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Facto Post – Issue 11 – 9 April 2018

Facto Post – Issue 11 – 9 April 2018

The 100 Skins of the Onion

Open Citations Month, with its eminently guessable hashtag, is upon us. We should be utterly grateful that in the past 12 months, so much data on which papers cite which other papers has been made open, and that Wikidata is playing its part in hosting it as "cites" statements. At the time of writing, there are 15.3M Wikidata items that can do that.

Pulling back to look at open access papers in the large, though, there is is less reason for celebration. Access in theory does not yet equate to practical access. A recent LSE IMPACT blogpost puts that issue down to "heterogeneity". A useful euphemism to save us from thinking that the whole concept doesn't fall into the realm of the oxymoron.

Some home truths: aggregation is not content management, if it falls short on reusability. The PDF file format is wedded to how humans read documents, not how machines ingest them. The salami-slicer is our friend in the current downloading of open access papers, but for a better metaphor, think about skinning an onion, laboriously, 100 times with diminishing returns. There are of the order of 100 major publisher sites hosting open access papers, and the predominant offer there is still a PDF.

Red onion cross section

From the discoverability angle, Wikidata's bibliographic resources combined with the SPARQL query are superior in principle, by far, to existing keyword searches run over papers. Open access content should be managed into consistent HTML, something that is currently strenuous. The good news, such as it is, would be that much of it is already in XML. The organisational problem of removing further skins from the onion, with sensible prioritisation, is certainly not insuperable. The CORE group (the bloggers in the LSE posting) has some answers, but actually not all that is needed for the text and data mining purposes they highlight. The long tail, or in other words the onion heart when it has become fiddly beyond patience to skin, does call for a pis aller. But the real knack is to do more between the XML and the heart.

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:25, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

"Organisms of countryX" categories

There is currently a discussion to merge many categories in the family Category:Vertebrates of Benin to Category:Vertebrates of West Africa, following many earlier similar mergers. I believe this discussion is of interest to many of us, but happens in a corner of Wikipedia where few relevant editors will notice it (as has happened before).

In my view, these mergers lead to loss of useful information. Notwithstanding that few countries represent natural biogeographic units, the world happens to be organized in countries, and country-based categories have lot of practical relevance. Instead decimating the system, we should have discussion on what kind of category structure we would like to have.

As far as I see, the criticism to "Organisms of countryX" categories is based on the fact that most organisms are not unique to a country, hence WP:NON-DEFINING. I found this argument too formalistic and overlooking the practical functions of categories. While I agree that for groups with typically very broad distributions, country-based categories can become impractical, this does justify the decimation of the whole system. But where to draw the limit?

For example, I would not argue for a comprehensive system of country-based categories for birds or marine animals. But to take something I am familiar with, amphibians, most species occur only in a few countries, so I do not see this a major problem. There are of course also broadly-distributed species in areas with many smallish countries, say in the forest and savanna belts of West Africa, or Europe. However, while we do have List of birds of Benin and few others, we do not have List of amphibians of Benin, List of reptiles of Benin, nor List of (freshwater) fish of Benin. While these would not be too difficult to create, I have trouble seeing that someone would actually maintain them. Therefore, I would argue for a relatively comprehensive system of country-based categories for amphibians. Micromesistius (talk) 15:16, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I understand your point, but there have been discussion[s] on what kind of category structure we would like to have, which, for animals, have in the past resulted in a consensus against country-based classifications. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:53, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
I am afraid that the past consensus might have reflected too much the situation for birds and mammals. These groups have relatively stable taxonomy and many editors, so it is fully possible to have "List of ..." articles that are complete and stay updated, satisfying the needs of readers interested in biota in a particular country. This is not the case for most other groups, say amphibians. Even for countries where you would expect that there are enough interested editors, list articles do not see many edits, for example List of amphibians of Australia is incomplete, and species counts per genus are not up-to-date. The situation is unlikely to better for most countries where English is not the first language. At least for amphibians, I see categories as an imperfect but the only practical solution for helping readers to find what species occur in a country.
By the way, I find it interesting that categorizing by year of formal description is uncontroversial because it gives unique placements, yet probably far fewer readers are interested in finding species based on when they were described compared to where they occur. Could we somehow balance formalism with practical needs? The category discussions seem to be dominated by category specialists who are only concerned about WP:NON-DEFINING, understood as meaning that an article belongs to multiple sibling categories. Argument that country-based categories are necessary navigational aids does not appeal to them, even though these categories are accepted for plants. I would be interested to hear opinions from other natural history editors regarding acceptability of country-based animal categories for selected groups, perhaps with opt-out for areas that do not want them (Europe?). Micromesistius (talk) 18:56, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
even though these categories are accepted for plants – well, not "country-based" categories; plants are categorized using the highest level of the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions that applies. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:55, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 12 – 28 May 2018

Facto Post – Issue 12 – 28 May 2018

ScienceSource funded

The Wikimedia Foundation announced full funding of the ScienceSource grant proposal from ContentMine on May 18. See the ScienceSource Twitter announcement and 60 second video.

A medical canon?

The proposal includes downloading 30,000 open access papers, aiming (roughly speaking) to create a baseline for medical referencing on Wikipedia. It leaves open the question of how these are to be chosen.

The basic criteria of WP:MEDRS include a concentration on secondary literature. Attention has to be given to the long tail of diseases that receive less current research. The MEDRS guideline supposes that edge cases will have to be handled, and the premature exclusion of publications that would be in those marginal positions would reduce the value of the collection. Prophylaxis misses the point that gate-keeping will be done by an algorithm.

Two well-known but rather different areas where such considerations apply are tropical diseases and alternative medicine. There are also a number of potential downloading troubles, and these were mentioned in Issue 11. There is likely to be a gap, even with the guideline, between conditions taken to be necessary but not sufficient, and conditions sufficient but not necessary, for candidate papers to be included. With around 10,000 recognised medical conditions in standard lists, being comprehensive is demanding. With all of these aspects of the task, ScienceSource will seek community help.

