See the Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/taxobox usage to learn how to use this template.

For articles which require, but do not yet have a taxobox, use Template:Needtaxobox.

Archives

/archive001 /archive002 /archive003 /archive004 /archive005 /archive006 /archive007 /archive008 /archive009 /archive010 /archive011

{{editprotected}} I tried a taxobox with diversity, type species and subdivision_ranks params, and it looks kinda crappy. The type species section would be placed more "logically" immediately after the last taxon in the main sequence, as they give taxonomic info. And if you have a subdivision_ranks as well as a diversity section - which is appropriate for most orders or higher - they ought to be grouped together as they say something about lower-level systematics. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 02:02, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

N Declined. The template must be accompanied by a specific description of the request. Please post the exact code you would like to have changed. Sandstein (talk) 20:03, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{editprotected}} Switch positions of "diversity" and the entire block of "type_[rank]" sections. Result should be the "type_" section showing above "binomial" and the "diversity" sdection showing over range map. Perhaps move "diversity" below range maps, might look better. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:42, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(If I could tell where each part of code starts and ends, I would post that... but if I could tell, I'd have by now cared to get the rights to change it myself ;-) ) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I propose to change

{{{image_width|200px}}}

to

{{{image_width|frameless}}}

The effect of this change will be to defer to user preferences on thumb size, whenever the "image_width" parameter is not set.

There are two reasons to do this:

1. It is proper to respect image size preferences where possible; over-ruling them should be avoided unless absolutely necessary;
2. It is a personal annoyance of mine that many articles honour thumb size preferences throughout, but the taxobox doesn't, so that the taxobox image ends up a different size to all the other images, which looks silly.

You can see an example of the proposed change at Alyogyne huegelii, where has been manually fed an "image_width=frameless" parameter.

Hesperian 23:56, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And so.... Looks like the taxobox and the image don't fit together now because of the extra whitespace to the sides of the image. A taxobox and its image should be sized together. - UtherSRG (talk) 00:56, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are you saying that the standard practice is to size the image to match the width of the text in the taxobox? I don't see any need for this; I think Alyogyne huegelii looks fine right now. And I don't also think this is actually happening in practice - I see no evidence of this in any of the featured articles on plants. Also, the text width depends upon the font size you view your webpages at, so just because it looks right on your screen doesn't mean it will look right on mine. And finally, I don't see how changing how we handle the absence of an "image_width" parameter has any bearing on this situation anyway. Hesperian 03:08, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It does appear to be a sane default. Currently image sizes are fairly arbitrary, so using thumbnail size would make sense. I don't see the problem with the whitespace... It looks the same to me. —Pengo 05:56, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This discussion appears to have generated little interest. But I see more support than opposition, so I have made the change. Hesperian 03:30, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Great - seems a sensible move. Sorry I didn't see the discussion earlier! Verisimilus T 11:27, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The taxobox is 200px wide by default. Now, for the vast majority of users, the taxobox image is 180px wide, creating 20px of undesirable white space. I think these changes need more consideration. Mgiganteus1 (talk) 13:26, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In order to see what you mean, I changed my thumb size default to 180px, then 150px, and then to 120px. Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with the whitespace, even at 120px. It looks just fine to me. Clearly some of you find it unattractive, but the question is, is it so bad as to warrant over-ruling user preferences? Many people have small thumb preferences for good reason, such as bandwidth issues, and presumably the logged-out default is set to 180px for similar reasons. It is impolite to overrule user preferences, on such a widely used template, for such an insignificant reason. Hesperian 04:25, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Go look at an animal species taxobox, which has a conservation status image, forcing the taxobox to be larger than the species' image. - UtherSRG (talk) 15:49, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, thanks, I had overlooked the status and range map image widths, which suffer from the same problem. That's fixed now. I realise this isn't what you were looking for here, but it resolves the immediate issue. Hesperian 04:09, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If the white space is a problem, why not reduce the default width of taxoboxes to 180px? Wider pictures will stretch it. Verisimilus T 15:50, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think that makes it look crappy on larger pages. Taxoboxes, even and sometimes especially long ones, tend to bring visual structure to a page. People with very low screen resolutions will suffer though. On the other hand, for example the fish people have very many images that are quite wide but not at all high. Forcing them to 180px by default renders the image as an in-article resource kinda pointless, as one cannot make ot sufficient detail. Note that the focus/main picture of an article is exempt from the "no image widths please" rule. So much of the perception that there is some guideline requiring a change of SOP is erroneous.

From my personal experience, a width of 200 px and perhaps a bit more is the point from which most images start to become useful for naturalists, biologists etc.

