AtonX

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Please sign your comments on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username (if you're logged in) and the date. Please also read the Wikispecies policy What Wikispecies is not. If you need help, ask me on my talk page, or in the Village Pump. Again, welcome! -- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:06, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Link to taxon

You can find a link to the taxon on the "Find all Wikispecies pages which cite this reference" link, so it is a bit redundant and generally not used. Best regards. Andyboorman (talk) 19:29, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Bad redirect

Hi. Redirects to red-links (like this one Prenolepis vividula) is not recommended. If neglected, they often lead to link rot. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 22:03, 7 July 2021 (UTC).

Hi, had already Nylanderia vividula in the pipeline, I hope the article is OK. Thank you. --AtonX (talk) 22:22, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Yup, the article is fine! In the future it might be good to do things the other way around though: create the article first, and then make the redirect. Not many admins are as quick as me ;-) but if you're unlucky an admin may delete the "red link redirect" before you've had time to create the article it's supposed to redirect to. I think that in some wikis this is even done automatically by bots, and then it's a question of seconds! Of course you can always recreate the redirect page afterwards , so it's not a very big deal, but it seems unnecessary to have to make the same edits twice. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 22:57, 7 July 2021 (UTC).

Makes sense, thanks. :) --AtonX (talk) 23:10, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Frank Morton Carpenter

Hi. It's getting a bit late here in Sweden (and Slovakia!), but tomorrow I'll move the Frank M. Carpenter page to the more correctly named Frank Morton Carpenter address. Basically the two pages will shift places with each other. It'll take some time though, since there are some 70 other connected pages that needs to be dealt with as well in order to avoid a bunch of "double redirects" and in the worst case also so called "link rot". No worries though: just carry on as usual and I'll take care of the tech stuff. Regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 00:25, 10 July 2021 (UTC).

Hi, yes well-spotted. I'll see how I can help to fix the links/redirects... godnatt! --AtonX (talk) 00:37, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Resolved. It only took 71 page edits, and now it's done. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 18:17, 10 July 2021 (UTC).

Ah, great, all the work is done! Thanks! :-) --AtonX (talk) 21:34, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Odd template in disambiguation page

Hi! What's up with the {{Access|hybrid}} template in the Berry author disambiguation page, which you added here? Is it a mistake, or have I missed something? By the way the per-praxis format for author's listed on author disambiguation pages is (without the indentation):

* [[Author Name]] (YOB–YOD, '''Abbreviation'''), Nationality scientific disciplines

In case years of birth and/or death aren't known, please use floruit instead (when available). Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:42, 11 July 2021 (UTC).

Hi, no idea, I am sorry, I was probably copying the necessary markup from an existing disambiguation page, I will remove the template. Per-praxis is so difficult to follow, with so much inconsistency around, but I'll keep this in mind. For years I took the information from existing author pages, without examining further. --AtonX (talk) 13:48, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, and yes: I know the policy/guideline/consensus/praxis situation is a mess. I will try to sort it out later this year, with the help of my fellow admins and 'crats. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:56, 11 July 2021 (UTC).

Thanks! As an on-boarding editor here with some experience on other wikis, I should prepare an Astonishment report on WS, maybe it could help pointing out what documentation is unclear or missing for those who do not follow the praxis over decades. :-) Having said that, in the Help:Reference section#Reference Templates, there are only 4 possibilities for the name of the template. We discussed User talk:AtonX#Frank Morton Carpenter, but how to avoid ambiguity or clashes with all the other Carpenters publishing in the same year {{Carpenter, YYYY}} (and more than one paper in the same year {{Carpenter, YYYYN}}), for example? Thanks! --AtonX (talk) 14:22, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

P.S. Finding a good disambig for publications of Edward Wilber Berry and Edward Willard Berry would be part of the question... :-) --AtonX (talk) 14:31, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

Just a "partial" answer for now, since I need to cook me some linner/lupper: it's 17:40 in the early evening here and I haven't eaten in all day… The standard Wikispecies naming scheme for different "homonymic" authors publishing in the same year (and/or several papers in the same year by one author) is to add a trailing letter after the year of publication. For example {{Carpenter, 1824}}, {{Carpenter, 1824a}}, {{Carpenter, 1824b}} and so forth. The extra letter is of course not shown in the actual citation, only in the template's file name. See for example {{Sauvage, 1880b}} which renders like this, without the extra "b":

Sauvage, H.-E. 1880. Notice sur quelques poissons de l'île Campbell et de l'Indo-Chine. Bulletin de la Société philomathique de Paris (7th Série) v. 4: 228–233. BHL Reference page.

It's probably not the best system, but it works… Unfortunately some users occasionally produce non-standard template names, using semicolon or underscore instead of comma e.g. {{Carpenter; 1824}} or skip the spacing e.g. {{Carpenter&Hancock, 1824}} and other variations. This frequenty leads to duplicates, since many users don't think of searching for those "oddities" before creating a new template. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 15:39, 11 July 2021 (UTC).