OpenRefine logo, courtesy of Google
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:16, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

Henicorhynchus

so now that Garra is done for the time being, I am moving on to Henicorhynchus. I notice that there are a few species that CoF places there that Fishbase and the IUCN place in other genera. If there is no objection, I'll follow CoF placement (looks like some of the species list a species in one genus in the taxobox, and another in the article body, so needs to be corrected anyway)...…Pvmoutside (talk) 15:41, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

edit war

I am in an edit war with User:Dw122339 over 2 articles: Vinagarra and Vinagarra elongata. I cannot find a reference anywhere to even a redirect to the species or genus page, so I blanked both pages hoping for a speedy delete. Dw122339 keeps on restoring without explanation.....Pvmoutside (talk) 17:17, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

WoRMS says the genus is accepted[1]. --Nessie (talk) 17:37, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
As does Catalog of Fishes (search here; I don't know how to get stable links to CoF records). There doesn't appear to be any combination in another genus for Vinagarra elongata and Vinagarra tamduongensis, nor any statement of synonymy for these two species. Plantdrew (talk) 17:49, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
so both databases list the genus, but don't list any species under it. The former I had a little trouble with. WORMS does not list it as a valid species, same with Fishbase and IUCN. Catalog of Fishes does, but it also has the latter listed as well, where fishbase links the latter to Pareuchiloglanis. The latter is a valid red link at Pareuchiloglanis tamduongensis. All the other species in Vinagarra have been listed in other genera. I'm almost positive "elongata" is not valid.....Pvmoutside (talk) 20:25, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
CoF lists four valid species: Vinagarra elongata, Vinagarra findolabium, Vinagarra laichowensis, and Vinagarra tamduongensis. I would consider CoF more authoritative than FishBase when it comes to taxonomy, even though WP is following (mostly) FishBase. Micromesistius (talk) 20:32, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
"findolabium" and "laichowensis" are both listed under the Genus "Garra" at CoF. CoF lists "tamduongensis" in both Vinagarra and Pareuchiloglanis. I suppose they could be distinct species, but the species name is pretty uncommon, and was listed by the same author in the same year, which seems very odd....Ordinarily you may be correct about CoF, but not in this case?.....Pvmoutside (talk) 20:52, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
The CoF listings are not user-friendly... The conclusion is in the very end. Even though you will find, e.g., Vinagarra laichowensis under Garra, it ends with the statement "Current status: Valid as Vinagarra laichowensis" Micromesistius (talk) 21:05, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, CoF uses the basionym as a header, with the current status at the end. Pareuchiloglanis tamduongensis was described by Nguyen in 2005. Vinagarra tamduongensis was described by Nguyen & Bui in 2010. Garra elongata was described by Vishwanath & Kosygin in 2000. Vinagarra elongata was described by Nguyen & Bui in 2010. The Vinagarra species are different. Plantdrew (talk) 21:13, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
Okey dokes, but I have a bad feeling about this...Pvmoutside (talk) 01:34, 30 May 2018 (UTC
@Pvmoutside: Why? What is there to be having a "bad feeling" about. This is a pretty simple case of misreading a source it seems, unless you have other references that suggest Vinagarra' is a depreciated genus name?--Kevmin § 02:21, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
seems like a few fairly reputable sites have had the same problem...Pvmoutside (talk) 02:43, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Seems to me that Garra is a large genus from which some new genera have been recently derived, e.g. Sinigarra and Vinagarra, although Fishbase doesn't recognise the split (yet?). Endruweit (2014) says Vinagarra was created for V. laichowensis and findolabium should be transferred to it. It seems unlikely that both G. elongata and V. elongata are valid names for two such closely related fish, which is what CoF currently suggests. CoF also lists Pareuchiloglanis tamduongensis as current status uncertain.

FishWisePro recognises V. elongata, V. laichowensis and V. tamduongensis in Vinagarra and also (strangely) has V. findolabium as the valid name of G. findolabium under Garra, but doesn't list it under Vinagarra. It does have all four as valid species names, just not in the same place.

Overall, it seems the Vinagarra article is correct in listing four species. The remaining question is whether there are two elongata species. The records in CoF and FishWisePro suggest they are, but this seems suspicious when one is a derived genus. One is found in India, the other in Vietnam.   Jts1882 | talk  08:46, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Please post on the relevant article talk page when a discussion like this starts out. This is a good discussion with a legitimate commitment to finding verifiable sources, and that's awesome, but because it wasn't linked to until later all we saw was a page being surriptitiously blanked. --HighFlyingFish (talk) 19:19, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   11:02, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Unikonta

Can we do something about Unikonta? The group is well past its best-before date, but retains a high profile in templates and taxoboxes. Because the name carries an embedded hypothesis that has turned out to be false (that amoebozoans and opisthokonts are ancestrally uniciliate), it was abandoned by Adl et al. in their Revised Classification of Eukaryotes (2012). That paper establishes Amorphea for a clade of the same composition.

Cavalier-Smith, who erected Unikonta in the first place, has also abandoned it, noting that "the ‘unikont’ condition (having a single centriole) of phalansteriids and Archamoebae is not ancestral for podiates, as was once postulated...and not even ancestral for Amoebozoa, which must now be considered originally biciliate" (see https://ac.els-cdn.com/S1055790314002796/1-s2.0-S1055790314002796-main.pdf?_tid=a855ddd2-63f3-47a0-bbb2-ee0d522f11e1&acdnat=1528295824_e4c1972597de06b6f87097d39cb1a76e ).

For similar reasons, Derelle and his collaborators declared in 2015 that "the term Unikonta should no longer be used". They suggest "Opimoda" as an alternative(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4343179/). However, that name has not caught on (Google Scholar shows just 13 uses since 2014, as compared to 130 for Unikonta and 215 for Amorphea).

Unikonta does not feature in Ruggiero et al., 2015, the scheme that forms the framework for databases like The Catalogue of Life, ITIS and WORMs.

Back in 2005, when the Unikonts page itself was created, Wikipedia enthusiastically embraced then-current phylogenetic conjectures such as Chromalveolata and Unikonta. Since that initial burst of effort, something like institutional inertia seems to have settled in, and the encyclopedia has been slow to update some of these. Whether we mean it to be, or not, Wikipedia is a prominent source of taxonomic information, so it's important to keep up to date (or, alternatively, be more cautious about using WP:PRIMARY, so as not to flash-freeze rapidly-changing taxonomic hypotheses).

If there is some consensus on it, we could begin by replacing Unikonta with Amorphea in Template:Taxonomy/Amoebozoa, Template:Taxonomy/Opisthokonta, etc. Deuterostome (Talk) 16:01, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm not up on the literature, but agree it's kind of a mess and support efforts like this to straighten things out. The Unikont article will need to be updated as well with whatever is consensus. --Nessie (talk) 19:01, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
The article could use some improvement, but Amorphea already redirects to it, and it does make it clear that the two names are synonyms. Changing the taxonomy templates (template:Taxonomy/Amoebozoa, template:Taxonomy/Fungi, etc.) would eliminate most instances of the obsolete name, I think, since it propagates mostly through the automatic taxoboxes. If we can get consensus about that, I'll post requests on the Template:Taxonomy pages. Deuterostome (Talk) 12:12, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Cross-post from WikiProject Lepidoptera: Post-Caftaric category straightening-out/clean-up

User:Caftaric, whose name certainly has been mentioned here before, has been blocked. I've made a post at the WP:WikiProject Lepidoptera talkpage regarding the impact they've had on our categorization structure and how to handle it. As the WikiProject is both low-activity and shares many of its editors with this WikiProject, I'm cross-posting a notice here. The post can be found here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Lepidoptera#Post-Caftaric category straightening-out/clean-up. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 20:28, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 13 – 29 May 2018

Facto Post – Issue 13 – 29 May 2018
The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page.
To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer.
Back numbers are here.
Respecting MEDRS

Facto Post enters its second year, with a Cambridge Blue (OK, Aquamarine) background, a new logo, but no Cambridge blues. On-topic for the ScienceSource project is a project page here. It contains some case studies on how the WP:MEDRS guideline, for the referencing of articles at all related to human health, is applied in typical discussions.

