Talk:List of Zoraida species

@UtherSRG: Thanks for your time and efforts with this page. However, I see several problems with your new format.

• Many of the Peggiopsis species have not been formally assigned to the genus Zoraida and I am moving them now to your new section of unassigned species.
• By removing all the basionyms, you make it difficult to understand the taxonomy and history of the species. For example, Zoraida (Neozoraida) obsoleta was originally described by Kirby as Thracia obsoleta, but unless we know that, we will not be able to find the original description in Kirby's publications.
• Taxonomically, "Zoraida (Zoraida) borneensis" is not the same as "Zoraida borneensis". In the first case the species has been assigned to a subgenus, in the second case not.
• There are some problems with the authors (with or without brackets) which I am also correcting now.
• For new wiki pages of these species (your red links), I think it would by better to have the subgenus in the page title, e.g. "Zoraida (Neozoraida) carpenteri" rather than "Zoraida carpenteri".

Altogether, I feel, it would be clearer for the readers if we go back to the original list. Bernhard Zelazny (talk) 10:17, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Most of these issues are best handled via discussion within the articles themselves as they get written. For article names, we do not include the subgenus. That will show up in a properly implemented taxobox and, again, can be handled in the discussion in the article. - UtherSRG (talk) 11:29, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

But check with WP:Insects. There are folks more knowledgeable there than I. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:10, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi! Something that could be done, instead of having to create hundreds of distinct articles, would be to have a table in the style of List of Cladonota species, where all relevant information (authority, basionym, range, basic information) could be added as time goes on. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 12:11, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion, this may be a useful alternative. Bernhard Zelazny (talk) 14:39, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

@Chaotic Enby: Thanks for your help and the useful design of a table for the Zoraida species. I have modified it slightly, deleting the column "Length" (few data available) and changing the column "Wingspan" into "Wing length" (the measurement reported more often). Why doesn't the colouration of the rows work in some cases, e.g. Zoraida nivifera, Zoraida punctipennis? Bernhard Zelazny (talk) 10:45, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the improvements! I'm going to see if I can fix the row coloration issue. By the way, it could be good to have the footnote directly on the measurements that were converted from wingspan to wing length.
Regarding the conversion itself, not sure how accurate it is (given the "minus 10%" part that appears to be accounting for the length of the body), are there sources that establish this as the conventional way to calculate it, to make it closer to WP:CALC than WP:OR? Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 11:52, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing the colouration problem. I will wait for the discussion to finish before continuing. Bernhard Zelazny (talk) 18:13, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

My only further comment is that when a genus is demoted to subgenus, the species in that former genus are usually assumed to be in that subgenus. Some note should be added to the top of the Unassigned section explaining why this wasn't done. - UtherSRG (talk) 11:15, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, but they still seem to require a formal assignment to the subgenus in a taxonomic publication. Muir created the genus Peggiopsis and in 1918 decided it should be a subgenus, writing "I have sunk the genus Peggiopsis Muir to a subgenus", which obviously means all Peggiopsis species should belong to this subgenus. However, it seems that for taxonomists each species still needs to be reassigned. For example, Z.P. Metcalf (1945 - General catalogue of the Hemiptera, Fascile IV, Fulgoroidea. Northampton, Mass., U.S.A.: Smith College. pp. 1–253) distinguishes between assigned species like "Zoraida (Peggiopsis) distanti" and unassigned species "Peggiopsis dorsimaculata", although both are listed under "Peggiopsis subgenus of Zoraida" (page 54). Bernhard Zelazny (talk) 12:25, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

