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I have started merging {{BHL page}} and {{BHL item}} into {{BHL}}. Please see the examples on the latter's documentation page and comment on any issues or concerns at Template talk:BHL#Development. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:56, 17 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

The merge is now complete and I have marked the former two templates as deprecated. I'll see about getting a bot to replace them. Once again, please note any issues on the talk page of the combined template. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:01, 18 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thank you very much, @Andy, good work! I'll see if for example the AutoWikiBrowser can be of assistance (however I run a Mac, so the AWB editor sometimes needs a bit... persuasion). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:47, 19 March 2025 (UTC).Reply
Good idea - I have AWB, I'll give that a go. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:54, 20 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Using AWB, I now have now started removing {{BHL item}}. I will finish that, and do a trial run on {{BHL page}} tomorrow, then will need clearance to run AWB using my bot account to do the bulk of the conversions. Here's a BRFA. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:12, 20 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
{{BHL item}} is now unused. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:17, 21 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

─────── The bot is now approved, and added to Wikispecies:AutoWikiBrowser/CheckPageJSON. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 23:35, 22 March 2025 (UTC).Reply

We need to update the "Wikispecies tools:" panel that appears below the editing window (at least in some skins) to replace {{BHL page}} with {{BHL}}. Where can that be done, and who can do it? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:35, 24 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

  Done It's stored at MediaWiki:Edittools and I just edited it. Let me know if more is needed. —Justin (koavf)TCM 18:46, 24 March 2025 (UTC)Reply


{{BHL item}} and {{BHL page}} are now orphaned, and redirected to {{BHL}}. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:50, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

{{Date}} issues

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I decided that using {{Date}} to format dates would probably be better than writing them out in plain English (see e.g. Template:Evenhuis et al., 2010#Nomenclatural acts). However, @Monster Iestyn caught an issue with this on Template:Evenhuis & Pape, 2019 - in certain circumstances, using the template in a natural-seeming way may lead to it displaying the wrong date. Specifically, providing a date in the form {{Date|yyyy|Mon|d}}, where "Mon" is an abbreviation for the month, and "d" is the day, from 1 to 9, will lead to the result "1 Month yyyy". That is: {{Date|2024|Dec|5}} → 1 December 2024 ("1 December 2024"). Notably, this works fine for {{Date|2024|Dec|05}} → 5 December 2024 ("5 December 2024").

This seems to be due to the inner workings of {{Date}} - in the above example, it would pass 2024-Dec-5 to {{#time:}} as {{#time:j F Y|2024-Dec-5}}, which according to the documentation gets passed to the PHP strtotime() function. It seems like the issue is a mix of odd PHP behavior and the way that {{Date}} passes its arguments.

This is also an issue with e.g. {{Date|2024|February|2}} → 1 February 2024 ("1 February 2024").

Potential fixes/workarounds:

  1. Always include a leading 0 for the date, e.g. {{Date|2024|Dec|05}}. (IMO this is insufficient, someone will inevitably forget and not notice)
  2. Never use it as {{Date|yyyy|Mon|dd}}, instead always use it as {{Date|yyyy|mm|dd}} (e.g. {{Date|2024|9|2}}), which seems to work regardless of leading zeros.
  3. Modify {{Date}} to convert months and shorthand months to the corresponding month numbers before passing them off, e.g. January → 1, ..., December → 12. Benefits: {{Date}} could be used without worry or issue; {{Date|2024|Dec|2}} and {{Date|2024|February|2}} would work as expected. Currently, the documentation for {{Date}} implies that it's meant for numerical values only; this change should allow for non-numerical values (i.e. the names of months) without odd edge cases/bugs.

Personally, I'm leaning towards #3, but I'd rather not touch anything without some feedback. Furthermore, is it a good idea to be using this template at all (once it is/assuming that it is working correctly)?

--WrenFalcon (talk) 02:19, 23 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Given that we're a multilingual project, option 2 would be best. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:03, 23 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
I agree with Andy Mabbett. It's also worth noting that the code for our Wikispecies' version of the {{Date}} template is very different from the code in the corresponding versions at Wikidata (d:Template:Date), Meta-Wiki (meta:Template:Date and MediaWiki (mw:Template:Date), and that they are all very different in regards to each other as well. It may be worth looking into the differences in more detail, since all of the above three wiki projects are also supposed to be multilingual. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:17, 23 March 2025 (UTC).Reply
I third Andy's solution: we should be using ISO dates as much as possible. —Justin (koavf)TCM 20:22, 23 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
True, ISO 8601 is the best way to go. It's the international standard (as the name suggests...), and it doesn't get much more language independent than that. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 09:53, 24 March 2025 (UTC).Reply
Talking about ISO it would be nice if we could also enter the actual ISO date format as a parameter in the Date template. In other words not only the presently accepted format
  • {{Date|2024|9|2}} and {{Date|2024|09|02}} but also
  • {{Date|2024–9–2}} and {{Date|2024–09–02}} i.e. ISO format.
I thinks that's a bit more intuitive and user-friendly than the present-day format with three separate parameters divided by pipes. Obviusoly all four of them must render the same outcome, e.g. 2 September 2024, relying on the user settings to show the month in each user's preferred language. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:20, 25 March 2025 (UTC).Reply

Incertae sedis within tribe level – clarification (zoology)

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In Moran et al., 2021, a number of genera were excluded from a subtribe and "left as incertae sedis inside the Milesiini (stat. rev.)". How should I represent this on the appropriate taxon pages? Perhaps on the tribe page, a list of subtribes, and a list of the incertae sedis genera below that - but what's the best way to phrase/format the list of additional genera? "Genera (incertae sedis): {{g|genus}}..."? Should I mention incertae sedis at all?

