User talk:BilledMammal/NSPECIES

Based on the various discussions recent discussions there is some support for suitable species articles being upmerged, but only if it is done correctly and in consultation with the various relevant wikiprojects. Using this discussions I have drafted a guideline that would describe how and when this should be done; it needs significant work, and templates to suitably display the taxonbar would need to be developed, but I hope it is a suitable start:

@Plantdrew and Dyanega: BilledMammal (talk) 05:32, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm starting some sections/threads which I intend to expand later. I think there are several issues that may be conflated here; WHEN to upmerge, HOW to upmerge, and WHETHER to upmerge. Plantdrew (talk) 03:57, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: Thank you. I'm still planning to proceed with this when I have time. BilledMammal (talk) 17:12, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

@BilledMammal:, not sure if you've seen it, but there's been another discussion about notability of species since you were last active; Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)/Archive_39#Wikipedia:Notability_(biology). And there is already a proposed guideline at Wikipedia:Notability (biology) that hasn't really gone anywhere. Plantdrew (talk)

I was aware of the proposed guideline, but not of that discussion; I will read through it, thank you. BilledMammal (talk) 17:44, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Upmerging substubs and stubs (WHEN)

There are thousands of substub articles on species with a boilerplate sentence that prosifies the taxobox. If there is a single statement of fact that isn't represented in boiler plate prose of the taxobox, it is most likely the range of the species. It may be beneficial to readers to upmerge substubs on species to a genus article with a table that gives range (and some other minimal information; synonyms, subspecies). There are some more developed articles (stubs but not substubs), that could be candidates for upmerging into a genus article that goes into more detail about a small number of species.Plantdrew (talk) 03:57, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Reader benefit

Lists of species in a genus article are more beneficial to readers when ranges are included. Plantdrew (talk) 03:57, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Editor cost

Tables are more difficult to edit than bare lists. Upmerging species substubs requires some effort from editors. Editors could also expend that effort on expanding substubs.Plantdrew (talk) 03:57, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

How to upmerge (HOW)

Guidance on best practices when upmerging species is warranted. This seems to be the meat of BilledMammal/NSPECIES as it currently exists. Plantdrew (talk) 03:57, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Notability of species (WHETHER)

This is contentious. Whether Wikipedia should potentially have articles/redirects for "every described" species is a different question than WHEN and HOW to deal with species substubs. Wikipedia doesn't remotely have (or have any intention of having) articles for "every described" species; described species considered by taxonomic consensus to be synonyms don't have articles, fossil species don't have articles, and species in monotypic genera don't have articles. Plantdrew (talk) 03:57, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: Would the general principle that every described species is worthy of coverage in Wikipedia, but not necessary as a standalone article, be appropriate? BilledMammal (talk) 05:56, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

@BilledMammal: I can only speak for myself, but I don't think coverage necessarily requires a stand-alone article. I previously pointed out Apororhynchus as an example of a genus article that does a fine job of covering all of the included species.

However, I must ask what do you see as the benefit of upmerging species articles? There is a certainly a cost in editor effort to execute upmerges.

Upmerging would reduce the number of very short articles (readers using the random article function do notice that Wikipedia has many short articles, and that has been commented on in various places).

Perhaps upmerging would make other sites with more information than Wikipedia has rank higher in search engine results? I'm not sure exactly what Google would end up doing if a bunch of species articles were upmerged. If Google continues to favor Wikipedia, but just returns a genus article with little information on the species rather than favoring other sites with (possibly) more information, I don't see much benefit.

Upmerging won't necessarily increase the quality of information on Wikipedia for a particular species (that a reader might search for specifically without using random article) that currently has an article that is of very short and of little use to the reader (for my personal use of Wikipedia as a reader, the taxonbar adds redeeming value to many articles that would otherwise be useless). In some cases a genus article might have significant content that provides more useful context to the reader than a substub species article does, but overall, I think genus articles are more likely to be lacking useful content than species articles (genus article tend not to be substubs if you're counting bytes, simply because a list of species takes a lot of bytes, but that doesn't mean that genus articles often have a useful description of the genus, its ecology, etc.).

Maybe there's a benefit to editors (and ultimately readers) in reducing the number of Wikipedia articles? Wikipedia has too many articles; the ratio of editors:articles has been declining for pretty much all of Wikipedia's history. There are stubs in every subject area that might get expanded if editors had fewer articles to deal with. There are articles that should get regular updates that are neglected (a couple days ago I came across an article about a US city that had presidential election results up to 2016; I'm not sure that city articles really need to have tables of election results, but if they do, the tables ought to have the most recent results).