@Dyanega: Can you weigh in here? - UtherSRG (talk) 13:55, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I'll offer my two cents, but it's unlikely to make Bernhard happy. First, I've been following a number of discussions in various places in Wikipedia that relate very directly to taxonomy articles, and there appears to be a reasonably strong feeling (I wouldn't call it a consensus) that Wikipedia articles should not simply be data dumps from authority files and other online sources. This article, the way Bernhard is structuring it, looks very much like the exact thing that people are saying we want to avoid having in Wikipedia. It is vastly more detailed than nearly any other "List of XXX species" articles I've ever seen; it looks and feels like a database. As much as I appreciate the effort and scholarliness of having such finely atomized data, and I am very much a Wiki-pedant, this goes beyond what seems appropriate and healthy for Wikipedia. In this case, even more so than the average example one might pick, because this is a planthopper genus, and there are TWO very comprehensive online databases that contain all of the relevant information for all planthoppers; between this site and this site, you can get all of the information on type species, nomenclatural history, subgeneric placement, range, and so forth. Any motivated reader who wants all of that information needs only to be pointed to one or both of these sites; it doesn't all need to be in a Wiki-table here. Much as I hate to say it, I think a "List of XXX species" article really should just be that. See, for example, List of Megachile species (leafcutter bees), and List of Lasioglossum species (sweat bees). Those are extremely large genera with many subgenera, but the species lists are just the species and authors. Realistically, that's all that's necessary for Wikipedia. For smaller genera, it might be okay to subdivide into subgenera, as with List of bumblebee species, but for my tastes, even that is marginal; the bigger a genus gets, the more problematic it becomes to subdivide, for a few reasons: (1) finding a name you're interested in is easy when the list you're looking at is alphabetical, but it isn't so easy if you have multiple sub-lists and you have to scroll through each one. (2) the more subdivided your data, the more reshuffling you need to do every time a new revision is published. That means, for example, that the bumblebee list is much harder for editors to maintain and keep updated than the sweat bee list; it literally doesn't matter if someone moves a bunch of Lasioglossum species from one subgenus to another, or creates a new subgenus, or sinks two subgenera, the list of species doesn't need to be changed at all. Consider this, too: if your list of species contains a field for geographic distribution, then that field in your table is going to become outdated every time someone posts a new photo to iNaturalist, or publishes a new catalogue or checklist. No one is going to want to maintain the data in those geographic distribution fields here, in Wikipedia, when the same thing can be accomplished by simply providing a link to iNaturalist. Or, alternatively, by giving distribution only as biogeographic region or continent, and not atomized down to countries or provinces. Because Wikipedia is a group effort, with many editors, taking the impact on future editors into consideration is a factor in the discussion here. If you really feel it's important to give subgenera, then create subgenus articles, but consider that even the bumblebee subgenera don't all have their own articles, so I don't see much evidence that subgeneric placement is generally considered to be important information. That all being said, I'll point out a few other things more related to Uther's prompt: no one needs to explicitly recombine a species with its genus or subgenus name in print in order for it to be formally accepted. A statement such as "I have sunk the genus Peggiopsis Muir to a subgenus" is absolutely all that is needed to unambiguously place all Peggiopsis species into Zoraida. There should be no redlinks to Peggiopsis names here in this species list. Basionyms are not relevant in zoological nomenclature, and very much not needed anywhere except the article for a given species, where they are - by Wikipedia convention - listed as synonyms if (and only if) they differ from the present name. As a taxonomist, does it bother me that what Wikipedia calls "synonyms" includes basionyms and other combinations? Sure, but I got over that a long time ago. It's not Wikipedia's function to be a taxonomic or nomenclatural database. The fine-scale details belong, if anywhere, in well-sourced species articles. I also absolutely agree that a species article in Wikipedia should never include the subgenus in the title. Peace, Dyanega (talk) 15:30, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

Firstly, this doesn't really appear to be a data dump, as the information isn't, well, dumped from a database, but sourced from individual articles relating to each species. If anything, having a well-structured list with information about each species is usually much more encyclopedic than a raw index with only the species names.

Second, there's been a long-running debate on whether species should automatically have articles, with many editors considering species to be notable by default. If they don't have articles, it makes sense for the basic information people might be looking for (range, basic measurements) to be in the list of species, or in the genus article if short enough. If they do have articles, the list becomes a good summary rather than a bare index of species names.

