Help talk:Author Names

Perhaps author abbreviations is an area Wikipedia can become authoritive in. For publications over the last 50 years or so authors just signed with their last name, or first letter of first name, plus surname. When we keep using that, then we will run into problems. So perhaps we just need to say: Wikispecies will use (L.M. Smith) for Lewis MacCuen Smith, and (J.B. Smith) for John Bernard Smith. Instead of both receiving Smith, adding confusion. It will be our standard.

Of course when there are lists like IPNI we should follow that as much as possible. -- KempmPOV

I think we shoul link with whole name like J.B. Smith. Or could we create templates for authorities, which shows both of the letter used and the whole name. Like above link does. – linnea (talk) 20:53, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Author pages

Could we add commons-link and image to author pages? And what else information we could add without overlapping with Wikipedia? – linnea (talk) 21:15, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

What is useful also is a list of publications, not just a list of books, in which the author contributed. In the end when there is doubt about the sanctioning author of a certain name, the actual publication is decisive to determine who sanctioned it. If we have two Mr. Smith's working on determining Mammals, and we only know the name of Smith for a certain taxon, we can see from a list of publications what both authors were working on, and thus connect the right Smith to the taxon. --Kempm 09:08, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Modifications

I am making some modifications. Open2universe 14:47, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Dates

Date formats are always problematic. If we use full dates for birth and death I would recommend using the ISO 8601 standard which specifies YYYY-MM-DD. [1] Open2universe 20:11, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

I think we should follow that iso standard. – linnea (talk) 09:38, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree too. Don't think there's much to discuss on this, when there are standards like this. --Kempm 10:05, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Humm I just wanted to try this, when I ran into a formatting problem. If I write the born and the day of decease for an author I would get (1840-02-13 - 1899-12-12). This is pretty hard to read. Can we do it better while sticking to the ISO? I was thinking perhaps this ISO thing is more for computer database formats and not for human readability? Difficult. --Kempm 11:16, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

What about compromising: 1840/02/13 – 1899/12/12 or 1840.02.13 – 1899.12.12? Lycaon 11:36, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Then if we abandon ISO standard, why not stick with what we have now. 02.II.1840-03.III.1899. This format makes it clear to all countries that the second fields are months I think? While if we write 02.03.1840 or 02/03/1840 some countries think it's DD.MM, and others MM.DD. Maybe we can also add the symbols for death and birth: (*02.II.1840-†03.III.1899) but I think it will do fine as it is now. --Kempm 12:18, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

How about (*1840-02-02 - †1899-03-03)? It is easy to read? – linnea (talk) 12:29, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

All good points. It doesn't matter to me, but we should choose one. Thanks, Open2universe 14:31, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

This should be brought up on the Village Pump for a vote. At first I thought the Roman numerals were months but then the first example I found while editing a page had numbers greater than 12!? I would have followed whatever convention was in the Help pages. This is a good candidate for a template. See en:Template:Birth date and age for a fancy example --Georgeryp 20:54, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Interwiki's now in the sidebar

Now that interwiki links are in the sidebar, should we remove the "Other languages" header on Author pages (e.g. Anton_Reichenow), or use something like the {{VN}} template? 66.81.17.230 22:03, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Along that same topic, I am assuming the "" section header can be removed since that area is empty, having been moved to the sidebar, unless as asked above, something like a {{VN}} is used. (e.g. Erik Acharius) --Georgeryp 20:08, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Works include

I thought we had decided to use the heading "Publications" rather than "Works include"? –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 22:45, 25 April 2016 (UTC).

Formal guidelines on what to include (or not)

I'm seeking additional clarity on what should be included on authority pages. In addition to list of publications and Authored taxa, I've seen a section on Eponyms (as seen on the current Distinguished author, Mary Agnes Chase), and wonder if a more structured (and complete) list of authored taxa might be included: one such list was deleted without comment from Ralph Vary Chamberlin (diff). To me, a list of authored taxa can have desirable attributes, such as year, other authorities, indication of redlinks (missing articles!) and the potential to sort by taxonomic group (e.g. plants and animals). All of this information is missing or obscured in "Category:X taxa", categories, which only sort taxa alphabetically. Also, regarding publications, the usual practice seems to be chronological, but another option would be to list by taxon as well, potentially helpful for prolific authors working on distinct taxa. Thoughts and/or guidance appreciated. -Animalparty (talk) 00:00, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

@Animalparty: One problem with adding a list of named taxa directly on the author pages is that some authors have named several hundreds or in some rare cases even many thousands of different taxa (including synonyms). Because of this Wikispecies have a praxis saying that the taxon names themselves shouldn't be listed on the author pages, since such huge lists would really harm legibility. Hence we insert a "Taxa by author" category on every taxon page instead, so that the named taxa for each specific author can be easily viewed as a list in the respective "Taxa by author" categories, without cluttering the actual author's page.

The downside of this praxis is that it can sometimes take some time before all of the actual taxon pages are created, and meanwhile those taxa are of course not yet members of any "Taxa by author" category. That is why the text string "List may be incomplete" is automatically added by the {{Taxa authored}} template. As for eponyms they are rarely more than a handful, why adding them on the author pages doesn't pose a problem.

Listing publications by taxa is already possible, at least to some degree. If you click the "Reference page" link next to any reference/publication (available both on author and taxon pages), you will end up on the actual reference template's page. Clicking the "Find all Wikispecies pages which cite this reference" on that page will show a list of all pages where that template is used, including taxon pages. As an example of this, please try the "Find all…" link on the {{Boulenger, 1911}} template page. (P.S. When creating a new reference template it is important to always add the {{Reftemp}} template to the bottom of it, or else none of those "Find all…" and "Reference page" links will be automatically created. Note that the {{Reftemp}} template must be "subst'ed", as explained on its template page.)

Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 00:48, 24 April 2017 (UTC).

Proposal to add instruction

Hello, I suggest to add the few lines above within the section Help:Author_Names#Format of an Authority page

"===Before the creation of a new page===

Before to create a new authority page, make you sure that there is not already an existing page about that author. In some scientific papers some authors may have variations in the way their names are spelled or in the order in which the components of their names are presented, e.g. Azman bin Abdul Rahim may be cited as author under 3 or 4 different ways. So before to create a new page you may check by using the search box at the top of any Wikispecies page with one (or more) selected component(s) of the author name."

Any improvement in grammar or spelling, or for anything else is welcome. If there is no oppositions I will add it in a few days or a week. Christian Ferrer (talk) 08:59, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Worth adding something like 'If the spelling in your source does not exist here, but the author does have an existing page titled differently, then create a new redirect from the additional name variant'? - MPF (talk) 09:27, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

I'd give examples of the other ways of referring to Azman bin Abdul Rahim. "before to create a new..." should be "before creating a new..." (two occurrences). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:19, 10 July 2022 (UTC)