This page is within the scope of WikiProject Tree of Life, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
taxonomy and the
phylogenetictree of life on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Tree of LifeWikipedia:WikiProject Tree of LifeTemplate:WikiProject Tree of Lifetaxonomic articles
This talk page can be used to discuss issues with the automated taxobox system that are common to the entire system, not just one of its templates. Discussions of this nature prior to 2017 can be found at
Template talk:Automatic taxobox
Those familiar with the system prior to mid-2016 are advised to read
Notes for "old hands".
We use {{taxonbar}} to link to various taxon IDs, including wikidata, wikispecies, etc. All of the IDs are stored at Wikidata. We could consider adding commons and gallery to the taxonbar. @
Tom.Reding and
Jts1882: thoughts on this? -
UtherSRG(talk)12:21, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I'm not against an unobtrusive addition at the bottom of the taxobox. However, as an infobox, the taxobox is supposed to summarize information on the taxon, so it is probably better for links to other resources to be elsewhere.
There was a previous discussion about including wikispecies and commons in the taxonbar or only using the templates {{Commons category}} and {{Wikispecies}} to avoid redundancy. In the end the status quo was kept (with Wikispecies in the taxonbar). I'm not adverse to adding the commons gallery or commons category.
The taxonbar doesn't appear on mobile because it uses Navbox, which is not allowed on mobile view for some reason (possibly because you can't collapse large navboxes or they are condised too large for downloading on phones). I believe there were some proposed changes aimed at making a mobile compliant navbox. @
Tom.Reding: do you know anything on this? It would certainly be possible to make an alternative output for the taxonbar without using navbox, although this may go against decisions made elsewhere for such content (e.g. authority control). — Jts1882 |
talk15:03, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Mobile & style issues are sort of a black box to me. My impression is that there's a desire, and some work being done, to, at some point, make navboxes viewable on mobile, but I don't keep up with that at all. I don't know of another navbox-like utility (not that I've looked for one). If there were a flag or something in Lua that would designate a user's device as mobile or non-mobile, then an alternate method could be used (even something dumb like an un/ordered list, assuming consensus, etc., etc.). ~Tom.Reding (
talk ⋅
dgaf)15:22, 17 April 2024 (UTC)reply
There is no way of detecting the skin in Lua. It can only be done in JS or CSS. Without Wikimedia support, this means any solution must use CSS, which can be customised for different skins (including the mobile one, Minerva). I'm not sure how Navboxes are blocked in Mobile view, but I assume it's server side, as the HTML code for navbox is not on the page (although strangely their templatestyles is). An alternative output could mimick the navbox styles and hav different displays for mobile and desktop (or narrow and wide screen).
An alternative output from taxonbar shouldn't be too difficult. I did some experimenting in the module sandbox some time ago, using horizontal and vertical lists, with collapsible options. However, it would be good to find out what Wikimedia plans are for navboxes and mobile. — Jts1882 |
talk07:39, 18 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Taxonbar appears to be overpopulated, uncurated, containing numerous links to, from a reader's perspective, low-quality sites (database dumps); on mobile devices this would be one half of the screen full of some links. On the other hand, I know that a link to the commons category/gallery will take me to moderately well-curated images of the species, which are made and heavily used by us. Since our articles don't have more than a picture of two, and many readers probably want to see more, I am still not convinced that adding a wikispecies link and one or two commons links would be a bad idea, as unobtrusive as we want it to be. While the taxobox is intended to summarize information on the taxon (meaning: classification), we already deviate from this by incorporating images, statuses, and range maps. Should this be discussed anywhere else? Can we
BOLDly add it and wait for the avalanche? — Preceding
unsigned comment added by
Ponor (
talk •
contribs)
Back in the old days, we did try putting those links in the taxobox. It got shot down. This is why Tom said what he did above. Those were the arguements against. -
UtherSRG(talk)13:04, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Taxonbar links are curated to some extent. We've decided not to include databases published by governments of non-English speaking countries. And there are many Wikidata properties for taxonomic databases that aren't included in taxonbars (where there has never been any discussion to include or exclude them).
I'm against including (potentially) 4 links to Wikispecies in desktop view. Currently links appear in the desktop sidebar, in the taxonbar, and via {{Wikispecies}} (if present). A link the in the taxobox would be a fourth. Sidebar and taxonbar links don't appear in mobile view. It would be good to enable links to Wikispecies and Commons in mobile in some way aside from {{Wikispecies}} and {{Commons}}.