And how should I indicate the incertae sedis placement on the individual pages for the genera, if at all? I was considering having the taxonavigation jump directly from the genus level to the tribus level, while not mentioning the subtribus level - but what's the best practice for this?

While I'm here, any feedback on how to format nomenclatural acts and enter them on reference template pages (like what I did with Moran et al., 2021) is very much appreciated. --WrenFalcon (talk) 19:32, 23 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Hello WrenFalcon, and thank you for your questions. The phrase "incertae sedis" must be mentioned, and the incertae sedis taxa should be added to the Milesiini page, below the list of subtribes. See pages Eumetazoa and Hexapoda for examples.
Note that all taxon page names that includes the phrase incertae sedis were banned in 2016, mainly because "incertae sedis" isn't part of any actual taxon name. Hence a page name like for example "Milesiini incertae sedis" (intended for a list of all the applicable incertae sedis taxa) wouldn't be accepted. That said, we still have quite a lot of pages left with "incertae sedis" in their page name (see Incertae sedis for those). The reason for this is partly that some of them are tricky to sort out, from a nomenclatural point of view, but also... I don't really know, but my best guess is that many users are unaware those pages even exist. Nonetheless they should all be dealt with and ultimately deleted, so feel free to have a go at it if you like to.
–Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 10:44, 24 March 2025 (UTC).Reply
@WrenFalcon: In this case, on the taxonavigation templates for the genera themselves I would put the "incertae sedis" placement directly in the templates:
{{Milesiini}}
Subtribus: incertae sedis
Genus: {{gbr|Genus}}
This way no extra template for the "incertae sedis" line is needed. Monster Iestyn (talk) 14:25, 25 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
But WrenFalcon said that [some] “genera were excluded from a subtribe and left as incertae sedis inside the Milesiini (stat. rev.)”? Hence, technically speaking, they might be daughter taxa directly under tribus Milesiini and perhaps not necessarily part of any subtribe. So in their particular Taxonavigation list there shouldn't be any post for subtribus at all. Instead only:
{{Milesiini}}
Genus: {{gbr|Genus}}
Or am I misunderstanding? –Tommy Kronkvist (talk)‚ 20:01, 25 March 2025 (UTC).Reply
Possibly. The authors' words (for Cynorhinella, with similar wording for the other genera) are as follows: "Monophyly of Blerina is maintained by the removal of Cynorhinella with the genus left as incertae sedis inside the Milesiini (stat. rev.)" (emphasis original) and "Removal of Cynorhinella from Blerina (stat. rev.) with the genus left as incertae cedis in Milesiini" (emphasis original) [Moran et al., 2021]. I'm not entirely sure on the best way to translate this onto the taxon page. Speaking of, here's what I have for Cynorhinella. --WrenFalcon (talk) 20:12, 25 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Tommy Kronkvist @WrenFalcon: My interpretation here is that Cynorhinella being left incertae sedis in Milesiini means the authors don't know which subtribe it belongs to currently, since evidently nearly all of the other genera of the tribe are placed in one of its subtribes. Cynorhinella used to belong to Blerina but not anymore after the author's molecular study, yet they didn't place it in any of the other subtribes, instead leaving it incertae sedis in the tribe. Hence why I thought "Subtribus: incertae sedis" should be displayed in the taxonavigation template. But if others don't agree with me here, then fair enough. I just figured out my own system for handling incertae sedis taxa in the absence of any guidance for them in Wikispecies's help pages. Monster Iestyn (talk) 21:13, 25 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
"...since evidently nearly all of the other genera of the tribe are placed in one of its subtribes." More on that point, the classification accepted by the authors of the paper (before this paper was published) seems to classify all genera of Milesiini into its subtribes. See the Syrphidae Community Website (somewhat slow - you may need to access it through the Wayback Machine), linked in Moran et al., 2021. ("Ximo", presumably Ximo Mengual, is a coauthor on this paper.) --WrenFalcon (talk) 23:01, 25 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Double-checking nomenclatural interpretation of paper

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Could someone read Mengual et al., 2015a and double-check my interpretation of the nomenclatural acts? I interpreted it as saying that the authors were moving Pipizini from a tribe in Eristalinae to a subfamily, Pipizinae, in Syrphidae, to the effect that there is now a subfamily Pipizinae and no tribe Pipizini (the taxonomy as currently modeled at Pipizinae). That is, Pipizini is considered a synonym of Pipizinae. However, it seems some sources had a different interpretation (e.g. BioLib, FossilWorks), where a new subfamily Pipizinae was created, while the tribe Pipizini remained under Pipizinae.