In any case, 180px is less wide than most Commons, Wikispecies etc boxes. Thus so low a value is completely pointless. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Remember that any default value can be easily overruled in specific instances, e.g. with fish. I agree that there is a trade-off to be made between inclusivity (i.e. making Wikipedia useable by people with lo-res screens) and utility (i.e. actually being able to make things out). I suspect that this balance has been thrashed out somewhere else, with the result that thumbnail size defaults to 180px; therefore it seems that there ought to be a strong reason for changing to something else. Perhaps photographs of organisms do need to be larger than photographs of anything else; perhaps extra width on the taxobox makes the article's structure look more pleasing to some (high-resolution) users. Are these concepts strong enough to merit enforcement, or does it boil down to personal preference? Verisimilus T 10:45, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmmm... I don't really care what to the fall-back size is set to as long as it's not too large. I say "fall-back" rather than "default" because I envision it to apply only if no size attribute is given. In most taxoboxes it is given, adapted to the page's needs... so it's not really like anything would get broken. See for example the very large image at Passerine, which nonetheless is, well, excellent. Both aesthetically and from a scientific standpoint, because it illustrates well what systematically speaking is one of the most passerinish passerines out there - a member of the Passeroidea, the last major group of birds to evolve - in all its glory. I neither would nor could change anything about this image to make it any better, even despite it being of a size I would not use myself. It just... fits. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:48, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This change has been used to revert the image width in Cat by Hesperian and UtherSRG. There is no problem with "defer[ring] to user preferences on thumb size, whenever the 'image_width' parameter is not set", but that's quite different from claiming "thumbnail is best" on the lead image. As pointed out above, lead image is exempt from the "thumbnail rule" and Wikipedia:MOS#Images actually recommends the lead be not smaller than 300 px(although the rational is suspect) and even Wikipedia:Taxobox_usage#Images suggest a fixed width of more than 200 px. --Dodo bird (talk) 11:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your MOS comment is a misquote. That section does not recommend overruling the default thumb size. What it says is that if the default size is to be overruled, then it should be more than 300px, so that it isn't smaller than all the other images for users with 300px default thumb size. I think it is pretty clear that not overruling the default size is consistent with the MOS, whereas overruling with a size less than 300px is not. As someone with a default thumb size of 300px, I can confirm that overruling the lead image to be smaller than all the other images, makes an article look thoroughly stupid.

The taxobox usage page is terribly out of date - it hasn't been updated since this change went through at the start of this year. I'll get onto that.

Having said all that, I don't personally wish to remove any image sizes that have actually been thought about. I'm removing sizings because in the vast majority of cases no thought whatsoever has gone into them, and in those cases it is far better to return to the default. If you have thought deeply about the implications of over-ruling the thumb, and still think it should be done, then you won't hear any objections from me.

Hesperian 11:26, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any particular reason that the data deficient IUCN status is not linked and doesn't have an image? The image is there ... could someone change this? Frickeg (talk) 04:07, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think it also does not have a category. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:23, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

True. I think this needs changing, but not being an administrator could someone else? Frickeg (talk) 23:15, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

_ _ In viewing the Australopithecus article, which includes a Taxobox, i was struck by my many decades of knowing roughly what Hominidae means, but not retaining any further information. (I also admit to ignorance of whether, for instance, the differences among the subfamilies of Hominidae are similar in degree of difference to those among the subfamilies of other primate families -- let alone among those of families within Carnivora. Nevertheless...) I now feel -- after additionally accessing (via Rdr Homo sapiens) Human, (via Hominidae) Great ape, (in desperation) Hominina (where i strained to discern the first i in "Ardipithecus" in the multi-flawed graphic), and Ardipithecus -- that i know something worthwhile in learning that Homo, the gracile australopithecines, and probably Ardipithecus, have in common membership in the Hominidae, Homininae, Hominini and Hominina.
_ _ I would say that the long and noble history of the accompanying template probably demonstrates that the familiar single-branch display is effective, and is the form that should be displayed whenever a user opens a page containing a Taxobox. On the other hand, i think instructive value would justify letting the curious user click a control to see a forked branch (that shows no taxon twice), but in the case of say, Russian Tortoise, incorporates the tree portions of the current Taxoboxes of Human and Russian Tortoise. (In fact, it would be great if, for instance, the taxobox of African Civet could have two new options, one adding the Human side-branch and, in light of the expression "civet cat", one adding instead the Cat side-branch.) This would not only create a means to offer some high-interest info that is otherwise a task to find, but by example, provide editors an incentive to do the research needed to add the branches to the markup, instead of leaving that to be repeated by each interested user.
--Jerzy•t 22:31, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{Taxobox | color = lightgreen | image = Utricularia inflata illustration.jpg | image_caption = | image_width = 300px | status = LC | status_ref = | regnum = [[Plant]]ae | divisio = [[Flowering plant|Magnoliophyta]] | classis = [[Magnoliopsida]] | ordo = [[Lamiales]] | familia = [[Lentibulariaceae]] | genus = ''[[Utricularia]]'' | species = '''''U. inflata''''' | binomial = ''Utricularia inflata''}} (nowiki'd because it no longer demonstrates the problem being discussed, and was putting this page into Category:Taxoboxes needing a status system parameter. Hesperian 04:38, 19 April 2008 (UTC))[reply]

