Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Arthropods/Article Classification

Importance Scale/ GA vs. A.

In the first table, why is GA-class below A-class? I always thought Good articles are of higher quality than A-class articles, but not as high as Featured articles. If I am not mistaken, GA should be above A.--Crustaceanguy 14:03, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

Importance/Taxonomic classification

I don't think the importance of the article is on a one to one relationship with the higher taxonomic classification. After all people see common arthropod and are interested in their ecology and ways to distinguish them from similar species with different ecology. At least I am. So I think there should be also some emphasis on the species articles, or articles about genera with a group of species that are very much alike, concentrating on their ecological and morphological differences.Viridiflavus (talk) 11:20, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I started a discussion on the "importance" classification page too as I think this classification is misleading, or at least needs some serious rewording. --Land Moil (talk) 21:20, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Entomology entry

I changed the importance of the Entomology entry from mid to high. It meets the listed criteria of "This article is fairly important to this project, as it covers a general area of knowledge" -AJseagull1 (talk) 21:29, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

"Top" importance

I have noticed that "top importance" when it comes to arthropod articles seems rather disorganized. Some articles that seem like they belong in Top are in high, such as some of the subphyla (Why is Arachnid above Chelicerata importance wise, for example). The opposite problem also seems to apply, articles in Top that don't seem to belong on Top, such as the various orders (though this I can understand more). I am relatively new to Wikipedia, however, and I can't help but notice that this seems odd.

Schtompemphlatt (talk) 15:45, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Stub vs. Start criteria

I posted a similar comment in WP Plants in September: considering the number of insect genera and species, I think it applies even more here … If our objective is to describe all ranks and notable clades - particularly orders, families, genera and species of organisms: we have a massive task in front of us. Without wanting to 'dumb-down' WP standards, I feel that it would be useful to establish some clearer minimum criteria to achieve Start class articles, since Stub-class pages risk "being dropped from being an article altogether." An approach taken in other WPs, notably Sv and NL, has been to generate a large number of genus and species pages robotically, often having taken data from the Catalogue of Life. Whereas this had obvious limitations, at least they have helped to make inroads into the 'massive task' and I have found them to be useful starting points for generating new En pages in less than an hour. Finding and placing good illustrations for organisms is highly desirable, but this can often be the most time-consuming part of the task! When transferring starter information (often from Sv:WP robot pages), I try to 'add value', for example with local names, distributions and links to the relevant Species File site (trying to 'track down' insects that we see here in southern Vietnam).

The current criteria for Stub-class articles (under Plants) include: "A very basic description of the topic." and they "Provide very little meaningful content …". WP now provides a number of powerful tools including the Automatic taxobox and taxonbar: these alone often provide substantial meaningful content, especially with the links to international databases. Wikiproject Arthropods currently has thousands (6413) of stub-class articles – 7x the number of start-class or higher classes combined. When will the former be upgraded? The criteria here refer to (an unspecified) length of the article, but 'less can be more' using the tools above. For example, it will be quite difficult to add much to the recently-developed page Megradina, with information available here (apart from a photo – which we will try to obtain). Much more useful surely, to move-on and work on related genera … for example, take a look at what still needs to be done in its subfamily Orthacridinae. On the other hand, Bienkotetrix transsylvanicus is appropriately ranked as stub-class at the moment: not least because En:WP and the other language WP pages use old synonyms!

In order to achieve Start-class articles in a person-hour I suggest a list of minimum criteria might be:

• Complete automatic taxobox, including Authority and (where relevant) synonyms
• Picture(s) where available: failing that an external link (e.g. to Flickr page) below. Peter Coxhead has suggested here that presence of good illustrations, together with these other criteria, should make pages candidates for "C class"; personally I prefer to see illustrations together with a few paragraphs of description for a 'C'.
• Introductory description, to include (at least briefly):
  • Taxonomic placement and description with (say 1-3) references.
  • An indication of the known geographical range of the organism.
  • Wherever possible, vernacular name(s), ideally verified with a reference or equivalent WP page in other language(s).
  • If it is a genus page, at least a provisional list of species. Unless there are less than 3-4 subdivisions, I prefer to put the list in a section of text rather than the taxobox itself (otherwise the page can look unbalanced).
• Footers: reference section, taxonbar, commons/species links if available, categories.

I suggest that the role of 'Stub-class' is for articles that have yet to be fitted-in to the Automatic taxobox system (with their accompanying data entries). With an achievable 'Start-class' target such as the above, editors could then swiftly move-on to the next page … might we then be able to at least make some reference to (say 99%+) of the World's Arthropod genera within the next 10 years? Top priority for pages on the higher taxonomic ranks, I think – after which I wonder when might we have entries for even 50% of the World's species? Roy Bateman (talk) 11:49, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Stubbed species and genera articles with references wouldn't risk "being dropped from being an article altogether" since they are all notable topics, right? For your example Megradina, a simple physical description would in my mind move that from article from stub to start. (There's much more info available in its 2004 original description, so I wouldn't call that a C yet.) Interested to hear other thoughts. Thanks for starting the conversation! —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 13:05, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I doubt there are many people watching this page; it might be good to put a link to this discussion on the main WP Arthropod talk page (and/or on TOL). I've always understood the quality ratings to be mostly about prose. Footer material, auto vs. manual taxobox doesn't play into it. I have treated pictures as a tipping point between a Start and a C; I'm more inclined to treat a short article with a picture as a C, without a picture I want to see substantial prose before rating higher than Start. I do think the prose content suggested here is certainly sufficient for Start class. Plantdrew (talk) 20:43, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello Plantdrew – Perhaps I could illustrate what I am trying to address with 2 examples (both were 'stubs' until today):

