Wikispecies:Village Pump

Welcome to the village pump of Wikispecies.

This page is a place to ask questions or discuss the project. If you need an admin, please see the Administrators' Noticeboard. If you need to solicit feedback, see Request for Comment. Please sign and date your post (by typing ~~~~ or clicking the signature icon in the edit toolbar). Use the Wikispecies IRC channel for real-time chat.

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Village pump in other languages:

• Chinese - 中文
• Czech - česky
• Finnish - Suomi
• French - Français
• Hungarian - Magyar
• Hindi - हिन्दी
• Italian - Italiano
• Korean - 한국어
• Nepali - नेपाली
• Russian - Русский
• Tamil - தமிழ்
• Ukrainian - Українська
• Vietnamese - Tiếng Việt

Archives
1	(2004-09-21/2005-01-05)	2	(2005-01-05/2005-08-23)
3	(2005-08-24/2005-12-31)	4	(2006-01-01/2005-05-31)
5	(2006-06-01/2006-12-16)	6	(2006-12-17/2006-12-31)
7	(2007-01-01/2007-02-28)	8	(2007-03-01/2007-04-30)
9	(2007-05-01/2007-08-31)	10	(2007-09-01/2007-10-31)
11	(2007-11-01/2007-12-31)	12	(2008-01-01/2008-02-28)
13	(2008-03-01/2008-04-28)	14	(2008-04-29/2008-06-30)
15	(2008-07-01/2008-09-30)	16	(2008-10-01/2008-12-25)
17	(2008-12-26/2009-02-28)	18	(2009-03-01/2009-06-30)
19	(2009-07-01/2009-12-31)	20	(2010-01-01/2010-06-30)
21	(2010-07-01/2010-12-31)	22	(2011-01-01/2011-06-30)
23	(2011-07-01/2011-12-31)	24	(2012-01-01/2012-12-31)
25	(2013-01-01/2013-12-31)	26	(2014-01-01/2014-12-31)
27	(2015-01-01/2015-01-31)	28	(2015-02-01/2015-02-28)
29	(2015-02-28/2015-04-29)	30	(2015-04-29/2015-07-19)
31	(2015-07-19/2015-09-23)	32	(2015-09-23/2015-11-21)
33	(2015-11-21/2015-12-31)	34	(2016-01-01/2016-04-17)
35	(2016-03-22/2016-05-01)	36	(2016-05-01/2016-07-12)
37	(2016-07-13/2016-09-30)	38	(2016-10-01/2016-12-04)
39	(2016-12-04/2017-01-17)	40	(2017-01-18/2017-01-28)
41	(2017-01-29/2017-02-13)	42	(2017-02-14/2017-03-21)
43	(2017-03-20/2017-08-11)	44	(2017-08-10/2017-12-07)
45	(2017-12-08/2018-01-08)	46	(2018-01-19/2018-03-11)
47	(2018-03-11/2018-09-11)	48	(2018-09-01/2019-02-17)
49	(2019-02-22/2019-06-18)	50	(2019-06-19/2019-10-06)
51	(2019-10-07/2019-12-23)	52	(2019-12-24/2020-04-03)
53	(2020-04-03/2020-07-16)	54	(2020-07-17/2020-09-05)
55	(2020-09-08/2020-11-27)	56	(2020-11-27/2021-06-21)
57	(2021-06-05/2021-09-24)	58	(2021-09-25/2022-01-24)
59	(2022-01-26/2022-02-27)	60	(2022-02-27/2022-04-13)
61	(2022-04-14/2022-05-10)	62	(2022-07-01/2023-12-17)
63	(2022-12-24/2023-04-20)	64	(2023-04-20/2023-08-29)
65	(2023-09-01/2023-12-27)	66	(2023-11-18/2024-02-14)
67	(2024-02-14/2024-06-21)	68	(2024-06-22/2024-xx-xx)