I'm inclined to believe my interpretation, especially since an overview of syrphid taxonomy posted by Ximo Mengual (the first author) on the Syrphidae Community Website shows Pipizinae containing no tribes. iNaturalist's taxonomy also supports this interpretation (taxonomy changes).

Thanks. --WrenFalcon (talk) 16:14, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Yes, I would agree with your interpretation. The article states at the end "Based on all the evidence mentioned above, we propose to revise the taxonomic rank of the tribe Pipizini to subfamily Pipizinae stat. rev.", so tribe Pipizini is now subfamily Pipizinae. The authors don't mention the newly established subfamily includes any tribes, so I too assume there aren't any.
BioLib from my experience is problematic for many reasons and IMO unreliable as a taxonomic source, and in this case it doesn't give any sources for why it places Pipizini under Pipizinae (nor for any of the other data on tha page, for that matter). Meanwhile, PBDB / FossilWorks (FossilWorks' website went down last year, but PBDB seems to take its place) says its claim that Pipizini is under Pipizinae comes directly from Mengual et al. 2015: I think this is probably an error on their part? Monster Iestyn (talk) 17:55, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Just to point out that PBDB is a multi-contributor site so there is probably not a "PBDB voice" as such. Individual contributions can get it wrong sometimes... Tony 1212 (talk) 17:59, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thanks to both of you! --WrenFalcon (talk) 18:16, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Something fishy...

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Our Pisces is matched to fish (Q152), but that Wikidata item has its "Instance of = taxon" statement set to deprecated.

What's up? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:11, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Pigsonthewing: the statement was set to deprecated back in 2021 [1], and it seems nobody reversed it all these years later. (The taxon name statement was also set to deprecated shortly after, but that was changed back the same day.) Perhaps nobody disagreed with it, or otherwise questioned it? It might be redundant anyway as both paraphyletic group (Q58051350) and grade (Q2612572) are subclasses of taxon (Q16521), but I don't really know what should be done. Monster Iestyn (talk) 19:23, 28 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Monster Iestyn and Pigsonthewing: The English Wikipedia disambiguation page Pisces says “Pisces, an obsolete (because of land vertebrates) taxonomic superclass including all fish.” The original wording on the disambiguation page was “Fish, as an obsolete taxonomic term.” added in September 2006. (The links above all points to enWP.) –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 20:35, 28 March 2025 (UTC).Reply
From Wikipedia as at now:
{| class="wikitable"
|Subphylum:
|[[:en:Vertebrate|Vertebrata]]
|}
{| class="wikitable"
! colspan="2" |Groups included
|-
| colspan="2" |
* "[[:en:Agnatha|Agnatha]]"
* <abbr>†</abbr>"[[:en:Placodermi|Placodermi]]"
* <abbr>†</abbr>"[[:en:Acanthodii|Acanthodii]]"
* [[:en:Chondrichthyes|Chondrichthyes]]
* [[:en:Osteichthyes|Osteichthyes]]
** [[:en:Actinopterygii|Actinopterygii]]
** [[:en:Sarcopterygii|Sarcopterygii]] <small>(including [[:en:Tetrapod|tetrapods]])</small>
|}
I note Gnathostomata (everything that are not Agnatha) is missing from this summary. It seems that Agnatha and Gnathostomata are treated as infraphyla of Vertebrata per the page for the latter, which has:
"The fish include the jawless Agnatha, and the jawed Gnathostomata. The jawed fish include both the cartilaginous fish and the bony fish. Bony fish include the lobe-finned fish, which gave rise to the tetrapods, the animals with four limbs."
Whether one includes non-fish Tetrapoda (amphibians, reptiles and mammals) that evolved from fishes within Sarcopterygii is a question for the cladists (in IRMNG I do not, following CoL 2016, PBDB does I think).
"Pisces" as a taxonomic group is obsolete since the term includes both the Agnatha and the Gnathostomata which are these days treated as infraphyla of their own, leaving no room for a traditional "class Pisces" which would have lived at at a lower level and included them both... Tony 1212 (talk) 17:14, 29 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

FYI: Giant, fungus-like organism may be a completely unknown branch of life

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Popular: https://www.livescience.com/animals/giant-fungus-like-organism-may-be-a-completely-unknown-branch-of-life

Academic: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.14.643340v1Justin (koavf)TCM 05:41, 29 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Well, this is about Prototaxites (no Wikispecies entry as yet, but should be...) - a well known organism about which there are competing theories, most recently that it was a fungus of some type but not closely related to other fungi. The cited, new work is a preprint which (as I read it) would remove it from kingdom Fungi altogether, however as a preprint (not published or maybe peer reviewed) it should not yet be cited, I believe... In other words: somebody's new opinion, not yet formally published and too early to see how it will be received by relevant other workers in the field (although it may be correct of course, but too soon to know). Cheers Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 17:25, 29 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Correct, it has not been peer reviewed or accepted by any naming authority. —Justin (koavf)TCM 17:35, 29 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Indeed. Although Wikispecies can certainly have a page for Prototaxites, probably just assigned to Fungi for now pending additional scientific discussion and/or consensus... most recent published reference would be What to Do with Prototaxites? by Matthew P. Nelsen and C. Kevin Boyce (2022) Tony 1212 (talk) 17:39, 29 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Actually there is a newer one that also considers Prototaxites to be a fungus: Vajda et al, 2023, "Prototaxites reinterpreted as mega-rhizomorphs, facilitating nutrient transport in early terrestrial ecosystems", Can. J. Microbiol. 69: 17–31 (2023) | dx.doi.org/10.1139/cjm-2021-0358 . Interestingly, these authors reconstruct Prototaxites as a fungal structure creeping along the ground, not as a giant Devonian "tree" up to 9 meters tall... Tony 1212 (talk) 18:18, 29 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Spol. Zeyl.

