Template talk:Taxobox/Archive 26

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How to list unranked clades

I've started a discussion on standardizing how unranked clades are listed by the automatic taxobox here: Template talk:Automatic taxobox/Archive 8#clade vs. unranked - how to list unranked clades. Any input would be appreciated. If the outcome is to standardize on "clade" rather than "(unranked)", I imagine we may want to discuss changing this template as well to match. Kaldari (talk) 22:16, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Interwiki to template in Spanish Wikipedia is wrong

It should be:

[[es:Plantilla:Ficha de taxón]]

--Canyq (talk) 01:24, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Done. Note that the interwiki links are actually on the documentation page, which is not protected. --Stemonitis (talk) 06:13, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. But with good reason.

Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 01:28, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Stemonitis, but I'm afraid you are wrong. If I click here, I can only "View source" and there is a box saying:

This page is currently protected from editing because it is transcluded in the following page, which is protected with the "cascading" option:

Template:Taxobox

I don't know if there is a reason for it to be protected or has that status just by mistake but, obviously, if it weren't protected, I would fix the issue directly instead of posting in discussion page.--Canyq (talk) 01:18, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

My mistake – sorry. I overlooked that. --Stemonitis (talk) 06:03, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

No problem :-) --Canyq (talk) 00:26, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Image rotation

This one's new to me. User:Ptelea contacted me to ask about File:Ulmus uyematsui leaf with 1 Euro coin.jpg being displayed sideways in the taxobox on the Ulmus uyematsui article. I tried a dummy edit, nothing looks wrong with the taxobox code on that article, and there haven't been any recent edits to this template (or /core) that would explain the undesirable image rotation. Any ideas? Rkitko ^(talk) 14:17, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Erk. Ok, that's weird. When I look at the file page, the image appears in the correct orientation. When it's included in this page and in the species article, it appears sideways and distorted. Is it something to do with this image in particular, or the wikimedia software? Rkitko ^(talk) 14:18, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

That is really weird.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 15:21, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

It's the Wikimedia software, I'm pretty sure. When I went to the file page and loaded the larger versions, they were rotated but with the same height:width ratio as the upright version and hence were distorted. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:41, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

[EC] Intriguingly, it only happens at some resolutions, so it must be a MediaWiki bug. It may be related to the resolutions mentioned at File:Ulmus uyematsui leaf with 1 Euro coin.jpg, which are presumably pre-prepared (450 × 600; 180 × 240; 360 × 480; 576 × 768; 768 × 1,024). --Stemonitis (talk) 15:42, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Wow. I've never come across an image that does this. Is it happening with any other images that you can find? If so, WP:VPT would probably be a better forum for the issue. I did a quick fix for now by forcing the image size to 180px diff]. Thanks for finding that. Rkitko ^(talk) 15:54, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

The latest version of MediaWiki (1.18) includes a new feature that rotates images according to their EXIF metadata; possibly that's related. Ucucha (talk) 16:02, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it is a problem with the specific file. I've uploaded an edited version (removed the coin and inserted a scale bar, based on 1 euro coin having a diameter of 23.5 mm – a scale bar is more useful internationally); this doesn't seem to suffer from the problem. See Ulmus uyematsui article now. Very odd. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:43, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to learn how to manipulate this programmatic rotation onwiki... Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:40, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Cascading protection

I note this template currently has cascading protection set. I'm not sure what was intended by doing so, but it is probably not doing what you actually intend and is therefore worse than useless. In particular, the cascading protection results in Template:Taxobox/doc being editable only by admins, which is contrary to the intent of a template documentation subpage. The only interesting subtemplates that are covered by the cascading protection and not themselves already protected are Template:Next period and Template:Period color (I consider Template:MoS-guideline, Template:Taxobox colour scheme, Template:Style-guideline, and Template:UF-species uninteresting for this purpose as they are not transcluded onto articles), and these are only accidentally protected as they are used in examples in the documentation. See also further discussion at Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items#/doc subpages of cascade-protected templates.

Unless someone can give a good reason for this template to continue to have cascading protection, I intend to remove the cascading protection (and fully-protect Template:Next period and Template:Period color to maintain the status quo) soonish. This template would, of course, retain its normal full protection and move protection. Anomie ⚔ 14:25, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

These were not accidental; they were well-thought-out. These templates occur in thousands of articles, therefore it is required these be protected. However, we weren't thinking about documentation when cascading protection was applied. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:18, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that this template or its subtemplates should not be protected, I'm arguing that applying cascading protection to this template is wrong and worse than useless. What exactly do you think you are protecting by placing cascading protection onto this template? The only things actually protected are those in the list of "Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page", and any that are already marked "(protected)" can be disregarded because they are themselves already protected directly. As I said above, it turns out that the only things actually being protected by the cascading protection here that should be are Template:Next period and Template:Period color, and there are several that shouldn't be. We can easily just protect the former directly and then remove the cascading to stop incorrectly protecting the latter. Anomie ⚔ 18:51, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Your planned changes sound fine to me. --Stemonitis (talk) 19:32, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you misunderstood me; I was explaining the rationale for having cascaded, not for keeping the cascading. I don't have a problem with your proposed solution at all. It sounds wonderful. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:00, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Eliminate trim from incomplete param

