Wikispecies:Village Pump

Welcome to the village pump of Wikispecies.

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Jiamjit Boonsom

Is there any evidence that Jiamjit Boonsom made a contribution to taxonomy? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:49, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Is very involved with zooplankton, I did not explore very thoroughly. Neferkheperre (talk) 14:38, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

At first glance, no. Not in Algaebase, not in IPNI, not in Zoobank, not in his ResearchGate profile (including in the three papers uploaded to said profile). if it happened, though, it was sometime in the 70s to 90s, possibly in hard-to-find material. Since there is no wikilink or even mentions of him on Wikispecies under either names, I believe that alone to be justification for deleting the page. We can recreate them if evidence turns up later. Circeus (talk) 14:51, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

The page appears to have been created with an anonymous IP who just gave a brief Wikipedia-style description of her with no sources and nothing else. Doesn't seem like it was made as a taxon author page for Wikispecies at all. Monster Iestyn (talk) 17:30, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

What I did find earlier was a book on freshwater zooplankton of Thailand. As it cost 30.00 USD, I left it alone. There are other pubs on similar topics. His wife was involved in describing at least 2 species of fish. He may have done some taxonomic work in this regard. The couple seem to make their living developing edible algae, thus associate fauna would be of interest. Neferkheperre (talk) 20:07, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Jiamjit Boonsom is the wife. Their "Boonsom Spirulina Farm" web page speaks of "Ms. Jiamjit Boonsom" (1966) and "Mrs. Jiemjit [sic] Boonsom’s Biography" (born in Lampang in May 15, 1941). Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:09, 2 May 2021 (UTC).

Also, neither Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (CoF) nor FishBase seems to have any record of an author named "Boonsom", but their databases are sometime tricky and/or slow to search. Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:15, 2 May 2021 (UTC).

@Monster Iestyn: ResearchGate is known to auto-populate author pages based on author names. We may be looking at one of those pages. But does anyone here know Thai? This individual may have published materials in Thai and a search of this author's name in Thai may turn something up. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:36, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

From what I can see they have 3 pubs at google scholar Search Here one of which is a list of species from Thailand. However they do not seem to have named any taxa just produced a checklist. Searching in Thai sites did not yield anything new to the discussion either. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 22:17, 2 May 2021 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: I've seen bot-created pages on ReasearchGate before. This doies not appear to be one of them. Circeus (talk) 13:19, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

• Yes Jiamjit Boonsom is a woman, in addition of all that is written above she is also well known to have isolated several microalgae strains, and to have developed the cultivation method of microalgae, especially of spiruline. Christian Ferrer (talk) 09:34, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Some data in the primary database will soon be in read-only mode for a short time

Hello fellow Wikispecians!

Some services will be in read-only for a short time on 2021-05-05 at 06:00 AM UTC.

During the restart time (expected to be around 60 seconds or so) all the components and extensions that use the x1 database will be read-only.

Things that might experience some issues when creating new writes:

• New short urls cannot be created
• Email bounces from lists might not get recorded
• There might be issues with new translations
• New items on the notification list might fail, some notifications may not be delivered
• Reading lists might not record new items added to "bookmark" or "read it later" feature

A banner will be displayed on all wikis 30 minutes before this read-only time.

Please see Phabricator maniphests T281212 and T281375 for details.

Best regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:16, 4 May 2021 (UTC).

Wait a minute. There's a read-it-later feature?? Circeus (talk) 13:18, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Quite frankly I'm not sure, but I think that part is specific to email lists. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:42, 4 May 2021 (UTC).

Candidates for speedy deletion

Hello. @Estopedist1: seems to wish to have deleted all pages for authorities who have not authored a taxon - see Candidates for speedy deletion. I would like to canvass fellow editors on this approach, as it seems somewhat excessive and could involve the deletion of a very large numbers of authority pages. In the meantime I suggest the requested deletions are left alone pending discussion. Over to the community. Andyboorman (talk) 13:22, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Andy. In my opinion we need to first study each page one by one rather than start an uninhibited mass-deletion of author pages. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:40, 4 May 2021 (UTC).