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I'm working on a new page for George Morrison Reid Henry. A number of his publications are listed as published in Spol. Zeyl., in the 1930s and 1940s, but our page on Spolia Zeylanica, ISSN 0081-3745, says publication ended in 1918 or 1921 (depending on which part of the page you believe), with no successor title listed.

What's the story? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:44, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Heya Andy, would seem to have been taken over by other institutions at various points see the BHL Page
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/10229
Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 22:19, 30 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
Google Books results as well as Hathitrust clearly shows the journal running long after 1919. I'm assuming that 1919 could be just an error based on a misreading of the data at BHL, while 1921 is just the end year for volume 11, the last volume currently accessible from BHL. (Also, could Colombo Museum, National Museums of Ceylon and National Museums of Sri Lanka all be the same institution? Though the year spans given for each on BHL are cryptic to be honest.) Monster Iestyn (talk) 04:38, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply
That page says "Vol. 13-22, pt. 1, issued as Ceylon journal of science. Section B. Zoology, which continues as an independent publication, v. 23-" (for Ceylon Journal of Science (Biological Sciences), we have ISSN 0069-2379). I'm still confused. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:25, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

See also [2], which says:

The Ceylon Journal of Science was founded in 1924 by the government of Ceylon bringing together the Annals of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya (first published in 1901), the Spolia Zeylanica (first published in 1903) and the Bulletin of the Ceylon Fisheries (first published in 1923). Different branches of science were covered by separately published sections A, B, C, D, E, F and G. With the establishment of the University of Ceylon in 1942, the administration of the Journal was taken up by the University and Spolia Zeylanica reverted to its original status of a separate publication. In 1958 sections A, B and C comprising Botany, Zoology and Fisheries were combined as the Ceylon Journal of Science (Biological Sciences) new series.

It continues to be published by the University of Peradeniya, Formally the University of Ceylon...

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:31, 31 March 2025 (UTC)Reply

Wikidata and Sister Projects: Online event

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Hello everyone, I’m writing to announce an upcoming event called Wikidata and Sister Projects that will be a mini online conference to highlight the different ways Wikidata can be connected and integrated with the other WM projects.

We are currently looking for session ideas and speakers for our program and wanted to reach out in case there were any editors here that might have a cool idea for a session proposal. More info and templates for sessions can be found on the talk page. As previously mentioned, we would like to showcase the relationship between Wikispecies and Wikidata and how data such as facts, or links to external databases and external identifiers can be stored and centralised at Wikidata and reused on Wikispecies.

The event is scheduled between May 29 - June 1st, 2025. If you have any questions about the event, would like more information or have a session idea to propose, please feel free to get in touch by replying to this post or writing on the event page or on my talk page. Thanks for reading, - Danny Benjafield (WMDE) (talk) 07:19, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Catalogue of Life Extended

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Heya everyone. Letting you know the Catalogue of Life Extended Edition has now been released in Checklist.org and is available to use. Catalogue of Life XE can be found here. It is still a little early days but is fully functional with more options in the pipeline for future releases. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 16:25, 1 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

PhytoKeys

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I have just been informed by Kew that around 2021, the underlying databases behind POWO had trouble in importing from PhytoKeys. By now there probably are very few names that are still affected, but it is not unknown. For example I came across Saxifraga viridiflora. Please do not delete if the taxon is not in POWO, but make a check. First port of call should be IPNI, if the name is registered then it is likely a POWO error. Do a Scholar search and see if the taxon is referred to in later works. Check through other databases. Finally contact Kew via wcb@kew.org or bi@kew.org. Hope this helps. Andyboorman (talk) 08:00, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Template:Q etc.

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As agreed in Renaming Template:Q, I have now replaced all instances of the old {{Q}} with {{Wikidata short link}} (shortcut: {{Qn}}), and moved {{QID}} to {{Q}}.

This means that our {{Q}} now works in the same way as the equivalent on other projects, and won't be broken by future template imports.