Something I noticed the other day (as a consequence of diff?) is that the image_width parameter meant for the image of the species now changes the image width of the status images - or has it always done this? And is this desirable? Shouldn't we force these to stay smaller so they don't break out of their resolution (240 × 64, but they are svgs). Thoughts? --Rkitko ^(talk) 02:31, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The background for this is above, section #Defer to user preferences for image size. Is this an issue, considering they are svgs? If so, would it be fixed by setting their nominal sizes to 300 x 80, so that they scale down rather than up? If so, is this as trivial a task as I think it is? Hesperian 02:53, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I saw the discussion above and I agree with the decision. Just wondered what should be done or if it was a problem that the image_width parameter also now controlled the size of all images in the taxobox (as all have the "frameless" bit). Has this created any problems with competing image_width parameters, like a range map width? I just saw it and thought the rather large status svgs (when image_width was manually set to enlarge the main image) looked a bit silly. --Rkitko ^(talk) 03:07, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I see... I think... but can you point me at an example anyhow please? Hesperian 04:12, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I know I've seen it before, but I can't find where in my contributions I've run into it recently. I usually have just removed the image_width parameter to correct the situation. See a mock example to the right and play around with it. (Of course the image really isn't that large at Utricularia inflata.) --Rkitko ^(talk) 05:13, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

<-- Okay, I see your point. My take on this is that when people overrule the default thumb size, they generally intend it to affect only the image, not the status box. The solution is to change the status box widths from

{{{image_width|frameless}}

to

frameless

How does that sound? Hesperian 06:09, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good to me. Thanks. --Rkitko ^(talk) 14:26, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No further comments... then done. Hesperian 02:52, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think this should have an imagemap to the place where it says Least Concern, EExtinct, etc. Clicking on one of the bubbles will go to the right page. Remarks? Soxred93 | talk count bot 15:41, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Verisimilus T 16:40, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is the color parameter actually used for any legitimate purpose? I have noticed that it appears to be used primarily for light vandalism (e.g., changing the color to black or blue so that captions can't be read). Is it a good idea to remove the parameter optionality so that the color is always the default pink? Silly rabbit (talk) 04:34, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The colour varies with kingdom. Plants are green, for example. As for doing away with the parameter, you're seven months late - see Template talk:Taxobox/archive010#Automatic colour detection. Feel free to remove it any time you see it. Hesperian 04:47, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And feel free not to remove the parameter; because of the recent discussion at Wikipedia talk:Taxobox usage, I'll be removing them by bot from all 51,000 articles soon. If the bots approval group ever gets round to approving this... That takes ages... -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 09:50, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Should we add a field in the box for a link to the new Encyclopedia of Life, like the links to IMDB in Template:Infobox Film or to Boardgamegeek in Template:Infobox_Game? I'd do it, but can't edit this page. — Aldaron • T/C 19:36, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why to that one and not to any of the other number of such sites? given the fluid nature of taxonomy, I'd say no to any of them. - UtherSRG (talk) 21:37, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would most assuredly not link them - they use ITIS as their baseline taxonomy, which simply means that en:Wikipedia is better ;-) For example, EoL sucks in passerine taxonomy. The entire thing is generally suspect at present, as very little of it has ever been reviewed by someone who knows their job. Whereas Wikipedia is for the most part reviewed. And in my experience, you can trust interested layfolk more than you can trust automated large-throughput parsing.

I would go as far as to explicitly prohibit its use on Wikipedia as a taxonomic source, indefinitely. There is at present almost no taxonomic/systematic information in it that cannot be gotten from closer to the primary source - i.e., the original studies, or the latest reviews. And in groups like dinosaurs (including birds), mammals, possibly fishes for example, I see no reason why Wikipedia can't always be a tiny bit more up-to-date and thorough, especially regarding larger systematic shifts.