Close to home also, a template, called {{medrs}} for short, is used to express dissatisfaction with particular references. Technology can help with patrolling, and this Petscan query finds over 450 articles where there is at least one use of the template. Of course the template is merely suggesting there is a possible issue with the reliability of a reference. Deciding the truth of the allegation is another matter.

This maintenance issue is one example of where ScienceSource aims to help. Where the reference is to a scientific paper, its type of algorithm could give a pass/fail opinion on such references. It could assist patrollers of medical articles, therefore, with the templated references and more generally. There may be more to proper referencing than that, indeed: context, quite what the statement supported by the reference expresses, prominence and weight. For that kind of consideration, case studies can help. But an algorithm might help to clear the backlog.

Evidence pyramid leading up to clinical guidelines, from WP:MEDRS
Links
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:19, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Nono64 socks cleanup effort (NotWith, Caftaric, Couiros22 et al)

After User:Caftaric's blocking as sock/block evader, more accounts were uncovered. These include the recently-active User:Couiros22, the old and stale but to many editors highly familiar User:NotWith, as well as lesser-known and already-blocked-now-tagged User:R567, User:Wwikix and long-blocked original account User:Nono64.

For the relevant discussion, see User talk:JamesBWatson#What_to_do_now_re_Couiros22 (the most relevant section, but sections Re:Caftaric & Caftaric etc. are also relevant) (permalink up to the as-of-now most recent relevant comment)

As an admin's user talk is not the best place to stage and coordinate a large-scale clean-up effort, I (though anyone else is also welcome to) intend to make an organized subpage of this WikiProject (at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Nono64 and its talkpage Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Nono64; as long as those are red-links, no one has gotten around to creating them yet) to function as central coordination point to determine strategy, keep track of what's been done and who's doing what to avoid folks doubling back over the same edits. Considering there's a six-figure number of edits involved, that's kinda important if we don't want to still be busy in 2030 or so.

Until someone—whether me or not—gets around to it, this notification/discussion will have to serve as staging point. Beats causing notification-hell on our friendly neighbourhood admin's talkpage, at least. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 22:42, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Tasks ahead

Feel free to add additional tasks that need doing

  • Creating an LTA page for Nono64/socks;
  • Creating a WikiProject Tree of Life cleanup subpage;
  • Repair various issues caused with the taxonomic categorization structure:
    • Lepidoptera (discussed on WikiProject Lepidoptera//in progress--AddWittyNameHere)
    • Fish
    • Birds
    • Plants?
  • Handle created-out-of-process stub templates&categories (still building that listing--AddWittyNameHere)

Comments/talk/discussion/pings etc.

Pinging the relevant editors from the discussions on JamesBWatson's usertalk & the discussion at WikiProject Lepidoptera: @Plantdrew, DexDor, Nick Thorne, and Loopy30. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 22:42, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

I have already gone through a large number of edits to fish articles where the editor has moved the article name away from the beginning of the article lead. I have not as yet undone any of the categorisation changes. My thoughts are: should we create a list or lists of articles to be checked/fixed? How do we co-ordinate our work? - Nick Thorne talk 00:22, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
Good question. I've found there's some discussion regarding the identification of Couiros22 as part of the sock drawer, so I've held off on doing anything related to that account for a bit to see what, if anything, comes from it. As for how to organize, depends on what the various folks cleaning up would prefer and how many people even will help out, I guess.
In my personal opinion, I'm not sure a full list of all articles or edits is particularly useful to build. While there are more specific areas where such lists might help—e.g. all categories created, or all out-of-process stub template/category creations—a full, undivided list doesn't accomplish much that going through their User Contributions doesn't other than the ability to add notes regarding completion to it (but then, one could post those notes without a list just as well, just note the begin and end date/timestamps for longer strings of consecutive edits checked and the article names for short strings or separate edits checked).
For issues that can't be identified without looking at the article/edit in question, such as the lead order issues, it's probably similarly a waste of time to do make an issue-specific list: it's almost as much time and effort to put such a page on a list as it is to actually fix the issue.
At this stage, it might be more helpful to just build a list of all the relevant issues that need to be checked on articles they've edited so we don't end up having to clean up after each other for missed issues too. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 01:39, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
I agree it's not worth listing each edit - not least because in many cases the edits were adding a category tag (Spiders of Latvia, Megabovids...) to an article and the category has been or probably will be deleted (thus removing the tag).
Also, some edits by these accounts are correct (albeit without an edit summary of course) or are/will be undone as part of normal editing - I've come across examples of both in the limited editing (unrelated to this cleanup) I've done in the last couple of days (e.g. a good edit by C22).
I've started putting sone notes at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Nono64. It might be best to continue this discussion on the talk page of that page. DexDor (talk) 07:37, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
Added some stuff as well, thanks for starting the page. (I'm kinda swamped on Wikipedia at the moment. Trying to handle a couple too many things simultaneously, I suppose—I've been averaging about 600 edits daily the past week and I'm still running into delays like that =/) Probably best if most of the discussion takes place there, yes. AddWittyNameHere (talk) 10:11, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Doctoral thesis to establish a species?