Xing-Yue Liu or Xingyue Liu

Should the taxon author page Xing-Yue Liu be renamed to Xingyue Liu? I've just checked every single publication listed on the page as of writing: only one of them spells his name "Xing-Yue Liu" with a hyphen, while all the others spell his name as "Xingyue Liu" without a hyphen. I realise that we often spell Chinese authors' names with hyphens on Wikispecies, but I'm not sure if this is correct in cases such as these. Monster Iestyn (talk) 14:24, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

We did develop a consensus on Chinese names about 10 years ago. The same name can be presented as one word, with a hyphen, or with a space. A great confusion was happening because sometimes different publications would use different presentations, and thus one author could wind up with two or three pages. There were more of the hyphenated forms than the others, so it became a convention. Neferkheperre (talk) 12:55, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Where was the discussion where this consensus was made? I tried to look for it in Village Pump archives but I'm unable to find it there (maybe I'm searching for the wrong terms?) Monster Iestyn (talk) 13:10, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

@Neferkheperre (ping in case you didn't see my reply from a few days ago) Monster Iestyn (talk) 12:17, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I have had a busy time last couple of weeks. As I remember, Thorpe left here in early 2015. I took over making citations for Zootaxa, and we had a quick intense discussion about reference citations and a considerable increase of information content resulted. The sharp increase in author pages led to a discussion of Chinese names. Try looking Thorpe in 2015, and go from there. Neferkheperre (talk) 12:58, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Wrong 74.218.66.18 19:17, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:19, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Badly formatted category talk pages

These two recently created talk pages are rather messy. I don't really know what to make out of them, or even whether they are at all useful. Can anyone please help sort them out?

• Category talk:Eponyms of Clarke Abel   (a botanist, IPNI standard form C.Abel)
• Category talk:Eponyms of James David Ackerman   (a botanist, IPNI standard form Ackerman)

Thanks! Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 22:15, 30 September 2024 (UTC).

Adding Category talk:Eponyms of Jess A. Peirson. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:18, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Indeed the taxa in the two articles and lots of redirects concerned Frank Warrington Peirson. --RLJ (talk) 19:12, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Renaming Template:Q

Template:Q has only 146 transclusions.

On this wiki, {{Q|1043}} renders as:

Q1043

on en.Wikipedia, Wikidata, Commons and elsewhere, it renders as:

Carl Linnaeus (Q1043)

On the other hand, this wiki's {{QID|1043}} renders as:

Carl Linnaeus (Q1043)

I propose to rename the current Template:Q to, say, Template:Wikidata short link, with Template:Q-short as a redirect, replace all instances of {{Q}}, and finally to move Template:QID to Template:Q, leaving a redirect, in order to standardise template behaviour on this wiki with others, and to facilitate the import of updates to them made on other wikis.

Any thoughts? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:30, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

As far as I'm seeing here, Template:Q on Wikispecies is just a redirect to Template:Wikidata entity link, which itself is an import of en:Wikidata entity link from en.wiki, while Template:QID is an import of c:Template:Q from Commons. Additionally, these templates seem to serve similar purposes to each other, except that one links to Special:EntityLink/<item>, while the other links to <item> directly. Do we really need both of these templates on Wikispecies? Monster Iestyn (talk) 13:59, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

That was my mistake, After posting here, I reimported {{Wikidata entity link}} to get a bug fix that had been applied on en.Wikipedia. That inadvertently overwrote {{Q}}, which I have now restored. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:24, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Last call, before I do this. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:26, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Andy Mabbett: Good and sound idea. Please, go ahead. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk)‚ 16:42, 4 November 2024 (UTC).

BHL

Please note that this resource is down due to extensive maintenance on Internet Archive. See here as an example. It is likely to be days not weeks!Andyboorman (talk) 08:25, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

BHL

BHL is not showing pages, message says: "Internet Archive is currently down. As a result, page images are not displaying in BHL." Any insight on what's going on or when it will be back? --Hector Bottai (talk) 21:01, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

They suffered a major DDoS attack a week or so ago; they are slowly working on improving the site security, but it may be a few days yet till things are up and working again fully - MPF (talk) 08:49, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Hector Bottai:​ There is more information (through links) on our Twitter account: @Wikispecies. Also, some internet sources say it might be a good idea to change your Internet Archive password, if you have registered a user account. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk)‚ 09:16, 18 October 2024 (UTC).