BUT: see here. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 02:02, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why isn't the Budgerigar taxo box pink? Aren't animal related taxoboxes pink? -- penubag  (talk) 05:10, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We got sick of pink. All the animals have a new colour now, including budgerigars. There's some discussion above here if you're interested. I hope the change doesn't confuse too many people. —Pengo 09:34, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see. Thank you for replying, would you mind changing it on the template page to avoid confusion? -- penubag  (talk) 02:55, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The status value "fossil" triggers inclusion in Category:Invalid conservation status. Seems like a taxobox template code problem. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:33, 22 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's because "fossil" isn't a valid conservation status. I can't remember where the discussion about this was held - taxobox usage, perhaps? Verisimilus T 10:29, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do you agree with me if I say that the images in these infoboxes most often should be from groups in which the human is not a member of? So you can see how different it can be from a human. --212.247.27.126 (talk) 14:43, 4 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Since humans would only qualify for a tiny percentage of all taxonomic groups, as you describe it is just the way it presently is. E.g. you won't find a photo of a human in an insect taxobox :-) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:54, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For a long while there's been a general consensus on the Scientific classification talk page that the latter article should be moved to Biological classification and this will proceed in a few days from now if there are no significant objections. The main problem is that we have around 90,000 articles linked to Scientific classification, nearly all of them from the taxobox. When the move is accomplished, Scientific classification will probably become a disambiguation page, in any case the heading that links to it in the taxobox should either link to Biological classification instead or should be delinked. Could people here please commit to altering the taxobox in tandem with the move so that everything proceeds smoothly? Gnostrat (talk) 21:05, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If Scientific classification is moved, I (or someone else) will update the taxobox. After the move, please keep Scientific classification as a redirect for a day or two; it will take a while before all of the articles that use this template are updated. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 21:59, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I have a question. I counted the 90.000 links. But it was just an intelligent guess that 99% of them where related to this one Taxobox. Now I am not familiar with this taxobox, and I an wondering. is there only 1 taxobox, or 10, 100 or 1000s of them? And could this eventualy be a problem? -- Mdd (talk) 22:24, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's one taxobox template, and there should be no problems. Once the taxobox template has been updated it will be a trivial task to find the other links; you can always request a bot if there are too many to do by hand. Verisimilus T 23:12, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much. This sounds like a dream comes true. -- Mdd (talk) 23:20, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have just changed the link in the template to Biological classification; the database should be up-to-date by the time the move request poll ends. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 17:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wandering around the various microbiology pages and looking at the taxoboxes for many bacteria I have noticed some of them are incorrectly classified. Then I became curious - do they appear incorrectly classified to me because I get my classifications from a different source? And do the classifications for Bacteria and Archaea that are on Wiki indeed come from the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology? This is a site that's dedicated to tracking new and official names of prokaryotes http://www.bacterio.cict.fr/[1]. Jessica87au (talk) 13:42, 10 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I'm one of the maintainers of articles that use the Taxobox on the Icelandic Wikipedia. The Taxobox is a very complex template which we occasionally have to copy as-is from the English Wikipedia and then proceed to make alterations to it required for localization.

I'd like to propose the following to make this process easier for all wikis that copy this template:

Move English-specific strings out of the template itself and into sub-templates, e.g. instead of writing "Fossil range" write "{{Taxobox i18n:Fossil range}}". This would save me edits such as this one when I move the template over.

--Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 12:47, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Shouldn't stuffs like Kingdom, Division, Class, Order etc be linked to the relevant page? --220.255.53.160 (talk) 04:09, 12 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Folks,

The current conservation status code dumps everything into generic categories such as Category:Endangered species, Category:Vulnerable species, etcetera. These categories contain thousands upon thousands upon thousands of articles, which is a problem. They are supposedly defined strictly in IUCN terms, which is also a problem, but we ignore that and dump articles into them no matter what the status system, which is also a problem. I had intended to take one small step towards rectifying this, by segregating the "status_system=iucn" articles into categories like Category:IUCN Red List endangered species. However the current conservation status code is gloriously concise, and therefore unmaintainable, so it is impossible for me to take my "one small step" in the current code.

I have therefore re-written the conservation status code in a slightly longer but utterly straightforward manner. The basic structure is

if there is a status parameter
   output header
   if there is a status_system parameter
      switch status_system
         case IUCN 2.3:
           switch status:
              case EX:
                 output "Extinct (IUCN 2.3)"
              case CR:
                 ...
              ...
        case IUCN 3.1:
           ...
        ...
   else
      switch status
      case EN:
         ... 

This code is currently located at User:Hesperian/Taxobox. There is a test suite at User:Hesperian/Taxobox test suite. You are welcome to edit at either of those pages.

As far as I am aware, this code is functionally equivalent to the current code, with one exception: it handles nonsense inputs much better. For example, the current taxobox tries to accept status=G4 | status_system=iucn3.1 and ends up displaying an image redlink. The new code will display "Invalid status (IUCN 3.1)" in the taxobox, and place the article in Category:Invalid conservation status.

Can I get your approval to make this change? At this stage I have not implemented the proposed category changes; that can wait.

Hesperian 06:31, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You need to add DD, at least (See Kultarr). Also, you don't always utilize status_ref correctly (see Long-tailed Pygmy Possum. - UtherSRG (talk) 07:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, excellent feedback.

DD was there, but I hadn't attached it to the IUCN system - neither the code nor the images gave any clue as to its purpose. That's fixed now, and Kultarr has been added to the test suite. Should NE (Not evaluated) and NR (Not recognized) be attached to the IUCN system too?

As for status-ref, I had omitted it from the no-status_system case. That's fixed, and I've added Long-tailed Pygmy Possum to the test suite. Note that this one doesn't get an IUCN image, because no status system is given. I could set the code to recognise the status system for unambiguous statuses like this one, as a temporary measure, if you want. In the long run, the appropriate course of action is to set the taxobox to tag into a hidden category, Category:Taxoboxes needing a status system parameter, and work on emptying that category. Which is something that I would be happy to do.