Is a doctoral thesis a sufficient source for a species to be listed? It seems to have been "published" but I can now only find it online through the Internet Archive (see here). I haven't found any solidly reliable source for the species elsewhere. We have articles for ten species, but they are not now listed on the genus page Donacaula. They were removed in 2014 by an account which only made that edit. I'm not sure if I should nominate those pages for deletion or add them back to the genus page. Thanks,  SchreiberBike | ⌨  04:36, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Species named in doctoral theses are invalid nomen manuscriptum. Basically nomen nudum because the form of publication doesn't mean ICZN requirements. IJReid {{T - C - D - R}} 04:41, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
Yeah see, e.g., Scholtens et al., 2015 doi:10.3897/zookeys.535.6086: 113 : Donacaula was revised by Martinez (2010) in an unpublished dissertation, therefore the new scientific names are not available until they are published. Umimmak (talk) 05:46, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
Thank you. I'll take them off to WP:AFD.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:29, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
Technically they are not nomina nuda they are unavailable names. This is because that the various codes do not recognise theses as a valid form of publication. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 19:29, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
@SchreiberBike: Best to just redirect them to the genus article and have a sentence there listing them and noting that they remain unpublished referencing that Zookeys article; unavailable taxa names and nomina nuda are valid search terms and these are covered in a reviewed, reliable source as being such. —innotata 03:22, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

Taxonomy

Hi,

I'm writing about a modest little bivalve. There is some dispute about its name. The ITIS database (and the rest of Wikipedia, for that matter) refers to it as "Tellina simulans". https://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=81206#null/ The WoRMS database says that this name is no longer accepted and the correct name is "Eurytellina simulans". http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=575431/ Eurytellina was previously a sub-genus and has apparently been promoted. It seems to me that Eurytellina is likely the more "correct" answer in that the new name presents the most current thinking on this topic, and is based on the database that specializes in marine life. On the other hand, I am aware of many instances where biologists fight amongst themselves about taxonomy. Does Wikipedia have a view on what is definitive in taxonomy?

Thanks! Jordanroderick (talk) 15:38, 7 July 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jordanroderick (talk • contribs)

We accept WoRMS as the best reliable source for taxonomy of marine life, as it is maintained by the best specialists in this branch. The name Eurytellina simulans was proposed in 2015 by Huber, M.; Langleit, A.; Kreipl, K. (2015). Tellinidae. In: M. Huber, Compendium of bivalves 2. Harxheim: ConchBooks. 907 pp. The species was originally named Tellina (Eurytellina) simulans by C.B. Adams in 1852. JoJan (talk) 12:53, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

Two issues

Hello all:

  1. I have placed a comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Assessment if someone in that field could have a look.
  2. Regarding the Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life#Taxonomic resources. The "General taxonomy" resources are led by the Catalogue of Life, which has now grown to cover 1.8m of the world's 1.9 named species. Currently, the main resource for "Mammals" is Mammal Species of the World edition 3 of 2005, now getting a little dated. I am the person who some time ago was instrumental in getting MSW3 listed on the WikiProject Mammals page as its taxonomic reference. Has anyone here on TOL got any thoughts on when we might move away from MSW3 and onto COL for mammals? William Harris • (talk) • 10:10, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
The 4th edition of Mammal Species of the World was due at the end of 2017. It's still not listed on the Johns Hopkins Press website, although their fall catalogue must be due relatively soon. I'm beginning to wonder if it will be published.
The American Society of Mammalogists, who oversaw the MSW project have a new database, the ASM Mammal Diversity Database, which I think might be the future. It is still in the early development stages, but seems up to date on Felidae (it notes the recently revised species and subspecies by the IUCN Cat Specialist Group) and Canidae (e.g. Canis).
At the moment I would say MSW3 is too dated for the taxonomy source and the ASM database too developmental. I don't think Catalogue of Life helps as that follows MSW3 for mammals (e.g. still has Soricomorpha and Erinaceomorpha for Eulipotyphla ). There doesn't seem a good authoritative source at present. Hopefully MSW4 will be publised soon or the ASM database project matures.   Jts1882 | talk  13:34, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
Thanks JTS for your speedy reply. Regarding mammals, COL draws on the ITIS database as its source data supplier. ITIS mammals are based on MSW3, but it has already moved away from MWS3 on some e.g. the recently "discovered" in 2015 Canis anthus is recognized. If MSW4 is ever put together, even as an online database, it will simply feed into COL. From what I am seeing, COL is the future. I am not sure the rest of the planet is going to run with the taxonomic pronouncements of the American Society of Mammologists as the final authority. Interesting developments. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 22:28, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
It's worth clarifying, I think, that there are two different issues with classification systems. If our article titles and taxoboxes are to be consistent and articles not duplicated at synonyms, we need, as far as possible, to use one source. On the other hand, to maintain WP:NPOV, article text needs to discuss all reliably sourced systems. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:36, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
Wouldn't the solution be to redirect all the synonyms? I'm skeptical about adopting one source's approach as something akin to an "official WP standard". An attempt to do something like that is what led to about a decade of editwarring, movewarring, WP:POLICYFORKing, and other battlegrounding over upper/lower case in vernacular names of species, and it was a nasty episode we should learn from rather than repeat. I'm not sure I immediately detect the potential for something like that, if we adopted CoL for titles and taxoboxes. But I don't think anyone predicted a decade of disruption over trying to integrate IOC vernacular names into our title and infobox systems, either. So, I'm not opposed, but urging caution.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:46, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
We need to be wary of circularity here too. CoL often uses Wikipedia and Wikispecies for its information, it may also cite other sources but its fairly obvious what they are doing. If we cite them and they are citing us we are in a circle and this is not good information. Also be aware that online resources are not peer reviewed reviews and hence subject to issues of personal opinion. It is better to find peer reviewed and regularly updated checklists for the classification and nomenclature of species. I have no problem utilising the online resources but they should as much as possible be backed up by referencing the peer reviewed literature. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 17:50, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
I have asked some associates who are SSC chairs for some information on possible checklists to utilise. Will let people know what I find out. For info for turtles I have been recommending the IUCN Checklist of turtles. This is peer reviewed and updated every 18 months (since 2007 latest is 2017). Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 18:13, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
CoL uses Wikipedia as a source? That's the first I've heard that, do you have any example? I do see EOL and GBIF using Wikipedia as a source, so maybe CoL picks up Wikipedia secondarily via EOL?
@SMcCandlish:, redirecting ALL synonyms could be a solution, but that is a rather tall order. I think the average is something like 4 synonyms for each valid/accepted name, but the distribution is very uneven. Common, widely distributed species may have dozens of synonyms, while rare, recently described species may have none. Some potential synonyms are the subjects of current taxonomic disagreements, but the majority haven't been treated as valid/accepted by anybody in decades. I'm not sure it's a good use of editors efforts to make redirects for synonyms that haven't been used in 150 years. And some "synonyms" are actually junior homonyms that may not be flagged as homonyms in a given database. I've come across numerous "synonym" redirects where there is a senior homonym that is accepted/valid. Plantdrew (talk) 18:16, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: yes that is one way it is happening, via EOL, many of these online resources are linking back to very few sources, including us, and are not necessarily incorporating a check mechanism of actually looking for taxonomic reviews.
On the issue of redirects, I would limit it to ones that may be used, ie recently sunk names, for whatever reason, ones that do appear in the recent literature. I agree that 150 year old names, often nomen dubium anyway, are not worth the effort in this forum. The can also be what are more or less homynyms across kingdom, these are not technically hmonyms as each code is limited to a kingdom, more or less, but the names are the same. Though these are rare and could be handled by disambiguation. However, its probably not worth the effort. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 18:28, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
Had a chat with Russ Mittermeier the chair of the Primate SSC for the IUCN, his recommendation is Lynx Edicions Handbook of the Mammals of the World as the most up to date and comprehensive lists for mammals that has full support of the IUCN. He also offered to provide their own internal update for volume 3 on Primates that is 100% up to date if we would like to use it. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 18:38, 27 June 2018 (UTC)
I know it's a lot of work, but it's something that could be automated: Produce machine-readable synonym list (from multiple sources); tell bot to create corresponding redirects where they do not already exist, with the proper rcat templates; output post-run lists of pre-existing redirs (total, correct according to the list, going to the wrong place according to the list, and correct interrelationship but backwards order according to the list); if a classification changes, just tweak the list and the next bot pass will produce a new output list of stuff to adjust; maybe it would have options to make conforming changes; and merged/split taxa would have to be dealt with manually. Old synonyms should still redirect, because people still encounter them in old sources; e.g., I've run across all kinds of old bi- and trinomials for what is presently usually called Felis catus, and I ended up manually creating redirects for them, including early, abandoned attempts to define some breeds, like the Siamese, as subspecies. It might be that they really aren't worth the effort, even if being done by bot, but we can't really have "Prevent creation of duplicate articles at different names" and "Only create redirs for a few, recent synonyms" at the same time; they're antithetical. The latter would likely come at the cost of the former being impossible.

