Template talk:taxon

Discussion
Lets add Category:Taxonomic names into the template? Mutante 13:24, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I meant inside Mutante 13:33, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The template uses template, so the category is included.--Jyril 15:34, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Category:Mushrooms
The various "Cortinarius" taxonomic names in Category:Mushrooms should be moved into Category:mul:Mushrooms. How to do that using this template? Mutante 22:12, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Just remove the "t=" parameter. --EncycloPetey 22:17, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Miscategorizes by language
This puppy, which should only be used in translingual, categorizes into an en category. DCDuring TALK 04:47, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Taxonomy is not a context.
This template produces a context tag as if taxonomic names were only used by taxonomists or only in taxonomic discussions. This is obviously the opposite of true: most taxonomic terms would not be understood by taxonomists, but would be understood by at least some zoologists, entomologists, ichthyologists, botanists, etc., depending on the term. DCDuring TALK 21:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

What about obsolete taxa, less-used synonyms?
Is a taxonomic name that is no longer preferred "obsolete"? What makes a term "obsolete" for this purpose? It seems that the terms continue in use and are recognized so we must not be talking about the same sense of "obsolete" as in the rest of the dictionary. Do we need different context labels, like "deprecated", "superseded", "not current", "disputed"? DCDuring TALK 19:34, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Not well suited for bi- and tri-nonial taxonomic names
This template seems a little lame for binomial names, repeating what is inherently obvious to anyone who knows the grammar of taxonomic names. It is useful, I suppose for someone who doesn't remember what the first part of a binomial name is a genus.

I would not even try to use it for tripartite names.

Perhaps binomials could use something a bit more specific (yuck, yuck), conveying whether the species is the sole known, sole known living, or type species for the genus, and possibly with some better wording.