Hesperian 11:43, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I picked those two species at random, and both had an issue. I was going to fix the possum, but then realized you'd want it "as is" for your testing, so I left it. Hrm. "NE" I think should be included, but should be handled like "DD". "NR" probably means that the species was identified (or elevated) after IUCN's most recent listing. Do we have any taxoboxes using NR? As for the "needing a status system" category: YES PLEASE!! :) I have plenty of time on my hands to work on emptying that, too. I only wish I had my MSW3 with me. - UtherSRG (talk) 23:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

With typical programmers' hubris, I was expecting no problems. And now with typical programmers' hubris, I suspect you got lucky scoring two from two, and you won't find any more errors. I've added Category:Taxoboxes needing a status system parameter, but won't actually create the category until this goes live. I've moved "NE" into the IUCN systems. I've also moved "NR" in, based on its use in article such as Dwarf Manatee and Chapin's Crombec. However I believe that NR is not really a valid status; rather it is used to explain the absence of a status. I think in the long run these uses of "NR" should be changed to "See text", and "NR" removed. Hesperian 23:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

LOL. I know that hubris all too well, as I have it myself most of the time. :) Your rationales sound good. I'm ready for it to go live. Would be nice to get another set of eyes or two, though, to see if they get lucky. ;) - UtherSRG (talk) 23:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. I shall restrain my eagerness and wait a day or so; there's no rush. Yes, more eyes would be good, especially Pengo's. Hesperian 23:57, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry didn't reply sooner. I haven't looked in too much detail yet, so I might mention already solved issues. The restructuring looks good basically, as the current one is getting pretty messy. But personally I'd like to remove automatic categories all together from the template, so that any keen Wikipedian can re-organise pages into appropriate categories. I'd prefer a more fluid, human-friendly system, as I think that's what Wikipedia excels at, and leave more rigid systems to projects like Freebase. E.g. so we can have "Critically endangered birds" or "Threatened species of New Zealand" (or both) or "Near threatened animals of Africa]] if that's what editors think are good categories for those domains; and you don't need a huge discussion and a template wrangler to make the changes.

For default images, I'd prefer to keep IUCN 3.1 images when the category fits. One thing I like about how the template works now is that if you don't add a status_system is basically guesses., On second thoughts, it's probably good to leave off the graphic unless it's unambiguously one system. (e.g. LC/cd or LC/xx is always IUCN2.3). Having no graphic gives editors (including myself) motivation to include the system too. (I really need to get some time to start up beastie bot again.. I only marked status_system on pages that really needed it the first time it went through, because the taxobox didn't use it so much like it does now). Um... I remember I did ask (when making changes to the taxobox) if people thought having separate categories for different systems (IUCN endangered vs EPBC endangered, etc) was a good idea, and I remember the consensus being "no, keep them together". I don't really have that much of an opinion. It depends largely on how it's to be used. I imagine people might like to see all mammal species considered endangered by any system, and would be frustrated having to browse all the different system-specific categories -- but equally they may wish to only see only IUCN assessed ones. Part of the problem is that you can't do boolean searches in categories (i.e. using keywords AND, OR, NOT).

"Not evaluated" generally should be left off, but in cases where many of the other species in the genus or family are assessed, it may be appropriate to note that "this one isn't". (I did see "Not evaluated" in a taxobox once and thought "Yeah, I'm glad it's there actually".) (Also I haven't thought about NR much, but Hesperian's opinion sounds good to me: change them to "See text") —Pengo 00:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with you on the loss of flexibility of automatic categories. What started all this for me was that I created a Category:Biota of Australia by conservation status subtree, tagged a lot of articles into categories like Category:Critically endangered flora of Australia, then found I couldn't remove redundant supercategories like Category:Critically endangered species. I considered asking for the auto-categorisation functionality to be removed altogether. But on reflection I came to the conclusion that there is no reason why we can't have multiple subtrees: Category:Endangered species by country (e.g. Category:Endangered biota of Australia), Category:Endangered species by taxonomy (e.g. Category:Endangered mammals), Category:Endangered species by status system (e.g. Category:IUCN Red List endangered species). And I couldn't see any reason why the taxobox oughtn't autotag into the last of these, at least for now, until someone is ready to subcategorise it.

Okay re: keeping the images where the system is obvious from the status. I'll fix it up so that the right system image is used but it still tags into the "missing status" category. Once the latter has been emptied, the guessing code will be redundant and therefore subject to removal.