PS: As for the other matter: if CoL really is using WP and WikiSpecies data, via any route, that would be a pretty serious issue.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:02, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

do remember that the liklihood you will come across an old name is dependant on what and why you read about a species. As a taxonomist I frequently find old names as I spend a lot of time examining the original literature. However the majority of readers will not see a lot of synonyms, hence I still think the recent and commonly seen ones are enough. Complete synonymies are on Wikispecies and in various checklists for those who need them. Sure add them add hoc if you wish or find them but for the most time its not necessary I think and I would not like to see it become policy. I agree circularity of authorities is a big issue, hence I bring it up alot, here, at Wikidata and Wikispecies. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 19:26, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

A couple of points: (1) Some synonyms are the same as legitimate organism names. It might be nice not to make redirects for these, since it is confusing for someone searching for the legitimately named organism, and it makes it harder for someone creating a page for the legitimately named organism. (2) As mentioned above, I think some synonyms have close to zero probability of being used by a Wikipedia reader. It seems like quite a few obscure synonyms could be omitted. Bob Webster (talk) 20:33, 27 June 2018 (UTC) ,

Not sure what you mean by your point 1. Names are available or not and if available are valid or not (in zoology terminology slightly different for plants). In any case all synonyms are available names but there can only be one valid name for a taxon, all others are synonyms. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 00:42, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
@Faendalimas: point 1 is (I think) the same point that's made above by Plantdrew: some synonyms are junior homonyms, and must not be used as redirects, even if no article yet exists at the valid use of the name. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:03, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Here is a list of COL databases, those mentioned above as suspect "linking from" are not listed. William Harris • (talk) • 08:49, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

