Wikispecies:Village Pump - Wikispecies

I have added this Help:Name section#Special: Reptile and Amphibian Nomenclature with respect to the nomenclature of Hoser. Reptile Database, TTWG, ITIS, COL etc will not be using his nomenclature in the future and neither should we. Any names post 2000 need to be deleted. When adding new names we should no longer add any names from this author. Wuster et al with support of 464 individual herpetologists, Kaiser et al with support of over 600 herpetologists and all major Herp Societies have in essence followed the recommendations of Krell, 2021, who says that its up to community consensus on how to deal with Taxonomic Vandalism. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 05:58, 9 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Hi Scott, might it be good to include the link to Krell, 2021 reference cited somewhere in that Help page, also maybe hyperlink other key ones? Cheers Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 18:40, 10 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

I can add links to all the papers cited in that statement, I will put a references list at the bottom of it later today, cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 18:55, 10 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Scott, great initiative! Regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk),19:32, 13 May 2021 (UTC).Reply

The taxonavigation section of our Odonata page (i.e. dragonflies and damselflies) is probably incorrect, messy or at least out of date. Please help out fixing it if you can! Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 21:57, 12 May 2021 (UTC).Reply

Last September, I deleted {{Author2}}, which was created in March 2020.

It was speedily deleted at the request of User:Estopedist1 who noted when tagging it that "The template was used years ago, when we haven't HotCat script"; I concurred it was unused, and further noted that it was non-standard.

In talk:Pigsonthewing&oldid=8322793 this comment on my talk page, its creator User:Pitke disputes this, and accuses me of deleting the template improperly.

I have therefore restored the template in order that a community discussion as to its merits can take place.

It should not be used in main space, until consensus to adopt it is shown.

Pitke also comments that the template "saved a lot of work for me"; I would respectfully suggest that any editor wishing to use a template for such purposes should either bring it to the community to seek widespread adoption; or apply their template through substitution, such that it leaves behind templates and other markup that their fellow editors expect to find.

I also note {{Repo inline}}, another non-standard template by the same editor, with fewer than 200 transclusions. Is there consensus to use this? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:40, 26 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

I think that having two templates to format and link author names may invite errors to the many "Taxa by author" categories we use. The only practical difference between the two templates is that the more commonly used {{a}} template does not automatically add the page to a "Taxa by author" category, whereas the {{Author2}} does. We should bear in mind that the vast majority of authors listed on taxon pages aren't the ones who actually described that particular taxon. Quite the contrary: most of them are only referred to as writers of additional publications, or the authors of synonyms. Such writers/authors should of course not have those particular taxon names atomatically listed in their "Taxa by author" categories. Hence I argue that we should delete the {{Author2}} template, since it may be unnecessarily confusing for new and inexperienced users to know which of the {{a}} and {{Author2}} templates to use. In my opinion the current praxis to use the {{a}} template and then manually add specific "Taxa by author" categories works well.

The non-standard {{Repo inline}} template is easy to use, but has its shortcomings. First of all it was created five and a half years after the standard {{Repository link}} one (or {{rl}} for short). Furthermore, as of this writing it's only used on 128 pages, compared to 31,868 for the standard one. But above all it lacks some of the functionality found in the standard template, most notably how to render text. For example the Swedish Museum of Natural History (SMNH) is often referred to as "NRM" in older literature. "NRM" is short for Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, i.e. a Swedish short form meaning "Natural history (state) museum". The trouble is that the actual Wikispecies page is called SMNH rather than "NRM", and using the template as {{Repository link|NRM}} leads to a redirect page, and then to the proper SMNH page. However the standard tempate can deal with this: the code string {{Repository link|SMNH|NRM}} will render the text "NRM" but link directly to SMNH, without a redirect. The non-standard {{Repo inline}} lacks this feature.

