Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life

Archives for WT:TOL
1	2002-07 – 2003-12	Article names
2	2003-11 – 2004-02	Taxoboxes
3	2004-02	Taxoboxes
4	2004-02 – 2004-08	Bold taxa; taxonomy
5	2004-03 – 2004-04	Taxonomy; photos; range maps
6	2005-04 – 2004-06	Capitalization; authorities; mammals
7	2004-06 – 2004-08	Creationism; parens; common names
8	2004-05 – 2004-08	Templates; †extinct; common names
9	2004-05 – 2004-08	Categories; taxoboxes
10	2004-08 – 2004-12	Categories; authorities; domains; Wikispecies; ranks; G. species; capitalization; Common Names
11	2004-11 – 2005-05	Capitalization; common names; categories; L.; authorities; algae; cultivars
12	2005-03 – 2005-05	Ranks; common names
13	2005-05 – 2005-06	Hybrids; taxobox format; cultivars
14	2005-06 – 2005-07	Categories; food plants; identification; Capitalization
15	2005-07 – 2005-09	Synonyms; types; authorities; status; identification
16	2005-09 – 2005-12	Paleontological ranges; Rosopsida; Taxobox redesign; identification
17	2005-12 – 2006-04	Taxobox redesign; identification; APG; common names; capitalization
18	2006-04 – 2006-10	Categorization; include in references; snakes; range maps; seasonality graph; common names; bioregions; brya;
19	2006-10 – 2007-03	various
20	2007-03 – 2007-06	various
21	2007-06 (Next 64 Kb)	various
22	(Next 64 Kb)	various
23	(Next 64 Kb)	various
24	(Next 64 Kb)	various

Cladistics coding

Did i once see a way to write in a bit of code and wikipedia would do some wizzy work and produce a taxonomy tree? Something similar to the <math> function. Did i see this, or was it just an experimental thing? chris_huh 18:38, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I had a go at it here: User:Pengo/clad and had a rant about it here. But it's a pretty miserable attempt. The best thing is still is to make one from scratch in Inkscape or something. —Pengo ^{talk · contribs} 09:12, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't this be more of a wikispecies kind of thing? --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 14:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Category:Fauna_of_the_United_States_by_state_and_its_subcategories up for deletion

All US "fauna by state" categories have been nominated for deletion. I think this would be of interest.

Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_October_13#Category:Fauna_of_the_United_States_by_state_and_its_subcategories

Please see Category talk:Biota by country GameKeeper 13:40, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Problems with the usage of sub-categories of Category:Biota by country

I am trying to get a discussion going on the Flora of <region>/Forna of <region>/Biora of <region> caregories.

Please see Category talk:Biota by country GameKeeper 13:40, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Talk:List of regional bird lists

Please comment on the move and reversion jimfbleak 05:49, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Protists and plants

What should one do with taxoboxes for groups where their classification is still not well agreed upon, such as whether or not Rhodophyta (and Glaucophyta) should be separated from the other protists and put with the plants? It's not exactly a new concept for the Rhodophyta, but the taxoboxes leave no allowance for it, and it is one of the issues people take strong stands on, whether the Rhodophyta are protists or plants. What can be done so that the taxobox reflects the level of ambiguity in the taxonomic placement? Can the boxes have a color slash, khaki above, green below? Should they reflect Wikipedia's current classification system--although I think the one article listed on the protist page does classify Rhodophyta with the plants, not with the protists? Should it be majority rules as primary and the secondary classification within the article? Can the boxes be stacked so both are represented by taxoboxes?

This issue should also be addressed with Angiosperm taxonomy--as has been brought up before. If Wikipedia is chosing APG II as the primary classification, certain groups should not be used in the taxoboxes.

Were these issues discussed and decided before?

