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Ongoing discussions about policy and guidelines relating to notability of species

This Wikiproject is likely to be interested in the following discussions: Wikipedia talk:Notability#Biology and Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Species notability. Crossroads ^-talk- 02:01, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Reposting these at WP:PALEO and WP:DINO The Morrison Man (talk) 12:23, 26 June 2024 (UTC)

Update: I have posted a draft proposal at WP:Notability (species). It is not yet time to vote. However, if you see errors (e.g., the wrong set of taxonomists) or think it is unclear, please post your comments on the talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:11, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

cite iucn

{{make cite iucn}} will now create a {{cite iucn}} template from the IUCN's Green Status assessment citation. Here is an example from IUCN's Iberian Lynx page:

{{make cite iucn |Ortiz, F.J.S., Carlton, E., Lanz, T. & Breitenmoser, U. 2023. Lynx pardinus (Green Status assessment). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2023: e.T12520A1252020241.Accessed on 30 June 2024.}}

{{cite iucn |author=Ortiz, F.J.S. |author2=Carlton, E. |author3=Lanz, T. |author4=Breitenmoser, U. |year=2023 |type=Green Status assessment |title=''Lynx pardinus'' |volume=2023 |page=e.T12520A1252020241 |doi= |access-date=30 June 2024}}

Ortiz, F.J.S.; Carlton, E.; Lanz, T.; Breitenmoser, U. (2023). "Lynx pardinus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Green Status assessment). 2023: e.T12520A1252020241. Retrieved 30 June 2024.

Category:Cite IUCN maint lists ten articles that have urls that {{cite iucn}} does not recognize as valid (valid urls link to a species assessment page). Grouped by unknown url, these articles are:

|url=https://www.iucnredlist.org/en – reader hostile; it is pointless to link to the IUCN red list as a whole; links should be specific to the species

• Garter snake
• Guzmania teuscheri
• Japanese rice fish
• Plectostoma sciaphilum
• Sarcosoma globosum
• Silky short-tailed bat

|url=https://www.iucnredlist.org/ – reader hostile; as above

• Eremias persica
• Oval electric ray
• South Georgia shag

|url=http://www.iucnredlist.org/search – reader hostile;

• Butia campicola

I intend to modify Module:Cite IUCN to promote unknown url messaging from maintenance to error status.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:54, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Another maintenance message to be promoted to error status is no identifier. At this writing, only one article has a {{cite iucn}} template emitting that message:

• List of carnivorans by population

—Trappist the monk (talk) 15:15, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

In preparation for the above, I have refactored the error messaging code in Module:Cite IUCN. Report any anomalies here.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:23, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

Bamboo coral taxonomic revision

I was trying to find out what bamboo whip coral were (turns out this term just means whip-shaped bamboo coral, and does not refer to a particular species/genus/etc.), when I read a study saying that the family Isididae (what we currently have for bamboo coral) has been shown to be paraphyletic and been split into four separate families. MarineSpecies references the article establishing the revision on the respective pages. I added a statement that it had been shown to paraphyletic. I think the sources are adequate, but because I don't know much about taxonomy, I'm trying to double check here: should the taxonomy be updated? Mrfoogles (talk) 06:43, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

It seems that many of the articles here are cited to MarineSpecies, and it seems reliable, so I've started trying to update a few things. Based on this, though, probably a lot needs to be done Mrfoogles (talk) 02:46, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

Twitter coverage

Yesterday I created a social media account for sharing WikiProject Protista's news, if anyone is interested the link is @WikiProtista. I plan on sharing mainly two things: 1) newly created articles, with at least a brief mention, and 2) newly GA-nominated articles, with a more elaborate thread. All suggestions are welcome! I also made a custom icon which I will soon upload to Wikimedia. — Snoteleks (talk) 20:20, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Don't have a twitter but personally I'll probably look at it if any of it's on Mastodon or something more easily accessible (Twitter makes you log in these days) Mrfoogles (talk) 02:19, 14 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm not accustomed to Mastodon, I would like to make an account there but it seems like I have to choose a server? Any advice? — Snoteleks (talk) 13:20, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

