Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Archive 6

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

taxobox centering

The taxobox "designs" on the "Project" page do not match those presented in the discussions here. I suppose there must be discussion of the design change here somewhere, but the "settled" upon formats are ugly and difficult to implement in HTML. It makes no sdsense to "center" lists of species (or whatever) and not center titles - that is (IMHO) backwards from good HTML and graphical design. Also, a majority of the taxoboxes out there (that I have encountered) are non-conforming to the Project design. I suggest we provide the examples to the Wikipedians for a vote. - Marshman 18:10, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm suspecting now that your browser is possibly causing you some problems. (Much like it did Mirv awhile back.) The th tag should get rendered as if it were td align="center" with its contents bolded. - UtherSRG 18:28, 15 Apr 2004 (UTC)

How interesting. Yes, the th bolds but does not center. Is that because I have the "wrong" version of IE? Could it be that many others get the taxoboxes set up with left justification instead of centering? I do recall some time ago thinking that the tag should auto-center, but noting that it (at that point) no longer did - Marshman 02:53, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Anyone know why my browser (Internet Explorer 6.0) does not center text in th tags? It seems if centering is a part of the standard being established here, it needs to be added into the tag if (from my perspective, although possibly mistakenly) most users' browsers do not in fact center the text? In other words, is what I see what most people see, or is my experience a rare exception with a fix? - Marshman 18:36, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

No, my experience is consistent with yours. IE 6.0 (at least) does not do the standard thing. However when I pleaded for us to add a "=center" tag to help out IE users (a mere 85% of our user base!) I got all this rubbish about "get a proper browser". This is one of the archives of this page. I would be very pleased if we could use the center tags... its not like it will break other browsers. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 18:44, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

I have a couple of different versions of IE (including multiple 6.0 versions) and the th tags work fine for me. The implication of 85% of our user base has a problem is incorrect. My current version is 6.0.2800.1106.xpsp2030422-1633. Perhaps all that's needed is to get service pack 2 (SP2) via Windows Update. - UtherSRG 19:39, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

I think I'm up to date on my Windows, but maybe I need to download another version of IE? Mine is 6.0.2600....blah blah and yours seems to be more recent. I agree with Pete, when you are using a pretty standard, widely used browser, your impression is that it is THE standard. That is why I made a plee here. I'm adding align="center" to all the th tags I come across because my experience is that it is needed. I suppose the real authority would be the html definition of the tag, not who or how many wikipedians do or do not see centering. If centering is part of the definition, then we can assume at best our browser versions are non-compliant. I will work on updating my IE to see if that helps. And thanks! - Marshman 03:23, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Lol, I have the exact same version number as you Uther (all 28 characters of it!) and yet I still get the wrong behaviour. Goodness knows why - maybe possibly it is because I have different languages settings (I have en.UK and presumably you have en.US?) but that seems a bit of a stretch. The thing is though we really shouldn't be talking in such detail - it is clear that the there are several people with the issue - why the resistance to a harmless workaround. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 06:49, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

HTML definition is that the th tag acts as a td tag with center and bold. Perhaps this *is* a US v UK issue after all, and you Brits should just cope better. *grins* Just kidding. I give up. Go ahead and add the centering as you see fit. Just one more reason to hate MSIE I suppose. - UtherSRG 12:33, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Capitalization of species common names again

Somewhere along the line, while I apparently wasn't watching closely enough :-) and I can't tell from the lengthy page history, somebody changed the capitalization rule for common names from just birds and mammals to all species, and yet I don't think there is any consensus that it is the right general rule. As I've mentioned before, FishBase, the largest collection of fish species names in the known universe, doesn't capitalize them, and I'm not seeing much capitalization with the beetle stuff I've been working on more recently. So where are these policy changes coming from? Stan 16:36, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I, too, am having a great deal of difficulty with this. I remember people wanting to capitalize the FIRST letter of names (with which I and the entire American botanical scientific community disagree), but NEVER every word in a name. Yet, people are acting as if this were a done deal. jaknouse 17:40, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Firstly and in general, it comes from commonality. It make sense to have a consistent naming convention for all organisms. Second, the discussion in Birds is as applicable to other organisms as it is to the bird: to wit, it sets the common name of the species apart from potential problems and outright confusing terms. Third, the scientific community is of so many different minds, each small little subgrouping has their own way of doing things. Whenever an author crosses those borders and makes a work that is more inclusive, they have to pick and choose what convention they will follow. For instance, in The Variety of Life (Oxford University Press, 2000 ISBN 0-19-850311-3), Colin Tudge documents the entire tree of life as best he could. He had to pick and choose carefully what naming convention he would use. He eventually settled on one and uses it throughout the book, regardless of what convention the authorities in the various different biologies use. WikiProject Tree of Life is much like that; we're a single work. We should have a singe naming convention. - UtherSRG 18:08, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't care that FishBase doesn't capitalize, or that some other collection uses all caps, or another uses mixed large and small caps. It's not a relevant point. These collections each made a decision on what convention to use based upon their needs and what they felt would work best for them and their users. We must do the same. So where does that leave us?

