Archives for WT:TOL | ||
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1 | 2002-07 – 2003-12 | Article names |
2 | 2003-11 – 2004-02 | Taxoboxes |
3 | 2004-02 | Taxoboxes |
4 | 2004-02 – 2004-08 | Bold taxa; taxonomy |
5 | 2004-03 – 2004-04 | Taxonomy; photos; range maps |
6 | 2005-04 – 2004-06 | Capitalization; authorities; mammals |
7 | 2004-06 – 2004-08 | Creationism; parens; common names |
8 | 2004-05 – 2004-08 | Templates; †extinct; common names |
9 | 2004-05 – 2004-08 | Categories; taxoboxes |
10 | 2004-08 – 2004-12 | Categories; authorities; domains; Wikispecies; ranks; G. species; capitalization; Common Names |
11 | 2004-11 – 2005-05 | Capitalization; common names; categories; L.; authorities; algae; cultivars |
12 | 2005-03 – 2005-05 | Ranks; common names |
13 | 2005-05 – 2005-06 | Hybrids; taxobox format; cultivars |
14 | 2005-06 – 2005-07 | Categories; food plants; identification; Capitalization |
15 | 2005-07 – 2005-09 | Synonyms; types; authorities; status; identification |
16 | 2005-09 – 2005-12 | Paleontological ranges; Rosopsida; Taxobox redesign; identification |
17 | 2005-12 – 2006-04 | Taxobox redesign; identification; APG; common names; capitalization |
18 | 2006-04 – 2006-10 | Categorization; include in references; snakes; range maps; seasonality graph; common names; bioregions; brya; |
19 | 2006-10 – 2007-03 | various |
20 | 2007-03 – 2007-06 | various |
21 | 2007-06 (Next 64 Kb) | various |
22 | (Next 64 Kb) | various |
23 | (Next 64 Kb) | various |
24 | (Next 64 Kb) | various |
I suspect this may have been discussed here before, if so please point me to the discussion. If not ..... I was wondering if there has been any thought given to re-naming the taxonomic wikipedia categories to indicate what level they are. So categories like Category:Emberizidae would be something like Category:Family - Emberizidae or perhaps Category:Emberizidae (family). This would give people an idea of what taxonomic level they are looking at. Failing re-naming them perhaps we could come up with some conventions for how to describe the categories themselves on the category page. This way even if the name does not tell the user where they are reading the category description would (or we could do both). Dalf | Talk 01:36, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I don't see why making levels explicit on category pages is a good idea. It makes them more system-dependent when the levels vary between authors, and it makes things difficult when a single group has multiple levels. Since the taxonomy is already discussed in the articles, what does it help? Josh
I know this to be the case because I have been adding missing or filling out incomplete taxoboxes on animal pages and using the category system and related articles to do so is non-trivial. Granted with something as complex as taxonomy total uniformity is impossible but I think some degree of higher usability could be achieved. Dalf | Talk 01:00, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The level of taxonomy of the category could/should be described on the category page, it doesn't need to be in the category name.-- nixie 06:02, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, for those of us who do a lot of work in the plants and animals, the categorizing by sci. classification is indespensible. You can have other categories along side of it. But I often want to refer to the Category:Mimosoideae or Category:Asparagales. I want to write an article on a type of Faboideae, I can go to the category and see what's been done there. Others may not need it, but they don't have to use it. It would be chaos without categorizing this way. But I don't see a problem with Category: Order Asparagales or Category:Family Asteraceae. That might really work. -- DanielCD 01:19, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
As some of you may know I have been writing moth articles for a few months and including info on larval food plants for each species. I have also updated the plant articles with a link to the moth article. Some of the plant articles (eg Birch, Hawthorn) now have long, rather unwieldy lists of moths incorporated into the text. I think it may be a good idea to develop a "phagobox" which could be used to show this data in a neater way. It could also be used to differentiate between insects which use a plant as an exclusive food source and polyphagous species which feed on this plant among others.