A web search found this directory of servers. Either I'm not finding the correct search term, or there isn't a relevant specialised server. The nearest I'm finding is Scholar.Social. You could always use a general server. Lavateraguy (talk) 19:02, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Upcoming International Botanical Congress vote on "offensive" binomial names

This has been rolling along for a while, but the vote happens this week (see the recent Nature story) there are two main proposals that are being voted on:

• 1. Replacing "caffra"-related names (which are etymologically related to an ethnic slur) to derivatives of "afr" (affects around 218 species)
• 2. A proposal to "create a committee to reconsider offensive and culturally inappropriate names."

I'm not a botanist or involved in the botanical taxonomy community, so I'm not sure what the broader mood within the community is about whether these proposals are likely to pass (they appear to require a 60% supermajority). Obviously there are a group of quite vocal botanists who have made their voice known repeatedly on this issue, the question is whether there voices represent that of the broader botanist community. There does seem to be substantial (around 50%) support for renaming "caffra" related taxa in preliminary polling according to the Nature article, so the issue is worth keeping an eye on. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:13, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

The Botanists seem to be taking a different approach to the AOS where they are openly discussing it rather than imposing it without consulting members. They are proposing changes only to a few particularly egregious names, compared to removal of all bird eponyms from common names, although they are going further by looking at the scientific names, which the AOS is not addressing at this stage.  —  Jts1882 | talk  09:19, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

As someone who has some foot on the botanical community, I guarantee the general mood is against. A compendium of over 1,000 international botanists came together and expressed their opinion on this Bioscience article, which is summarized in this Twitter thread. Basically, we want a universal stable taxonomy, which means we don't want to retroactively change the species names due to subjective socially guided perceptions as it is supposed to be completely separate from social perceptions, and changing it would be incredibly risky for every practical effort of conservation. However, the article also emphasizes that we as taxonomists have a responsibility to name new species in an appropriate manner, and even give representation to local ethnicities, cultures and languages. — Snoteleks (talk) 15:41, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

See (126) Proposal to add a new Article 61.6 to permanently and retroactively eliminate epithets with the root caf(e)r‐ or caff(e)r‐ from the nomenclature of algae, fungi and plants (wiley.com) (square brackets in title replaced by parentheses to avoid breaking WikiPedia syntax).

This is a rules hack - treating "caffra" etc. as orthographical variants to be corrected. This is not etymologically the case, and even somewhat of a stretch semantically - Cis/Transkei is rather narrower than Africa, even if afric- names often referred to South Africa, or other parts of Africa, rather than to the whole continent, but it's not greatly disruptive. (The Nature article is slightly wrong - caffra -> afra (not affra).) I suspect that much opposition will be to the precedent rather than to the proposal.

But there's not really much to discuss here - either it passes and WikiPedia changes the titles of a score or so articles, and the spellings of a few synonyms, or it doesn't pass, and WikiPedia doesn't have to make any changes.

I note that there are 4 names referring to Kafiristan (rather than the more recent Nuristan), and these are all relatively recent (one from 2018), and aren't fixable by this rules hack. Lavateraguy (talk) 20:52, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

I essentially agree with Lavateraguy. Nothing for Wikipedia to discuss as we don't get a vote on this. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 23:18, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

The "afr" vote has passed [1], so we will need to get around to changing the affected articles. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

The search may be helpful. And perhaps this search.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 19:29, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

"caffra" is too narrow - it would miss "caffrum", "caffer" and "caffrorum" and some other variants. See IPNI for a list of relevant names (excluding fungal and algal names). (There are remarkably few false positives - on a cursory skim a few names honouring Caflisch and Cafes (sp?). Lavateraguy (talk) 22:34, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

Ok, try this one.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:49, 18 July 2024 (UTC) 23:01, 18 July 2024 (UTC) (revised for fewer false positives)