The main rationale for having species names, it seems to me is that they often correspond to the referent natural kind of vernacular names. Sometimes this goes as far as trinomial names, so we should consider how to handle them as well. Initially, they will just be hyponyms under the species as required. DCDuring TALK 18:57, 8 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Monotypic genus entries especially should be tagged as such and allow listing of their associated species. Pengo (talk) 02:05, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I have in the meanwhile begun to almost always use "family" for parm2 and the family's name for parm3 for all names 'below' family. This makes this much less lame. It also has the advantage of keeping a reference to the longstanding taxonomic names at the family level instead of the ever-increasing number of intervening sub- (and infra- etc) and super- taxonomic names and phylogenetic clades. "Order", "class", "phylum", and "kingdom" play similar roles for higher taxa. DCDuring TALK 02:35, 7 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Some day we can do something about the monotypic taxa, but some of the monotypic are only monotypical if we limit ourselves to extant taxa. For example, Platanistidae, which has but one extant species. Fossilworks has opened my eyes to the number of fossil taxa. DCDuring TALK 02:40, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Alternative hypernyms?
See Hyaenidae. DCDuring TALK 20:39, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅. A better place to ask for this would have been the Grease Pit. --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 23:11, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for trying. This repair has extinguished the link to the items occupying the slot unless the wikilink brackets are added. As all but one instance of usage of this don't have the brackets, this is not desirable. Accordingly, I have reverted the change. DCDuring TALK 15:37, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I unreverted, but this time I didn't give square brackets to the #ifexist. I think it should be fine now for all cases (yet another reason to ask at the Grease Pit, where somebody who can actually program well can do it for you). --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:12, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Same problem. The entry I was working on Inga has a blacklink for Ingeae where it should have a colored one, red now. The problem has probably been addressed before. It isn't urgent, but now that I know that it is not simple, I will take it GP. DCDuring TALK 00:21, 6 October 2012 (UTC)
 * This is very frustrating to me. It looks like it's just a parser function manipulation problem, but since I failed twice, I guess I'll leave it to someone else. Oh, by the way, it looked good to me after looking at the doc page, so make sure it isn't a caching problem. --Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 00:27, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikidata possibilities
Looking at the parameters that this template currently takes, I see some options for using Wikidata to retrieve them. See for example. I'm not sure if this would completely work. The Wikidata entry lists as the parent taxon, but in our own  entry, the parent is, a family. It is possible to go up the taxon tree until you find a taxon whose rank is "family", but this needs to be coded into the template specifically. I don't know what is the most desirable here. —Rua (mew) 18:13, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The current taxon type can be retrieved from the "taxon rank" property
 * The parent taxon can be retrieved from the "parent taxon" property, and its own name and rank can then be retrieved.
 * The colloquial name should probably not be taken from Wikidata, to alleviate any concerns of using Wikidata for lexical content.
 * Topical categories can perhaps be automated as well.
 * I've thought about this a little.
 * No major problem with "taxon rank".
 * As you note, the "parent taxon" does not correspond to what I insert in . I have chosen to limit parent taxa to family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, omitting clade, tribe, and the various sub-, super-, infra-, and parv- ranks unless circumstances force me to resort to other taxa. These unprefixed taxa have a longer history and will probably be more stable than the prefixed ones.
 * I don't see why we wouldn't take their English vernacular names and place them under Synonyms.
 * Chuck handles topical categories, probably in a way not entirely consistent with their approach.
 * Additional content that would help includes:
 * Translations.
 * Identifiers ("IDs"). Six of the ones in Martes are ones that I use in our Martes entry. DCDuring (talk) 19:55, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The IDs would be the area that would probably save me the most effort, even though they don't necessarily cover all the references that I would use. I would need a template the Lua for which grabbed any ID that was on a list of ones we use and inserted it into something appropriate for the search syntax (or API) of the sources that used the ID. This could make the References/"Further reading" section more attractive. DCDuring (talk) 19:55, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Do I understand then that the procedure for finding the parent taxon to display is to go up the taxon tree, stopping once you've reached a taxon whose rank is one of family, order, class, phylum, kingdom?
 * Right now the matter is only about this one specific template, so synonyms and translations are not relevant for the moment. Wikidata may be of use for those things, but not within . However, here is my analysis of other things in taxonomic entries:
 * Hypernyms showing the whole taxonomic tree would be easy to generate.
 * Hyponyms would not be possible, since Wikidata doesn't indicate within a particular taxon which subtaxons it contains.
 * Interproject links could also be generated easily, Wikidata includes those. Even the ITIS number is in Wikidata.
 * Vernacular names could be used as synonyms, but doesn't list any. Perhaps not something to rely on for now.
 * The name that is listed in parameter 4 of suffers from the same problem. There is currently no way to get the current text listed on, namely  , from Wikidata. We'll have to continue to specify this parameter ourselves.
 * Same problem for translations as well, which are essentially vernacular names in all languages. Moreover, I think we should limit translations to English entries to avoid duplication.
 * What do you mean by IDs? —Rua (mew) 20:36, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
 * The IDs I refer to are the taxonomic-name identifiers used in the various taxonomic databases that are linked references. Most sites have their own unique identifiers, usually numbers, occasionally more arbitrary ASCII strings. DCDuring (talk) 14:32, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Redlinked display of parameter 4
The fourth parameter, where a large part of the definition should be, displays with a redlink if there is no wikilink or template in its content. Many definitions use no words that are wikilinked or templated. Some use no words that should be wikilinked or templates (eg, "certain plants"). Even if there are words that should arguably be wikilinked or templated, it does not seem productive to spend time inserting such links and templates. Can the performance be corrected to show unlinked/untemplate parameter 4 text as black? DCDuring (talk) 14:28, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
 * This is an illustration. For many definitions certain is a marker for the potential to improve the definition. The ugliness increases with the length of the text, with can consist of as many of a dozen words none of which need linking or templating. DCDuring (talk) 14:38, 26 April 2018 (UTC)