Does anyone (especially "plant people") have any comments on whether this is a good idea and any suggestions on formatting/where on the page it should be placed, etc. Richard Barlow 11:14, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
This is very much a first draft of how this might look:
Insects which use Plant1 as a food plant |
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Major pest species |
Insect1 Insect2 … |
Other species which feed exclusively on Plant1 |
Insect3 Insect4 … |
Species which feed on Plant1 among others |
Insect5 Insect6 … |
A bit basic I know. Any comments on how it could be improved? Richard Barlow 13:19, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have a horrible feeling "intermediate cases" will be very common indeed! If a moth larva feeds on rowan and whitebeam should it be listed as monophagous in Sorbus or polyphagous in Rowan and Whitebeam? I think strictly single species monophagy is actually quite uncommon. Foxglove Pug is an obvious example but I can't think of too many other common examples offhand. Richard Barlow 15:51, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I have just found a huge database (called HOSTS) on the Natural History Museum site dedicated to this info. If I use this there is going to be a big increase in insect/food plant links: I think a table is going to be required in both the insect and the plant page. It's all a bit daunting and I'm beginning to regret starting all this! (but not really, obviously). I'm going to give some more thought to the best way to do this. Input would still be appreciated! Richard Barlow 16:19, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've been working on a couple of animal articles and have noticed the lack of suggested animal artcile layout (I expected one from WikiProject Mammals). I have been applying the following sections consistenly to articles long enough to need sections,
Then I add whatever additional sections are relevant to the critter. Should we come up with some kind of semi-formal suggested outline for wikiproject mammals? -- nixie 04:38, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
For Dogwood (plant) to be moved back to Dogwood; it needs admin assistance, please. Thanks - MPF 18:25, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
For Meadow-grass to be moved to Poa: since all meadow-grasses are in Poa, but not all species of Poa are called "meadow-grass". Thanks - MPF 16:35, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hi all,
I'm a relatively new but already addicted wiki-bod. I've just got done re-writing the beetle page, which was a bit sad considering the number of species. Would be great if someone could cast a (nice) critical eye over it.
There is a list connected to that page of families within the order of beetles, and few of them are populated! - I'd really like to start banging through them but it would take some time, any one else out there a bit of a beetle nut who'd like to help me out, trade ideas, and maybe act as a wiki-style mentor??
Anyone out there with pictures of beetles, also somewhat lacking?
Thanks
John -- John-Nash 06:46, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The article Subgroups of the order Coleoptera is the place to see how broad Wikipedia's coverage of beetles is. You can see that we have (stub) articles on all the suborders and infraorders, 11 out of 17 superfamilies, and 46 out of 168 families. (This article needs a reference indicating whose taxonomy this is and how recent, by the way.)
There are several lovely photos of beetles at http://www.sxc.hu/ that can be redistributed without restriction — see [1] and successive pages of search results. Some particularly good photos include:
Gdr 2005-06-30 10:39:31 (UTC)
I worked on beetles for a while, and got tired... :-) Generally you want to work topdown, which amounts to finishing out the families, and then push on to the more interesting genera. Complete lists of genera would be great but seem hard to come by; in some cases the "family is in need of revision" with the last complete list dating from the 1920s or something, and known by all the specialists to have no connection to reality. Incremental is good - it's fine to create a family article with taxobox and one paragraph summarizing what the family is all about, then go back later and do more details like morphology and such. The commons is accumulating a nice little stash of beetle pics that could have god articles written around them, see [7] and click around. Stan 30 June 2005 13:09 (UTC)
I need some assistance with Flacourtiaceae please, to get it up to the APG classification. Most of the genera are now in Salicaceae, but there's quite a few genera where I've not been able to hunt down where they've been moved to since the demise of Flacourtiaceae. Does anyone know where to sort them to? - Thanks, MPF 28 June 2005 17:17 (UTC) (PS I like Wiwaxia's description of Flacourtiaceae as Cronquist's trash can!)