1. ALL CAPS - works with the software
2. [[MIXED CAPS]] or [[MIXED CAPS]] - doesn't work with the software
3. ''italics'' - doesn't work with the software
4. all lower - links are identical to All lower, breaks Birds
5. First upper - links are identical to first upper, breaks Birds
6. All Upper - works with the software
7. 'single quoted'
8. ???

- UtherSRG 18:08, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

A couple of comments. I think the software should be changed so that having two different articles with different case is not possible, e.g. Yerba buena vs. Yerba Buena. Second, a lower case search should find the article, no matter what the case of the article may be. That said, I think either all lower or All Upper (my preference) would work for common names, but lets nail it down. WormRunner | Talk 18:46, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Case-insensitivity is frequently proposed, but the result would be chaos - there are thousands of articles that would have to be renamed and relinked. People who've looked at the full scope have thrown up their hands and gone to do other things. :-) Stan 19:09, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The last consensus I know about was that different specialties were free to do whatever seemed best for them; birds could be one way, fish another. While consistency is good, there have been no lack of local controversies in WP because of ill-advised attempts to enforce consistency on a large scale; to take two classic examples where we've had to agree to be inconsistent, both January 1 and 1 January are accepted date formats, and we've agreed to have London instead of London, England but Seattle, Washington instead of Seattle, effectively a per-country naming rule for cities. Now if everybody except me who works regularly on ToL wants to capitalize species names, I'll go along and only grumble a little, but it looks more UtherSRG has decided to "be bold" and decide this unilaterally, and that's not really the right way to change policy. Stan 19:09, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

While I dislike the date and city inconsistencies, that's not my area of interest, so I ignore it. *grins* Actually, there are plenty of those inconsistencies, but I never notice them. They don't distract me from the work I'm doing. The common name issue does distract me and it is at time problematic. The problem was initially discovered before my time with the Birds. Pete and I adopted it when we created the Primates and Cetaceans Projects. I don't see what the problem is, why people don't think this is a reasonable direction to move in. As for my unilateral effort, it may seem so, but I was only the front guy doing the more public changes, and there has been discussion (I believe Archive 3) about this. - UtherSRG 05:14, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm strongly in favour of All Caps style, because it is internally consistent and always predictable. You don't have to ask people to decide whether something should, or shouldn't, be capitalised based on its etymology - which can, in many cases, be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to find out, or may be subject to major dispute. It also looks a lot less messy than a list of species with some capitalised, others not, often on a seemingly random basis. That hints at either sloppy editing, or else hidden secret knowledge not permitted to the common person. - MPF 20:18, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

And a philosophical point: if people's personal names, and place names, are both proper names to be capitalised, why not also organism names? Is Ponderosa Pine any less a proper name than David Douglas or Columbia River? Personally, I think they are of equal status. - MPF 20:18, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The proper name argument is weak, because then why only species and no other taxa? As you know, half the time specialists can't even decide where one species ends and the next begins, so it's kind of arbitrary to capitalize one taxon in the middle ( :-) ) of the tree. Stan 22:14, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Not in the middle of the tree! - infraspecific taxa, if they have distinct vernacular names, also get caps, e.g. Shore Pine, Bewick's Swan; though of course by and large, infraspecific taxa don't merit their own wiki pages. And anyway, as authors, we all make decisions on where each species begins/ends, as wiki pages do have defined ends, so we have to make the decision. - MPF 23:49, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Middle of the tree" was a joke, dude. My question is still why species have "proper names" but not families - isn't the family name a proper name too? Stan 00:11, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's an ambiguity thing, Stan. Part of the purpose of a species name is to make it immediately clear that this is a particular, exact species we are talking about here. Otherwise, we would never know if the author meant a Barn Owl or a barn owl. Tannin

