User:ManfromButtonwillow/Sandbox2
Structure and criteria for inclusion[edit]Articles should normally be about particular taxa. For example:
If a family has only a single genus, the family name should redirect to the article on the genus (e.g., Elassomatidae). If a genus has only a single species, the generic name should redirect to the species (e.g., Centrarchus). When a genus contains only a small number of similar species, the articles may be combined with the article on the genus (e.g., Crappie, which includes the white crappie, Pomoxis annularis, and the black crappie, P. nigromaculatus.) Also see the lists at Tkinias/Fish, Gæa/Fishes, SpeciesFishes1, SpeciesFishes2, SpeciesFishes3, and MarineFishList WikiProject Fishes categories[edit]Fish names and article titles[edit]Common names[edit]Common names should be written in sentence case rather than title case, following normal English usage and that of FishBase. (This contrasts with the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Birds, which follows the practice in many ornithology journals of using title casing for bird common names.) Use, for example, "largemouth bass", not "Largemouth Bass". Note that geographical or personal names which form part of a fish's common name remain capitalized, hence "Guadalupe bass" (in reference to the Guadalupe River in Texas) or "White Cloud Mountain minnow" (in reference to White Cloud Mountain in China). Systematic names[edit]
Article titles[edit]Article naming for WP:FISH differs, as detailed below, from Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna). Use the common name for any species that satisfies at least one of the following criteria:
Use the Latin name for any species that fails to satisfy criteria 1(i) to 1(iv), including such situations as the following:
Guidelines
Higher taxa[edit]Articles on higher taxa should be titled using the common name, if one exists and is unambiguous. Otherwise, the scientific epithet should be used. For example, Micropodia is known commonly and unambiguously as the black basses. The Centrarchidae, however are the sunfishes, which is a term commonly (if loosely) used for a variety of taxa, especially those of genus Lepomis but also of unrelated fishes (see Sunfish). The article is therefore titled using the scientific epithet. When FishBase or other references give a common name of "xes and ys" or "xes or ys" for a higher taxon, the scientific epithet (possibly anglicized) should be used for the article title. Articles on taxa above the generic level should be titled with the Latin form of the name and not the anglicization, e.g. Cyprinidae not cyprinid, and Perciformes not perciform. The anglicizations may be freely used in article text, however. Taxonomy[edit]For the sake of consistency, fish articles should follow FishBase taxonomy. If a taxon's classification is disputed, the article text should explain this. Categorization[edit]Wikipedia categories should be created for well-known families, using the plural of the common name of the family (Category:Sunfishes or Category:Cyprinids), and for orders, using the common name (e.g., Category:Catfishes) or the scientific epithet (e.g., Category:Cyprinodontiformes). For very small families (e.g., the pygmy sunfishes), only the order category may be used, but usage must be consistent among members of a family. Article format[edit]Taxoboxes[edit]
All articles on taxa should have taxoboxes (constructed using the taxobox template, not built from scratch) including kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. The new taxa above class should not be indicated, since they can be found elsewhere in Wikipedia. Taxa between class and order should not be used, since they are unstable and can be found in the class and order articles. For large taxa, intermediate classifications may be indicated in the taxobox. For example, Perciformes should indicate their suborder and (if one exists) superfamily, and members of large families should indicate subfamilies. All members of a taxon should, however, be consistent in the usage of intermediate classifications. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/taxobox usage for the full details of taxobox construction. An example taxobox, for the warmouth (Lepomis gulosus), is given at right. Note that the specific name is L. gulosus, not simply gulosus, and that the generic name is not bolded, since the article is not about the entire genus Lepomis. Images[edit]An image should be included in the taxobox if an appropriate one is available. Higher taxa should use images reflecting their types, if possible. For example, Lepomis uses an image of L. auritus, the redbreast sunfish, which is the type species of the genus, while Centrarchidae uses an image of Centrarchus macropterus, the flier, which is the type (and only) species of Centrarchus, the type genus of Centrarchidae. The taxobox image should ideally picture a single fish, facing left, in a horizontal orientation, cropped to 20 percent of the fish's length around the fish's body, and should be 250 pixels wide. (The image should not be resized manually; the full-size image should be uploaded and markup used to create the 250px image. Note that very large images may be resized before upload so that they will fit in a normal browser window when enlarged.) For articles long enough to warrant inclusion of additional images, these may be placed as thumbnails in the article body, ideally showing the fish in its native environment. Note that images of fishes which do not possess right-left symmetry should not be flipped to obtain a left-facing fish; doing so would, for example, convert a righteye flounder into a lefteye flounder. Text captions should not be used on taxobox images in species articles, but in articles on higher taxa, the article caption should indicate the species pictured (if known), in the format "[[Common name]] (''Genus species'')". If the species depicted is not known, the caption should identify the fish as closely as possible, as in "Pygmy sunfish (Elassoma sp.)" ![]() It is always beneficial to have a picture that communicates a sense of scale. This can be achieved by
Anyway, any image is better than no image - esp. if you have only third party material available, or if you don't want to get the animal out of its living environment. Introduction[edit]The first paragraph should give the common and systematic names of the taxon featured in the article, as well as some information about its classification. Species articles should follow the form:
Higher order articles should follow the form:
Succeeding paragraphs should give, in order (omitting paragraphs for which no information is available):
Other sections[edit]Information on keeping fish in an aquarium should be put in a section entitled "In the aquarium". Breeding and dietary information pertaining to captive fish should go here, rather than in the main section, which should refer primarily to the fish in its natural habitat. Other sections may address topics of interest warranting discussion longer than a brief paragraph. References[edit]Every article should include a section entitled "References", with a bullet-list of sources. Every article should include a citation there of the relevant entries in FishBase and, if possible, ITIS. It is not necessary to include Fishes of the World unless it has been used as a source for the article. Other sources for information in the article should be included, following normal citation format. Templates exist for citing FishBase and ITIS, and these should be used. FishBase[edit]For a FishBase entry on an order, use:
For a FishBase entry on a family, use:
For a FishBase entry on a genus, use:
For most FishBase entries on species, use:
For most FishBase entries on subspecies, use:
For FishBase entries that are problematic for the above templates, get the numeric ID from their URL and use:
For all FishBase templates, year and month refer to the FishBase revision consulted, not the date on which you consulted FishBase; the revision can be found from the FishBase home page. ITIS[edit]For an ITIS entry, use:
For the ITIS template, year and date refer to the date on which ITIS was consulted. Date can be in either U.S. or international format, as it will be wikified. External links[edit]Web sites or pages not used as sources for the article (except for FishBase and ITIS) should appear in a section entitled "External links" (using the plural even if only one link is present). |