Can anyone identify this fern pic uploaded by Fir0002 and now added at plant? It's from Nunniong in Gippsland, southeast Australia, I'm fairly sure it is a Blechnum species, but don't know which. It is a super photo, but for its taxobox position, it would be nice to have an accurate identification. - MPF 30 June 2005 10:00 (UTC)
Can some people familiar with Taxobox articles take a look at Talk:Praying_mantis. Earlier in the month a user asked for input on merging Praying mantis with Mantidae which was previously a normal redirect. They may also have been getting confused with the order Mantodea, but having received no response, they have now gone ahead with a number of cut-n-paste moves and other changes.
It now needs someone familiar with standard taxo practice to untangle the related articles. -- Solipsist 30 June 2005 21:04 (UTC)
The article for Mantodea looks ok - I checked, and most information applies to the order as a whole. The article for Mantidae was mostly duplicated text, which I've removed. The species list was terribly incomplete for either - compare TOL - so I've pulled it as well. That should give a place to start. Someone else should decide exactly what praying mantis refers to; the Audubon Guide mentions it as a common name for Mantis religiosa. Incidentally, preying mantis is clearly a mistake, and I don't think we should mention it as an alternate name. Josh
Thanks a bunch for the help. When I started out praying mantis was the main article and Mantodea and Mantidae both redirected to that. Then it got ugly once I wanted to add the Chinese mantis, which is clearly different from religiosa. I tried to get input, but it looks like I simply wasn't asking in the right places. I've also been doing some big moves and re-arranging on Cockroach and Grasshopper which played similar tricks. Given that I now know about this page I'll hold off on doing more of those so that if it's wrong it's not too much work to undo. I've also been adding information (and sources) to a few of these as well. I'm very open to constructive criticism. Wikibofh 30 June 2005 22:39 (UTC)
Instead of going straight to the reference desk, there was a suggestion that people here might be well placed for identifying photos of plants and animals. So here is one of each from a mountain top in the Atacama Desert. Any ideas? -- Solipsist 3 July 2005 11:06 (UTC)
When should the title of an article about a species be capitalized? I see that birds and crocodiles are almost all capitalized, mammals are mostly capitalized, fish and frogs are about 50/50. Dragonflies are capitalized, Butterflies are about 50:50, but cockroaches are not. Pines are capitalized, but flowers are mostly not.
I confess to being unable to understand the principles behind this scheme. Is there an article somewhere explaining it? How should I know whether to capitalize the title or not? Gdr 4 July 2005 22:23 (UTC)
Yes, I've read all those discussions. But what I don't see is any conclusion or style guideline. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) says that capitalization is disputed. I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I would like to see something written down even if it's only a division of the higher taxa into "capitalize" and "lowercase". Gdr 5 July 2005 09:11 (UTC)
I'm also in the caps camp. One partial solution is to have a child project of ToL decide the issue for the articles that project would cover. This has been effective for at least the cetaceans, primates, and cephalopods, as well as the birds, of course. - UtherSRG July 5, 2005 21:56 (UTC)
To see a debate in process, check out the editorialization in [9], including the the familiar-sounding "We are aware of the polemics (and attendant emotion) that capitalization of common names invokes among some of the academic community [...]". While I personally prefer non-capitalization, I'm willing to go along with whatever the experts say to do - but in an area where there is ongoing debate and no consensus, I don't think that non-experts should presume to make a decision on their own authority. (It would be cool if someone were to create a WP article on this very subject, so that at least the facts of the situation are gathered in one place; perhaps this could become an opportunity to influence the discussion among specialists, who are not always fully aware of the situation outside of their own disciplines.) Stan 5 July 2005 22:23 (UTC)
Stan Shebs had an interesting comment a while back that people tend to ungrammatically capitalize things they feel are important. I mainly get peeved at people who go on a crusade, changing hundreds of existing articles to their personal capitalization preference. Mackerm 5 July 2005 23:21 (UTC)
How about the following policy as a compromise:
Gdr 6 July 2005 23:33 (UTC)
Just out of curiosity, in what cases are there official common names? I know they exist for birds, but I haven't heard of any others. This page, incidentally, suggests that capitalization of species names is done almost exclusively by ornithologists, although it's fairly old. Josh
I'm familiar with the arguments. I'm just pointing out that Gdr's proposal would probably amount to capitalizing birds and not capitalizing much else. Josh
Given that Jimbo decreed that Wikipedia ToL was for trivia whilst real science was reserved Wikispecies, perhaps we should standardize on whatever the makers of Free Willy. Pcb21| Pete 8 July 2005 16:41 (UTC)
If we are to follow the standard authorities (sensible), then - for plants at least (and I suspect several other groups too) - we ditch common names completely and stick to scientific names. The authoritative plant books (e.g. the Kew checklists, or the APG publications) simply don't even mention common names at all. I'd have no problem following suit for page titles. This gets rid of all the capitalisation problems too, since Genus species capitalisation applies throughout. Beautifully simple and consistent. - MPF 8 July 2005 21:43 (UTC)
I'm hoping that this discussion is wider than just about Titles, so I'm goint to suggest what the key problem is with Common Names. But first, were problems with Common Names not solved during the great era of Taxonomy or in the century since? Or, are today's experts (mostly narrow group specialists) about to demonstrate some great new consensus? Or, are the cultural mores of the world's nations about to hand up the necessary new concepts? No signs; whatever it is, it's our problem. The good news? Most of the clues needed to solve it are already posted here!