That's a different argument from what MPF was making. It's one that sounds sort of plausible at first, but it's actually kind of bizarre - after all, if these are formalized common names (they have to be formalized in order to make them designate only one species rather than several), why not pick a formalized name that is different from the group name? At least it used to be the case that people used terms like "common barn owl" to designate a species for which one had no better qualifier - when did that become unfashionable? As I mentioned in previous discussion, I think this whole thing is a birders' idiosyncrasy that was adopted in a couple field guides, and is now being propagated into other categories without much thought and by nonspecialists, not unlike the Amurricans who want to move the article to London, England "because it's more consistent". Stan 05:16, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes it is a different argument. There are several good reasons behind the convention that species names are capitalised. Stan writes that it used to be the case that people used terms like "common barn owl" to designate a species. You see, that is exactly the point. The phrase "common barn owl" indicates a frequently occuring creature without specifing its species. It might be Phodilus badius, Tyto alba, Tyto novaehollandiae, or any of a dozen others - we cannot tell. The phrase "Common Barn Owl", on the other hand indicates a particular exact species - or it would if there was a species with that name - and does not make any comment about the frequency with which it is found. Tannin

People have been writing about species without using caps and without confusion for many years, and were always able to figure out whether "common" was an adjective or a part of a name. By that reasoning, languages that didn't have multiple cases would have a serious problem talking about species, yet I think they manage to cope. Like any other bit of bizarrity in language, if you do it that way for long enough, it will come to seem normal and everybody else will seem weird. (Wasn't it you that once said that if the lower case convention were adopted, you would stop working on bird content altogether?) Anyway, capitalized fish species names in fish articles look totally strange, as if they had been invaded by a bunch of Germans still not clear on the conventions of English. :-) Stan 17:22, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Let's try that again, shall we? Read as: decapitialised species names look totally strange, as if we had been invaded by a bunch of Americans still not clear on the conventions of English. (Sorry for the low blow, Stan, but that last comment was begging for it.) :) Tannin

Hee hee, although you don't want to suggest it's an American/British English thing, because then no agreement is possible! :-) Stan 06:14, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

And it wouldn't be correct, 'cos I'm an American. :) - UtherSRG 05:14, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The caps convention also avoids abominations like The green female red crossbill or The common crossbill is rare in Cornwall. There is almost always a lower case redirect for bird articles. Do articles with lower case titles normally have a capped redirect? jimfbleak

Apparently "abomination" is in the eye of the beholder - your examples seem clear enough to me. Stan 17:22, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

On the caps/lowercase differentiation in article titles -- for an example, I believe that Continental divide is about the subject in general, while Continental Divide is about the one in the western U.S. It might be possible, however, to have an insertable code so that we can edit a page so that a particular page comes up whether it's in lowercase or caps, but the default is still to have different pages for one case or the other. In any case, the scientific birder community that I know of capitalizes only the first word, if I'm not mistaken. jaknouse 06:40, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I subscribe to about 6 scientific birding publications, and a range of more popular ones too, and they all use caps. Tannin

To get back to my original point, I'm not in favor of having a capitalization rule for all species, and unless a lot more than three people speak in favor of UtherSRG's change, I'm going to put it back to "birds and mammals required, optional for other categories". Stan 17:33, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

So far on this recent discussion, I count five in favour, two against :-) - MPF 20:28, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yup, time to advertise a little more widely... :-) Stan 06:14, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Ah... since I tend to get into some hot water with adverting, perhaps someone could suggest the next advertising venue? - UtherSRG 05:14, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I use rather a small screen, so I am outdenting again, though this isn't a really new point. Just to say that as one fairly regular contributor to various taxa, I actually don't care what convention we adopt, though it would be nice to be at least moderately consistent - say within orders. I take the point about All Caps looking a bit Germanic (or, worse, like something that's escaped from a Daily Torygraph leader page), but you soon stop seeing that. Just to toss a couple of more general points into the stew:

1. Although ornithological sources do tend to use All Caps style, the rest of the scientific literature doesn't, even when writing about birds. In fact I didn't know about All Caps till I got told off by Ibis for not using it - journals like Animal Behaviour (the premier journal for ethology, and conveniently Anglo-American) don't, or didn't the last time I noticed, and if I tried to do it in a psychology journal (where I do write about birds), I'd be toast.
2. Anyone who publishes regularly knows that different publishers have different conventions about all sorts of thing, including this one (but also including things like US/International spelling, abbreviation styles, and even idiocies like "London, England"). Although most of us have personal preferences, we soon get used to copyeditors having the final say (and compared with what they have sometimes done to my carefully crafted prose, the odd bit of butchery of capitals by a fellow-Wikipedian seems positively constructive). Wikipedia is a bit different just because it's democratic, and we can have a civilised discussion about it rather than just accepting a publisher's say-so; but in the end, there probably isn't One Best Way, and the consensus for the time being just has to be binding. A useful general convention is to set a time limit on discussions - and then a time horizon during which we'll all get on with writing articles before raising a particular contentious point again.