Requiring an unused value for the incomplete param doesn't make much sense. It's existence, whether empty or not, is the trigger for it's activation. bondolo (talk) 03:17, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

I think you need to explain this comment in a bit more detail; I'm not sure precisely what you're referring to. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:06, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

The {{species list/core}} template includes the following logic :

{{#if:{{{incomplete|}}}|{{incomplete taxon list}}}}

to include a message as part of a species/taxon list that the list of species/taxons is incomplete. The message is triggered by the presence of an "incomplete" param. My testing shows that the incomplete param must be assigned a non-empty value eg. "incomplete=yes" in order for the param to be recognized and the message generated. Using "incomplete=" (no value) is currently insufficient. bondolo (talk) 18:27, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah, right, so this is actually about the behaviour of {{Species list}}, which can be used in taxoboxes but isn't an integral part of those templates (it could be used anywhere in an article).

I think it's better to maintain the general principle that an absent parameter and an absent parameter value mean the same. It's common to start with an outline for a template which contains parameters which may not be used, e.g.

{{Speciesbox | taxon= | image= | image_caption= |authority= }}

and then leave empty values in the source of the article for the future. Thus it's important, for example, that |image_caption= doesn't mean "insert a blank caption" but that no caption is present at all. So personally I would prefer to maintain the same logic for |incomplete=, i.e. that no value is the same as omission. (Although I understand that it's odd that |incomplete=no means the same as |incomplete=yes.) Peter coxhead (talk) 12:02, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Having an empty parameter being present actually trigger, well, anything violates almost all editors' expectations of template behavior. An empty but specified parameter is always the same as the parameter just being missing. This is actually very important for other reasons that Peter coxhead's very good one, e.g. because it can and frequently is used to provide |parametername= HTML comments where an explanation can be given for editors, e.g. why a parameter is blank and must remain blank, and that its emptiness isn't accidental. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 23:29, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Grypania

Can some check why does the image File:Grypania spiralis.JPG not show up in the taxobox of Grypania. Is there a problem or it's something that has to do with my settings? --Geilamir (talk) 22:52, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not having any problems; does the problem still happen on your end? Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:56, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't showing for me, either. I discovered that removing the |image_width= parameter meant that the image was displayed. It should not generally be necessary to specify the image widths, either in the taxobox or elsewhere, so that should be an acceptable solution. Quite why |image_width= stops the image from showing, I couldn't say. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:37, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Are you sure it was not just the edit that fixed it? The image shows up fine for me in the old version. Ucucha (talk) 07:46, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

No, but I figure if it was only displayed temperamentally before, and is displayed consistently now, then that's a problem fixed. It certainly wasn't displaying for me before the edit (or in your linked version, where I get the caption but no photo), so something was wrong somewhere and isn't any more. The URL for the image when I load that version reports that the image contains errors; maybe different servers give different results, or maybe it's a browser issue. --Stemonitis (talk) 08:21, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Fixed now for me too. But still can't see the old version both in IE (empty box with a red X) & Firefox (just nothing). --Geilamir (talk) 09:12, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

I too couldn't see it using Firefox (Mac OS version). So I've uploaded a slightly changed version of the file (different JPG compression parameters, nothing else) in the hope that the problem was previously caused by some internal problem of the file. It works for me now...

By the way, when you go back to an old version of an article, I think it doesn't use the old version of an image, so you can't test changes in this way. The URL for the image Stemonitis gave didn't work for me before I uploaded the revised file, but it does now. (You need to refresh your cache in however this is done on your browser.) Peter coxhead (talk) 12:41, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

File compression does sound more plausible here. I'm using Aurora (alpha Firefox 10) on Windows 7, and it looked (and still looks) normal. Thanks for correcting, Peter. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:07, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Basal metabolism rate

It suprises me that a range of basal metabolism rate is not considered as part of this template. Not the exact amount, but a range, much like the range of when the species originated (recent - long ago). For example, canidae "have more energy" per pound of weight than felidae; flying creatures more than slugs; that sort of thing. Also, require more energy. Student7 (talk) 20:51, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

This template is a taxobox; it's intended to give an overview of the taxonomic situation. BMR is probably unknown for the vast majority of taxa, and it's not such an important measure that it commonly appears in factsheets about species.