So now:

{{Q|1043}} gives
Carl Linnaeus (Q1043)
{{Qn|1043}} gives
Q1043
{{Qx|1043}} gives
Carl Linnaeus

Please see the documentation of {{Q}} for other parameters and output options; and let me know if you find any problems resulting from this change. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:21, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, this will certainly simplify things. Good work! –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:47, 2 April 2025 (UTC).Reply
Updated to use {{Qn}} as a shortcut for "Numeric" output. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:24, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Category:Taxa by author

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This Category has 61.461 entries. In a gross estimative, >25% are empty categories. I don't see any logical in opening a category for some taxon authority who is not an author (yet). It is a waste of effort and confusing. Should be all deleted? If agreed, could somebody set up a bot to perform? Thanks Hector Bottai (talk) 22:04, 2 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

This one cuts me to my soul. The problem is that we have redlinks to a bunch of these categories on taxa authority pages, so we have two bad options at the moment: either have a bunch of wanted categories or a bunch of empty categories. E.g. see Syed Qaiser Abbas, which presently includes the line "0 taxon names authored by Syed Qaiser Abbas" that links to Category:Syed Qaiser Abbas taxa. This is because the page has {{Taxa authored}}. The solution is to make an if/then statement so that the category is only linked if it exists and only make the category if it has at least one entry. I'm kind of okay at MediaWiki and marginally knowledgeable about Lua, so I could try to do this, but it would probably be better if someone more competent tried. The best person I know who edits here is @Pigsonthewing:. Andy, are you motivated to fix this template issue so that we can delete all these empty categories? —Justin (koavf)TCM 03:55, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
There is a third problem: persons who have authored many names in their category, but they are not displayed on the author's page (e.g. Willem F. Prud'homme van Reine). This occurs for names with an apostrophe. --Thiotrix (talk) 09:05, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Ah, thanks. These apostrophes cause problems, so there is a workaround to escape them. Thanks. —Justin (koavf)TCM 16:04, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Thiotrix: this edit fixed it. If you don't see it working immediately, you need to purge the page by going to https://species.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Willem_F._Prud%27homme_van_Reine&action=purge. Let me know if you see any other issues. —Justin (koavf)TCM 16:09, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Great @Koavf:! I knew another way to fix it but much more complex and case to case. This seems to be a definitive solution. Thanks! And let's continue the discussion over the empty categories.--Hector Bottai (talk) 16:27, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for this improvement, --Thiotrix (talk) 10:36, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Motivated, yes, but sadly not sufficiently skilled. If the template is so modified, rather than hiding it when the category does not exist (or is empty), we could make it say "we have no taxons listed yet" with a link to our guide to creating such pages. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:24, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hm, I'm not sure how I feel about mass deleting all the empty taxon by author categories, since I probably made some myself for taxon authors, but I'm also aware that many of such categories have been made for people who have never authored a taxon and/or probably never will do so; for those I definitely feel that a taxa by author category is completely pointless, and on a number of occasions I've deleted them for those non-taxon author people I've come across. (I also remove Category:Taxon authorities on the person's page when doing that) Monster Iestyn (talk) 16:35, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
For instance, the earlier linked example of Syed Qaiser Abbas has an empty category, but the sole publication linked as well as IPNI is indirect evidence that they have at least co-authored a genus of fungi Cytopleastrum Abbas, B. Sutton, Ghaffar & A. Abbas. Monster Iestyn (talk) 16:51, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
The problem is that I don't want a bunch of redlinks to show up at Special:WantedPages, nor Special:UnusedCategories. —Justin (koavf)TCM 17:15, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Personaly when I create an author page, and that I know the person is indeed a taxon author, I create automatically a category, e.g. today I created Pedro Bonfá-Neto with the corresponding category. But I do not plan to create the taxa pages myself. Let me know if to create automatically such categories are a no wanted pratcice. Christian Ferrer (talk) 23:11, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I prefer to keep the empty categories. As the Category:Taxa by author will grow very large, I propose to use a better style of Table of Content with a subheading: Aa Ab Ac Ad ..., like here [3]. --Thiotrix (talk) 10:36, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Well, it seems we haven't arrived to any conclusion. Agree mass deletion is out of question because would create a mass of red links and seems a bot is not possible to avoid. But I think we should recommend something from now on: a. not to create new empty categories, b. not to include the {{Taxa authored}} template in new authority pages who are not yet taxon authors. I personally will delete empty categories AND resulting red link every time I face one. By the way, I already applied to 100% of the authority pages I created--Hector Bottai (talk) 17:19, 8 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
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User:MGA73 raised a question on Wikispecies talk:Copyrights about the Creative Commons license. On the footer of each page, the license has been updated to CC-BY-SA 4.0. But on Wikispecies:Copyrights, it still states CC-BY-SA 3.0. I'm not sure if one of us can simply change it to 4.0 or whether it requires a community vote to officially change it to 4.0. Would appreciate others to chime in here. OhanaUnitedTalk page 19:34, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

The footer is stored at MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyright-footer. It was changed by WMFOffice (talkcontribsblock logall projects) on 202-06-07 due to a larger change in the Terms of Use. Therefore, I'm changing Wikispecies:Copyrights unilaterally, as I don't think it needs any discussion. I'm happy to be corrected. —Justin (koavf)TCM 21:29, 3 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Final proposed modifications to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter now posted

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The proposed modifications to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines and the U4C Charter are now on Meta-wiki for community notice in advance of the voting period. This final draft was developed from the previous two rounds of community review. Community members will be able to vote on these modifications starting on 17 April 2025. The vote will close on 1 May 2025, and results will be announced no later than 12 May 2025. The U4C election period, starting with a call for candidates, will open immediately following the announcement of the review results. More information will be posted on the wiki page for the election soon.

