User talk:DexDor/Categorization of organisms by geography

Categorization of species by geography

Wow, you really have started to do the groundwork for the major overhaul that is needed. User:DexDor/Categorization of species by geography is very impressive.

Starting at the top, I'd like to see a sharp definition of the geographical continents used for animals, especially Oceania. We have discussed this (can't remember where now) but with no consensus. The sensible biogeographical boundary for Oceania is the Wallace Line in my view, but this runs into many editors' insistence on using political categories, since "Biota/Fauna/etc. of Indonesia" then doesn't fit into the hierarchy. The alternative is to use just Australia + New Zealand + the Pacific. But then some editors want "Biota/Fauna/etc. of the United States" where this is the political unit including Hawaii. If we had an RfC on fauna continents and reached a consensus, we could go forward.

For plants, the WGSRPD works well, especially because the up-to-date Plants of the World Online uses it as well as many other plant databases and sources. But for historic reasons, the category names are confusing, e.g. Category:Flora of North America isn't "North America" but "Northern America" which is significantly different. Again we have tried discussing this, but with no consensus on the way forward. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:52, 15 December 2018 (UTC) [Copied from User talk:DexDor - see also CFD discussion.]

Peter. Appendix B of the essay is a start on defining the continents etc.

I'm mainly working on categorization of fauna articles and trying to reduce the amount of categorization by small regions and to bring them into closer (although probably not complete) alignment with the larger regions used for flora categorization (clearly defined, non-overlapping etc). However, the biota categories also need to mesh with the regions used for categorization of other topics.

My strategy so far is to make incremental improvements (e.g. CFDs which affect at most dozens of categories at a time) whilst also developing what I think the guidance should say. The guidance would become wikiproject guidance (which might need a RFC to formalise it). Any comments on (or even minor edits to) the guidance are welcome - e.g. if you're aware of relevant discussions that aren't currently linked.

I dislike categorization of biota by politics (e.g. animals native to Greenland end up in Category:Europe because politically Greenland is part of Denmark). That might need an RFC to sort out. DexDor ^(talk) 05:18, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Great work continued! Appendix D is very revealing. I'll look through the whole page again later. [Rest of comment now in separate section below. DexDor ^(talk) 15:52, 24 October 2020 (UTC)] Peter coxhead (talk) 07:54, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Naming of the WGSRPD categories

One further issue I'd like to get sorted is the naming of the WGSRPD categories. There has been a view that category names must match an article title, so we have Category:Flora of North America even though WGSRPD's "Northern America" is not what is normally meant by "North America". Category:Flora of North Africa is the same. It would help if it were made more difficult to create categories that can be tagged as overseen by a WikiProject, e.g. requiring consensus at the WikiProject to be shown. But this is probably not likely to be acceptable. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:54, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Peter coxhead, I think the thing to do in a case like this is to see if there are any actual problems in the category structure. For example, Category:South America, Category:Countries in South America) etc do not include Central America, but if you go down the category tree you find Category:Flora of South America (meaning Southern America) which does include Central America.  Thus we have, for example, Zacatonal in (via several intermediate categories) Category:South America which is incorrect, but probably doesn't cause much of a problem - however, it does mean that it's currently unclear what area other categories (e.g. Category:Fauna of South America) cover.

If we renamed that Flora category to "Southern America" and removed in from the South America category tree it'd be a more correct structure, but we might find that someone re-creates Flora of South America. In many cases the name of a geographic area has multiple meanings which complicates things. In some cases the difference between a WGSRPD-defined region and a political/culturally-defined region may be small (e.g. whether some islands are included) and it probably isn't worth trying to make the category structure perfect in such cases.  There may be some cases where we should deviate from WGSRPD to improve the fit to higher categories. Small improvements to make the category structure simpler and clearer are probably the way to go. DexDor ^(talk) 15:52, 24 October 2020 (UTC) adjusted DexDor ^(talk) 08:31, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I certainly wouldn't alter the fauna category, which I believe uses the traditional sense of "South America". But if the flora category name were changed to "Southern America", it would be clear(er) that it's not a subcategory of anything called "South America". Peter coxhead (talk) 19:48, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Oops, I meant to refer to the flora category. DexDor ^(talk) 08:31, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Ah, right – makes more sense. We could have a "Category:Flora of South America" as a container category for Category:Flora of northern South America, Category:Flora of western South America, Category:Flora of Brazil and Category:Flora of southern South America. Then if any articles got put into the category, they could be moved up or down as appropriate. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:21, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Peter, how about the following as a CFD?

Propose renaming Category:Flora of South America to Category:Flora of Southern America

Rationale: At present there is a mis-match between the name of this category and its inclusion criteria. In particular, the name ("South America") excludes Central America (CAm), but the inclusion criteria ("Southern America") includes CAm.  This inconsistency causes some articles that are specifically about CAm to (incorrectly) be under Category:South America. This may also cause confusion at other South America categories. As an editor said in a 2015 CFD "The present situation ... the worst of all possible solutions ... confusing to readers and confusing to editors trying to use the categories."

I propose 2 options to resolve this:

1. Rename the category to Southern America, remove it from Category:Biota of South America, add links between the categories, place appropriate subcats directly under Biota of South America. Note: This is similar to what was proposed in the 2015 CFD which closed as no consensus. Note: the editors who opposed were an IP, myself (mainly on procedural grounds) and a now-blocked editor.

2. Keep the category name as is, alter the category text etc to match the normal definition of South America (i.e. exclude Central America) and make appropriate adjustments to the category structure (e.g. remove the WGSRPD parent category and C.Am child category). Once that's done consideration could be given to creating a category at Flora of Southern America (but I think such a category is unnecessary).

My preference is for Option 2, but I would also support Option 1.

Note: Depending on the outcome of this CFD any other categories that also have the South vs Southern muddle (e.g. Category:Invasive species in South America) or similar (e.g. re "North" vs "Northern") should also be looked at, but I've limited this CFD to one category to avoid adding to the complexity.

Note: I'm (slowly) trying to refine guidance about how species etc are categorized at User:DexDor/BioCat and resolving anomalies like this is part of that.

DexDor ^(talk) 13:07, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I would very strongly oppose Option 2, and I would expect to be joined by other editors at WP:PLANTS, since the project agreed to use the WGSRPD categories for plant distributions before I began editing plant articles. WGSRPD is used by so many plant databases that it's the obvious choice. Once you start using major non-WGSRPD categories the whole system begins to fall apart. I would much rather leave the category with its current unsatisfactory name than see Option 2 adopted. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:58, 2 November 2020 (UTC)