Indeed, if you had an account, change the password, the passwords were stolen. Fortunately for myself I didn't have one there! - MPF (talk) 09:49, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I didn't have either.--Hector Bottai (talk) 11:35, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

I do, though at the moment it seems to be impossible to log in to change it... In any case all my passwords are always unique and I use two-factor authentication wherever possible, so I think I should be fine in the long run. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 09:30, 19 October 2024 (UTC).

Just heard that Internet Archive is now back online. I can confirm that pages on BHL now display again too. Monster Iestyn (talk) 18:35, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

​ Yes, thank you for notifying. I made a tweet about it yesterday, too. Most services are back online, but it's still not possible to log in (which in all honesty doesn't really matter, for most users). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 06:59, 22 October 2024 (UTC).

Internet Archive

Please note that it's now possible to log in to Internet Archive again hence also possible to change your passwords, which is greatly recommended. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:51, 4 November 2024 (UTC).

Pages that use Structured Discussions/Flow will be archived

Hello

This is an important message regarding your wiki. Any page that uses Structured Discussions/Flow (like here) will change.

Flow, also known as Structured Discussions, is an obsolete tool that causes a lot of maintenance problems. It has been decided to remove this tool from the wikis.

Starting today, a script will move all user pages that use Flow to a sub-pages, to archive them. A link to that archive will be created on the user talk page. When the move will be done, the talk page will become a regular talk page.

A previous message was sent to any page that user who uses Structured Discussions/Flow at their talk page.

The next step will start on October 27, it won't be possible to add any new topic or response to any page that uses Structured Discussions/Flow. All Structured Discussions/Flow contents will be converted to wikitext later.

Please let me know if you have any questions! Trizek (WMF) (talk) 18:58, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Bot please

Can anybody provide a bot to automatically change == Links == into === links ===? The problem with the first iteration is that is also gives an unnecessary section break. Links are part of the Reference Section and not a separate stand alone section surely? There are hundreds of these mistakes. Thanks in advance. Andyboorman (talk) 09:45, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

This is confusing to me. Can you give me a for instance? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 14:50, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Drosera miniata one of a number in this genus. Can you help? Andyboorman (talk) 15:12, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Silly me: I thought the problem was "links" versus "Links", but it's H2 headers versus H3 headers. It should be trivial to have an AWB run to fix this. I haven't even tried to use AWB on my Linux machine in many years, but I'll see if I can do it. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 15:27, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, if you can it will be brilliant. Andyboorman (talk) 19:34, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Ipomoea

Hello fellow editors. It is now accepted that the infrageneric classification of Ipomoea is no longer accepted (Wood et al., 2020). Unfortunately there has been no formal Linnean replacement as yet. Therefore, I have removed the old out dated classification and we await developments in due course. I have redirected the subgenera, sections and series. In addition, I notice that there are many pages yet to be added and a lot of existing taxon pages are more or less stubs. Please feel free to help update this important genus. Many thanks Andyboorman (talk) 16:00, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Android app for Wikispecies

Hi, is there an Android app for Wikispecies? How does it work? I have been advised that there is no infrastructure for push notifications for Android apps for sister wikis and I would be interested to know more. Related: phab:T378545. Thanks! Gryllida (talk) 23:15, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

@Gryllida: There is no app. I'm not clear what an app would do that our mobile-formatted website does not. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:24, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Gryllida and Andy Mabbett: There actually is an Android app, and it's available from the official Google Play Store, here: WikiSpecies [sic]. It was first released in October 2016 and I added a Wikispecies main page link to it ten days later (which is still present). The latest version of the app was released in December 2023 and requires Android v.7 or later. Unfortunately I've never tested the app and know nothing of its features, since I don't use any Android devises. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 15:01, 5 November 2024 (UTC).