Please be advised that this process will require more messages to be sent here over the next two months.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review was planned and implemented by the U4C. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

-- In cooperation with the U4C, Keegan (WMF) (talk) 02:04, 4 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Template:VN language requests

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There are several historic requests to add languages to {{VN}} on its talk page, including one to add eight languages and one to add 380 (yes, 380!). I'm minded to refuse the latter on the basis that there is no evidence of there being volunteers willing or wanting to use them; but that and others need more input. Please discuss there, not here. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:32, 9 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Some recent Wikidata property proposals

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The following open proposals for new Wikidata properties are relevant to the work of this project, and may be useful for citations or {{Authority control}}.

If you have any views, please express them on their respective Wikidata pages. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:59, 10 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Giraffa

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Could a mammal specialist please review this genus? This has come about as the request for speedy delete of Giraffa giraffa angolensis has highlighted inconsistencies and apparent errors in the genus circumscription. For example, Giraffa camelopardalis angolensis. Thanks. Andyboorman (talk) 08:59, 12 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

I commented on the talk page, reject the deletion. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 16:54, 12 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
ughh I have looked through the Giraffe in more detail, theseare a mess. Based on most recent publications we need to do some work on this genus I am going to fix this and will take care of the speedy delete. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 20:47, 12 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
(I'm sending a ping to @Nerdnewt, who first added the speedy deletion request to the G. giraffa angolensis page. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 05:37, 14 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Hmm ok I may have to rethink this. I have just been sent 2025 papers of relevance to this that seem to now be recognising 4 species not 3. I will examine them all and update accordingly. By the way the MDD and Mammal species of the world are not the best sources for this genus. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 12:30, 17 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
For those unsure. The problem is that conservation imperatives have been in the way of the taxonomy of Giraffe for decades. The phylogenetic studies presented have been both hampered by this and by the lack of explicit explanations of methodology and acceptance/ refutation of results (which are not proposed well) due to the influence of conservation imperatives. This is bad taxonomic practice. So I have had to go through each paper, question the authors and gain an full understanding of what they are trying to do and how they did it. So sorry if this takes a little time. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 13:06, 17 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Sentence at the top of categories

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Hello, I think we should create a kind of template to put at the top of the categories contained within Category:Repositories, for two pruposes: 1/ to standardize the text used, 2/ in that way to make translations.

We currently have a lot of different headings (e.g. "List of type specimens reposed in..", "List of species group taxa whose type specimens are housed in ...", "List of species group taxa with type specimens housed at ...", "List of taxa whose type specimens are deposited in..", ect.... ), and none are translated. To begin we should chose one and only one sentence and make it tranlsated at Wikispecies:Localization. Once it is done either we chose to use it directy at the top of the categories with the help of {{int:}}, or we create a template using itself {{int:List of type.... in}} followed by a {{PAGENAME}} giving the right link to the repository page. The potential use of a template has the advantage that, once created, it's easier for future maintenance, e.g. change of text or formatting.

If necassary I think I'm able to work and potentially to make such template, but I'm not able to put it on all the 3000 categories contained within Category:Repositories.

What are your comments? Christian Ferrer (talk) 13:59, 12 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Christian Ferrer: Good idea! I've been thinking of this for many years, but never gotten around to invest any actual work into it. I'm not sure which of the methods you suggest that is best, but implementing the feature is a fairly straightforward endeavor regardless of which solution the community finally opts for. Adding the improvement to +3,000 pages isn't a very big task, if I use a bot. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 05:06, 14 April 2025 (UTC).Reply
@Tommy Kronkvist: Thanks for the comment. Well, after to have read Help:Extension:Translate in MediaWiki, I think the Local interface translation ({{int:}}) is the best choice. We firstly need to chose the right sentence before to create an entry at Wikispecies:Localization. Either Wikispecies users potentially say here their opinion about the sentence we will use, or maybe Wikispecies:Requests for Comment is a best place to get users' attention. Christian Ferrer (talk) 08:07, 14 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
See Template:Types by repository! Regards, Burmeister (talk) 11:08, 14 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Thanks you! the question is therefore settled. We should have a page Help:Categories dealing with all that kind of stuff. Christian Ferrer (talk) 16:39, 14 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
  • @Tommy Kronkvist: if either you, or someone else, want to put (or to replace current texts with) that template with a BOT in all categories that don't have it yet, you can use this wikitext: {{Types by repository|{{PAGENAME}}|{{PAGENAME}}}}, because the template have been made to work with parametters. The little issue here is that it will render only acronyms,

E.g. "{{Types by repository|{{PAGENAME}}|{{PAGENAME}}}}" placed in Category:FWRI will gives  :


List of type specimens reposed in FWRI.