We've gotten pretty sidetracked from your initial question, but to bring it back on track. In the absence of a MSW4, we should use perhaps use ITIS if ITIS is more up to date for mammals. I don't think we should CoL directly for anything. We can use CoL source databases for relevant taxa. Plantdrew (talk) 13:39, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
@Plantdrew: Yes sorry we have got sidetracked. I have a recommendation from Russel Mittermeier and Anthony Rylands both from the IUCN. They recommend Lynx Edicions Handbook of the Mammals of the World and have also sent me their comprehensive update to the Primate volume of this that they did at the IUCN meetings. It is 100% up to date. I am happy to forward the primate list to anyone who wants it. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 13:46, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
The Handbook of the Mammals of the World looks excellent. The problems are accessibility and publication dates. How many people have access to the books? The newer volumes will be up to date but older volumes (e.g. Vol. 1. Carnivores, 2009) will be outdated. It might be better to use the IUCN specialist groups. The Cat SG taxonomy is already the de facto standard for the felid taxonomy on the English Wikipedia, but the primate SG taxonomy on their website is as dated as MSW3.   Jts1882 | talk  15:10, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
What the mammal SSC's at the IUCN are doing is using the Handbook of the Mammals of the World and maintaining updates of it. So the SSC updates are basically this book with new taxa added. I have the primate one in my possession I can probably get the others as I am a member of an SSC. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 15:53, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
Plantdrew, when you state: "I don't think we should CoL directly for anything. We can use CoL source databases for relevant taxa." COL is simply an IT infrastructure "backbone" to house and deploy these other databases. It produces nothing by itself. It is also publicly accessible.
Even with the proposed books, these have a similar issue to MSW3 - they are rarely printed, quickly become out of date, and one must ask which database each one was based on. This is the second decade of the 21st Century - the day of the printed book as a taxonomic reference is over. We need to move to an accessible online database - it is becoming clear which one, the question I asked - specifically for mammals - was when? Currently, nobody has provided a valid reason as to why COL should not be used.
@Tony 1212:, you maintain a taxon database, do you have an opinion to share? William Harris • (talk) • 22:31, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
well COL is only as good as the databases it uses. As a taxonomist I rarely use the databases they use because they are too out of date. Books are not good taxonomic references that is true and I do not use them. But it seems for mammals the best way is to use whatever the most up to date lists are being made from. That's the recommendation of the mammal specialist groups. Who also do not use COL. Online databases are problematic. ITIS is barely up to date if at all, certainly no better than relatively recent books. I got you the recommendation of the IUCN specialist groups on mammals. My specialty is turtles, I also will not use COL or ITIS I cannot, its not up to date and is self contradictory. Better to follow the peer reviewed literature. The best method is internationally ratified checklists, but there is not one for mammals. There is for turtles. The closest mammals get to are the lists maintained by the IUCN which are updates from the book I said they recommended. So valid reasons for not using COL, not peer reviewed, non transparent assessment, unable to make valid nomenclatural acts to improve issues (is illegal under the Code), what references it uses have the same issues they do. They also use EOL which uses us hence circularity. COL is an ok guideline and start point, but every species in it must then be assessed against the literature to see if they are out of date (they can be as much as 10 years out of date). They are not utilised or followed by taxonomists, I have never yet read a taxonomic or nomenclatural peer reviewed paper that cites them. Since I am a nomenclatural taxonomist thats my job to do that. As for access I have already offered to send the IUCN lists to anyone who wants them, these are currently updated to June this year. So you have access to them. Yes the books are expensive and as I said I agree that books are not the best taxonomic resource, the peer reviewed literature is. All that literature is available on line, when in doubt go to SciHub. Or ask me, taxonomic literature is my job as I have said and I have already offered. Online databases always take shortcuts are usually subject to personal opinion of its few authors and as they are not peer reviewed there is not check mechanism to prevent this. COL is easy, yes thats true, but there is an easy way and a correct way. You want the taxonomy of these groups to be easy or correct.
I wish someone would do checklists for each major group, its something I have been encouraging, I have also suggested to the ICZN that the practice of making nomenclatural acts in books is out dated and should be made illegal under the code for the 5th edition of the ICZN code (being written), you should also by the way be utilising another resource no one has mentioned and that is ZooBank, since it is a registry of all available names online and maintained by the ICZN. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 01:28, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
Oh last point, the books in question are work of the authors of each title, are based on their own research, not the reusing of unpublished databases available online. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 01:36, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
On your point about checklists there might be some hope with HMW in future. The HBW series was followed by the Illustrated Checklist of the Birds of the World which has an online version of the checklist. But the bird folk seem very keen on checklists, while they have become a rarity with mammals. I do not know whether this is planned or not for HMW, but I can't see it coming out until after the last volume of HMW (Bats, next year?).   Jts1882 | talk  13:03, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
@William Harris:, my understanding is that CoL IDs and links aren't stable. That understanding is based on a blogpost from 2013, so perhaps that situation has changed. While the post focuses on problems with CoL's implementation of LSID, it also claims that CoL internal database identifiers aren't stable. This (non LSID) link now goes to Homo sapiens; will it always do so? ITIS TSNs are very stable. If the "backbone" has IDs/links that aren't stable, but the source databases have stability, we should avoid the backbone. Plantdrew (talk) 15:38, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
At this stage, I will leave this matter to rest. My thanks to all for your time and most thoughtful comments. William Harris • (talk) • 11:13, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
@William Harris:Sorry William, only just saw your ping above. Yes I do maintain a taxon database and try to upgrade portions as new "authoritative" sources come to hand. For the basic outline mammals I still use MSW3/ITIS/CoL (2006 version in the main) for the extant ones, so they are definitely due for an update, but in reality this will most likely wait for the appearance of MSW4 whenever that may be, or in its absence, whatever ITIS (and therefore CoL) may do in the mean time if different. Meanwhile I add a new taxa (genera in the main, sometimes species if of particular interest) as I do sweeps of the primary literature (last done in 2014 via the Thomson Reuters ION database) but wait for the next "authoritive" treatment before implementing more far reaching changes e.g. to families and above, or generic reassignments. For extant orders and above I intend (eventually) to follow the treatment of Ruggiero et al., 2015 (except where this is already outdated), and for families a 2014 version of the same called "Families of Living Organisms" (FALO), although this too is now superseded in some areas. Hope this helps (a little)... Regards Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 22:39, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
Thanks @Tony 1212:. For genus Canis - my area of interest - I refer to ITIS/CoL. ITIS will reflect MSW3 unless there is undisputed, overwhelming evidence in favour of something different e.g. the African golden wolf Canis anthus, which has been argued on phenotype for over a century and finally validated by whole-genome analysis. Regards, William Harris • (talk) • 08:19, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
The "Families of Living Organisms" has been updated since 2014 (last update Nov 2017). At least it is for some new families. For mammals it still follows the obsolete MSW3 for orders, but there are additional families that are not in MSW3 (e.g. Prionodontidae in Carnivora).   Jts1882 | talk  09:26, 15 July 2018 (UTC)

Major changes at Taxonomic rank

An anon with a rotating IP address has been making a lot of non-trivial changes at Taxonomic rank. These should probably be reviewed for accuracy, as they're changing the hierarchical relationships between various ranks.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:13, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

These look broadly accurate but the whole article could use more sourcing, and there's no authoritative list of all in-between/minor taxonomic ranks that some taxonomists have used, so a tough nut to crack. —innotata 03:16, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Probably ranks like Division and Series shouldn't be given as part of a hierarchy. It can be mentioned that some are used a particular way for some groups (e.g. series for fish) but its misleading to suggest it is part of a hierarchy. Benton uses division all over the place, sometimes twice within the same classification. It doesn't mean any more than using clade.   Jts1882 | talk  13:03, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
"Division" is ok for botanical ranks (equivalent to phylum). The automated taxobox system uses the special 'rank' "zoodivisio", which displays as "Division", as a rank immediately above Infraclass[is], but any other use of "divisio[n]" in zoological classification is problematic, and Series is hopeless.
As is also well attested, newly invented ranks like Mirordo and Grandordo are used inconsistently by different sources. For information, the rank descriptors used in the automated taxobox system are at WP:Autotaxobox/ranks; the table can be sorted in different ways, including hierarchical order. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:07, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Remember in the zoological code that only the major ranks are compulsory. Any others may be ignored under the code. Though, if well established, I think some are useful eg suborder, subfamily, subgenus and subspecies also of course subphylum particularly for vertebrates, all the others unless well estabished and consistently used should be ignored in an Encyclopedia at least in the taxobox. Comment about it with refs could be done in the main article if its deemed necessary. However with what is almost random usage for some ranks, and their usage often governed by whether the writers are following ICZN or PhyloCode, its best if taxoboxes remain consistent in usage from my perspective. Without explanation as to why these ranks are being used, and I would add that it should not be for the sake of naming some random clade, it is misleading to include this in the taxobox. We do use a number of them at Wikispecies for example, but we do not suggest they all be used. Only the compulsory ones and a few extra ones. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 21:50, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
By default, the automatic taxobox system only displays the 'principal ranks', although this can be over-ridden. I agree that extra ranks should not be shown in taxoboxes without very good reasons. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:31, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
Said user is replacing the auto taxobot with a manual taxobox in a lot of articles. I have no expertize in the area, but I think all these changes are confusing and not helpful for the encyclopedia. - Donald Albury 15:18, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
which "said user" ?? which pages ?? Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 17:35, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
User is now blocked by Courcelles. See here. - Donald Albury 22:40, 15 July 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, sorry, I would have acted faster in trying to deal with that anon. He/she/it was making a mess in an robotically edit-warring way at cat-related list articles, and I didn't realize it was the same IP until we were at the level-4 warning stage. The block is short-term, but I had the list articles semi-protected until September, and that might work for Taxonomic rank, too. It comes at the cost of excluding other IP editors, though.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:27, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Yes, the IP chose not to respond to friendly advice on the need for citations, and has made a large number of uncited changes. We probably need to revert all of them for safety. Perhaps the whole automatic taxobox system should be a bit better protected. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:15, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
I noticed the activity and thought it strange, but I don't feel qualified to judge taxonomic issues. If it is just a matter of reverting their changes, asking for citations, and protecting articles, I can help, but, as I said, I don't feel comfortable deciding what classifications are correct. - Donald Albury 12:54, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Oh, yeah, it probably would be good to revert what that person was doing. Very few edits I saw them make where legit. It all ranged from insertion of incorrect name, to false facts, to promotional nonsense about WP:NFT cat "breeds", to ungrammatical use of English, to confusing one breed with another, to breaking apart functional, sortable tables into subtopical one that were arbitrary and unhelpful. Skimming the taxonomic and wildlife article edits, all of them look suspect, like changing taxa to different names and so on. I have no idea what's going on, motivationally, but the results are seriously not constructive. Given the tendentiousness, I think that a day or so from now we can expect a resumption, but can quickly get a longer-term block.

