity (talk) 21:01, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

A possible interpretation here is that the animal/botanical split refers not to the Kingdoms, but to the nomenclatural codes (in which case "fungi and kelp and slime molds" come under botanical). But there are also the bacterial and virological codes, and PhyloCode. (One might argue that PhyloCode isn't used widely enough for Category:PhyloCode taxa by author to be useful.) Lavateraguy (talk) 11:20, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not fully sold on the need for someone to look up taxa based on the citizenship of the author, but that's pretty standard for Wiki categories so it makes sense. --Prosperosity (talk) 21:01, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of the nationality categories before, and I don't think they've been previously discussed anywhere. Category:Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus is in both the the animal category and the botanical category, and I'm sure there are other taxonomists in both categories. The botanical category does specify that it covers "plant and cryptogam taxa (lower plants, fungi, lichens, algae)". I think the animal and botanical categories aren't particularly useful and could be eliminated. I don't think we really need to diffuse Category:Taxa by author at all, and the nationality categories could be eliminated as well. Plantdrew (talk) 21:19, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Someone being in both Animal & Botanical is ok. I just don't see the point of having (Animal|Botanical) and (nationality) at the same level...unless...(Animal|Botanical) is declared non-diffusing. I'd be ok with that.

There are ~5600 unique "Taxa named by <author>" categories, and always growing, which I think is worthy of diffusion.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:15, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

My intent of beefing up the taxa by nationality was to get those categories out of the FOOian people by nationality categories that they were showing up in. I personally don't find the animal vs botantical distinction to be very helpful, but I assumed that other people who know more about tax do. Mason (talk) 23:16, 29 August 2024 (UTC)

Interesting discussion, thanks for the ping! Not very experienced with categories so hopefully I'm understanding everything correctly. I think the animal/botanical(/additional categories for other eukaryotes, prokaryotes, and virus taxa?) distinction can be valuable, but agree that it definitely should not be mutually exclusive with nationality categories. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 06:58, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Get rid of the nationality part. it's irrelevant. Two prolific authors I can think of, George Albert Boulenger and Albert Günther, were dual nationals, and there will be many more. I also don't think we need anything more than "Taxa named by", so agree with removing the references to animals and plants. Quetzal1964 (talk) 07:19, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Someone being in 2+ nationality cats is ok. Someone being in both Animal & Botanical is ok. Someone being in any of (American|Australian|...) AND any of (Animal|Botanical|...) is the main question here, and which of these 2 sets, if any, should exist.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  09:33, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

• When I first proposed these taxa by author categories back in the day, there were no suggestions to specify further than just author. So I wonder if nationality and field are even needed. FunkMonk (talk) 07:31, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

I do not see Animal & Botanical as being mutually exclusive with each other or with the nationality cats. Only having nationality category makes categories difficult to find, especially when one does not know the full name and identity of an author, or when there are spelling variations. Therefore I object to only having nationality-based categories, but I am OK with these otherwise. I see a need for diffusion but the Animal/Botanical split is quite sufficient. To me a bigger problem is propagation of categories with one or few articles, without much prospect of them becoming more populated. When does an author deserve a category? There is no good answer, and this was the reason I was initially quite sceptic to the "Taxa by author" system. Now I kind of like it because it highlights the people behind taxonomy, but the notability issue remains unresolved. Cheers, Micromesistius (talk) 11:55, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

I personally vote to get rid of the field categories. The animal/botanical split is archaic, unrealistic, and completely subjective, so it should not be considered. I have no issue with the nationality categories as it could be an interesting source of demographical data, but I also have no issue with removing them if that is the consensus (also, people can have more than one nationality, and some believe to be better represented by their ethnicity than by their national status). — Snoteleks (talk) 15:28, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