non-valid taxa (animals)

What's the current view of community viewpoint about pages for taxa which are now synonyms. (by 'valid' i mean in sense of Zoological nomenclature, therefore my question is about [subjectively] invalid animal taxa)

For example there's these moths https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cacoecia Which, as far as i see - that genus a synonym, as recognised on that and reflected in the text "CURRENT STATUS Archips" Same goes for all the listed species, all seem to lead to various later recombinations, i.e. their valid combinations (with all the subjectivity that entails).

I vaguely remember seeing some discussion on Village Pump about adding such synonyms. To my mind having such pages for 'outdated' combinations seems unnecessary and easily confusing - the 'valid' combination can give all the details of earlier combinations and other (heterotypic) synonyms. For the 'outdated' non-valid genus Cacoecia in the link above, it begs the question about whose concept of that genus is that based on? I'm not looking for an answer to that, my point instead that i expect its composition varied over its long history, with plenty of disagreement about which species are included or not. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sjl197 (talk • contribs) 19:12, 31 October 2024 (UTC).

@Sjl197: In my view all names should be treated this expands our coverage and provides information additional to other checklists that only we provide, giving us uniqeness. I have added a number of these and there are templates to make sure that these names are clearly identified as junior synonyms. I have found that the listing of names in synonymies does not usually provide all the information about those names, such as the type data for that name, its references etc. Including the treatment references. So my view if we wish to maintain our function as a global list of names, then we need to include all names and all the relevant data, clearly linking non valid names to their valid senior synonyms. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 20:31, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

See Chelodina_(Chelodina) and its sub pages to see what I mean and the usage of the templates. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 20:41, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for thoughts. Well exactly, the essence was just to determine if still 'tolerable' even if for just a subset of editors. I'm open minded about pages for such synonyms, increasing the value of the initiative overall is great, i just don't yet see what value can 'only' be on synonym pages, for example i just feel the data about type species/specimen etc of (heterotypic) synonyms can be easily presented alongside that name under synonyms below the chosen valid combination. However, in the taxon which sparked my question, i'm just altering the 'markup' and such to be hopefully much clearer on later recombinations and such. To me these are adding needless redundancy where content will likely differ with degree of editorial effort on each combination, as well as broader questions for genera about what to include or not - perhaps everything which has ever been published in that genus - but then we open a can of worms about later recombinations only in databases etc. I also think with few curators and many 'valid' taxa without any entries all effort still can be best directed at input for 'valid' combinations. I fear like others you're driven by some 'vertebrate-centric' thinking, where the ratio of (many) researchers to (few) taxa seems vastly different to that for almost every other element of our world's vast biodiversity. Sjl197 (talk) 02:26, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Seriphidium and Artemisia subg. Seriphidium fussion and issues

Hello, how are you all? I would like to inform and ask for help to proceed with the correct merging of the articles Seriphidium and Artemisia subg. Seriphidium, so that the final article remains under the name Artemisia subg. Seriphidium. I believe that this modification will help clarify the organization of the species within this group and avoid duplication of information, as well as more homogeneous information in Wikispecies.

In the review of these articles it's observed that it is not always clear which plants of the genus Artemisia belong to the subgenus Seriphidium. In some articles on Artemisia species on Wikispecies the subgenus is specified, while in other cases this information is missing. To improve the precision of the database and support the identification and classification of the species, I suggest that the information on belonging to the Seriphidium subgenus be complemented in the articles where it is missing. I appreciate your attention to this suggestion and remain available for any additional information required to facilitate the process of merging and reviewing the articles. Thanks and greetings. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by AbeCK (talk • contribs) 07:08, 4 November 2024.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I have traced some recent papers that may help clarify this complicated situation. In my opinion you are correct in asserting that Artemisia subg. Seriphidium is the correct name for this group of plants, although some flora, for example, Flora of China and World Flora Online still prefer the segregation. Is this a situation where WS can not take sides favouring one taxonomic opinion over another? Andyboorman (talk) 08:32, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Consensus does not require universal agreement, Andy, especially when some sources like FoC and World Flora are going to trail behind precisely because of their update cycle. If the bulk of the recent material goes in the same direction, that's the direction we should go into. Circeus (talk) 14:04, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