On the automatic taxoboxes, yes, that'll all need to be at semi-protected a least, since screwing with it could have wide-ranging negative effects.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:50, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

The taxonomy templates for automatic taxoboxes can only be edited by (auto)confirmed users. Taxonomy templates with a high number of transclusions (1000+, I think) are fully protected. I do think that's a bit much, and is one drawback of the automatic taxobox system. Extended confirmed editors should be able to edit highly transcluded taxonomy templates, or template editor rights should be granted more freely to editors working on ToL articles. At any rate, IP editors can not change taxonomy templates, although they can change which template is called by the automatic taxobox in an article. Plantdrew (talk) 15:37, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Strangely the edits on the sponges seem to be legitimate updates to the taxonomic system currently used by WoRMS, based on a major 2015 revision to take account of molecular data. This is either very bizarre behaviour by one editor or more than one using the account. The changes weren't backed by citations so reversion does still seem the wisest option.   Jts1882 | talk  16:40, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
In regards to reverting I agree playing it safe and reverting all may be the best option. In regards to what @Plantdrew: stated on protection. I agree. Any confirmed user should be able to edit this. It should be noted that although there are a lot of transclusions it may only be (for example) one edit that messes it all up, hence it will only be one revert to fix it. So long as there are plenty of people watching these pages it should be minimal in impact. I think it should be encouraged though, through all portals etc relevant to this, that any changes must be referenced appropriately and we should be strict about this. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 16:45, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
Some of us who are actively working with automatic taxoboxes should get in the habit of regularly checking Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Taxonomy templates. This shows all changes to taxonomy templates. By default, links made on Wikidata and newly created templates are shown, but you can set it so these edits aren't shown (new Wikidata links are unlikely to have problems, and if there is a problem with a newly created template, it is likely to show up in some of the error tracking categories under Category:Taxobox cleanup). Filtering out Wikidata and new templates, I recognize most of the editors names and trust their work. Plantdrew (talk) 17:55, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Reptile Database update

I was trying to take a look at the most recent Reptile Database update and all I get is machine language. Anyone out there know if this can be translated to English?...[2].....Pvmoutside (talk) 17:50, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Comes out fine for me, it uses the latest excel in an xlsx format. Are you using the most recent version of the software? It will not work in older excel or likely not in Open Office either if your using this. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 18:28, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
I initially used MS Edge instead of google Chrome…...when I used Chrome all went well in the world.....Pvmoutside (talk) 18:41, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
yeah it wont work in that, better to download it and use it Excel. If you want it converted I can probably do that for you if you have an older version of Excel. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 18:48, 16 July 2018 (UTC)

Stub template question

There is a list of Wikiproject stub sorting templates here that can be used in stub articles about insects, arachnids, arthropods, and a lot of other scientific topics. There are some users who edit articles and replace the stub template with a new one that is not in this list, usually with a little lower taxonomic rank.

For example, ‎GTBacchus has changed {{Tachinidae-stub}} to {{dexiinae-stub}} and {{ichneumonoidea-stub}} to {{ichneumonidae-stub}}

‎Sbbarker19 changed {{bee-stub}} to {{sweat-bee-stub}}, which was created today.

‎Caftaric (since banned as a sock puppet) changed a lot, such as {{arthropod-stub}} to {{Springtail-stub}} for springtails.

What should be done?

(1) Nothing, it's not a big deal,

(2) Start using the new templates or non-official stub templates (if so, should they be added to the official list?),

or (3) Revert the edits to a template on the WikiProject stub sorting list.

The main thing I was wondering is whether I should stick with the official list for future articles. I was going to post this on the stub project talk page, but it doesn't seem very active and I thought someone here would know.

Bob Webster (talk) 18:22, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I would bring it to WikiProject Stub sorting. Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Proposals does attract responses, so maybe there are some people watching the main project page. I'd be inclined to go with #2 (and adding them to the list), but I'm not sure what the stub sorting folks think about officially recognizing stub templates that were created without going through their process. Plantdrew (talk) 18:39, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
I've been digging into the stub templates created by Caftaric for a while and have been meaning to bring the problem to project stub sorting. (I got kinda distracted by fixing other Caftaric nonsense and by a variety of maintenance-y/gnomish tasks) The problem is that they're a mixture of "good but needs listing on the official list", "would be valid as an upmerged template but shouldn't have its own category", "this pertains to too few articles to be useful even as an upmerged template", "this is just adding layers of categorization for the sake of adding layers of categorization" (a very common theme with Caftaric) and "otherwise problematic", making it basically impossible to treat the entirety of them the same way. AddWittyNameHere 19:11, 17 July 2018 (UTC)
Created a post at the stub sorting WikiProject AddWittyNameHere 19:32, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks! I've posted this at the Stub sorting project. Bob Webster (talk) 20:21, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, if people have been creating stub tags and categories without going through the process, they'll be deleted if there's not a consensus that they're needed. Despite being labelled a wikiproject, WP:WPSS/P has been pretty much a formal XfD process since the 2000s.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:19, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 14 – 21 July 2018

Facto Post – Issue 14 – 21 July 2018
The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page.
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Plugging the gaps – Wikimania report

Officially it is "bridging the gaps in knowledge", with Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town paying tribute to the southern African concept of ubuntu to implement it. Besides face-to-face interactions, Wikimedians do need their power sources.

Hackathon mentoring table wiring

Facto Post interviewed Jdforrester, who has attended every Wikimania, and now works as Senior Product Manager for the Wikimedia Foundation. His take on tackling the gaps in the Wikimedia movement is that "if we were an army, we could march in a column and close up all the gaps". In his view though, that is a faulty metaphor, and it leads to a completely false misunderstanding of the movement, its diversity and different aspirations, and the nature of the work as "fighting" to be done in the open sector. There are many fronts, and as an eventualist he feels the gaps experienced both by editors and by users of Wikimedia content are inevitable. He would like to see a greater emphasis on reuse of content, not simply its volume.