Shouldn't we wait for secondary sources to adopt the changes?  —  Jts1882 | talk  19:38, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

My understanding of past discussions is that we have generally deferred to the opinions of the ICN and ICZN over those of secondary sources. The IBC vote has direct power over the ICN, so isn't it effectively equivalent to an ICZN ruling, or an I mistaken? Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:55, 18 July 2024 (UTC)

The last day of the Shenzen IBC was July 29th, and per our article on the ICNafp, that is the day that the Shenzen edition of the code was ratified. The Madrid IBC hasn't even started yet (the nomenclature meetings occur prior to the opening of the main event, and still have a day to go). The Madrid IBC ends on the 27th. There is at least one name that will become a later homonym which will need to have a replacement name published.

Where things are at right now is equivalent to a media organization calling an election for a political candidate, before the election results are certified, and before the candidate takes office. Plantdrew (talk) 01:06, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Before we jump into any conclusions: 1) the Congress hasn't even ended yet. 2) The change will be implemented from 2026 onward. 3) There was also a vote to allow the rejection of new species names (given after 2026) that are derogatory. Let's not make any changes before that date. — Snoteleks (talk) 13:22, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

Are there any potentiel conflicts with any of these name changes? It seems like such a broad stroke for there not to be any preexisting afr- names already in these clades. awkwafaba (📥) 03:21, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Of the subset of these names which are currently accepted there is one which clashes with another name. There is an available synonymous name available, with the result that Plantago cafra is changed to Plantago capillaris. Lavateraguy (talk) 09:17, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

We are already getting IPs making changes, and I think that without a firm position on why they should be reverted they should be allowed. (I've made one move. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:28, 20 July 2024 (UTC)

If they're not official yet as other commenters have suggested, then I moving the articles is jumping the gun. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:50, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, we shouldn't be making the changes now. We make the changes after the relevant sources make the changes (IPNI, POWO, etc.).  —  Jts1882 | talk  10:22, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

As I read the proposal in Taxon, the change would be to Dovyalis afra, not Dovyalis affra. I believe the double-f spelling to be an error introduced in press reports.

"61.6. Epithets with the root caf[f][e]r-, such as cafra, caffra, cafrorum, and cafrum, are not permitted in the nomenclature of organisms covered by this Code. Where these epithets were used in validly pub-lished names, they are to be treated as orthographical variants that are tobe replaced by epithets with the root af[e]r-, such as afra, afrorum, and afrum, respectively"

Lavateraguy (talk) 11:10, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

There's a very good reason that these changes should not yet be allowed: we don't have a reliable source to confirm the new names. As Plantdrew stated above, the IBC hasn't even finished yet, and the exact name changes have not been published - we only have the general rule by which the new names will be decided. This is absolutely jumping the gun and antithetical to WP:V. We should be waiting until the new names are confirmed and published via IPNI/WFO etc. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 11:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Effected articles

Given that the vote will apparently be in effect by the end of the month [2], I thought I would collate an (probably incomplete) list of effected species articles:

• Erythrina caffra
• Rauvolfia caffra
• Kei apple
• Protea caffra
• Senegalia caffra
• Ximenia caffra
• Mimusops caffra
• Erica caffra
• Jubaeopsis (monotypic)
• Combretum caffrum
• Harpephyllum (monotypic)
• Afrosciadium caffrum
• Encephalartos caffer
• Citron melon

There will obviously be genus articles that will also need to have species names changed. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:14, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

CarabCat hijacked site.

CarabCat is a database of members of the ground beetle family Carabidae. It is used by Catalogue of Life, GBIF, and others. Their site, www.carabidfauna2.net, has been compromised and its links now direct users to various unrelated sites of questionable reputation. Links to the CarabCAT URL above are shown on the Catalogue of Life and other sites, and it is the target for at least one CarabCat DOI.

Wikipedia has quite a few articles with references that include the CarabCat URL. (I'm probably responsible for a good number of them.) I think the link and/or references should be removed.