Hesperian 01:05, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've added guessing cases for the unique IUCN 2.3 codes, all of TCN, and nearly all of DEC. All the other status systems have significant code overlaps. Hesperian 01:21, 15 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I've gone live this this. Category:Taxoboxes needing a status system parameter is in there but Mediawiki performs template-based category membership updates asynchronously, so it might be a while before it gets populated. Hesperian 04:30, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Something I overlooked. I have removed the missing-status-system category for some cases lacking a status system, such as the "See text" case. Hesperian 05:20, 19 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Orca article seems to have a broken taxobox. Could this be related to the recent changes? Mgiganteus1 (talk) 02:01, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good to me. What do you see as broken? - UtherSRG (talk) 03:04, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

My new code broke taxoboxes that use the image2 parameter. I discovered it when fixing the status section for Minke Whale, and fixed it already. I guess maybe I fixed it in between your two comments. Hesperian 03:40, 20 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I assume that these changes are responsible for the changes in many, many infoboxes. I am wondering why the Lower Risk categories now include "Lower Risk" in the taxobox. This is a very unwieldy change that causes many status areas to become very messy (see Brown Antechinus, for example). Could these categories be returned to simply "Least Concern" or "Near Threatened" without including the Lower Risk? Frickeg (talk) 02:12, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is trivial to fix this. But under IUCN2.3, the status is actually named "Lower Risk Least Concern" not "Least Concern". For example the Red List entry for your Brown Antechinus is entitled "Antechinus stuartii – Lower Risk Least Concern".[2] Are you quite sure you want to go back to "Least Concern"? Hesperian 02:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Frickeg. I believe we had a discussion about this somewhere, somewhen, during one of the other taxobox rewrites, and it was agreed that the shorter naming would suffice. - UtherSRG (talk) 02:25, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. I clearly exceed my brief in letting that change slip in. I'll fix it right away. Hesperian 02:26, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You da man. :) - UtherSRG (talk) 02:32, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think overall this is an improvement :). However, I wonder if I could trouble you to add a graphic and category for Data Deficient species, as well as link it? I know that there's a graphic around somewhere, and there is also a page at Data Deficient. Thanks. Frickeg (talk) 08:53, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Pengo's the man to talk to about graphics, as he is the author of the present set. Hesperian 11:14, 21 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. By the way, from the above I'm not sure whether to use NE or NR, seeing as they basically mean the same thing. I think it's NE. Am I right? Also, if I may put in my two cents on the categories, is there anything wrong with an umbrella category including all species with the status and then subcategories as well? (For example, Critically Endangered species, which has all critically endangered species, and then subcategories (Critically Endangered species by country, etc.)) Frickeg (talk) 02:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what you're asking. "Data Deficient" is DD. "Not evaluated" is NE. "Not recognised" is NR, but there seems to be agreement to deprecate this option. Yep, that's the idea for categories. Hesperian 02:16, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For someone who didn't know what I was asking, you've just answered it perfectly - thanks! Frickeg (talk) 02:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I think that the "Critically endangered" and "Data deficient" outputs need to be capitalised, as this is what the IUCN does (and what we do for Near Threatened and Least Concern). DD should probably be linked as well. And should there be categories for DD, Conservation Dependent and Not evaluated? Also (at the risk of sounding very nitpicky), the "extinct in the wild" result should really be linked to Extinct in the Wild. Frickeg (talk) 01:01, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've done the capitalisation and linking of Data Deficient and Extinct in the Wild. The categories stuff needs to be discussed. My two cents: I don't think there should be a category for "not evaluated", but the others are fine. Hesperian 01:15, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. By the way, the previous stuff about the graphics - I think that the graphic for DD already exists here. Is it possible to include this (Pengo hasn't yet responded, but as I said, I think he's already done the graphic). Frickeg (talk) 01:21, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