KP Botany 00:20, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Good question. As far as I can remember, this topic has not come up before. Would it be a satisfactory solution to assign two values to each parameter, separated by a slash? Something like "|regnum = plantae / Protista"? Or "|regnum = plantae | Protista"? (Or whatever the alternatives are, and this down the different levels) TeunSpaans 17:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, a good question, and also a sticky one. I remember when green algae, and even cyanobacteria, used to be classified as "plants", back in simpler times when there were only two kingdoms of living organisms. But my old introductory botany textbook, Raven et al.'s "Biology of Plants", classifies green algae as protists. I never did like this and since this is an old edition (1981) maybe they've changed their minds since then--I have the latest edition at home so will have to check.

It's possible that there's more support nowadays for defining plants to include green algae, as the latter are decidedly paraphyletic if the embryophytes are excluded, whereas green algae plus embryophytes comprise a pretty solid monophyletic group. This just helps to illustrate, once again, that classifications are opinions: the relationships are pretty objective and well-accepted, it's just how to sort them into groups and what to call those groups that causes disagreement. My recommendation is that if you're going to use a classification of any kind, however well-accepted, you ought to cite a reference for it. Who calls green algae plants, and who calls them protists? And why? There are some good subjects for an article right there. MrDarwin 17:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I guess the issue is the taxobox itself, in part because I'm too biased from educational background to do these mixed groupings of the taxoboxes, and my bias towards monophyletic classification schemes. However, it makes Wikipedia confusing as it stands, to include a paraphyletic category in the taxoboxes.

What Raven et al. do in their latest edition is call the Chlorophyta protists, but include a cladogram that clearly shows they form a well-supported monophyletic clade with the embryophytes based on the apomorphy of [chlorophyll b, starch storage, stellate flagellar structure, and gene transfers], and that the Rhodophyta and Glaucophyta form a monophyletic groups with the viridophytes due to chlorplast endosymbiosis--they use 'viridophytes' only in pointing out that other biologists use it.

After thinking about it, the problem seems to be the meaning in the taxobox, because taxonomy today has a strong emphasis on monophyletic groups, but also because there are different levels of certainty attached to various ranks within the taxobox--although this is true of all of botany. Does its use in the taxobox imply anything?

Someone did just that, with the slash on one page between Protista / Plantae--this is probably more useful than using either one. I think it will work with a note attached that protists are not monophyletic, so including the Rhodophyta in the Kingdom Protista does not precude their placement in the Kingdom Plantae?

There are a number of other problems with the taxoboxes that have been pointed out before, in particular mixed classification schemes. Possibly each taxobox should use a single classification scheme and give a reference for the one used?

Also, the title of the box has a little '?' in it--a link to more information. However, in scientific nomenclature isn't a question mark used to denote that a taxon's name is presently undecided, or an organism is not certainly identified? If so, it should not be used at all as an information icon next to the name of a taxon--something someone else pointed out.

KP Botany 21:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Now I'm looking at Judd et al.'s "Plant Systematics: A Phylogenetic Approach". They basically define "plant" as green algae plus land plants, but then go on to ignore pretty much everything except the tracheophytes. And yes, the taxoboxes are problematic--one reason why I stay almost completely away from them. MrDarwin 00:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

There are certainly situations where the community is simply split in half and there's really no way to pretend that choosing one over the other is anything but POV. The older taxoboxes had a bit more flexibility in them and I took advantage of this on a few occassions where, as an editor, I thought listing only one option in the taxobox was picking one side on a coin flip. Here and here are examples. Neither survived the transfer to the new (and superior) taxobox format. I think in most cases the community will pick a taxonomy to use in the taxoboxes and discuss the controversy in the text, but I do think there are a handful of situations where the taxobox should represent the controversy as well. --Aranae 01:08, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

For most of the protists and algae, the taxonomy is really variable. The problem with saying "| regnum = Plantae / Protista" is that it implies the rest of the classification is less controversial, but although a general outline has taken shape, a lot of aspects vary from author to author. Thus the taxoboxes should really be considered representative systems, since they don't have room to explain the others. In fact, in most cases the different possibilities aren't even discussed in the articles. They should be, but it's really hard to find good information on them, as most people just pick one system and stick with it.

