Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system

This talk page can be used to discuss issues with the automated taxobox system that are common to the entire system, not just one of its templates. Discussions of this nature prior to 2017 can be found at Template talk:Automatic taxobox

Those familiar with the system prior to mid-2016 are advised to read Notes for "old hands".

30 December 2023 use stats update

30 December update

Project	Auto	Manual	Total taxa	Percentage auto	# auto added since 30 June 2023	# manual subtracted
Algae	2163	227	2390	90.5	58	51
Amphibians and Reptiles	22524	206	22730	99.1	354	13
Animals	11167	1158	12325	90.6	1083	900
Arthropods	10774	3067	13841	77.8	866	357
Beetles	24731	13421	38152	64.8	2390	2282
Birds	14358	62	14420	99.6	67	19
Bivalves	1674	32	1706	98.1	14	2
Cephalopods	2009	566	2575	78.0	10	2
Dinosaurs	1643	0	1643	100	11	1
Diptera	14160	2165	16325	86.7	775	477
Fishes	24408	1671	26079	93.6	410	191
Fungi	10655	5171	15826	67.3	1012	513
Gastropods	27510	7224	34734	79.2	3068	2526
Insects	57978	20719	78697	73.7	5123	4599
Lepidoptera	74631	23766	98397	75.8	4876	4827
Mammals	8301	144	8445	98.3	95	9
Marine life	8723	672	9395	92.8	779	648
Microbiology	6971	6030	13001	53.6	727	663
Palaeontology	14779	3474	18253	81.0	689	262
Plants	79920	611	80531	99.2	1468	353
Primates	979	0	979	100	-1	0
Protista	380	80	460	82.6	210	-55
Rodents	3137	28	3165	99.1	17	1
Sharks	829	45	874	94.9	11	4
Spiders	10040	0	10040	100	342	0
Tree of Life	89	6	95	93.7	7	5
Turtles	759	0	759	100	5	1
Viruses	1722	55	1777	96.9	8	1
Total	383888	76708	460596	83.3	19320	16446

Mammal subprojects with articles tagged for both mammals and subproject:

Project	Auto	Manual	Total taxa	Percentage auto
Cats	186	0	186	100
Cetaceans	439	0	439	100
Dogs	241	0	241	100
Equine	109	0	109	100

Methods and caveats (copy-pasted from previous update)

Method: For the most part I use Petscan to search for articles with a talk page banner for a particular Wikiproject and either {{Taxobox}}, or any of {{Automatic taxobox}}+{{Speciesbox}}+({{Infraspeciesbox}} and/or {{Subspeciesbox}} (depending on whether botanical/zoological code is relevant)), and record the results. Example search for algae with automatic taxoboxes (search terms are in the Templates&Links tab in Petscan). For viruses, I search for {{Virusbox}} rather than the other automatic taxobox templates. For plants, I sum the results for the Plants, Banksia, Carnivorous plants and Hypericaceae projects. "Total" is derived from the Template Transclusion Count tool (https://templatecount.toolforge.org/index.php?lang=en&namespace=10&name=Speciesbox#bottom e.g. results for Speciesbox), and is not actually sum of the results for individual projects (some articles have talk page banners for multiple Wikiprojects, and would be counted twice if rows were summed). I started compiling these stats in April 2017, and have been updating roughly every six months since December 2017. I've kept my method consistent; perhaps I should have included all of the automatic taxobox templates (Hybridbox, Ichnobox, etc.), but I didn't do so at the beginning, and the other templates aren't used in very many articles. Caveat: The remaining manual taxoboxes in projects with a high percentage of automatic taxoboxes mostly have some kind of "problem". I have periodically reviewed all the manual taxobox articles in projects with less than 207 manual taxoboxes, and chose not to convert them to automatic taxoboxes at that time (however, it has been awhile since my last review, so there probably a few recently included articles I haven't reviewed). "Problems" may include: Fossil taxa; fossil classifications may be derived from multiple sources and present classification on Wikipedia may include mutually incompatible hypotheses. Fossil taxa are often not be linked from extant parent taxa. Synonymy; there is some obvious synonymy issue; e.g., a species is in a genus which redirects (as a synonym) to another genus; maybe the species article needs to be moved or maybe the genus should be reinstated Common names; articles with common name titles may not correspond to taxa, but still have manual taxoboxes. In some cases {{Paraphyletic group}} may be appropriate, in others the taxobox should be removed Parasite and pathogens; article on parasites and pathogens may be tagged for the WikiProject of the organisms they infect. Higher level taxonomy templates for the parasites may not yet exist, and the classification presented in manual taxoboxes may not be up to date.

The template for the Bats taskforce was merged into the template for WikiProject Mammals since my last update. I can't track bats separately anymore, but they had been at 100% automatic taxoboxes for a couple years now. WikiProject Protista is slowly being added to more articles; there has been an increase in the number of tagged protist articles with manual taxoboxes. Primates has one less article than it did last time; perhaps a taxon has been lumped and an article merged.

All projects are now over 50% automatic taxoboxes and the majority are now over 90%.