• Aiolopus thalassinus: categorised as a 'stub' by you in 2015 - and after a couple of edits, I think it was reasonable to upgrade it to 'start' class (and with a little more description we might both agree that it could soon be a 'C').
• Bienkotetrix transsylvanicus: for illustration – I am glad nobody has edited it yet! – it was written by a bot, so nobody should be offended :) … A classic case of a species page that has languishing as a 'stub' for over a decade – there a far too many of these IMHO. It was also a bit of an "orphan", until I discovered it trying to systematically write Orthoptera genus pages. It should either be edited or deleted and re-written as Tetrix transsylvanica (info. on genus page): I understand you would prefer the former (and would be happy to do so, when this discussion has ended).

I think it is very important to be able easily between these two 'types' of starter page: whichever project applies, 'stub' and 'start' should have a clear(er) meaning and relate to further action. Both typically have only a short text, but I suggest that 'stub' means the page should be improved or deleted ASAP (risk of "being dropped from being an article altogether" is actually from project plants): whereas 'start' and C contain useful information and the pressure is off. All three, to differing degrees, are still a long way from the 'ideal' A-class of course. In summary, with so much still to be done to describe the World's biodiversity, let's have a better mechanism for 'sorting sheep from goats' at their starting stage. Brgds Roy Bateman (talk) 05:27, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

For Aiolopus thalassinus [1] I too would rate that as a start. I might even rate the 2015 version [2] as a start, after adding a second reference. Let's contrast that with Sanaa [3] which does not have a physical description. (I'm not stuck on morphology; another subtopic can take the place of physical description to move it from stub to start, but it needs to be pretty substantial.) A stub template on Sanaa indicates to a potential editor that there is an opportunity for quick improvements to the article to move it beyond a basic dictionary-like definition of a taxon. Referenced taxon articles aren't going to be dropped from the encyclopedia, so that bit of the stub guidelines is not relevant for our purposes. Most arthropod articles are very short and they will be for a long time. As well, most genus articles that only list basic taxonomic information and a list of species are currently stubs. Moving the goal posts seems unhelpful from the perspective of an editor looking to improve stubs and as an assessor of article quality. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 14:31, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, there is indeed a lot of work ahead in translating stub articles to start (or higher). Many editors are contributing effort to achieve this. However, as long as an article subject has been deemed notable, why would any stub-class article be at risk from "being dropped from being an article altogether"? Loopy30 (talk) 00:55, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Right, they aren't at risk of being dropped, so I don't think that "worry" shouldn't be a consideration in doing assessments of taxon articles. Roy Bateman: "...'stub' means the page should be improved or deleted ASAP ... 'start' and C contain useful information and the pressure is off" — we definitely shouldn't be feeling "pressured" to hurry up and de-stub everything. Sounds stressful. :) —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 20:23, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm sorry @Hyperik:, but I possibly haven't been clear enough where I'm coming from … I actually quite agree with the guideline on WP Plants that Stub-class pages "have risks of being dropped from being an article altogether" - and suggest we say the same on WP Arthropods. Either a page is worth having (in these cases representing species or higher taxa) or it is not / questionable. In the two examples I gave above, both had been placed in the same 'stub' category for some time: to me, that is perverse. You rightly point out that good work is being done to upgrade pages, but I suggest there are simply too few editors to clear the enormous backlog and in the discussion so far, I am not seeing a mechanism to identify Bienkotetrix transsylvanicus (and I suspect many other similar pages) so we can prioritise their upgrading or weeding-out.

Take another example: you have just downgraded Elimaea to stub class – why? Do you seriously believe that, after our interest has moved on in a week's time, somebody is likely to come along and augment it into a start class or higher? Nevertheless, it contains a lot of useful information and a picture – due to the strengths of Wikipedia – especially providing links to databases with more information. Like many others, I set it up with the help of pages at Sv and NL:WP in order to 'get started' quickly: these have been written by 'Bots (like B. transsylvanicus) – so 'stub' is indeed an appropriate label there. However, I and subsequently you (many thanks by the way) have spent considerable time 'curating' pages and bringing them reasonably up to date: so not stub class please – which simply adds to the problem described above. As a compromise, how about 'list' class, as in my latest edit, for these genus pages? A list can be as little as 2 spp. I suppose :). BTW, I quite regularly find that in writing these linked lists, I uncover good but 'orphaned' species pages that someone may have written several years ago and are now 'in the system'. Roy Bateman (talk) 13:11, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

