Template talk:Fossilworks

Changing Fossilworks to paleobiodb.org

@YorkshireExpat: I'm not sure changing the link to https://paleobiodb.org is the appropriate. I had problems over the weekend with fossilworks failing, but it was working earlier today. The two sites are very closely related, but not exactly the same. —  Jts1882 | talk  20:20, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jts1882: Ah right, I thought it was a mirror or rebranding or similar. Fossilworks seems to have been down for a week or more. I was following a link from a taxonbar, so was following Wikidata's lead, but appreciate that may not be the correct thing. Happy for you to revert, but it seems, at least in the short term, it will lead to a lot of dead references. YorkshireExpat (talk) 20:34, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jts1882: FYI this link just worked for me! Also interesting info. YorkshireExpat (talk) 20:42, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@YorkshireExpat: Fossilworks seems to be on and off for me. It was working again for a while, but then failed again.

A while ago, I spent some time looking at the relationship between Fossilworks and PaleoDB. If you compare the Fossilworks and PaleoDB pages there are minor differences. I can't get examples now as Fossilworks is down, but I might have them noted down somewhere. The difference could be because the two interfaces extract data with different algorithms from identical databases or possibly that there are differences in the data in the two databases. The FAQs indicate the Fossilworks database gets changes in PaleoDB daily, but it doesn't say the exchange is two-way.

So if it can be avoided, the Fossilworks template shouldn't redirect to PaleoDB, but obviously it's better than nothing. Let's leave your change and see if Fossilworks comes back in a stable form. —  Jts1882 | talk  17:48, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jts1882: No problem. I will keep an eye and revert as and when I can. I agree the situation isn't ideal at the moment. YorkshireExpat (talk) 18:36, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

@YorkshireExpat: Fossilworks was there all along, it just needed the "www." in the url. I noticed in Firefox that their security page was briefly appearing before redirecting to the page not found page. I tried Edge and that gave some info and suggested running Windows Network Diagnostics (Chrome does the same), which suggested using www.fossilworks.org instead of fossilworks.org to the url. I'm not sure what changed but it might be to do with browser security standards. It seems unlikely that it would be a change on fossilworks itself. —  Jts1882 | talk  12:00, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jts1882: Yes, that's better now. Good sleuthing! YorkshireExpat (talk) 12:02, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jts1882: I've fixed Wikidata now, so taxonbars should be back to normal too. YorkshireExpat (talk) 17:35, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I saw that when I went to attempt the fix. Glad you got there first. I understand the formatter url, but not the URL match pattern or format as regex entries.

Some of the taxonbars are still showing older dead or paleobiodb links, but this is the caching. A null edit fixes them. —  Jts1882 | talk  14:32, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Now I can compare the two. Take Giraffa as an example on fossilworks] and [paleobiodb]. There are some small differences in the taxon record:

1. Fossilworks gives the PaleoDB taxon number.
2. Fossilworks gives "Ecology: scansorial browser", whereas Paleobiodb has "Ecology: ground dwelling browser"
3. Fossilworks has an "Environments" and "Age range" section, , whereas Paleobiodb has neither
4. Fossilworks reports 171 collection and Paleobiodb reports 177.

In the latter case it seems fossilworks is choosing not to count some (possibly as indeterminate), as the Algeria collection (on the Paleobiodb Giraffa page) does have a record on fossilworks (see here). I still can't decide if the databases are slightly different or whether its just how they use and display the same data. —  Jts1882 | talk  15:06, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Thousands of plain and cite web citations using the now bad link

The link in the template is now working, but there are thousands of citations using the now dead links. This probably needs a bot request to fix. A simple replacement of the url would be relatively straightforward, but this might be the opportunity to change citations to use the {{fossilworks}} template or an improved version wrapping cite web (e.g. {{fossilworks/sandbox}}). However, this might be complicated as the citations and urls take many forms:

• Search insource:"http://fossilworks.org/" finds 7208 results
• Search insource:"at [[Fossilworks]].org</ref>" finds 1209 bare references with the following form:

References

• Search insource:"a=taxonInfo&taxon_no=" 2271 results, which can be in several forms:
  • Search insource:"http://fossilworks.org/?a=taxonInfo&taxon_no=" 552 results
  • Search insource:"http://fossilworks.org/bridge.pl?a=taxonInfo&taxon_no=" 1595 results
  • Search insource:"http://fossilworks.org/cgi-bin/bridge.pl?a=taxonInfo&taxon_no=" 147 results
• The taxonInfo searches also take a few other forms:
  • Search insource:"http://fossilworks.org/bridge.pl?action=taxonInfo&taxon_no=" 166 results
  • Search insource:"http://fossilworks.org/bridge.pl?taxon_no=" [... &action=taxonInfo] 13 results
• There are also urls using the forms a=collectionSearch&collection_no=" (~500) and a=collectionSearch&collection_no=" (~20).

The above is not a complete, but illustrates that an upgrade might be difficult. —  Jts1882 | talk  15:35, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jts1882: An excellent example of why templates should be used when they exist! YorkshireExpat (talk) 22:38, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Templates have their own problems. For example, what if the site migrated only some of the URLs and those left behind are dead links. This is typically what happens. Templates thus create link rot as they can only do all or nothing. They also require special bots to work with unlike CS1|2 templates which have standardized tools. -- GreenC 21:33, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Bot request

A bot request was made Wikipedia:Link_rot/URL_change_requests#Fossilworks. It looks like the site did a URL migration. My bot can do that. Here are the links and a first pass on the rules:

It looks complicated butI think it's actually easy. Just delete the part of the URL to the left of the "?" and replace with "https://www.fossilworks.org/cgi-bin/bridge.pl" so for example:

http://fossilworks.org/bridge.pl?a=displayInterval&interval_no=733 -> https://www.fossilworks.org/cgi-bin/bridge.pl?a=displayInterval&interval_no=733

That's it, should work for most of them except rule 5 which will require special handling. The bot will test the new URL if not working add an archive URL otherwise a {{dead link}} or flip an existing |url-status=live to dead. -- GreenC 20:58, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

It would be better to use http://www.fossilworks.org/cgi-bin/bridge.pl for the home page (or with ?action=home). If you just use http://www.fossilworks.org, the totals and feature species doesn't display and the search doesn't work (for the same reason why we have all the dead links). The full url gives a page that has the same welcome message and is fully functional. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:42, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes I see they are different. Alright will use the new form. Already did 1,000 articles, will return and fix those. -- GreenC 16:11, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

 Done done. All former http://fossilworks.org URLs should be working now, migrated to the new form. There were about 10,000 URLs in 7,300 articles. -- GreenC 04:08, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Edit request: Clean up "postscript=" field

Greetings and felicitations. Would someone (I see that you, Jts1882, are still an active Wiki editor) please be so kind as to clean up the hanging "postscript=" field? I'm afraid I can't see where it's transcluded from. —DocWatson42 (talk) 04:00, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

This seems to me a good use of the postscript field, doing what it says on the tin, adding a postscript of the form "from the Paleobiology Database" after the "Retrieved <date>". Using postscript exclusively to determine the terminal punctuation is a strange choice and enforcing that with warnings even stranger. There should be a way of suppressing the warning when it is deliberate (e.g. the ((...)) used with other parameters. I haven't found a good way of indicating a database a particular source uses. Publisher and via don't convey the correct relationship. Agency might be an option as in where the information came from.

As an aside |postscript=none also gives the maintenance message, despite being covered in the documentation. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:25, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I've changed the citation to remove the warning message. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:31, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Discussion on future of Fossilworks and PBDB

Fossilworks is down again. There are discussions at Wikipedia Palaeontology and Wikidata:

• Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Palaeontology#Fossilworks_and_Paleobiology_Database_(PBDB),_revisited
• d:Wikidata_talk:WikiProject_Taxonomy#Fossilworks_not_working,_time_to_switch_to_Palaeobiology_Database?

There is also an old discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Palaeontology/Archive_16#Fossilworks_and_Paleobiology_Database_(PBDB) —  Jts1882 | talk  15:41, 29 March 2024 (UTC)