Sadly I don't how you can get the full names of the repositories with a bot, even if it is possible, but personaly I think that by default the acronyms are ok in the extand that the link lead to the page containing the full name. Christian Ferrer (talk) 17:25, 14 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Caesalpinioideae

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It looks like the large Fabaceae subfamily Caesalpinioideae has been satisfactorily circumscribed to the tribal level by;

  • Bruneau, A., de Queiroz, L.P., Ringelberg, J.J., Borges, L.M., da Costa Bortoluzzi, R.L., Brown, G.K., Cardoso, D.B., Clark, R.P., de Souza Conceição, A., Cota, M.M.T. & Demeulenaere, E. 2024.  Advances in Legume Systematics 14. Classification of Caesalpinioideae. Part 2: Higher-level classification. PhytoKeys 240: 1. DOI: 10.3897/phytokeys.240.101716   Reference page

I have added the required tribes, but not yet populated them with their data. For those interested I recommend reading the paper. Also have a look at;

  • Stevens, P.F. 2001 onwards. Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 14, July 2017 [and more or less continuously updated since]. Online. Reference page.  as Stevens is happy to accept Bruneau et al.

I will edit the subfamily in due course, but I am happy for feedback. Thanks for your time and happy reading. Andyboorman (talk) 19:25, 12 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

IUCN template broken?

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The IUCN template seems broken. See for example Bubo blakistoni where the link rendered by {{IUCN|EN|22689007|Bubo blakistoni}} ends up on a "404 page not found" page on the domain "apiv3.iucnredlist.org" instead of the proper Bubo blakistoni IUCN page on "www.iucnredlist.org".

The same is true for the three Canis lupus examples listed on the actual Template:IUCN page. Any ideas about what causes this? For comparison, the IUCN links created by the {{Taxonbar}} template works as expected. (Again, you can use the Bubo blakistoni page as an example. The Taxonbar template there includes an IUCN link with the same IUCN species ID as in the non-working template, i.e. 22689007, except here the link is working.)

Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 11:44, 14 April 2025 (UTC).Reply

Same with other links, received message of "unsafe connection". Also tried from a different template at the Spanish wiki, same situation. Don't know the reason. I accesed their site and search straight with no problem. Hector Bottai (talk) 14:46, 14 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Hector Bottai: I've never received an "unsafe link" message by use of our IUCN template. That particular template always produces a link that includes the encrypted HTTPS protocol instead of the old, unencrypted HTTP ditto. Hence the links should never be "unsafe" (at least not as long as the IUCN renews their SSL or TLS certificates on a regular basis – which they most likely do every year, just like for example Wikimedia). Having said that, I occasionally do get the "unsafe link" message from a few of our other link templates: especially some of the smaller external sites sometimes fail to renew their security certificates in time (due to lack of funding?) –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:04, 14 April 2025 (UTC).Reply

──── Maybe it's time to change the template to use www.iucnredlist.org rather than apiv3.iucnredlist.org? Last time it was working I think apiv3.iucnredlist.org links just redirected to www.iucnredlist.org links anyway. Monster Iestyn (talk) 14:57, 14 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

@Tommy Kronkvist: I fixed it, the former url have been deprecated, I changed it in the template. Christian Ferrer (talk) 16:34, 14 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Christian Ferrer: Thank you, it seems to work very well! Thanks also for removing the <small> tag that had slipped in during the recent edits. Well spotted, since it's not part of our standard format. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:04, 14 April 2025 (UTC).Reply
Bad link. Happening again today, at leat to me. Both WS and ES Anybody else?--Hector Bottai (talk) 12:08, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Hector Bottai: I haven't checked from Spanish Wikipedia (esWP), but here from Wikispecies they all looks good to me.
For example (per your own recent edits of Otus insularis and Riccordia bicolor):
and
Those two IUCN species links points to


By the way, please note that some templates doesn't work very well if one adds blank spaces between the parameters and the surrounding pipe symbols. I don't know whether our IUCN template is affected, but for the sake of example a code syntax such as
  • {{IUCN|EN|15933|Pan troglodytes}} will work, while
  • {{IUCN |EN |15933 |Pan troglodytes}} or {{IUCN | EN |15933 | Pan troglodytes}} sometimes doesn't.
This particular shortcoming isn't specific to Wikispecies, but a technical issue for all of Wikimedia (although the problem is rapidly decreasing, as our global tech staff is constantly refining the software). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk),v13:11, 15 April 2025 (UTC).Reply
Many thanks Tommy, working fine now at WS...and not at ES. Some temporary bug. Hector Bottai (talk) 13:18, 15 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