I have some detailed notes breaking remaining plant manual taxoboxes down by family at User:Plantdrew/Plant automatic taxobox progress. Less detailed notes at User:Plantdrew/Animal automatic taxobox progress that break animals down by phylum, and insects and fishes by order. Plantdrew (talk) 03:10, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Have you numbers on the number of new manual taxoboxes added, what percentage of all new taxoboxes they make, and the projects still using them? —  Jts1882 | talk  09:18, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@Jts1882:, there isn't any easy way to get new manual taxoboxes by WikiProject. A PetScan search for articles with taxoboxes sorted by "not at all"/descending shows recently created articles. Of the most recent 20, 7 are moths, 3 fungi, 3 beetles, 2 arthropods, 2 eukaryote incertae sedis, 1 gastropod, 1 insect (Hymenoptera), and 1 (fossil) bird. Single editors (different ones) were responsible for 6 of the moths, 3 beetles, 2 fungi, 2 arthropods and 2 eukaryotes. 8 of the 20 are species and 12 are higher taxa.

82 articles with manual taxoboxes were created between 30 June 2023 and 30 December 2023. Assuming the difference between # auto added and # manual subtracted represents newly created articles (it mostly should), 2874 articles with automatic taxoboxes were created since June 2023. 82+2874=2956. 82 is 2.8% of 2956. Existing articles do occasionally get converted from automatic taxoboxes to manual by editors who want to update the classification without understanding how taxonomy templates work, but that number is negligible.

I guess the take away is that there are a small number of editors creating articles with manual taxoboxes, and they are mostly working in groups where uptake of automatic taxoboxes is relatively low. Groups with low uptake of automatic taxoboxes are going to be missing many taxonomy templates needed to create speciesboxes, but the articles being created with manual taxoboxes are mostly higher taxa, so having taxonomy templates in place probably isn't going to help very much (of the 8 species in the most recent 20, only 1 was in a genus that has an existing taxonomy template). Plantdrew (talk) 16:25, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

7214 articles were created with manual taxoboxes since 10 April 2017, which is when I started tracking stats on automatic taxoboxes. That was a little after automatic taxobox use really started to take off (but well before it was the norm; 13.2% of articles had an automatic taxobox at that point). So less than 10% of articles with manual taxoboxes were created after concerted efforts to use automatic taxoboxes began (obviously there are some articles that were created since 2017 with manual taxoboxes that have now been converted). Plantdrew (talk) 16:58, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I guess a better date to pick would be 30 August 2018, when the RFC about preferring automatic taxoboxes closed. There are 3970 articles created with manual taxoboxes (and which still have them) since 30 August 2018. Plantdrew (talk) 21:16, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Aquaterraves‎

Is there any precedent on taxoboxes for 'hypothetical' taxons? I guess they're all hypothetical at some level. YorkshireExpat (talk) 17:03, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

There is precedent; see e.g. Eocyte hypothesis and Articulata hypothesis (there's relevant discussion going on at Template_talk:Taxonbar#Further_discussion, with the newly created Wikidata item taxon hypothesis (Q124477390) stemming from that). I'm not sure that the precedent needs to be followed if something is really framed as a hypothesis (i.e., we might consider removing those taxoboxes).

It gets more complicated with Tactopoda and Antennopoda, which are framed as "proposed clades", but which represent mutually exclusive hypotheses regarding the relationship of tardigrades, arthropods and onychophorans.

Avifilopluma is another weird one. It was the last article tagged for WikiProject Dinosaurs to get an automatic taxobox. It is the clade of feathered animals, with feathers not being precisely defined, and it not being clear exactly which taxa would be included. Plantdrew (talk) 18:06, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Ok, will leave alone for the moment. Thanks. YorkshireExpat (talk) 08:38, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

There are articles for Columbaves, Inopinaves and Aequorlitornithes (all from Prum et al, 2015), as well as Columbea and Passerea (from Jarvis et al 2014). Gruimorphae also has one, as do the more questionable Otidae and Gruae. While I think it is useful to have short articles clearly defining these proposals, perhaps the Neoaves article could be expanded discuss the alternative arrangements, which are currently shown in he cladograms. I think this new proposal certainly should be covered. —  Jts1882 | talk  10:37, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Automatic links to species, commons, data

Any interest in adding automatic links to wikispecies, commons categories and galleries, and wikidata at the bottom of our taxboxes to improve integration with our sister projects? Compare hr:Dracaena aethiopica / en:Dracaena aethiopica. Coded in hr:Template:Taksokvir (note the four tracking categories). Ponor (talk) 11:43, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

We use {{taxonbar}} to link to various taxon IDs, including wikidata, wikispecies, etc. All of the IDs are stored at Wikidata. We could consider adding commons and gallery to the taxonbar. @Tom.Reding and Jts1882: thoughts on this? - UtherSRG (talk) 12:21, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I was thinking of a more prominent place. {{Taxonbar}}, to me, is something that experienced editors might need, it's not very friendly to our readers. It's also not shown to >2/3 of them Ponor (talk) 12:41, 17 April 2024 (UTC)