I propose we replace all current instances of the non-standard template with the standard {{Repository link}} one, and then delete it. I can set up a semi-automatic bot to do the necessary replacements before deletion: replacing 128 occurrences will only take 30–40 minutes or so. Kind regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 05:03, 27 May 2021 (UTC).Reply

I think that I have said this before, but here goes again. WS is a taxonomy database and really should not be used by editors for private experiments. Of course developments should be encouraged, but before use it is reasonable that editors bring them to the pump for comment. If the community reject these developments then they become deprecated, if not we all can use them. As to the above, I would advise that {{Repo inline}} be rejected and instances replaced with {{Repository link}}. As to {{Author2}}, I do not see any obvious benefits that could not be obtained by modifying {{A}} indeed if this is required. Andyboorman (talk) 08:54, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Indeed. The {{a}} template could rather easily be modified, adding for example a |cat=yes and/or |cat=y parameter to automatically add a "Taxa by author" category, if desired. The template can be set to ignore the new parameter if given any other value than "yes" or "y", or if the parameter is left out altogether. This would ensure that the updated {{a}} template is backwards compatible with the old one on all the +30,000 pages where it is already used. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 09:56, 27 May 2021 (UTC).Reply

Comment: HotCat was definitely around when I created Author2, and I am very familiar with using it on Commons where I do most of my work. The nature of my editing at the time relied on using page shortcuts and HotCat would necessitated the locating and clicking of a button. But that hardly matters now. My experience in other wikis has been that suggesting changes to current, widely used templates is usually fruitless, and that providing an example of the proposed functionality with a sample template will speed things along because users will be able to see the difference instead of trying to parse it from possibly very technical language. I'm also still just beginning to understand and remain somewhat intimidated by the local wiki culture, so singularly focused on recording taxonomic info that, say, etymology may only be recorded as a category, and if related to a taxonomist, an unreferenced line. Support: Having said that, since Repository link exists, has better functionality, and doesn't seem to have the inline issue I think I created Repolink for, I have zero issues with deprecating the few repo link templates I've created and moving on to using RL in my editing. As for Author2, I'm completely fine with using A instead and adding an option for |cat=1. --Pitke (talk) 16:36, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

I agree with the replacement of {{Repo inline}} then depreciate it,as for {{a}} yes modifying this should always be the fist option if possible rather than creating new templates. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 17:59, 27 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

Someone with admin ops please update Template:A with this:

<span style="font-variant: small-caps;" class="vcard"><span class="fn n nickname">{{#if: {{{nolink|}}} | {{{2|{{{1}}}}}} | [[{{{1}}}|{{{2|{{{1}}}}}}]] }}{{#if: {{{cat|}}} | [[Category:{{{1}}} taxa]] | }}</span></span><noinclude>{{documentation}}
<!-- Add categories to the /doc subpage and interwikis in Wikidata, not here! -->
</noinclude>

-- Pitke (talk) 11:05, 1 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Pitke:   Done. Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 15:09, 1 June 2021 (UTC).Reply

Thanks a bunch! --Pitke (talk) 15:20, 1 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

I've just now converted all the pages formerly in Category:New taxon names by author to standard author taxa categories (or redirected them if standard ones already existed), and now this category is empty. Should it be deleted, or redirected to Category:Taxa by author maybe? Monster Iestyn (talk) 15:36, 5 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Deleted. Burmeister (talk) 15:46, 5 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

I agree, it should be deleted. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 15:48, 5 June 2021 (UTC).Reply

In that case, I'm proposing it for speedy deletion. Monster Iestyn (talk) 16:04, 5 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Deleted. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:43, 5 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

My friend User:Nicolekearney, Manager of BHL Australia, the Australian branch of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (based at Museums Victoria in Melbourne), has tweeted:

The species descriptions in John Gould's "A monograph of the Macropodidae, or family of kangaroos" (1841-2) now have DOIs (they're now persistently findable, citable & trackable!) Find the shiny new DOIs here: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/itemdetails/132864

Nicole and her BHL colleagues have previously minted DOIs for other historic species descriptions, also.

Is anyone interested in adding these DOIs, manually or programmatically, to Wikispecies, and to Wikidata? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:38, 7 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Cetainly, but I can't really start until the weekend or so. I've already retweeted her post to our official @Wikispecies channel though. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 16:37, 7 June 2021 (UTC).Reply

Guess the credits should go to Roderic's BioStor... --Succu (talk) 21:18, 8 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Why is it that the Wikidata to-do list has not updated since 20 April 2021.

• [1]

I have been making entries from this for a couple of years, and all of a sudden, something happened.Neferkheperre (talk) 02:07, 8 June 2021 (UTC)Reply

Sad to confess it, but I haven't been using that list for quite some time, and don't know what might have caused the changes. Perhaps @Magnus Manske has some answers? Regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:06, 8 June 2021 (UTC).Reply