The question of whether red and green algae should be considered plants has come up before. Really, it depends on what the currently favored classification is, which is difficult to tell. Reading journal articles about protists, I think it's better to call them plants; but few of these worry about what counts as a kingdom, except Cavalier-Smith, and his breakdown is not entirely standard (e.g. he argues in favor of paraphyletic groups, and for that matter does not use Protista at all). Josh 05:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

As these uncertaintes seem quit major, I think it might be wiser to leave the disputed taxons out of the taxobox. The taxobox has no required levels, see User:TeunSpaans/testtaxobox for an example. Thus, if regnum and order are disputed, we can leave them out and just have family and below. It is a possibility, I leave it to you to judge what is best. TeunSpaans 17:34, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The regnum cannot really be left out, because it determines the colour of the taxobox: note that in User:TeunSpaans/testtaxobox it is clear you think that bears are animals from the pink taxobox. I'd prefer to make a choice; to make it a consistent one across all our articles (e.g. all out taxoboxes on green algae should follow the classification on our Green algae article, whatever choice we're making); and to annotate the really uncertain ones. See User:Eugene van der Pijll/taxoboxtest. -- Eugène van der Pijll 22:36, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The color of the Kingdom It seems to me that if we are forced to change information, ie include information that is not accurate enough or too much in conflict, to meet the limited confines of the taxobox, it's the taxobox that must change, not what is included in the article--if we conform the information to the taxobox we are doing OR or inserting our POV. How about no color and a note when the kingdom is in dispute? I had not thought of this, but once TeunSpaans said it, although it irks me as an obsessive classifier, it seems the method least likely to misinform or confuse the user, or demand contortions of the editor, while indicating to both the need to look further in the article for more information as to why this is not classified at the kingdom level, namely scientists differ in how they define the kingdoms. We could also just make the color for the questionable placements protist/plantae be orange or something.

Also, please note, it is not necessarily in conflict on most classifications to say that something is both a plant and a protist, because the former is a monophyletic clade, but the latter is simply a grouping on convenience, usually, but not always, everything that isn't in one of the other groups.

I would still like to suggest that the question marks in taxoboxes be done away with as a link to more information about the taxobox. They have a meaning, as far as I know, in the nomenclatural codes for organisms, namely a level of uncertainty as to the correct placement, depending upon their location in the organism's name. Taxoboxes now simply indicate that all kingdom level classifications are in question. It could be an asterisk or a little 'i' like someone earlier suggested, but in this instance it really can't be a question mark. However, a non-colored box with a question mark in it, indicating uncertainty as to kingdom and linking to a discussion within the article of this uncertainty would be useful.

I think the taxoboxes are useful in giving information at a glance. However, I don't think they should be allowed to misinform at a glance, and others may be right that multiple taxoboxes decreases their usability. Not including misinformation, by removing the color, and tying the issue to a discussion in the text, would erase this issue, without interfering with the usefulness of taxoboxes. KP Botany 18:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the taxoboxes should inform, not misinform. I also agree that changing the taxobox to a colour not yet in use (white? orange? grey?) for taxons unclassified at the regnum level seems like a good option. A third option I thought of, possibly identical to the note KP botany mentioned, is to create a link to the article where the dispute is explained, something like:

|regnum=[[Rhodophyta#Taxonomy|Disputed]]
This option could be implemented without a taxobox change, only the colour would be suggestive of a kingdom, but adapting the taxobox would be neater.
TeunSpaans 19:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I just took a look at the taxobox, they do have a color parameter, so I think we don't need to change the taxobox. See User:TeunSpaans/testtaxobox2 TeunSpaans 19:19, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Except the kingdom is not especially disputable. For instance, look at the two classifications listed on red algae; they're similar, but one has added new classes and changed some of the ranks. What phylum Cyanidiophyceae gets is as disputed as its kingdom. And yet the relationships are the same, and I'd hesitate to leave its entire position as uncertain, when only the ranks of the groups are. (Incidentally, if most specialists working in red algae consider them plants, maybe we should follow them without worrying how more encompassing systems treat them).