Maybe there are some other benefits to upmerging I haven't considered? Plantdrew (talk) 22:00, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Would consideration of how different species within a genus are from each other be worth touching on? I.e, with Apororhynchus, the species all seem to be broadly the same with the main differences being host, location, and minor morphological differences. I suspect for many invertebrates and algae/bacteria/etc, species-level differences can be so minor as to be easily summarized within a paragraph or two. Where this is the case, upmerging can pave the way for a single, comprehensive genus-level article.

Also, I agree that there will likely be some benefit to editors in reducing the number of articles to deal with: less pages to update if/when taxonomy changes, less pages to check for changes/vandalism, less pressure to hop around trying to fill in missing species and update preexisting ones, and instead more time/effort available to be given to comprehensive genus article large enough to shepherd to GA. SilverTiger12 (talk) 16:47, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

@SilverTiger12: I think it would be too difficult to define, and that species where there is significant difference already tend to be better covered and thus not candidates for merging. BilledMammal (talk) 15:23, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: The benefits I see are:

1. Readers are provided with more information. Even when the genus article has minimal information the inclusion of information about other species will provide the reader with contextual information.
2. It will result in less articles to maintain, which will make it easier to keep the articles up to date and to respond to vandalism.
3. It will be easier to make minor improvements to our coverage of species, by making it clear what basic information is missing. For example, editors wishing to improve our coverage of Aa (plant) will easily identify that Aa achalensis lacks information on its range by the gaps in the table, rather than needing to go through each species article and figure out what additional information would be useful.
4. It will be easier to make major improvements to our coverage of the species because, for obscure genus and species, there is likely to be more information available about the genus as a whole than about the species.
5. Editor impact will be increased. Improving Aa would benefit the reader regardless of whether they are looking for Aa, Aa achalensis, or Aa trilobulata, while at the moment it would only benefit the reader looking for Aa.
6. Up-merging will improve Wikipedia as a whole, by making it denser and reducing the perception among readers that it is empty around the edges.

BilledMammal (talk) 15:23, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

described species considered by taxonomic consensus to be synonyms don't have articles, fossil species don't have articles, and species in monotypic genera don't have articles. I've added exceptions for synonyms and for monotypic genera. I'm not sure one is needed for fossil species; I think it would be beneficial to at least encourage coverage of them in genera articles? BilledMammal (talk) 13:18, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Taxonbar template for tables

I have asked at Wikipedia:Requested templates about the difficulty of creating a taxonbar template for tables; see Wikipedia:Requested templates#Taxonbar template for tables. BilledMammal (talk) 06:43, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Wikidata linking

One issue that doesn't seem to have been considered, or at least answered, is the effect on interlanguage links via Wikidata. If other wikis have articles on individual species, how will Wikidata links be used if we just have a line in a list or a row in a table? Peter coxhead (talk) 12:39, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

We can use Template:ill on the name of the species. For example, Cheirotonus jambar. BilledMammal (talk) 12:51, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

No, that doesn't deal with Wikidata, whose items are linked to articles. How would the Wikidata items for each species name be linked to a single list or table article? Wikidata has 7 items by my count for the species of Apororhynchus for example. As just one instance, Apororhynchus hemignathi (Q3826362) is linked to 5 language wikis. It couldn't be linked to our Apororhynchus article, because Apororhynchus (Q16528194) is already linked to that article. So if there are no separate Apororhynchus articles, it will look from Wikidata as though the English wikipedia has no information on the species. Wikidata has been set up to expect an article or redirect for every taxon name. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:15, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I misunderstood. I believe we can address that through redirects from the species to the genera. However, this would put you in conflict with Plantdrew, Edward-Woodrow, and, it appears, yourself, all of whom have argued against the creation of redirects for species we don't have articles on. My personal preference would be to not have this guideline speak on whether redirects should be created, but I don't have strong feelings either way so I will leave it up to the three of you to discuss. BilledMammal (talk) 13:27, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

@BilledMammal: redirects will achieve something, but they still won't be the full answer, because they don't create language links in the sidebar. If we have a genus article with a list/table of species, and other language wikis have separate articles on the species, for complete inter-linking we would need links to the other language wikis to show up against each of the species names. This should be possible via the interface to Wikidata – it would be something like a taxonbar for each species, but instead of listing the external taxonomic databases, it would list the relevant other wikipedia articles. Tom.Reding and Jts1882 will doubtless know how feasible this is. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:02, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

That's what Template:Ill is for. We don't need to link all the other relevant wikipedia articles, just those that have sufficient content. BilledMammal (talk) 18:39, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

Species → genus is doable, since parental links exists in WD, but child links, genus → species, are much more difficult, if not impossible, since that feature/property doesn't exist (yet?). This is a longstanding TODO in Module:Taxonbar too.