EW now links to Extinction in the Wild :) ... Frickeg (talk) 01:23, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Crikey! Fixed now. The IUCN2.3 case was okay, it was just the IUCN3.1 one I kludged. Hesperian 01:34, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Great work. And I'm so glad those poor Data Deficient species get a graphic - looks great. Frickeg (talk) 01:36, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not aware of any discussion on the DD graphic, so if anyone is unhappy about it, it will have to come out again pending discussion. Hesperian 01:38, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There was a question above (Data Deficient status) by me, but it received no responses apart from someone pointing out that there was no category either. Frickeg (talk) 01:45, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• (Un-indent). So, by following a conversation here from the WP:MAMMAl talk page I finally sort of get to the bottom of what has happened to all of the status graphics on the bird articles into plain text lately. Although by "get to the bottom" I mean, "I think someone played with the code and everything changed, but damned if I know how". Could someone kindly please explain, in English, what we have to do to get the graphics back for the 10,000 odd bird species articles that no longer have it? Thank you. Sabine's Sunbird talk 03:42, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, it's very simple. In each taxobox there is a parameter called "status_system". Usually, it's placed under the "status" parameter. Into it, you put the system that has been used for the classification. For example, if the species was assessed using IUCN version 3.1, you put status_system = iucn3.1. This will restore the graphic. The reason this change occurred was that some taxoboxes were using different classifications (like EPA) for various reasons, but without the status_system it would use the IUCN graphic. It also lets us distinguish between IUCN 2.3 (when the Lower Risk category for Conservation Dependent, Near Threatened and Least Concern was in place) and IUCN 3.1, the current usage. Does that help? (It doesn't actually take all that long. I've already done all the mammals up to the end of the primates.) Frickeg (talk) 03:57, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The new code categorises into Category:Taxoboxes needing a status system parameter. Initially this was listed on articles, which I preferred, but someone made it a HIDDENCAT. It should be fairly trivial to pull the bird articles out of that, e.g. using WP:CATSCAN.Hesperian 04:11, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It seems an convoluted way to solve a fairly minor problem. There can't be that many articles not using the IUCN system (certainly no bird articles that I am aware of), wouldn't it have been simpler just to flag them and have them not display it rather than messing up all the articles. I have neither the time nor the inclination to wade through thousands of articles doing this (as I don't use tools to help my editing) . Is there a bot that can fix this? Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:21, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There probably is, but there's the problem that it wouldn't know whether a species marked "VU", for example, would be IUCN 2.3 or IUCN 3.1, or something else entirely. Once they're all done (and I confidently predict that the vast majority will be done in under six months), it will be a helpful reminder to editors who may forget that the "status_system" parameter is required. Frickeg (talk) 04:23, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Uh, Unless you're checking every single entry, how are we supposed to do any better? Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:30, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am indeed checking every single entry. It's a menial task that will have to be done. Frickeg (talk) 04:37, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't it be simpler to have a bot just re-add every single status for ever species once the new list comes out in May? And then overwrite any non-standard status. Because you aren't going to find many volunteers to check ever single one of the thousands upon thousands of articles that would need checking, and those that do will burn out from the sheer mind crushing boredom of the task. I sure as hell have more important things to do. In the past User:Beastie Bot added the status to every taxobox without status, simply have it add the new status to every single article, and flag on the talk page if it has changed anything. Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:54, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That would work fine for birds, but many mammals still use the old 2.3 system.Frickeg (talk) 05:00, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And a bot capable of selecting the information "species = vulnerable" from the IUCN site would be incapable of acquiring and adding the system information because...? Sabine's Sunbird talk 05:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not following your argument, SS. If a bot can do it, get a bot to do it. There's still nothing wrong with Frickeg doing it by hand if s/he wants to. Hesperian 05:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(un-indent)I'm trying to save Frickeg the effort - in fact, I'm trying to suggest that rather than changing the taxobox in such a way that it creates hours of work for everyone to fix, we ask the bot creating people nicely to do this. Okay, so maybe this fix needed to happen, but slow down a bit and lets see if we can't work smarter rather than harder. That is all. Sabine's Sunbird talk 05:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Again, the bot will work fine when the new bird one comes out, but the mammals are still split into 2.3 and 3.1, and it's important to distinguish these. I honestly don't mind doing them. Frickeg (talk) 05:35, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That said, if there is a way that a bot can do that, then obviously it would be useless me wandering around doing them when a bot could. I just don't think that any bots could do the mammal ones, but I'm perfectly willing to be contradicted. Frickeg (talk) 09:09, 24 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Like I said, it is very simple in principal, (but I don't code). If Beastie Bot can search the IUCN database and find that Red List Category & Criteria: = LR/nt for a species (for example [3]) and add that to the parameter Status, it is no more difficult for it to also find that the version = ver 2.3 (1994), and add that to the next parameter status_system. All Beastie Bot would have to do is extract two bits of info instead of one. can't think of any showstoppers, so we could ask Pengo for help. Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:06, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Beastie Bot can do it already, and I'll get onto it. I've got a bit of time now and another run is long overdue. Though I might end up waiting for the 2008 red list now that it's so close. I actually deliberately left off the status_system field last round (unless it was really needed), and relied on 3.1 as being the default (bad move). —Pengo 00:38, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cheers Pengo! I agree that waiting for the new list may be the way forward. Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:40, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I left out a symbol for DD when I was making them, because it seemed too difficult to convey any useful information. (Likewise I originally left off a graphic for "Extinct", as conservation codes mean little in the context of an extinct species). All the same, User:Brodo saw the gap, and made this this symbol which has recently been adopted:

I'd like to suggest, if we must have a symbol, to use this instead:

It's just a blank template, to show that no status has been chosen. It shows the possible range of conservation statuses, rather than a symbol for a symbol's sake. The third option is to just have text, without any symbol. (as it was before) But people seem to expect a graphic in that spot now. So..