Things like this must happen fairly regularly with Wikipedia. Is there a procedure to fix this? I guess one or more of the following might be in order:

1. See if the makers of the CarabCat database can fix the site, assuming they still own the domain.

2. Remove all the links to CarabCatfauna.net (the old site, 2017) and CarabCatfauna2.net in Wikipedia articles.

3. Remove all the references containing links to CarabCatfauna and CarabCatfauna2 in Wikipedia articles.

4. ????

5. profit.

I can get rid of the references using qBugbot, but I thought there might be someone who has already done this and can take care of it faster, without waiting on me to add the function and get it through the BRFA. Any recommendations?

Bob Webster (talk) 05:36, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Wouldn't the references be accessible using the wayback machine? I'd recommend making a request at Wikipedia:Link rot/URL change requests Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:48, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

The old site also seems to be redirecting to questionable sites, so we need to removed the active urls. If we assume the site owners will fix it, then we shouldn't remove the references entirely at this stage. I found 876 pages with "carabidfauna2.net" (none with "carabidfauna.net"). It might be possible to get a bot to comment out the url's or add archive link while we wait to see if the site is resurrected. I can't remember what information the pages had. If minimal taxonomy they might just rely on checklistbank and CoL, which a number of more specialist datbases are doing recently.  —  Jts1882 | talk  08:16, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk: As the citation guru, can you help with this?  —  Jts1882 | talk  08:20, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

First do step 1 above and tell the site owners about the problem.

All of the results listed in the 876 pages appear to use doi:10.48580/dfqf-3dk which works for me. So, if the site owners cannot or will not get control of their site, step 2 above seems in order. I guess I gotta wonder why that url is in the citation in the first place. If you are sourcing a particular claim in a wikipedia article to an entry in the database why not link to that entry?

If memory serves, Editor User:GreenC has a bot that can fetch an archive of http://www.carabidfauna2.net/. But that might be problematic because links in archived snapshots link to other archived snapshots (which may or may not have been captured). Still, if this is considered to be worthwhile then someone should sort through the snapshots at https://web.archive.org/web/20170815000000*/http://www.carabidfauna2.net/ to find the best pre-hijack snapshot. I see little benefit to doing this.

Further, if this template is representative of the checklist citations (are they all the same?), it is malformed:

{{Cite web |access-date=2023-03-04 |title=Carabcat Database |date=2021 |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |volume=5 |issue=2 |publisher=ChecklistBank |url=http://www.carabidfauna2.net/ |doi=10.48580/dfqf-3dk |doi-access=free }}

{{cite web}} does not support |volume= and |issue=; what are those supposed to refer too? |date= is out of date; current version is dated 2023-11-24 (see doi:10.48580/dfgnm)

If there is to be an effort made to 'fix' these citations en masse, a true and correct template should be formulated and then all instances of the existing templates should be replaced. Better in my mind is to replace each existing template with one that links to the appropriate entry in the database.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:08, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Would a Template:Hijacked (analogous to ) be useful in this context. Lavateraguy (talk) 11:13, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Meh. Do we really need to invent a new template, its associated category(ies), rules for its use, write its documentation, etc? At fewer that 1000 articles, hardly seems worth the effort. And all that such a template would accomplish is the application a salve on the problem leaving the cure for someone else at some later time – yeah, I know, that is the wikipedia way of doing things...

—Trappist the monk (talk) 11:35, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed that all the urls were to the home page. There are two forms of the citations, the one above with 43 uses and another with 833 uses.

The website recommends using CoF to get most of the information and had a simple page to query the database (at checklist, now usurped). I don't think there was a url linking to the search results. Iirc, you had to enter the search terms in a rather unintuitive way using a sortkey. If there is no permalink it might be better to replace them with a CoL citation.  —  Jts1882 | talk  13:23, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

There archived pages at archive.org: the Checklist search page and the FAQS instruction page.  —  Jts1882 | talk  13:38, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Did you try using that archived Checklist search page? When I tried, it purportedly went looking but returned nothing. I even tried their %BATES% example which returned nothing. This is akin to what I wrote above (3rd paragraph).