Estonia-related scientists are marked as "to be deleted" who are not eligible for WS. I did quite thorough searching but definitely not exhaustive. Let me know if some of them are actually taxon authorities, so I can add them to enwiki--Estopedist1 (talk) 15:51, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Why are they not eligible for WS, if they have authored a paper or book that is used to construct an taxon page? Are you maintaining that only authors that name a taxon belong on WS? Not sure that is what I understand when we use {{A}} in a list of references or the name section, neither is that apparent when examining the list of botanists, for example. Andyboorman (talk) 17:11, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

If they are not authors that have named a taxon, then at the very least they don't belong in Category:Taxon authorities surely? Otherwise, there seems to be precedent in Village Pump for deleting pages for people who are not taxon authors. In fact there's another discussion going on right now whether to delete another page for the same reason. Monster Iestyn (talk) 21:14, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

I also do not agree that actually naming a taxon is a requirement here, some people have done significant research to rearrange currently named taxa, produced major checklists, keys, authoritative books etc. They are also needed here. I wish to see viewpoints and consideration before I will delete any of these. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 01:33, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

A Taxon authority is not the same as a Taxon author, at least for the reason that Scott mentions. Perhaps this discussion has highlighted that we need a separate category for Taxon author. I am not a fan of ever increasing categories on WS, but this is perhaps the exception that proves a rule. Andyboorman (talk) 06:55, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

I am currently editing eponyms of botanists, some of them do not have edited taxa but in their time, before 1753, they published botanical books that are the basis for current knowledge. I think the taxa of these scientific eminences should be respected.--MILEPRI (talk) 08:15, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

I've said before that I think we should not have separate pages for authors whose work is not clearly taxonomic in nature. So my general sentiment is approval of Estopedist1's work. It's usually fairly self-evident whether an author (as noted by Scott and MILEPRI) with no formal taxa authored belongs in that category nonetheless. A quick review of four names in the category in question find that Kessy Abarenkov (nontaxonomic molecular work) and Imre Taal (fish ecology) clearly do not belong—in fact Template:Verliin et al., 2016 doesn't belong here in the first place as far as I'm concerned. on the upside, Siiri Jürgenstein clearly does (Kurina & Jürgenstein, 2013). Mari Ivask is less clear. She seems to be primarily involved in soil ecology/pedobiology (having also published on earthworms), but she also published myriapod checklists for Estonia on the side. No new taxonomical acts as far as I can tell, tho. Circeus (talk) 11:41, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

I draw this discussion to this paragraph Global Taxonomy Initiative, CBD. This indicates how difficult it could be to delineate we should not have separate pages for authors whose work is not clearly taxonomic in nature. Without binding agreement on what actually is ...taxonomic in nature, it will then be down to the judgement of individual editors. However, I agree that Template:Verliin et al., 2016 has little or no relevance to taxonomy, but then deleting all of the authors without wider analysis must be beyond the scope of speedy deletion. In addition, I think we can not make a blanket statement that a taxonomical act is the only reason for becoming categorised as a WS Taxonomic authority. Andyboorman (talk) 12:30, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

• The authors of the papers were recombinations are done are also very welcome, even when, strictly speaking, they have no taxa under their name. Christian Ferrer (talk) 13:47, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

The taxon authority area can be very fuzzy and complex. Mostly, taxa are authored by people well studied in their area. However, we have instances such as Anna V. Buising. She is a structural geologist who found a strange barnacle while researching her thesis. This was described as Balanus canabus Zullo & Buising, 1989. She has since remained in structural geology and has never again done any paleontology. By criteria here, she is taxon author. She actually is, this one time.