Sorry, this is all rather sententious and obvious, but someone did ask for my opinion. seglea 06:02, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I checked the books I have lying around, and Seglea's right. I don't have anything specifically ornithological, and books on general zoology, invertebrates, fish, and the like never capitalized species names beyond the first word, except in titles. The only exception was the Audubon Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders. -- Josh

Incidentally, when I did the cetaceans project, I also did a survey of cetacean literature to try to decide whether to follow the birders or not (this was back before ToL was definite as it is now on capitalization). It was split down the middle but the Audubon Guide capitalised too and that just about tipped the balance in favour of working with birders rather than against them. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 21:06, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Argument for standard English capitalization

Please stop capitalizing common plant names. Mackerm 20:29, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

MPF - I believe you are our resident botanist. *grins* Wanna weigh in? I think everyone knows I want 'em capped. - UtherSRG 20:44, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

Guess everyone knows I'm strongly in favour of it too; I've already outlined my reasons in addition to those given by Uther, Tannin and others. Above all, what I want to see is consistency - so I would have no real objection to lower case, provided they are all lower case, including things like douglas-fir. What I detest is the inconsistent random capitalisation of some names but not others; the only reason I can see for doing this is so that those who know what 'should' be capitalised can sneer at those (the great majority) who don't. Interesting to add too, I've yet to see any coherent reasons for not using caps; all I've seen is appeals to other publications that happen not to use them, without saying why they shouldn't be used. - MPF 21:47, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

I heartily recommend http://www.onelook.com/ . It looks up words in several dictionaries, and should give you a good idea if a plant is named after a person or proper place, thus deserving capitalization. Mackerm 23:30, May 17, 2004 (UTC)

Doesn't work for e.g. Pohutukawa. And I can think of plenty more that are not what would be expected, or are open to debate. And lists with some capitalised, some not, are inconsistent, so even if the "correct" form can be found, it still both confusing (implying that some taxa of equal taxonomic rank are of different status) and looks awful. And I'm still waiting for a rational, logical argument in favour of having mixed capitalisation :-) MPF 23:52, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

I've given the real explanation for capitalization: it's the same for any other word. Proper nouns are capitalized, others aren't. Mackerm 00:05, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

But why should they be? - MPF 00:28, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Are you going to clean up after yourself? Mackerm 00:50, May 18, 2004 (UTC)

See capitalization (English, not Latin). It lists no exceptions. Mackerm 08:28, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

If you are refering to the "proper noun" rule, then what MPF has previously said, and I agree with, is that the common name (especially the official common name) of a species is a proper noun, and should be capitalized. - UtherSRG 11:52, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

See Noun#Proper noun for a definition. It designates a unique entity. "The Treaty Oak is a southern live oak." Or: "The Lone Cypress is a Monterey cypress." Use italics if you feel the need to make it stand out, but please don't force incorrect grammar on everybody else. Mackerm 17:07, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

A species can be considered a unique entity. While perhaps not strictly true from an evolutionary standpoint, it was certainly the intention of Linnaeus and others in formulating scientific classification. - MPF 10:21, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

UtherSRG alludes to an interesting point - "official" common name. In some areas there is a notion of an official common name, others not. For instance, FishBase lists dozens and sometimes hundreds of common names for a species, and identifies them by role (vernacular vs market), language and country/organization using them, but none of these are "official". I've been reading Gledhill's book on plant names, and he mentions some amusing traditional names, such as "Welcome home husband however drunk you may be", and "meet her i'th' entry kiss her i'th' buttery". I'll bet nobody in the world writes these as "Welcome Home Husband However Drunk You May Be" or "Meet Her I'Th' Entry Kiss Her I'Th' Buttery" (heh, now they look like country music song names). Stan 13:10, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, those would be odd names to make an organism's official name, but not impossible. Also, many have multiple common names. Many don't have any common name. Some have official and unofficial common names. There is great variety. However, even those that have many common names but no official ones, some common names are more .... err... common ... than others. Sometimes it is possible to idenitfy a small number of common names and treat them all as official common names. - UtherSRG 15:04, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

I think we all agree that there is no One Perfect System. It would possibly be better to use all lower case, if and only if we had some other easy way to denote the word or phrase as the name of a species, such as a different font. At this point, I don't think that's a reasonable possibility. (If we were starting the 'pedia from scratch and this were a pre-writing planning meeting, I might advocate for using something other than what we are doing, possibly all caps or a different font. But this isn't.) Certainly capitalizing the common name of an organism isn't the most horrendous thing in the world. I think ithas significantly more positives than negatives. I'd rather read "I enjoyed seeing the Meet Her I'Th Entry Kiss Her I'Th Buttery this afternoon." than "I enjoyed seeing the meet her i'th entry kiss her i'th buttery this afternoon."! The caps sets the 'phrase' apart as something distinct, instead of a string of words to be parsed for meaning along a garden path sentence. - UtherSRG 15:04, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Your reasoning is sound - I have to admit my instant reaction to seeing capitalized species names is "argh, another pompous writer", not exactly rational! Going by the scientific literature, I must not be the only one. :-) Stan 16:26, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