Plantdrew (
talk)
19:51, 22 April 2024 (UTC)reply
I concur, PD.
Let's see if I can sum up. There's a desire for links to Wikispecies/CommonsCats/CommonsGal/Wikidata to be available to mobile users, if they exist. Taxonbar is where these are already present in desktop, but is suppressed in mobile, as is the sidebar where some of these links are present in desktop. Links to CC, CG and WS should be listed on WD, if they exist. So it seems that only a link to WD would suffice, though providing all four would ease the burden on the user to click through WD to get to the others.
This seems to be our list of current options, though they weren't all stated above:
Add these links as originally requested to the Taxobox system.
Add these links as originally requested to the Taxobox system, but have them appear only for mobile users; so CSS or JS changes
Tweak the CSS or JS (or ?) so that the Taxonbar appears on mobile
Tweak the CSS or JS (or ?) so that the Taxonbar appears on mobile, but in a limited form with just WS/CC/CG/WD, if available.
Option 1 is ruled out by history. It's a good ask, but I don't think it will ever see traction. All the rest, as far as I can figure, need someone who can tweak the CSS or JS so that the good magic happens. Do we need to poke elsewhere for CSS/JS/? support on this? -
UtherSRG(talk)00:38, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
Another option is to create a simple template that displays a box with the wikimedia links that only displays on mobile. If could be floated right below the taxobox or placed at the bottom of the page instead of the taxonbar. The taxobox or taxonbar templates could be used to place it automatically. It can be given a class so that it will only be shown in mobile (the CSS would be set using templatestyles). — Jts1882 |
talk07:03, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
A summary of relevant differences between desktop and mobile views (mostly redundant with above discussion).
Template {{taxonbar}} is only shown in desktop, so mobile views don't get information that is exclusive to taxonbar.
In desktop, Wikispecies is shown in sidebar, taxonbar (if other identifiers) and in template {{Wikispecies}} or {{Wikispecies-inline}} (if present).
Normally only one of the Commons gallery or category is linked. Both the sidebar and the commons templates show the gallery if it exists and the category if there is no gallery. Both can be linked if {{Commons category}} is also added.
In short, mobile users need the wikispecies and commons templates if they are to see wikimedia links. Some numbers:
In short, only about 10% of the pages on taxa have the wikimedia link templates. I thought it would be higher. A taxobox or taxonbar solution is easier than adding the wikimedia templates.— Jts1882 |
talk09:04, 23 April 2024 (UTC)reply
30 June 2024 use stats update
30 June update
Project
Auto
Manual
Total taxa
Percentage auto
# auto added since 30 December 2023
# manual subtracted
Algae
2280
160
2440
93.4
117
67
Amphibians and Reptiles
22711
199
22910
99.1
187
7
Animals
11596
915
12511
92.7
429
243
Arthropods
11355
2719
14074
80.7
581
348
Beetles
26514
11994
38508
68.9
1783
1427
Birds
14405
48
14453
99.7
47
14
Bivalves
1696
28
1724
98.4
22
4
Cephalopods
2020
558
2578
78.4
11
8
Dinosaurs
1624
0
1624
100
-19
0
Diptera
15081
1565
16646
90.6
921
600
Extinction
796
31
827
96.3
NA
NA
Fishes
25302
960
26262
96.3
894
711
Fungi
12194
3932
16126
75.6
1539
1239
Gastropods
32419
2972
35391
91.6
4909
4252
Insects
61302
18450
79752
76.9
3324
2269
Lepidoptera
83659
14801
98460
85.0
9028
8965
Mammals
8401
124
8525
98.5
100
20
Marine life
8990
527
9517
94.4
267
145
Microbiology
7675
5393
13068
58.7
704
637
Palaeontology
15506
3198
18704
82.9
727
276
Plants
81558
188
81746
99.8
1638
423
Primates
983
0
983
100
4
0
Protista
778
150
928
83.8
398
-70
Rodents
3161
25
3186
99.2
24
3
Sharks
833
38
871
95.6
4
7
Spiders
10110
0
10110
100
70
0
Tree of Life
100
0
100
100
11
6
Turtles
760
0
760
100
1
0
Viruses
1736
55
1791
96.9
14
0
Total
407991
57001
464992
87.7
24103
19707
Mammal subprojects with articles tagged for both mammals and subproject:
Project
Auto
Manual
Total taxa
Percentage auto
Cats
185
0
185
100
Cetaceans
445
0
445
100
Dogs
241
0
241
100
Equine
109
0
109
100
Methods and caveats (copy-pasted from previous update)
Method: For the most part I use Petscan to search for articles with a talk page banner for a particular Wikiproject and either {{Taxobox}}, or any of {{Automatic taxobox}}+{{Speciesbox}}+({{Infraspeciesbox}} and/or {{Subspeciesbox}} (depending on whether botanical/zoological code is relevant)), and record the results.