I tried back in 2018 to create a Wikidata child property Wikidata:Property proposal/child monotypic taxon, but it only received 1 support.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:45, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think child taxa would work in Wikidata as the items are about taxon names most of the time. So a taxon name like Giraffa camelopardalis can apply to all giraffes (one species model) or one of three, four or eight species. How can you decide which subspecies to list as child taxa when the item convers different taxa? This is also why the parent taxa are problematic for taxoboxes. Attempts to have different items for these different taxa have been rudely rebuffed. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:33, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

On the interwiki links, I think it would be relatively easy to add these to the taxonbar output or to create create a taxonbar-like output using the taxonbar module if the idea of using tables for species in genus articles is accepted. —  Jts1882 | talk  08:51, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

@Jts1882: that's the issue that concerned me, which is not solved by any of the other solutions mentioned above.

Let me try to explain my issue again in the hope of being clearer. When there are separate articles for species, each species article is linked from a Wikidata "taxon name" item (which they incorrectly call an instance of "taxon"). The Wikidata taxon name item will be also be linked to 'corresponding' articles in other language wikis. These articles will be shown in the sidebar in standard view (not in mobile view). ('Corresponding' is a known issue, because if the other language wikis use synonyms as titles, there's an arbitrary choice as to which Wikidata "taxon name" item to link from. It may not be the principal one in our taxonbar.) Using {{Ill}} is not at all the same, since it requires an editor to make a choice as to which other language wikis to link to, whereas linking via the Wikidata taxon name item is dynamic – the amount and nature of the information in other language wiki articles is likely to change.

So, if we have just lists/tables for species in the genus article, then just as we will need to be able to include a taxonbar for each species, in my view we will also need to be able to include a new kind of 'bar' that dynamically lists all the other language articles linked from the Wikidata item. (I wouldn't add these to the existing taxobar.) Jts1882 has helpfully confirmed that this should be feasible. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:10, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

I've hijacked the taxonbar to output interlanguage links to show that it is an option.

• {{Taxonbar/sandbox|from=Q15083|sitelinks=yes}}

This is an initial test and would need refinement if ever used. The alternative output options (e.g. collapsible list) that were discussed elsewhere should also work with the sitelink output. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:31, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

@Jts1882: wow, that's an impressive list of other sites with articles about the Northern giraffe. I've never seen a plant article with a fraction of that number! Anyway, thanks for working on this. Let's see if it has support. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:17, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I chose the giraffe partly because that is my goto example for Wikidata issues and more importantly because with more sitelinks it is more likely to pick up issues (e.g. those red linked ones). I also note that the articles are not all on the Northern giraffe, as many (most?) are articles treating Giraffa camelopardalis as a single species for all giraffes.

I assume the big charismatic mammals will all have similar numbers, but so do some plants, e.g. common sunflower (Q171497) has over 120 and Rosa (Q34687) nearly 150. —  Jts1882 | talk  15:49, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

the articles are not all on the Northern giraffe – sigh, the classic Wikidata problem. As for numbers of links, clearly I don't work on popular plants! Peter coxhead (talk) 06:36, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

@JoelleJay, Aquillion, and S Marshall: I wanted to get your opinion on this proposal; at the ongoing WikiProject Tree of Life discussion there is some concern that the biggest barrier to an SNG like this is that codifying presumed notability for species will be controversial. The three of you are some of those I would consider, along with myself, the staunchest "curationists", and so your input on whether this would be an acceptable proposal would be welcome. BilledMammal (talk) 14:50, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

• Personally, I'm relaxed about it. These aren't biographies.—S Marshall T/C 16:03, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
• I'm of the view that topics that don't have much material beyond a primary/tertiary-sourced infobox shouldn't be standalone articles; individual species infoboxes should just be collected into the lowest taxon that actually has IRS SIGCOV. I also don't understand why people can't just develop wikispecies more instead of clogging the random article function with moth-cruft...
  Anyway, I'm running low on "contentious notability-related RfC" bandwidth right now due to the "selectively-indexed journals are inherently notable" NJOURNALS discussion so it'll be a while before I participate in species stuff again. JoelleJay (talk) 22:27, 13 August 2023 (UTC)

@JoelleJay: I have considerable sympathy with the view that it would have been better to develop Wikispecies more, but it simply hasn't attracted editors in the way that the English wikipedia has. They also haven't developed good standards for inline referencing. It's too late now; that horse has bolted. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:14, 14 August 2023 (UTC)