If we were to include additional information in the taxobox, body size might be a better choice. But even that is inconsistent with the current purpose of the template, and we'll probably need a variety of different measures of body size that are used in different groups. Ucucha (talk) 20:54, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Rank parameter

Please add a rank parameter to this template. That will make it easier for bots to figure out the rank of any taxon by reading the taxobox. For example, rank = Family, rank = Species, rank = Genera etc. — Ganeshk (talk) 00:56, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Why would bots need to do this? Rkitko ^(talk) 02:04, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

It will be useful for categorization. I was recently requested to assign importance rating on the project template (Species: Low, Genera: Mid, Family: High). This parameter will have allowed me to scrape the value and build a data file for updates. Automatic taxbox has this parameter at the parent level, it will be good to have it at the child level as well. It will also be useful to expose this parameter on the microformat. Other species databases have these.[1] — Ganeshk (talk) 02:26, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Do you know how long it would take to have a bot update all of the articles with the {{taxobox}} template in them? We did an automated run last year through Lepidoptera to correct some technical issues with all the taxoboxes in that family, and let me tell you-- it wasn't easy at all. We had a nice little WP:ANI over it, too, just after the bot run started, and even after the bot run was finally reapproved, it still took several weeks just to get through that single family and the next several months to finish cleaning up articles that were skipped due to Wikipedia's cache lag. Surely you're overlooking a better solution that doesn't involve making edits to hundreds of thousands of articles. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:35, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

From a semantic perspective, I think it's a good idea to have the rank set explicitly in the taxobox. It should generally be possible to determine it from the existing taxobox, if it is well-formed (e.g., if there is a |binomial=, it's a species; otherwise use the lowest rank for which the name is bolded). Ucucha (talk) 03:14, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Ucucha's correct; I'll further that by adding the lesser-known |trinomial= that would take precedence over |binomial= in determining the rank. In theory, a bot should be able to figure it out based on the trinomial, binomial, or lowest-positioned rank that represents an actual taxon rank, in that order. That said, I think it should be far easier to program a bot to recognize this pattern than it would be to program a bot to update all the taxoboxes to add the requested rank parameter. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

As you can see, it is messy to figure out the rank of a page by looking at the formatting. Formatting done by humans is never consistent. Something explicit is what was I going for. Agree, it will take some effort to update all the existing articles. It will be worthwhile in the long run. — Ganeshk (talk) 11:37, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Assigning importance in this way doesn't sound useful; you wouldn't be adding any information. And adding the rank explicitly to each taxobox sounds harmful, since you'll be encoding the same piece of information several times which leads to errors and is almost always a bad idea. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:30, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

The importance rating was a project request from the Bivalves project team. It was just one of the use-cases, not the only the reason that I am requesting this. I am not sure what you mean by adding a rank being harmful. Wouldn't the rank be just one, Family or Species or Genera etc.? — Ganeshk (talk) 22:42, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

It would be harmful because the information is already encoded. So it would be an extra way to say the same thing, which leads to the possibility of a conflict. What do you do if the "rank=" parameter conflicts with the rest of the taxobox, or with the taxonomy template? What is the point? Also, as a completely separate problem, importance only seems loosely correlated with rank in the first place—many genera or species are probably much more "important" than many families or orders. This is kind of what I meant above—if you just want a list of families, then get a list of families—why bother with "list of taxa of importance X" when that really just means "list of families"? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 01:13, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment Wherever I can I use the automated taxobox system, and I think that the trend will be towards increased use of this system. Hence I believe that changes like this shouldn't be made to the manual taxobox system alone. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:22, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

The 'rank' parameter of the auto taxobox is already required, isn't it? MMartyniuk (talk) 14:24, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

That's correct. It's not actually found in the taxobox, but the taxobox uses code to access the rank of the taxon, found in the taxon's template. I'd suggest anyone trying to programmatically extract the rank study the code the automatic taxobox uses to pull the rank particularly the bit where it figures out the name of the taxon in order to find the rank. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:42, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

The automatic taxobox does not have a rank parameter. The taxon templates have them, not the box on the page. — Ganeshk (talk) 22:33, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, your program can just load the taxonomy template corresponding to the page, and you're done. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 01:13, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

If you wanted a list of families, go get all the taxonomy templates with rank=familia and then see what article they point to. Ganeshk—this is what you want, right? Lots of manual work is still required, but at least it will be helpful instead of harmful. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:30, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