Example search for algae with automatic taxoboxes (search terms are in the Templates&Links tab in Petscan). For viruses, I search for {{Virusbox}} rather than the other automatic taxobox templates. For plants, I sum the results for the Plants, Banksia, Carnivorous plants and Hypericaceae projects. "Total" is derived from the Template Transclusion Count tool (
https://templatecount.toolforge.org/index.php?lang=en&namespace=10&name=Speciesbox#bottom e.g. results for Speciesbox), and is not actually sum of the results for individual projects (some articles have talk page banners for multiple Wikiprojects, and would be counted twice if rows were summed). I started compiling these stats in April 2017, and have been updating roughly every six months since December 2017. I've kept my method consistent; perhaps I should have included all of the automatic taxobox templates (Hybridbox, Ichnobox, etc.), but I didn't do so at the beginning, and the other templates aren't used in very many articles.
Caveat: The remaining manual taxoboxes in projects with a high percentage of automatic taxoboxes mostly have some kind of "problem". I have periodically reviewed all the manual taxobox articles in projects with less than 207 manual taxoboxes, and chose not to convert them to automatic taxoboxes at that time (however, it has been awhile since my last review, so there probably a few recently included articles I haven't reviewed). "Problems" may include:
Fossil taxa; fossil classifications may be derived from multiple sources and present classification on Wikipedia may include mutually incompatible hypotheses. Fossil taxa are often not be linked from extant parent taxa.
Synonymy; there is some obvious synonymy issue; e.g., a species is in a genus which redirects (as a synonym) to another genus; maybe the species article needs to be moved or maybe the genus should be reinstated
Common names; articles with common name titles may not correspond to taxa, but still have manual taxoboxes. In some cases {{Paraphyletic group}} may be appropriate, in others the taxobox should be removed
Parasite and pathogens; article on parasites and pathogens may be tagged for the WikiProject of the organisms they infect. Higher level taxonomy templates for the parasites may not yet exist, and the classification presented in manual taxoboxes may not be up to date.
I've added WikiProject Extinction to the table this time. WikiProject Protista continues to have tags added to existing articles, with a net increase in the number of tagged articles with a manual taxobox. WikiProject Dinosaurs recently merged a bunch of largely redundant articles for nodes in a cladogram, resulting in a net decrease in the number of articles tagged for that project.
Plantdrew (
talk)
17:12, 30 June 2024 (UTC)reply
Thanks for doing these updates. Good to see progress. Did you include {{WikiProject Cacti}} in with the Plants totals? It doesn't look like that template automatically adds it to the parent WP like the other plants subprojects.
awkwafaba (
📥)
19:01, 1 July 2024 (UTC)reply
@
Awkwafaba:, I did not include WikiProject Cacti in the totals. However, for the past several years, I've been running the "Taxon pages not tagged in WP ToL clade projects" query on your user page to ensure all taxobox articles are tagged for a project immediately before I start compiling an update of these numbers (and in general I run your query every couple of weeks, but haven't made it a priority to tag redirects). I did pick up several cacti articles and added WikiProject Plants tags before I started this update. None of the plant subprojects get picked up in a Petscan search for {{WikiProject Plants}}, so I have always done a separate search for Banksia/Carnivorous plants/Hypericaceae and added those results to the results for Plants when presenting these numbers (the other 3 subprojects aside from Cacti do contribute to the numbers reported in the assessment table for WikiProject Plants).
Plantdrew (
talk)
20:07, 1 July 2024 (UTC)reply