Also, an explanation about the kingdoms should be given on green algae, but if we footnote each variation in classifiction in each page about each genus, we're going to have a very difficult time adjusting and maintaining it. Maybe a better idea would be to change the link from "scientific classification" to something like "typical classification", to emphasize that some authors deviate from it. It would be easy enough to add a flag to do that, like we do for viruses. The question would then be at what point we stop using it - for instead, is APG solid enough that we can treat it as authoritative, and what about the minor variations for mammal orders? Josh 19:37, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Archive

This talk page has been archived. Feel free to reintroduce any topic that needs more discussion. Also, someone else needs to list the topics of that archive in the archive TOC. pschemp | talk 14:42, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Done. TeunSpaans 17:43, 24 October 2006 (UTC)==

scientific evidence

Citing temtbooks at each other seems, shall we say, a little medieval? Majority vote has nothing to do with it, either of people or of textbooks. The best evidence for the scientific consensus is recent review articles in peer-reviewed journals, or recent articles themselves if they give a good background.

• For the higher categories in land plants, I think it's Yin-Long Qiu, L, et. al.

The deepest divergences in land plants inferred from phylogenomic evidence PNAS 2006 103: 15511-15516; published online before print October 9 2006, 10.1073/pnas.0603335103 [not open access, unfortunately, except for the abstract, but will be in 6 months. Perhaps we should add others to this page as they appear. I will, but I'm not going to do it retrospectively. DGG 02:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The article you cite is not a review article, but original research according to its abstract. Review articles would be excellent evidence for the scientific consensus, though.

KP Botany 03:12, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I repeat from yesterday: "The best evidence for the scientific consensus is recent review articles in peer-reviewed journals, or recent articles themselves if they give a good background." This one does. Be pragmatic. DGG 06:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Review articles are different from including a "good background" of a subject, because a scientific review, by its nature, generally must include all valid conflicting theories:

"In terms of scientific literature, reviews is a category of scientific paper, which provides a synthesis of research on a topic at that moment in time. A compilation of these reviews forms the core content of a 'tertiary' scientific journal, with examples including Annual Reviews, the Nature Reviews series of journals and Trends." Wikipedia

I somewhat doubt that an article this dense on content also includes a good background anywhere near the level of a review in its 6 pages. Qiu's contribution alone to the topic would require more than 6 pages.

KP Botany 18:55, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 23:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

help on species name

I took this ptoto in Turkey this year, tr:Image:Resim14.jpg, but don't know their species name. Can anyone help on this? Thanks --Ugur Basak 11:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

a real tree

Taxoboxes are a nice navigation interface, but they are still purely textual and lack a "graphical" component for orientation ; it would be nice to have something maybe in the form of a tree, showing where a given group is located relative to the global tree (maybe showing the sister nodes at each parent node) or at least w.r.t. to the parent and child nodes, e.g.

Genus Balaenoptera   Genus Megaptera
                 \    /
                  \  / 
                   \/
       Family Balaenopteridae  Family2  Family3 ...
                             \   |      /
                              \  |    /
                               \ |  /
                                \|/
                             Mysticeti   Suborder2  ...
                                    \    /
                                     \  / 
                                      \/

— MFH:Talk 17:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

These textual representations rarely come across as very visually pleasing. Graphics almost always turn out nicer. Note Image:Hominini.PNG for an example including a highlighted section for the taxon of interest. --Aranae 19:26, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you didn't get my point: I did ask for graphics, my ascii art was just to explain what it should be! — MFH:Talk 21:56, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

It would be useful to put trees in many of these articles. But is there some simply way of graphically coding them for some uniformity of presentation? Now, the trees all over Wikipedia are simply made for that particular article. KP Botany 20:16, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