I understand the basic principle, and also the risks in inconsistency. I see some caveats which I will illustrate on examples:
1. Sequence. The years and alphabetical indexes are part of the reference for a given author and year, e. g. for William Steel Creighton in 1930, the first paper is (and always will be) Creighton, 1930a and the second Creighton, 1930b. However, there already is a template Creighton, 1930 here with the first reference (Creighton, 1930a). I think the guidelines could be more specific on the scheme, i.e. is it Surname ,1930, 1930a, 1930b,…, or Surname ,1930a, 1930b, 1930c,…, or Surname ,1930, 1930b, 1930c,…, and whether to create redirects between Surname, 1930 and Surname, 1930a, if any.
2. Homonymy. Take the example of Carpenter, 1883. On a new crinoid… (Philip Herbert Carpenter), and Carpenter, 1883. Report on… (William Benjamin Carpenter). Giving arbitrarily one of the two references the sequence 1883a, while leaving the other 1883, is potentially confusing (Is 1883a his only publication in 1883, or second publication in 1883? This should be answered unambiguously by the preceding rule on sequence.). Furthermore, there are currently 20 authors with the surname Carpenter (I did not have the perseverance to count authors surnamed Liu... ). There is real need for some disambiguation mechanism. Adding initials, as a secondary rule, such as Carpenter, P.H. 1883 or Carpenter, W.B. 1883, to solve homonymy is not foolproof either, as seen on Edward Wilber Berry and Edward Willard Berry. Hoping that they never publish in the same year is nice, but clear rules should be ready for any eventuality. The only hint on a rule on this is for botanists, who have fixed abbreviations (Carp., C.W.Carp., D.S.Carp. etc.). Bon appétit ! --AtonX (talk) 17:13, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────┘ Thanks, I had a nice meal. Earlier today I've only been burning caffeine as fuel... I'm in concord with what you're saying, but I think we both agree that it probably wont be possible to come up with a 100% fool-proof system. Or to be more precise, a fixed set of rules that everyone can understand and use, regardless how wiki-savvy they are. There are many potholes in our way. For example, numerous sources only present the author(s) by surname, and adding the correct initials for them – let alone full given names – is impossible. Analogous to this yes, each botanist's (IPNI) abbreviation is fixed to a specific author, but there's also a large number of botanists without an abbreviation, so that's tricky too. Also, how do we handle the many author's who do research within both botany and zoology, hence perhaps have two or more separate author abbreviations for each respective discipline? The most prominent example probably being L. and Linnaeus.

Good talk so far, and I'm sure we (the community) will come up with something better than the (lack of) system we use today. But not tonight. I'm too tired, hence will log out of Wikispecies for a few hours and play some online Blitz chess instead. Oddly enough that always clears my mind and sort of "restarts" my brain… Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:34, 11 July 2021 (UTC).

"Taxon links" and dagger symbols in the "Name" section

Please don't add dagger symbols (†) or wiki links for the "page nominate" taxon to the "Name" section; only in the "Taxonavigation" section. See this diff with my correction as an example. (N.b. that wiki links to taxon other than the "page name taxon" is okay in the "Name" section, such as links to type species, synonyms, etc.) Thank you. Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 21:53, 12 July 2021 (UTC).

Thanks! I see daggers used for extinct taxa, but I have not come across specific guidance here on where to place them and where not (and why yes/not). (P.S. If there is a plan to work on documentation, I might have time over summer to help...). For linking the page name taxon, the Help:Name section really starts with 2 linked examples (Zoology: Vulpes vulpes Linnaeus, 1758; Botany: Clematis viticella L. (1753)). I took it as a guidance to link the names... Thanks for understanding my confusion. (P.S. I took note of the desirable self-linking from the Taxonavigation section, but it does not hint on the opposite rule for the Name section... ) --AtonX (talk) 22:04, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, again the documentation is outdated, in the wrong place, or incomplete. As for whether there is a plan to work on it, well... that depends on ones point of view, really. In theory, there is always a plan to always work on the documentation. In reality? Not so much. Personally I've had a rather hectic and difficult year (spinal disc herniation, separation, moving house) so I haven't been up to full speed. It is a good idea though: I'll bring it up with my fellow admins in a few days, and hear what they have to say.

Back to the more immediate question. Yes we use the dagger symbol for extinct taxa (and in theory for destroyed or lost type material, but luckily that idea never really materialized into praxis…) However we only use the dagger symbol in the Taxonavigation. Never in other parts such as the "Name" section, since the dagger isn't part of the taxon name. The exception is references and templates. The {{Boudinot, Perichot & Chaul, 2020}} template you edited recently is an excellent example of this. There the dagger symbol is part of the actual title of the cited article, and should of course also be included in the title given in the reference template. (We tend to be as precise as possible to "copy" the titles from papers and journal's, with the exception of ALL CAPS for author names and such, which we change to Title Case.) In your template you've also added daggers to the list of new names which is also fine, when applicable. But again: only in reference templates.

The Vulpes vulpes- and Clematis viticella links in the beginning of the Help:Name section was an unfortunate mistake. They're now removed. Personally I think the most useful part of that help page is the Full example subsection. For instance it shows that no leading "list" bullets are used, except for the synonyms (since that's really the only part that is a proper list of several equal things). The "Full example" isn't perfect though. It says "Holotype: [[DPP|DPP]]" with a common [[...]] bracket link for the type material, instead of making use of the {{Repository link}} (or "rl") template which we normally use. I think that's okay though since the Help page is heavily ridden with templates already, and adding even more may scare away some of our new users. It's a work in progress, as always. Tommy Kronkvist, 00:48, 13 July 2021 (UTC).