You are correct in my opinion. Artemisia needs a full up date from species upwards, as a start. Andyboorman (talk) 14:24, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

@Andyboorman and @Circeus, thanks 4 your observations, in any case, these 2 articles require a fusion and a complementation of information, I hope we can proceed with these editions, to avoid so much discrepancy between which of the 2 is the good article, greetings. AbeCK (talk) 20:07, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Irrespective of the emerging infrageneric classification, Seriphidium can be replaced by a redirect to Artemisia, in my opinion. The synonymy of the later will need updating, of course. I will contact Kew and ask their opinion regarding Crossostephium, Filifolium, Kaschgaria and Neopallasia in light of Jiao et al. (2023). Andyboorman (talk) 20:39, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

---

I have made the redirect after updating the names under the subgenus. Please review. and edit as you fell fit. Andyboorman (talk) 09:35, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Switching to the Vector 2022 skin: the final date

A two minute-long video about Vector 2022

Hello everyone, I'm reaching out on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation Web team responsible for the MediaWiki skins. I'd like to revisit the topic of making Vector 2022 the default here on Wikispecies. I did post a message about this two years ago, but we didn't finalize it back then.

What happened in the meantime? We built dark mode and different options for font sizes, and made Vector 2022 the default on most wikis. With the not-so-new V22 skin being the default, existing and coming features, like dark mode and temporary accounts respectively, will become available for logged-out users here.

If you're curious about the details on why we need to deploy the skin soon, here's more information

Due to releases of new features only available in the Vector 2022 skin, our technical ability to support both skins as the default is coming to an end. Keeping more than one skin as the default across different wikis indefinitely is impossible. This is about the architecture of our skins. As the Foundation or the movement in general, we don't have the capability to develop and maintain software working with different skins as default. This means that the longer we keep multiple skins as the default, the higher the likelihood of bugs, regressions, and other things breaking that we do not have the resources to support or fix.   Vector 2022 has been the default on almost all wikis for more than a year. In this time, the skin was proven to provide improvements to readers while also evolving. After we built and deployed on most wikis, we added new features, such as the Appearance menu with the dark mode functionality. We will keep working on this skin, and deployment doesn't mean that existing issues will not be addressed. For example, as part of our work on the Accessibility for Reading project, we built out dark mode, changed the width of the main page back to full (T357706), and solved issues of wide tables overlapping the right-column menus (T330527). Vector legacy's code is not compatible with some of the existing, coming, or future software. Keeping this skin as the default would exclude most users from these improvements. Important examples of features not supported by Vector legacy are: the enriched table of contents on talk pages, dark mode, and also temporary account holder experience which, due to legal reasons, we will have to enable. In other words, the only skin supporting features for temporary account holders (like banners informing "hey, you're using a temp account") is Vector 2022. If you are curious about temporary accounts, read our latest blog post.

So, we will deploy Vector 2022 here in three weeks, in the week of November 25. If you think there are any remaining significant technical issues, let us know. We will talk and may make some changes, most likely after the deployment. Thank you! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

@SGrabarczuk (WMF): The reason that "we didn't finalize it back then" was because you did not address the issues that were raised at that time. Please will you do so now? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:20, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

R.A. Dunn

Who can help me with the fullname for R.A. Dunn. He is an Australian arachnologist and published in the 1945-1960. He was Honorary Arachnologist, National Museum of Victoria. PeterR (talk) 14:52, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

I have asked a contact I have at NMV. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:15, 14 November 2024 (UTC)