As far as a free web interface making a simple tree graphic that doesn't involve actual data or any other computer program, you might try Phylodendron. The simplest input is a single line that contains a representation of your tree. The format for that line is (A,(B,C)); where A, B, and C are taxa on the tree and B and C are sister taxa. Unfortunately the output formats are a bit awkward, but I find that outputting the tree as a GIF image map and then right clicking and selecting view image produces a workable GIF file. You can certainly use a graphics program to convert any of the other outputs into a loadable image as well. --Aranae 21:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Also note that you can label nodes by using [ ]. So the tree immediately above could be generated with: (((Balaeonoptera,Megaptera)[Balaeonopteridae],Family2,Family3)[Mysticeti],Suborder2); . Image:Hominini.PNG could be roughly reproduced with: (((((Homo,Pan)[Hominini],Gorilla)[Homininae],Pongo)[Hominidae],Hylobates)[Hominoidea]); . Note that you can vary the output type (vertical/horizontal or tree appearance). You can also incorporate branch lengths, but I'm not sure that will factor in much without running into OR problems. --Aranae 23:13, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

On the French wikipedia, there is a field in the taxoboxes for a graphical tree, showing the cladistic position of the taxon/clade. See e.g. fr:Solanaceae. This would also be a solution for some of the problems on ambiguous classifications. Unfortunately, the existing images are all in French... Eugène van der Pijll 23:25, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Their taxobox is nicely done on this page. However, what are they using for the classical taxonomy? I'll go look, I guess, but if you know... And with the embedded link to the image, it's useful and attractive. What do others think? Does someone individually make the images? Do all the organisms have these? Again, I can go look around, but if you know the standard.... KP Botany 00:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

While not a much more pratical than generating images of varation of the family tree templates could be made to do this. THey currently woudl make the articles look a bit messey unless they were done as templates, and they take a bi of time to do by hand. However since what we need here can be a lot less flexable than the family tree templates It is possible that we could do away with the internal formatting and just provide the names. We could with relative ease create a template that simply took 14 inputs and formatted them into a tree, with one of them bolded or some such. The tree in the pimage above would look something like this:

Hominoidea

Superfamily

Hominidae

Hylobatidae

Family

Homininae

Ponginae

Subfamily

Hominini

Gorillini

Tribe

Homo

Pan

Gorilla

Pongo

Hylobates

Genus

It is also worth noting that it woudl not have to be this big. We could drop the borders and move all of the cells twards eachother, and if we built some slightly diffrent images we could compress it vertically as well, and get it to close to the same size as the image above. Dalf | Talk 23:38, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

And finally it is also worth looking at Double-sized IPA vowel chart which appears to use an image as backgroun in a table then superimpose a second table on top with text. We could do somethign like that as well in a template. Dalf | Talk 23:43, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't think taxoboxes really have enough room for legible cladograms, but they'd be great additions to the article texts. If the developers are OK with nesting template arguments, that might be a simpler and more flexible way to write them. Here's a quick example based on the drawing code from the family tree templates; it would still need some polishing, but is it a step in the right direction? Josh User:Josh Grosse/Template:Clade

Yes, it's a step in the right direction, and fine without the colors. Did you look at the fr:Solanaceae one? Making it a clickable, even an abbreviated form of a larger one, looks very feasible on theirs, in my opinion. KP Botany 17:03, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem with the above two examples is that the data used is too clean. It's all nice and binary; each node has 0 or 2 children. This is not always the case. Simple binary trees are often easily understood through less graphical means, but the cases where the phylogeny is not so well defined (and the resulting trees have more than 2 branches from a node) are the ones that really need to be described graphically. For examples, take a look at the first and last images on Hominoidea#History_of_hominoid_taxonomy, or just the Strepsirrhini taxonomy, where we don't know which of the three infraorders is sister to the other two. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Compare and contrast:

Euarchontoglires
    ├─Glires
    │    ├─rodents (Rodentia)
    │    └─rabbits, hares, pikas (Lagomorpha)
    └─Euarchonta
         ├─treeshrews (Scandentia)
         └─N.N.
              ├─flying lemurs (Dermoptera)
              └─N.N.
                   ├─†Plesiadapiformes
                   └─primates (Primates)

Euarchontoglires

Glires

Rodentia (rodents)

Lagomorpha (rabbits, hares, pikas)