Thoughts? —Pengo 00:38, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that a graphic is needed. Before there was a graphic, even though I knew better, it always gave the impression that DD wasn't really a valid category (a bit like NE - there definitely shouldn't be a graphic for that). I also agree that the blank template is probably a better move for the DD graphic, as it emphasises its place within the IUCN categorising scheme. Frickeg (talk) 01:28, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No objection from me. Hesperian 11:09, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly prefer that the graphic be brought back. Nobody of Consequence (talk) 02:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody, I'm not sure what you're talking about. If any graphics have disappeared, it is because the status was ambiguous and no status_system has been specified. Add a status_system parameter to your taxobox, and your graphic will reappear. Hesperian 02:59, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I guess I was confused. I noticed that the graphic had disappeared from a large number of Taxoboxes in articles (namely Ladoga Seal) and I thought someone had removed it from the template. Nobody of Consequence (talk) 01:06, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, a code change somewhat related to this discussion (and discussed in a section further up this page) caused the graphic to disappear from a great many articles. Currently Category:Taxoboxes needing a status system parameter contains about 33,000 pages, which is about ten times what I had anticipated. It had to be done though, because articles on biota that are endangered under some other system, were being served an IUCN graphic, which was not right. Hesperian 01:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've changed the graphic per this discussion. Hesperian 02:59, 29 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I just added code to handle status systems that the taxobox doesn't know about. This was prompted by me adding "| status_system = Threatened Species Conservation Act (NSW)" to Alexfloydia, and finding that this results in an empty conservation status box. This new version of the taxobox outputs the contents of the status_system parameter in full, resulting, in this case, in

Endangered (Threatened Species Conservation Act (NSW))

Hesperian 05:08, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a better way to deal with |status=fossil? The way it displays now is informative (see Amoeboceras for an example), and is helpful since a lot of the taxoboxes with this element don't have the recommended fossil_range= element, but could it be keyed to a different category than Category:Invalid conservation status, or set up to display in a way that isn't tied to IUCN conservation status (maybe a bot swaps it for something else?)? I brought this up earlier at Wikipedia talk:Taxobox usage#Category:Invalid conservation status, but ran out of ideas. J. Spencer (talk) 17:39, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I favour removing Category:Invalid conservation status from this case; "Fossil" is a perfectly valid conservation status, albeit not under any particular status system.

On a related note, I wonder if it would be possible/advisable to change "fossil_range" to something else indicating temporal range, rather than evidence for temporal range. For example, if there is scientific consensus that jellyfish has been around since the Precambrian, but no fossils going back that far, it would seem appropriate to put "Precambrian–present" in the taxobox, only not under the heading "Fossil range".

Hesperian 23:58, 5 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If "Fossil" is not a category under any status system, doesn't that make it's use original research? Dinoguy2 (talk) 03:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No. A scientific publication may say that it is a fossil, without placing it in a formal status system. Hesperian 03:12, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's an interesting point; I don't see the discontinuity much in my area, since most fossil reptiles have poor representation outside of fossils, with ghost lineages being a matter of taste and most recent phylogeny. Would it be appropriate to have both |temporal_range= X as well as |fossil_range=Y for something like jellyfish or what-have-you?

No, I think that needs to go in the text - at least that's how I have dealt with such cases: put the actual time range of fossils in the taxobox, and discuss in the article's evolution section or paragraph that there has to be a ghost record because e.g. the sister group is known from fossils some umpteen years older.

But it might be possible to tweak the displaying of the | fossil_range info so that it goes below conservation status and do away with the "(N/A)" bit? So it makes entirely fossil taxa's boxes look prettier, but also would work with living taxa. Would have to be tried out to see how it looks. 13:07, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, I've changed "N/A (fossil)" to "Fossil", and removed the fossils from Category:Invalid conservation status (it might take a while for that category to empty). The other matter can stay as it is unless there is more interest in addressing it. Moving the fossil range argument requires more discussion too. Finally, I was wondering for what reason we have both "Fossil" and "Prehistoric" statuses; are these not equivalent? Hesperian 13:28, 11 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not all fossils are prehistoric. Take the Lake Mackay hare-wallaby, for instance. Bob the Wikipedian (talk) 12:32, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is the default taxobox image width too small? The default image width is even smaller than the width of the taxobox itself; see Chalcopsitta. Snowman (talk) 18:26, 8 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The default image width is whatever you have set as your default image width. Hesperian 00:01, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

... hence the image on Chalcopsitta looks pretty darn big to me. If you hardcode the image width to something bigger for you, I bet London to a brick you'll make it smaller for me. Which is why we defer to the default. Hesperian 00:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Recently I have started adding a legend to the map caption, normally for maps which use two or more range colors. The problem is that the legend template normally aligns itself to the left, while the taxobox wants to align the caption to the center. This is fine if there is only one legend box, but where maps have several the center alignment makes things ugly (example). The temporary solution I'm using at the moment is to override the taxobox style with CSS and align things to the left (as in Senegal Bushbaby), but this is impractical over the long run. I'm wondering what others think: we can fix the taxobox or stop putting legends in the map caption altogether.--Mad Max (talk) 18:15, 10 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]