Third, the fact that new information has to be maintained is pretty much the thing with having an encyclopedia to begin with. Yes, being more complete means we'll have to keep things up-to-date with reliable sources, and that alone isn't a reason to remove the information outright. A single iNaturalist observation isn't necessarily considered RS as it is user-generated, so I don't see why Wikipedia should have to follow up with it. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:06, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

@UtherSRG:

@Chaotic Enby:

@Dyanega:

Can you three vote on whether this page should be developed further or should be deleted. I am happy to follow the majority opinion. If it should be deleted, somebody who is authorized and knows how to do it would need to take over. A few more comments on the discussion:

• The initial intension of the list was not to aim at articles for all the species listed, but to give an overview of the species in the different subgenera and their distribution. The genus definitely needs more taxonomic work and I thought a Wikipedia article might help.
• It is unlikely that even in the long term there will be enough information and enough interest to create separate articles for many of these species. I would be happy to remove the red links.
• The 2 databases cited also include taxonomic references, but this list provides links to the taxonomic articles relevant to each species if they exist on the web. The "World Auchenorrhyncha Database" does not seem to provide such links and the FLOW database rarely does.
• I agree that articles on genera would be more important and I would be happy to concentrate on those. However, some species are important and I think a genus page should include a list of the most important species for which separate articles are justified.Bernhard Zelazny (talk) 18:06, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

  While I believe the page should be kept and expanded further, considering deletion would require us to open a formal Wikipedia:Articles for deletion discussion in order to have more participation and reach a broader consensus. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 18:13, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

  I largely agree with Dyanega, which isn't often the case. By default, species articles are granted notability, and as such can have their own article, even if it is just a one-line stub that has no hopes of going anywhere. I strongly suggest to look at the list of articles they point out and figure out which of those formats are a best fit in this case. As for data dump; which this isn't all from one database, it looks like a data dump, and that's as good as being one. Articles should convey some understanding of the topic, not just be a place to go look up info (as in a database). - UtherSRG (talk) 19:54, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

  To be fair, one issue is that the individual species articles likely won't ever be written, and, even if they are, we would have a hundred one-line stubs that are each just a row of this table. I genuinely don't see how this would be a better format than having all of the information in here, especially since this is very much how most table lists are written.

  For examples of featured lists of species structured like this, we can look at List of sunbirds or List of Armillaria species. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:00, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

That Armillaria list is a great example of what I would consider to be something that should never have been split into its own separate article; that's the content and formatting I would want to have in the article for the genus Armillaria. Lists of species should be just that, and ONLY that, as I see it. Tables are fine in genus articles, when there aren't over 100 species (there are, what, about 50 species of Armillaria in that table?). It would be pretty unwieldy to keep that tabular format for that number of taxa, and a table of 50 taxa isn't too big to have in a genus article. I look at that and see a good candidate for a Merge proposal. Dyanega (talk) 21:16, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

It's not really a matter requiring a vote, and certainly not something to be deleted. I just don't think it needs to be split up by subgenera, and prefer the "List of" format rather than a table. The purpose of a "List of" article is to deal with large genera, typically with over around 100 species, for which Zoraida barely qualifies. These species are all in Zoraida, that isn't subject to dispute, so the basic list format is fine. Dyanega (talk) 20:23, 23 July 2024 (UTC)

@UtherSRG:

@Chaotic Enby:

@Dyanega:

Thanks for all the comments. OK, we don't delete anything, that's good after all the work and time which has gone into this page. However, there is disagreement on the format. After reading your remarks, looking at other pages listing insect species and sleeping over it, here is my suggestion:

The genus page is modified and will have links to the 3 subgenera of Zoraida. We create the pages for the subgenera, using some text from the genus page and the lists of species from this page. This would make it also easier in the future if, for example, the taxonomy of the subgenera changes and they become full genera. For the lists of species, I would also prefer the table format and find it more useful compared to a simple list.

Eventually, we will have to delete this page and therefore it is important that we all agree to this approach. The simplest way to delete a page seems to be to use the Proposed deletion process which only works if nobody objects. - Bernhard Zelazny (talk) 10:00, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I think the exact opposite should be done. Rather than having a list on a different page for each subgenus, having a single list could be the most intuitive way to go at it. I don't see the benefits of creating three individual lists where one would be perfectly sufficient. If they become full genera, they can be split, but usually taxonomy is more stable at the genus level than the subgenus level.

I do agree with the table format, however, as it provides more information, again on a single page, rather than having to create a hundred different articles for each species. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 10:10, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

I would likewise, given various alternatives, opt for a single-article solution. If it's a table, then I would still prefer to see it embedded in the Zoraida article itself, rather than as a completely separate article. The only problem I have with tables is that they take up SO MUCH SPACE on a page that they rapidly become unwieldy to navigate in comparison to a simple alpha list. Dyanega (talk) 16:57, 24 July 2024 (UTC)