The above discussion seems to lean towards a consensus (but do let's have a vote), yet the problem area remains static. Nobody moved it; nobody moved themselves. I guess this is because our focus is skewed. We seem to want to know,' "What should the standard Common Name' look like?".
It's our current social 'tradition' to be superficial. Why are we concerned about 'style' when there are more interesting aspects? Where, in the above discussion or in the works of the great academic institutions, is there interest in the uses and functions of Common Names? I don't see any, yet I've got a feeling that Common Sense says they are needed to help people deal with important information: for remembering and recall; as indispensable keys to unlock recorded information; and for communication of information for use in Conservation, etc. Useable Common Names are primarily needed in peoples' heads - everywhere that Conservation needs local help. Ie, they need to be in use at a local level, and therefore in all keyboard compatible languages (so that computers can cope later).
There is only one rule that I know of: 'Common Names should be linked to valid taxonomic names'. OK, this is a series of minefields - one for each Rank that is, or isn't, used. But this area is worth working hard at. Let's do it - unless we can be sure that others are already doing it better. Other points are about style, appearance or preferences and should be dealt with pragmatically, thinking only of the users in the field. Common sense and cooperation will cope without a fuss.
Do I need to hint at my Capitalization preference? The "black rat", as mentioned above, could be tan coloured with a pure white underbelly (photo available (thanks to "Meg" (our resident Canine Megafauna) when I learn how to post it). 11:17, 10 July 2005 (UTC) & Stanskis 21:50, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
I will try, thanks. Thanks for starting this discusion It's a favourite of mine from the aspect that Common Names should have a function, and this should help with "the problems" that people find in "how to standaradise them". I don't want to preach or to lecture, so, above, I've tried to theorise. My best answer to you is the page User:Marshman which contains wisdom that I'm only beginning to pick up on in WikiWorld. One specific point; I see your proposal: "the principle that WIkiPedia should in general follow the experts...". Where to? Are we lost? Some experts would print "black rat", but who would dare to print "honda integra" or "toyota corolla"? Where are society's (conservation) values? Stanskis 21:50, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
Hello there, it would be great, if you can help us identify some pictures of dragonflies from Ontario near Algonquin Provincial Park.
It is discussed in the german Wikipedia so it would be great if you may answer at de:Diskussion:Portal_Lebewesen#Libellen_2. Greetings from Berlin, Achim Raschka 6 July 2005 07:41 (UTC)
I thought that No. 7 could be an Orthetrum albistylum, but I'm not sure if this species of dragonflies lives in Canada. Does anyone know more about that? -- Der Meister
(unless that's a case of sexual dimorphism, but my are is plants, not insects) Circeus 12:41, July 15, 2005 (UTC)
A dispute has arisen on the categorisation of several articles including Phasianidae, Anatidae, Dove, Wild Turkey, New World quail. I've moved it to Talk:Poultry to get other viewpoints on this. jimfbleak 05:25, 11 July 2005 (UTC)