In reality, naming new taxa is example of nomenclatural act, subset of taxonomic act. Generic re-assignments, revisions, synonymizing, etc. are all taxonomic acts. Neotype and lectotype selection can be regarded as nomenclatural acts, as Codes in recent years require selection of name-bearing types as mandatory for properly naming a new species. In recent years, DNA analysis is becoming more and more important in taxonomy, and many discussions are ongoing on what degree of importance should be placed. DNA's exact place in taxonomy is quite unsettled. Thus, what we need to do is not limit inclusion into taxon authority, or create any additional categories at this time. Neferkheperre (talk) 20:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

And yet I insist on a base fact, if an author is not linked from within wikispecies, the author has no business existing. if I delete Template:Verliin et al., 2016, then none of these authors (none of which are taxonomically relevant whatsoever as far as I've verified, in case you wondered) have a link, and I intend to get rid of the whole batch. Circeus (talk) 02:04, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

---

Given this discussion can we now agree that taxon author is not the same as taxon authority and as the Category and Pages are for Taxon Authorities not "Taxon Authors" then the criteria for inclusion in this Category are relatively wide. In addition, sources for References can use material which does not include taxa authorship, as long as the editor finds relevance to taxonomy. Best regards Andyboorman (talk) 07:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

I've said for a long time that properly documented inclusion policies and a style guide overhaul are long overdue. For example I'm pretty sure the Help pages do not specify that we generally do not want full pages for synonyms, and that there is no documentation anywhere about disambiguation pages. While the existence of journal ISSN pages is briefly mentioned, nothing is said about their formatting, while nonserial publications pages are not mentioned at all. The often noted lack of agreement about said formatting is an obvious and direct consequence of that. Circeus (talk) 13:53, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

'Wikidata and the Bibliography of Life'

This paper may be of interest:

Roderic D. M. Page (4 May 2021), Wikidata and the Bibliography of Life, doi:10.1101/2021.05.04.442638, Wikidata Q106727511

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:57, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Help Pages Reptile Names

I have added this Help:Name section#Special: Reptile and Amphibian Nomenclature with respect to the nomenclature of Hoser. Reptile Database, TTWG, ITIS, COL etc will not be using his nomenclature in the future and neither should we. Any names post 2000 need to be deleted. When adding new names we should no longer add any names from this author. Wuster et al with support of 464 individual herpetologists, Kaiser et al with support of over 600 herpetologists and all major Herp Societies have in essence followed the recommendations of Krell, 2021, who says that its up to community consensus on how to deal with Taxonomic Vandalism. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 05:58, 9 May 2021 (UTC)

Hi Scott, might it be good to include the link to Krell, 2021 reference cited somewhere in that Help page, also maybe hyperlink other key ones? Cheers Tony Tony 1212 (talk) 18:40, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

I can add links to all the papers cited in that statement, I will put a references list at the bottom of it later today, cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 18:55, 10 May 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Scott, great initiative! Regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk),19:32, 13 May 2021 (UTC).

Odonata taxonomy

The taxonavigation section of our Odonata page (i.e. dragonflies and damselflies) is probably incorrect, messy or at least out of date. Please help out fixing it if you can! Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 21:57, 12 May 2021 (UTC).

Template:Author2

Last September, I deleted {{Author2}}, which was created in March 2020.

It was speedily deleted at the request of User:Estopedist1 who noted when tagging it that "The template was used years ago, when we haven't HotCat script"; I concurred it was unused, and further noted that it was non-standard.

In talk:Pigsonthewing&oldid=8322793 this comment on my talk page, its creator User:Pitke disputes this, and accuses me of deleting the template improperly.

I have therefore restored the template in order that a community discussion as to its merits can take place.

It should not be used in main space, until consensus to adopt it is shown.

Pitke also comments that the template "saved a lot of work for me"; I would respectfully suggest that any editor wishing to use a template for such purposes should either bring it to the community to seek widespread adoption; or apply their template through substitution, such that it leaves behind templates and other markup that their fellow editors expect to find.