{{Image}} with more Wikidata functionality

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I went ahead and made a prototype for a version of {{Image}} with more Wikidata functionality - not only can it grab the image from Wikidata, but it generates a more appropriate caption based on the depicts (P180) and sex or gender (P21) qualifiers under the image (P18) property. You can check it out at User:WrenFalcon/Image. Feel free to play around with it (though, please don't use it in an actual article yet—stick to the preview or use a sandbox, please) or to suggest corrections or improvements. It's not perfect yet - I believe it wouldn't provide a caption at all on taxon authority pages, and I haven't tested it enough yet to be sure it will work everywhere else. However, I find it nice because an accurate caption can be generated without needing to provide any parameters in the Wikispecies article. Any feedback is greatly appreciated! --WrenFalcon (talk) 04:25, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

need to ensure it can be overridden by local edits though. Wikidata does not always have the correct information nor is it always the appropriate information for this wiki, as a taxonomic wiki we do need the correct name on taxa, the species epithet should be in the image title and the common name is not so relevant. There are on occasions additional information of use, for example if it's a picture of a type specimen. We also need to wary if its automatically grabbing any image of a taxon, since many of the ones on Commons are misidentified. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 09:05, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Everything should be able to be overwritten by local edits—see the newly-added examples (with some comments in the wikitext source) on the template page (User:WrenFalcon/Image).
It's not fetching any metadata (e.g. depicted taxon, sex) directly from Commons—data would have to be entered directly on the Wikidata taxon item. For example, see d:Q1048880#P18. The template is not directly affected by misidentifications in Commons; a misidentification would have to find its way into the Wikidata taxon item, which should help with data quality.
A custom caption or custom image can absolutely be provided, just like with the current {{Image}}. (However, if a custom caption is specified, I would recommend explicitly specifying the file name of the image to use; otherwise, the caption could become outdated by a change in Wikidata.)
The generated caption should always use the (scientific) taxon name, never the common name. See the last example on the template page (mallard, male, Anas platyrhinchos).
As for data accuracy, that's partly on Wikidata maintainers, partly on Wikispecies editors (and on Commons editors/reviewers for file name accuracy). However, the extended use of Wikidata by this template may also encourage more Wikispecies editors to contribute to Wikidata, especially to help fix incorrect or conflicting information. --WrenFalcon (talk) 16:23, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
unfortunately if they are misidentified on Commons they are invariably also misidentified on Wikidata. cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 18:43, 16 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
If that is the case, fix them! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:59, 17 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have fixed about 700 of them. But I cannot do all of them. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 12:21, 17 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Added documentation (which is also on the template page)! Hopefully that makes it a little more understandable what's going on. --WrenFalcon (talk) 03:16, 17 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
So, is this is change we would be interested in making to {{Image}}? And how should this change be handled - is consensus here enough to justify making the change, should it go through an RfC, or...?
I've updated it somewhat, and I've tested it a decent amount. I feel confident that it will work without issues on the vast majority of pages, and when there are issues, the captioning behavior can be easily overridden. It's also currently standard practice to use the image in Wikidata (though this does have its own issues with misidentification). Personally, I don't think this change would significantly exacerbate the misidentification issues as opposed to the situation currently. I don't know of any common usages/patterns on Wikidata that would break this template (though, then again, many of the taxa I've looked at don't have an image in Wikidata). I believe it should also be fully language-independent. --WrenFalcon (talk) 19:09, 21 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
Lovely. Is it possible to draw out media captions with a LangSwitch thing? —Justin (koavf)TCM 01:00, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure what you mean specifically, but there shouldn't be a need for that. For images of a taxon, it uses the taxon (scientific) name, and if it adds a sex annotation, it uses the male or female symbol. If the associated Wikidata item doesn't have the taxon name property, it captions the image with the item's label in the current language (i.e. the display language of the user/viewer on Wikispecies). If the associated Wikidata item doesn't have a label for the current language, it then defaults to the Wikispecies page name.
Images of taxa are captioned in a language-neutral manner (i.e. not using anything specific to any one language); images of taxon authorities and other miscellaneous items are captioned using the label in the appropriate local language OR using the page name.
If the automatic caption is overridden, it can be with whatever you want, including templates and parser functions such as {{int:}} and {{#switch:}}. --WrenFalcon (talk) 02:32, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Vote now on the revised UCoC Enforcement Guidelines and U4C Charter

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The voting period for the revisions to the Universal Code of Conduct Enforcement Guidelines ("UCoC EG") and the UCoC's Coordinating Committee Charter is open now through the end of 1 May (UTC) (find in your time zone). Read the information on how to participate and read over the proposal before voting on the UCoC page on Meta-wiki.

The Universal Code of Conduct Coordinating Committee (U4C) is a global group dedicated to providing an equitable and consistent implementation of the UCoC. This annual review of the EG and Charter was planned and implemented by the U4C. Further information will be provided in the coming months about the review of the UCoC itself. For more information and the responsibilities of the U4C, you may review the U4C Charter.

Please share this message with members of your community so they can participate as well.

In cooperation with the U4C -- Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:34, 17 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

Validity query

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On commons, I'm regularly having to remove misfiled images related to microorganisms from the category for the plant genus Microbiota. This makes me wonder: is Microbiota a valid genus name, or does it potentially breach ICN Article 20.2 "The name of a genus may not coincide with a Latin technical term in use in morphology at the time of publication..."? Microbiota was only described in 1923, so is later than the 1912 cutoff given in Art. 20.2. Thoughts, please! - MPF (talk) 19:10, 22 April 2025 (UTC)Reply

FYI: Can Citizen Science Be Trusted? New Study of Birds Shows It Can

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https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/can-citizen-science-be-trusted-new-study-birds-shows-it-canJustin (koavf)TCM 01:08, 23 April 2025 (UTC)Reply