If you're interested in finding "true starts" and upgrading them from stub to start, you can use a tool like Petscan to do something like sort articles by length and category (e.g. Orthoptera). But please follow the guidelines that have been in place for 10+ years to avoid disruption by misclassifying articles en masse. Also not specific to this topic, though please double check the work when copy/pasting from bot-generated articles. There have been a lot of errors from those SV and NL articles you have been copying, mainly the lack of species authors parentheses when needed, which can be substantial for large genera and require a lot of reworking. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 16:33, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

But to be clear: pages like Bienkotetrix transsylvanicus are not at risk of being deleted, whether they are tagged as stubs or any other class, as I and Loopy mentioned above. All accepted/valid species and other taxon pages are notable (WP:NOTABLE) and will be retained. And many notable topics across all types of articles will remain stubs for a long time, and there's nothing wrong or worrying about that. Just because a topic is notable doesn't mean it deserves automatic upgrading from stub to start. A page like "X taxon is a Y from Z. It has these species..." is useful but not very encyclopedic. More a dictionary-like definition. Here are some start-class encyclopedia article examples from WikiProject assessment pages:

• Ring-tailed cardinalfish from Template:Grading scheme, the main grading scheme page for Wikipedia, used as the start example in many TOL WikiProjects
• Drosera intermedia from WP:WikiProject Tree of Life/Assessment and WP:WikiProject Plants/Assessment
• Hypericaceae from WP:WikiProject Hypericaceae/Assessment

And see the stub taxon example at WP:WikiProject Animals/Assessment, Secernentea. There are some pretty stark differences between these example start and stub articles and your start assessments, e.g. Bienkotetrix transsylvanicus, Megradina, Orthelimaea, Rectimarginalis, etc., as far as length and content. Morphology, distribution and habitat, etymology, behavior, importance, taxonomy, etc.

List-class seems to be reserved for articles like List of Bembidion species or List of basil cultivars, not short genus pages. I'm less familiar with that, but in my experience the last few months doing article assessments, short "list-like" taxon articles are just tagged stubs, not lists. When editors like myself want to search for short articles that need expansion, we can search for stubs. Please stop removing these helpful templates and assessments[4][5][6][7] in contradiction with the established grading mechanism until you build consensus for a change. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 16:33, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

With respect @Hyperik:, these assessments are not helpful and you are not addressing my main point. All assessments are essentially a POV: usually by only one assessor and I am not trying to "move the goal posts" overall. We have three classes of page (stub, start and C) that could all be improved. I have the feeling that my 'threshold' for upgrading from start to C is higher than yours ... but these are all just opinions. I do indeed try to "double check the work when copy/pasting from bot-generated articles", in recent cases splendidly double-checked by you, creating 'stable' and notable pages. In contrast, B, transsylvanicus should be substantially revised if not deleted (I don't have a strong opinion on whether or how much server space should be taken up on synonyms). If both are labelled as 'stubs', how else are you going to distinguish between these and 'curated' pages? Roy Bateman (talk) 02:22, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

There are plenty of pages of synonyms on Wikipedia, but stub vs. start has never been a way to distinguish accepted and unaccepted names, or bot-generated vs. non bot-generated, as far as I'm aware. There's nothing inherently bad about a bot generating an article if its been fed the proper information. And an article hosted at a now-unaccepted taxon name might have great encyclopedic content and may only be outdated or "low quality" in the taxonomy section. The thing to do with synonyms: [8][9] —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 02:55, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

Thank you @Hyperik:, you have saved me a job and agree that is exactly what needs to be done. But you still haven't answered my question: how do we identify such pages if you insist on plastering 'stub' over new but 'good' pages? Roy Bateman (talk) 02:50, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

If you want to find and resolve synonymy issues on Wikipedia you could systematically comb through a list of synonyms, an export from the folks at Orthoptera Species File for example, and move the synonym pages to the accepted names, set up redirects, etc. Maybe someone else has a better/established system they employ, but that would be a better question for the WP:Tree of Life talk page. You can search for some bot-generated articles (e.g. Qbugbot contributions and category), but the content may have already been significantly improved/curated since first creation, or the bot may have done a good job setting up the article in the first place and not require any curation. As far as "If both are labelled as 'stubs', how else are you going to distinguish between these and 'curated' pages?" ...I take everything with a pretty big grain of salt here, checking and improving whenever possible. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 03:38, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

If you can find a source for synonyms, adding them to the taxobox will generate that page in a search result for the synonym name. That alone may forestall the creation of a new article at the synonym name by a human (non-bot) editor. Better still is to also create a redirect from the synonym name to the article page. This definitely aids in the discovery of already existing articles at the synonym name and also discourages a new article from being started at that title. Working systematically through the Cnidaria articles, I found, and merged, several duplicate articles using this method. Loopy30 (talk) 14:26, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

For fear of being boring, "If both are labelled as 'stubs', how else are you going to distinguish between [bot-generated stubs, etc.] and 'curated' pages? ...I take everything with a pretty big grain of salt here" shows that this is your POV and you haven't actually answered my question. But heigh-ho, happy holidays ...Roy Bateman (talk) 02:45, 22 December 2018 (UTC)