If that may not sound like radicalism, the Decolonizing the Internet conference here organized jointly with Whose Knowledge? can redress the picture. It comes with the claim to be "the first ever conference about centering marginalized knowledge online".

Plugbar buildup at the Hackathon
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:10, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Arctocephalus forsteri requested move discussion

I've set up a RM discussion on the talk page for what you may know as New Zealand fur seal. Some controversy about whether to use scientific name or use common name. Please feel free to comment..... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pvmoutside (talk • contribs) 15:36, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Please jog my memory. I know there's a word for this, for old now-rejected taxa based on visual similarities in the pre-genetics days. Googling for it just brings up "cladistics" over and over again.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:02, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

ummm.... cladistics does not equal genetics. Cladistics was developed in the 70's (Wiley, 1978) prior to the usage of molecular data. So not sure what your getting at. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 22:13, 29 July 2018 (UTC)
Phenetics? Loopy30 (talk) 02:56, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
Paraphyletic group? --Nessie (talk) 03:38, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
  • I think what you want is "grade" as opposed to "clade", e.g. "monkeys" can be described as a grade. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:59, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
    • Ah, that would qualify for most cases. But polyphyly was the one I was looking for, since even a grade are all fairly closely related, but a polyphyly can just be flat-out wrong, due to lumping together things that are simply the result of coincidental convergent evolution. (It was actually mentioned at Paraphyly, etc., but is the small red bit in the graph, which escaped my notice at first.) I had thought of polyphyly at first, briefly, but figured that wasn't it; I was mis-remembering polyphyly as synonymous with paraphyly due to the similar word, so it took a while to come back around to it. %-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:35, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
      Glad you found what you wanted. However, it's not quite true that even a grade are all fairly closely related. For example, Vermes used to be a taxon of "worms", and is certainly polyphyletic, and not even a grade. But there is a use of "worm" referring to a grade of animals, i.e. a group of not necessarily related animals that have the same general body plan: "worms are simply animals which have retained the general vermiform shape of their ancestors more or less unchanged, having bodies some 2–3 to over 15 000 times longer than wide and flattened or rounded in section" (Barnes, R.S.K.; Calow, P.; Olive, P.J.W.; Golding, D.W.; Spicer, J.I. (2001), The Invertebrates: a Synthesis (3rd ed.), Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 978-0-632-04761-1 {{citation}}: Unknown parameter |lastauthoramp= ignored (|name-list-style= suggested) (help), p. 80) Peter coxhead (talk) 10:10, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
      Hmm. Okay, well the evolutionary grade article doesn't make that clear, and the name seems to suggest otherwise (i.e., that there's an evolutionary relationship between the grade members). Anyway, the main reason I was asking was to do this.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:59, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
      A better move would be to delete this useless category – a classic Look2See/Notwith/Caftaric effort. A set index article would be more use. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:27, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

AfD to convert ICZN into a redirect

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ICZN
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:28, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Mouse

I'm unhappy with the genus Mus having the title Mouse. a better title would be Mus (genus) or Mus (rodent). Mouse is a pretty broad term which would better apply to a broader category of rodents.......any opinions?....Pvmoutside (talk) 21:32, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

is "mouse" even monophyletic? We might need two articles, like with salmon and Salmo.
Mouse is applied to elements of at least 3 different rodent families. a small rodent that typically has a pointed snout, relatively large ears and eyes, and a long tail. (Google's definition of mouse is "a small rodent that typically has a pointed snout, relatively large ears and eyes, and a long tail.") Lavateraguy (talk) 15:17, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Having looked a bit further mouse and rat aren't even restricted to muroids, or even myomorphs; there are castorimorph mice and castorimorph and hystricomorph rats. Also marsupial mice. Lavateraguy (talk) 14:30, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
I'm looking at two things: article content and incoming links.
Article content is godawful (outright plagiarism and the bestiary of a fantasy role-playing game used as a source being among the most egregious problems). But aside from the species list the article content is mostly information about Mus musculus that may not be generalizable to the genus. Peromyscus is mentioned in the lead, and one of the cited sources studied Peromyscus, not Mus. Article needs a complete rewrite regardless of whether it is supposed to be about the genus Mus, or animals commonly known as mice.
Incoming links almost never intend the genus Mus, and could largely be pointed to more precise targets. In articles on medical and molecular biology topics, "mouse" i:s Mus musculus, the laboratory mouse. In pet contexts, it is Mus musculus, the fancy mouse. As a pest, it is probably Mus musculus, the house mouse. In the context of other organisms that are predators of "mice", "small rodents" is probably a better link.
I'd recommend splitting out an article for Mus (rodent) (I'm not a fan of (genus) as a dab term; the single most common reason for title collisions in biological gener:a articles is another genus with the same name). The article history of mouse] is better associated with a title concept that is not about the genus Mus. Split the genus article rather than moving mouse to )Mus.l

lg,

Maybe mouse (disambiguation) should be moved to the base title, and mouse should be moved to "mouse (animal)"? where various small rodents can be discussed? Plantdrew (talk) 03:25, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Mouse (disambiguation) seems to have a semi-random subset of animals vernacularly known as mice. Perhaps that could be moved to mouse (rodent) and expanded - or put at mouse when all the Mus and Mus musculus content is moved out. (And sea mouse added to mouse (disambiguation)?) Lavateraguy (talk) 15:17, 5 August 2018 (UTC)
Rattus needs similar work to Mus, so if there are no objections, then I can create Mus (rodent) and Rattus articles for the genera by the weekend, then the mouse and rat articles can be expanded or anything else after a discussion if people would like.....as always, any editing help is appreciated......Pvmoutside (talk) 13:48, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Does the existence of Mus (subgenus) complicate things as both the genus and subgenus could be disambiguated by "(rodent)"? Umimmak ( talk) 16:17, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
good point...maybe a better title would be Mus (genus) in this case....Pvmoutside (talk) 17:26, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
In this case, yes. Given the historic record of the taxon, it seems unlikely to have been used for something else (a plant or insect). Given the subgenus article this seems the only practical solution.   Jts1882 | talk  19:20, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Ive split mouse and Mus (genus), and rat and Rattus. feel free to comment on or expand any article.....Pvmoutside (talk) 12:58, 11 August 2018 (UTC)
Is there any objection to working through Rodentia and adding the various "mouse" taxa (and removing the random sample from mouse (disambiguation)? Lavateraguy (talk) 11:18, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
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