Euarchonta

Scandentia (treeshrews)

Dermoptera (flying lemurs)

†Plesiadapiformes

PRIMATES

- UtherSRG (talk) 18:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Two answers. KP, the diagram on the French page is expandable because it's an image, and I'm not sure you can do the same thing with templates. We could just use images, but the downside is we'd need a separate file for each article and they wouldn't be directly editable. Uther, it's not too difficult to make templates allow ternary or more complex nodes, as below. Josh User:Josh Grosse/Template:Clade

I continue adapting the Euarchontoglires trees above, to get a feel for things. Josh, is there a way to pass in a style argument the way the familytree accetps one? I'm really starting to like your implementation, but I want some control over sizing. Sometimes we'll want the larger text (such as for smaller trees), while other times it would be most handy to have the smaller font. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

A word of warning: these graphical implementations don't work well in Opera. I don't know what the solution for that is, but it's something to bear in mind. --Stemonitis 12:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Can you post an image of what they look like for you? - UtherSRG (talk) 12:32, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Geographical categories

In the light of discussion elsewhere regarding geographical categories for flora and fauna, I think that guidance along the following lines may be appropriate.[1] With consensus, this would be an addition to the Category subheading on the project page.[2]

Geographical categories help readers find species by location. Regional categories are preferred over a large numbers of smaller categories. For example, country/state/province categories are useful for narrow endemic species, but don't add a country/state/province category if the species occurs in more than 4 or 5 countries/states/provinces; in those cases use larger regional categories (so a widespread species like Red Fox would be in Category:Fauna of the United States and Category:Mammals of Europe, but not in Category:Fauna of West Virginia or Category:Fauna of Lombardy). In some cases, a ecoregion category such as Piney Woods forests may be more appropriate than a country/state/province. The presence of a regional category makes the its subcategories unnecessary. The latter should be removed to avoid page clutter.[3]

--Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Agree fully; I'd go even further in the Red Fox example and cut it to Category:Mammals of Asia, Category:Mammals of Europe, Category:Mammals of North America, as it occurs in virtually every country of all three continents. - MPF 19:33, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Boar is another example of the problem. -- Donald Albury 19:35, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

There is some discussion of this here Category talk:Biota by country GameKeeper 19:43, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea, but keep specific cats for those items that are indeed extremely localized...though, in most cases, this is rare. Ecoregions for such places as the United States are generally well accepted as are those for many other larger counties. We need to be careful to not have a supercategory such as Category:Fauna of the United States become filled with ten thousand articles. I recommend we do either what Wsiegmund suggests by using ecoregions or figure out a better way to create categories so they are based on a regional structure...ie: Category:Fauna of the U.S. Pacific Northwest , etc.--MONGO 07:04, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The more I think about this, the more I think that categories may be the wrong way to handle it. Part of what we are trying to do is indicate range. Categories by political units doesn't work well for that most of the time, and categorizing by ecoregions isn't much better. (Another element in the current system is 'biota chauvinism', look at how many species our country/state/whatever has.) I have no clear idea of how to do this, but shouldn't we be looking at the possibility of developing range maps that provide two-way access; links to political units and ecoregions that the species range extends to, and links from political units and ecoregions to species with ranges falling in those areas. And yes, I understand that the development effort may be too much, and that maintenance of such a system might be too much, but can we kick the idea around a little bit? -- Donald Albury 13:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it might not be a bad idea to have a map which links to all the ecoregions of the world. I don't know if it is entirely possible, but have a map on the text/explanatory section of Category:Fauna by continent, which has overlaid links to all the continent categories. Then, when you go to Category:Wildlife of Oceania (by clicking the map or the text), there is a map of Oceania, with links to all the subcategories (New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea etc.), and it goes down the line. This way, we can get rid of the political boundary categories, which have the disadvantage of getting out of hand, and gets rid of the confusion caused by ecoregions, as well as the confusion caused by US states etc., as not many people know them.