—Trappist the monk (talk) 14:54, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I tried to do some searches and got a blank. This to be expected as the search calls the php file. Presumably the archive is of the output.

As linking the records is not possible, even if the site is restored, perhaps the best way is to link to CoL, with a citation like these:

{{Cite web |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |title=''Anthia'' (''Anthia'') ''artemis'' Gerstaecker, 1884 |work=Carabcat Database |url=https://www.catalogueoflife.org/data/taxon/5VD3Z |access-date=2023-03-04 |via=Catalogue of Life }}

Lorenz, Wolfgang. "Anthia (Anthia) artemis Gerstaecker, 1884". Carabcat Database. Retrieved 2023-03-04 – via Catalogue of Life.

{{Cite web |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |title=''Anthia'' (''Anthia'') ''artemis'' Gerstaecker, 1884 |work=Carabcat Database |url=https://www.catalogueoflife.org/data/taxon/5VD3Z |access-date=2023-03-04 |publisher=Catalogue of Life }}

Lorenz, Wolfgang. "Anthia (Anthia) artemis Gerstaecker, 1884". Carabcat Database. Catalogue of Life. Retrieved 2023-03-04.

How appropriate is it to treat CarabCat as the |work= and link to the CoL record, with CoL indicated by |publisher= or use |via=?  —  Jts1882 | talk  15:45, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Either will work though I think WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT applies. If we are citing the Catalogue of Life entry for Anthia, then mention of Carabcat Database is not necessary. So:

{{Cite web |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |date=2021-07-29 |title=''Anthia'' (''Anthia'') ''artemis'' Gerstaecker, 1884 |website=Catalogue of Life |url=https://www.catalogueoflife.org/data/taxon/5VD3Z |access-date=2023-03-04 }}

Lorenz, Wolfgang (2021-07-29). "Anthia (Anthia) artemis Gerstaecker, 1884". Catalogue of Life. Retrieved 2023-03-04.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:11, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Trappist is correct the solution is create a best-practice citation, replace all the existing. Should not be difficult, if someone can design a best version citation. It appears the DOIs link has the needed information. The URL is toast though, no web archives. -- GreenC 15:35, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

I had an edit conflict and have partially ansered this in my reply to Trappist above,with possible citations combining the CoL and CarabCat references. Most of the instances I checked had CoL and CarabCat references together and defined in the {{reflist}}. Combining them might be possible.  —  Jts1882 | talk  15:49, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

For a bot conversion, given this:

{{Cite web |access-date=2023-03-04 |title=Carabcat Database |date=2021 |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |volume=5 |issue=2 |publisher=ChecklistBank |url=http://www.carabidfauna2.net/ |doi=10.48580/dfqf-3dk |doi-access=free }}

It would probably need something like this:

{{Cite journal |last1=Lorenz |first1=Wolfgang |journal=Catalog of Life Checklist |publisher=ChecklistBank |title=Carabcat Database |date=2021 |volume=5 |issue=2 |doi=10.48580/dfqf-3dk |doi-access=free }}

Lorenz, Wolfgang (2021). "Carabcat Database". Catalog of Life Checklist. 5 (2). ChecklistBank. doi:10.48580/dfqf-3dk.

-- GreenC 16:16, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Carabcat Database is not a journal. I still think that it is wrong to link to only the Carabcat Database or its landing page at Catalog of Life; that is like citing the whole of Encyclopedia Britannica for a single bit of information. Essentially you are saying to the reader: 'Here are 50,000 pages; you find the right one.' Don't do that. If Carabcat Database/Catalog of Life supports statements in one of our articles, cite (and link to) the appropriate place in the database; omit Carabcat Database/Catalog of Life cites else.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:11, 21 July 2024 (UTC)