And surely it's not difficult for a bot to determine the rank of a taxobox? It will always be the lowest rank specified, right? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 19:26, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Rank is an attribute of the taxon. Why should the bot go through workarounds to figure it out? — Ganeshk (talk) 22:33, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not really a workaround, it's just there. What is the problem? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 01:13, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Speciesbox implementations do not need a taxonomy template for the species. The rank parameter exists until the genera. All I am saying it is not consistent. It will be great if it was built right into the taxobox that is displayed on the page. — Ganeshk (talk) 01:40, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Not necessarily. In the event of monotypy, the article effectively covers several ranks at once, and the last one in the taxobox needn't be the article title. I think Erik makes a cogent point that assigning all families high-importance and all species low-importance is a flawed system to begin with, for all sorts of reasons. Once that's done away with, the rest of this discussion is irrelevant. --Stemonitis (talk) 19:46, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Erik, Bivalves project presently does not use automatic taxobox. I will have to figure out the list of the families, genera and species by reading the taxobox template. — Ganeshk (talk) 22:43, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

My point is this: you either have to figure it out from templates as they exist today, or you have to add something new. If you are going to add something new, you have two choices: 1.) a rank= parameter or 2.) migrate to automatic taxoboxes (or at least just create the taxonomy templates). (2) has other benefits, (1) is harmful. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 01:13, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

If the template supported a rank= parameter, would people go through all the articles and fill it out? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 01:13, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

They would fill it out for new articles. We will need bots to update the existing articles. — Ganeshk (talk) 01:40, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Again, I am not trying to solve the importance rating with this. I will write a AWB plugin with regexes for that. I feel there should a rank attribute for each taxon and it does not exist. — Ganeshk (talk) 01:42, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Ganeshk, what you're asking for is not possible. As I mentioned above, a taxobox can apply to several different taxa at different ranks at the same time (e.g. species Amphionides reynaudii, genus Amphionides, family Amphionididae, order Amphionidacea). There isn't a single "true" or "correct" rank, so you can't assign a single value to a parameter called rank. For every other instance, looking at which taxon is marked in boldface (generally the last one) gives you all the information you need. Adding a rank parameter is entirely pointless. I should also point (to balance Erik's comments) out that automatic taxoboxes are not a panacea; they create a number of significant problems, and there are other ways of achieving the benefits that they do bring. --Stemonitis (talk) 08:01, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

In the event of monotypy, we could always go with the lowest rank, species for Amphionides reynaudii. Can't we? — Ganeshk (talk) 12:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

But the article is at "Amphionides", for which "rank=species" is entirely false. Moreover, the subject of the taxobox is simulataneously the species, genus, family and order, whereas your proposed parameter could only contain one rank, and would therefore inevitably misrepresent the page. I think this just underlines how flawed the proposed assignment scheme for importance is; would Amphionides be low-importance because it's a species, mid-importance because it's a genus, or high-importance because it's a family? It's all three, but it can only have one importance. It would be better if your project assigned importance ratings based on the importance of the topic, not the rank of the taxon. Sure, rank could be part of that assignment, but only part. An obscure family is much less important than a major commercial species or a model organism. Taxonomic rank simply doesn't provide enough information to assess importance by. If you want to automate it, have a robot set them all to low-importance, and then manually change the small number that are considered more important. This template doesn't need an extra parameter for any of its functions, so let's not add any unnecessary complications. --Stemonitis (talk) 13:03, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I dont remember WP:Bivalves as a whole asking for this, Ganeshk, is this in relation to the comment by invertzoo in the WProject Bivalves-Project templates thread? Also what levels would be included in the numbering? all? (subtribes, parvorders, and clades?).--Kev min § 10:41, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that thread and this one too. There are 831 articles that are missing importance ratings. Invertzoo was hoping a bot could help with that. The bot can update Family, genera and species levels, and leave the rest for manual updates. — Ganeshk (talk) 12:19, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Wait, didn't you just say you were going to have bots go fill in the "rank=" parameters? Why not just have those bots figure out the rank and fill in the importance? Not that basing importance on rank won't be harmful—I'm just saying, why the intermediate step? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok, so this is, in fact, more the request of invertzoo, and not a request of the entire project, since I do not agree with the proposal and am part of the project. As I was understanding the comments that were made in the project thread, they were more general guidelines for the rating of articles rather then a proposal to bot rate them. I would say there are too many variables for blanket rating to work. Even if it is done that way, the taxobox doesn't seem the appropriate place to do it, and the different WProj's will have differing opintions as to what ranks should be at what importance level.--Kev min § 19:17, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Isn't the point of a bot supposed to be to make someone's life simpler by doing something difficult for them? Seriously...if you really think you need this bot, we've told you what steps need taken already without adding the new parameter, and that's a flawless method that will work on any article with {{taxobox}}, {{automatic taxobox}}, {{speciesbox}}, and {{subspeciesbox}}, and can easily be improved to include the rest of the taxobox family as well with no errors. I think someone's a bit daunted by the work that would go into parsing, and there's no reason to be. Parsing for multiple attributes in the post-processed text really isn't that difficult. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:51, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

It looks like the consensus here is adding the Rank parameter is not a good idea. Please consider this request withdrawn. Thanks for all the input. — Ganeshk (talk) 23:43, 1 February 2012 (UTC)