I know this idea would take a long time, but would those against deleting the politcal categories be willing to use this alternative (which would involve eventually deleting the political categories when all maps are done)? I would be willing to put a lot of work into this, but only if it eventually results in the cleaning up of the categories. We would need to vote on deleting political categories upon the completion of this project before anyone starts though, as it could waste time otherwise. Thanks. --liquidGhoul 13:51, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Could you please reply at: Category talk:Biota by country#Using maps, the discussion is split, and I would like to keep it at the one place. Thanks --liquidGhoul 14:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I think this whole project is being approached rather idealisticly and will therefore produce very little in the way of substance. You need to be far more systematic. The problem is that many of the enthusiasts involved in this geography project have no idea of the numbers involved. We want categories to remain small, right? Well, then why do people keep adding category tags like "Reptiles of Africa" to the articles that I'm working on? These people have no clue just how big such a broad category is likely to become. In such cases, it would have been so much better to create a number of more specific subcategories first and only to have added those tags to the articles. However, that requires foresight and thus knowledge of the subject. I would therefore like to suggest that these people simply not bother unless they first do the necessary research. After all, recategorizing hundreds articles will be tough enough, but thousands? --Jwinius 15:53, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

On the contrary, it would be much easier to go through Category:Reptiles of Africa and split it into Category:Reptiles of West Africa, Category:Reptiles of East Africa, Category:Reptiles of North Africa, Category:Reptiles of the Mascarene Islands and so on than it would be to search through all of Category:Reptiles. Every bit of categorisation is useful as long as the category itself is meaningful. Not creating a category because it may become large later is a poor approach, and involves creating many underpopulated categories early on, and they're a real pain to navigate. --Stemonitis 16:00, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

In other words, creating big categories first, populating them, waiting a while, then creating subcategories and recategorizing all the existing articles, over and over again, is preferable to thinking first and acting later... despite the huge numbers of articles that this will eventually involve? How can you call that practical? Also, remember that the articles won't categorize themselves and many editors will likely be less than impressed with this unsystematic approach. As the growing number of articles will eventually prevent you from ever achieving your goal without their cooperation, the project will surely fail. --Jwinius 17:16, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

That's the way it works now. When someone decides it's time to create a new sub-cat, they do, and re-cat the affected articles. I've done it a few times myself. There's no point in creating cats before they're needed, as empty cats will be deleted. Besides, the whole category structure is a work in progress, and is constantly being reshaped. It's better to adapt the structure to WP's needs as we go along than to try to create some master plan that almost certainly won't fit later needs. -- Donald Albury 20:10, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't buy this argument. I've seen people come by and add tags like "Reptiles of Africa" to the articles I've created, but they always stop before they're finished -- kind of like they expect me to finish the job for them. I suppose that would be logical, since I know those articles inside out, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to help them. Why should I, if I can expect them to show up again later on and replace a few of those tags with "Snakes of Africa", expecting me to once more follow their example and do the rest? Now, if instead they had created a subcategory strait away, such as "Vipers of Africa", then I might have felt more cooperative, since it's not as likely that this one will be subcategorized any further. You could even place this category directly under "Reptiles of Africa" for the time being, since moving it to "Snakes of Africa" later on would not require the original tags in the articles to be changed. --Jwinius 22:01, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

And I don't see how laying out a detailed plan of future cartegories will help that problem. That's the nature of Wikipedia, some people add content without worrying a lot about structure, and some people take care of the structure. Me, I try to do a little of both, but there are different ways to help Wikipedia. -- Donald Albury 23:01, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely with Donald. If Wikipedia really did become a repository of all human knowledge then even a currently empty category like [Category:Nematodes endemic to the Comoros Islands] could turn out to be too cumbersome. We cannot know in advance what categories will be sensible, although we may be able to guess in some cases, so we just have to accept that repeated re-categorisation will be needed. It's a boring chore, but it works - it keeps the categories to reasonable sizes whilst still being navigable and meaningful. --Stemonitis 07:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Mixed-breed dog

Mixed-breed dog is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 23:55, 3 November 2006 (UTC)