Template talk:Taxonomy/Scomberomorini

what is this?

what is this? Pikachu Bros. (talk) 17:03, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

That's a valid question – one that I would have asked two days ago, until I happily stumbled onto these pages... This is a {{taxonomy}} template, intended to be used in conjunction with the {{Automatic taxobox}} and {{Speciesbox}} display templates. Using the older, static {{Taxobox}}, one must manually specify the Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species, etc. in the pages for each and every species. Naturally, in a family of hundreds of species, for example, it's hard to keep them all consistent with one another, and if a change is required, it must be made on each page.

In my case, I've been looking at the Scombridae family, which includes the tunas, mackerels, spanish mackerels and bonitos – in all, 51 species, 15 genera, 4 tribes, and a handful of subspecies, subgenera and subfamilies for good measure – and frankly, almost every one of them has an incomplete taxobox. Since i need to touch each page anyhow, I might as well switch them to automatic, so that maintenance will be easier going forward.

There's great documentation, including an Introduction, which explains the {{Taxonomy}} templates, and also the main page. Grollτech (talk) 18:17, 1 November 2012 (UTC)