I also note {{Repo inline}}, another non-standard template by the same editor, with fewer than 200 transclusions. Is there consensus to use this? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:40, 26 May 2021 (UTC)

I think that having two templates to format and link author names may invite errors to the many "Taxa by author" categories we use. The only practical difference between the two templates is that the more commonly used {{a}} template does not automatically add the page to a "Taxa by author" category, whereas the {{Author2}} does. We should bear in mind that the vast majority of authors listed on taxon pages aren't the ones who actually described that particular taxon. Quite the contrary: most of them are only referred to as writers of additional publications, or the authors of synonyms. Such writers/authors should of course not have those particular taxon names atomatically listed in their "Taxa by author" categories. Hence I argue that we should delete the {{Author2}} template, since it may be unnecessarily confusing for new and inexperienced users to know which of the {{a}} and {{Author2}} templates to use. In my opinion the current praxis to use the {{a}} template and then manually add specific "Taxa by author" categories works well.

The non-standard {{Repo inline}} template is easy to use, but has its shortcomings. First of all it was created five and a half years after the standard {{Repository link}} one (or {{rl}} for short). Furthermore, as of this writing it's only used on 128 pages, compared to 31,868 for the standard one. But above all it lacks some of the functionality found in the standard template, most notably how to render text. For example the Swedish Museum of Natural History (SMNH) is often referred to as "NRM" in older literature. "NRM" is short for Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet, i.e. a Swedish short form meaning "Natural history (state) museum". The trouble is that the actual Wikispecies page is called SMNH rather than "NRM", and using the template as {{Repository link|NRM}} leads to a redirect page, and then to the proper SMNH page. However the standard tempate can deal with this: the code string {{Repository link|SMNH|NRM}} will render the text "NRM" but link directly to SMNH, without a redirect. The non-standard {{Repo inline}} lacks this feature.

I propose we replace all current instances of the non-standard template with the standard {{Repository link}} one, and then delete it. I can set up a semi-automatic bot to do the necessary replacements before deletion: replacing 128 occurrences will only take 30–40 minutes or so. Kind regards, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 05:03, 27 May 2021 (UTC).

I think that I have said this before, but here goes again. WS is a taxonomy database and really should not be used by editors for private experiments. Of course developments should be encouraged, but before use it is reasonable that editors bring them to the pump for comment. If the community reject these developments then they become deprecated, if not we all can use them. As to the above, I would advise that {{Repo inline}} be rejected and instances replaced with {{Repository link}}. As to {{Author2}}, I do not see any obvious benefits that could not be obtained by modifying {{A}} indeed if this is required. Andyboorman (talk) 08:54, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. The {{a}} template could rather easily be modified, adding for example a |cat=yes and/or |cat=y parameter to automatically add a "Taxa by author" category, if desired. The template can be set to ignore the new parameter if given any other value than "yes" or "y", or if the parameter is left out altogether. This would ensure that the updated {{a}} template is backwards compatible with the old one on all the +30,000 pages where it is already used. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 09:56, 27 May 2021 (UTC).

Comment: HotCat was definitely around when I created Author2, and I am very familiar with using it on Commons where I do most of my work. The nature of my editing at the time relied on using page shortcuts and HotCat would necessitated the locating and clicking of a button. But that hardly matters now. My experience in other wikis has been that suggesting changes to current, widely used templates is usually fruitless, and that providing an example of the proposed functionality with a sample template will speed things along because users will be able to see the difference instead of trying to parse it from possibly very technical language. I'm also still just beginning to understand and remain somewhat intimidated by the local wiki culture, so singularly focused on recording taxonomic info that, say, etymology may only be recorded as a category, and if related to a taxonomist, an unreferenced line. Support: Having said that, since Repository link exists, has better functionality, and doesn't seem to have the inline issue I think I created Repolink for, I have zero issues with deprecating the few repo link templates I've created and moving on to using RL in my editing. As for Author2, I'm completely fine with using A instead and adding an option for |cat=1. --Pitke (talk) 16:36, 27 May 2021 (UTC)