When you say get rid of the field categories, do you mean to do away with taxonomic categorisation for authors entirely, or replacing the animal/botanical author categories with something more comprehensive? I wouldn't consider the animal ("zoological" would be a better term IMO)/botanical split subjective - I interpreted it as referring to to taxa covered by the ICZN vs the ICNafp, and I think distinguishing between authors publishing on animals and authors publishing on plants/fungi/algae can be useful. These two categories obviously fail to address all the organisms outside of those groups, but I would prefer to see more comprehensive categorisation than do away with taxonomic distinctions entirely. Interested to get your thoughts on this given that I know your interests lie with organisms that fall outside of the existing categories. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:45, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

The ICZN and ICNafp overlap in many protozoan groups, that's my primary concern. Authors that study protists such as Labyrinthulomycetes, Bicosoecida, Euglenida, Katablepharida and Myzozoa could belong to either of those categories, as there is no consensus (and no desire for consensus) on which nomenclatural code has domain over them. In all of those, both zoological and botanical suffixes of taxon ranks have to be used because the codes refuse to collaborate with each other. Ideally we would be able to firmly separate one from the other, but the reality is that it's subjective in the sense that it depends entirely on the author's preference for these ambiregnal groups.

However, even assuming that we collectively decide to maintain these categories, we could not even firmly separate them ourselves in Wikipedia to avoid any overlap. There are groups which, by consensus, have botanical suffixes in some taxon ranks, but zoological suffixes in others. Perhaps it would be better to have "animal", "plant", "fungal", "protist" and "prokaryotic" categories instead. — Snoteleks (talk) 12:19, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

My two cents, as an ICZN Commissioner, is that the plant/animal categorization is definitely artificial, and definitely has a fair-sized "fuzzy area", which argue against the maintenance of those sub-categorizations. I have an even stronger objection to categorization according to nationality of authors, because "nationality" is even MORE artificial, and can also be pretty darn fuzzy; not just authors with multiple citizenships, but authors whose countries have changed (e.g., how does one categorize an author from the former Soviet Union, or pre-Soviet Russia?), or authors born in one country, but who lived and worked elsewhere without citizenship there? If I want to know where an author was born, or their citizenships, I can look up their linked biography. If they are not notable enough to have a linked biography, then I wouldn't care where they were from. Categorizing taxa by their author's name, by their year of description, and by their biogeographic region or continent are all fine, but I have trouble with sub-categories within these (including subdividing biogeographic regions or continents into countries, which are, as noted, artificial boundaries and subject to change). Dyanega (talk) 15:49, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly. — Snoteleks (talk) 12:46, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

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So it looks like there's consensus to get rid of the nationality layer, as no one finds it useful. @Smasongarrison: is that ok with you?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:24, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

As I said before my problem is that these categories keep showing up in FOOian people by nationality categories, where they're really don't belong. So they might not be directly useful for Taxony, but they're really useful for keeping them isolated from the rest of the people categories. I'd be fine with an alternative categorization that solved this problem or a policy that these categories don't belong in the rest of the tree. But, they serve a basic use of diffusion. ^SMason_Garrison 18:37, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

What's an example of one of the FOOian categories that these keep populating? I'm ok with the taxa by nationality cats if they're part of a larger structure.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:59, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Here's the example I tidied up today. Category:Taxa named by Carl Borivoj Presl was in Czech botanists, before I cleaned these kinds of categories. They were often placed in all the same categories as the person who named the taxa, such as FOOth-century botanists, FOOth-century Czech scientists etc. It's just really annoying because the contents of the taxa category never apply to these kinds of pages. ^SMason_Garrison 22:13, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Is the problem that Carl Borivoj Presl is placed in category Category:Taxa named by Carl Borivoj Presl, when of course he isn't a taxon named by himself? The other categories in Category:Taxa by Czech author don't include the author (at least the few I checked).  —  Jts1882 | talk  07:54, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

Partially, but at the heart of it the entire category often gets treated like Carl Borivoj Presl, almost like it's an incorrectly named eponymous category. ^SMason_Garrison 12:20, 10 November 2024 (UTC)