I agree using "official" common names, whenever possible. On the other hand, if there is no official common name and you know where the common name is used, then you mention it. A good example is the website of the "World Dictionary of Trees', for which I give here an arbitrary example Abies amabilis. This may complicate the workload, but it could be helpful. JoJan 15:11, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes, all common names should be preemptively created, as redirs if unambiguous, or disambig pages if not - this helps prevent accidental creation of duplicate articles. See sardine for an example of how I dealt with an especially messy naming problem. Stan 16:26, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

This whole discussion looks more and more like an never ending story. I think it is high time to come to a conclusion and a binding rule. JoJan 17:37, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Why not standard English capitalization rules? People can use italics if they want to make something stand out. Mackerm 18:33, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

Partof the reason for using caps is because it is a discriminator for Wiki article names, with the first letter of the article being ambiguous. Italics would not be able to be used to designate different articles: First second, first second and first second are all the same article, while First Second is a different article. Additionally, italics are already used for the Latin name. Some organisms, especially some monotypic ones, their common name is also the name of their genus, but should not be italicized (eg. Phainopepla), so as to distinguish between when talking about the classification name and the common name (perhaps to refer to extinct species, etc). - UtherSRG 19:57, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

The "discrimination" justification, hence the consistency justification, is lost with single-word common names i.e. "marigold". And I don't understand your reasoning with "Phainopepla". If someone is using scientific terminology and they don't include the species name with the genus, they're just being sloppy. Mackerm 21:44, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

How about the phrase "...the three extinct species of Phainopepla..." - UtherSRG 21:59, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Here you used it scientifically correctly to refer to the genus. No argument about "marigold" though, right? Mackerm 22:11, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

I would argue it should be Marigold. "I saw a Phainopepla eating a Marigold while a Gray Wolf was stalking it." - UtherSRG 12:55, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Whoops... spoke too soon... see Stan's and MPF's stuff below... I should have looked at the actual article.... - UtherSRG 15:18, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Hard to step in here with so much activity. I too would like to see this settled one way, and I must confess, the arguments seem to favor the approach used by birders (cap each word of a proper name), which common names seem to be at the species level. Words like "pine" refer to a class of objects. Admittedly, something like "Douglas Fir" looks odd to me, but not because of the caps in the first part (Douglas was a person's name); but I could go along with that as a standard here. I also think if an "all caps" standard is adapted, that it should apply to words like "Pine Family". It is already standard (in my experience) that one would use "Family Pinaceae" and not "family Pinaceae", but the "Pinaceae family" and not "Pinaceae Family" (if that makes sense) - Marshman 19:05, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Not convinced on the caps for "Family Pinaceae", it isn't one that I've met with much, and personally prefer "family Pinaceae". But I'm open to what others think on this one. - MPF 10:21, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

I disagree that common names at the species level are comparable to proper names. "Jeffrey pine" is at the same level as "Homo sapiens". Would you say that the word "person" should always be capitalized? Mackerm 19:30, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

Not true. The same level equivalent is "jeffrey Pine", "red Pine", etc, with the generic term capitalised, and the specific not; looks very odd with English word order. It is perhaps unfortunate that English places the specific in front of the generic; if we were using French, Italian or Spanish word order, we could do the same as scientific classification, as in e.g. Italian Pino silvestre (Scots Pine). - MPF 10:21, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

I would argue that the word Human should be. - UtherSRG 19:57, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

How about "horse" or "coyote" which both refer to single species. Should these always be capitalized? Mackerm 21:15, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but I'm going to back off of this a little... "It was a very human gesture." "She was horse-faced." - UtherSRG 21:59, 19 May 2004 (UTC)

Why? capitalization rules say that adjectives derived from proper nouns (which is what you and Marshman claim these effectively are) are capitalized too. Mackerm 22:28, May 19, 2004 (UTC)

Horse is sometimes a proper noun, and sometimes common. Compare with 'moon'; a proper noun when referrring to Earth's moon, a common noun otherwise. We can draw a similar distinction for species names. If we are considering the species as a single entity that's a proper noun, and so capitalised. If we are talking about individual non-generic members of the species that's a common noun.

I.e 'The Horse was domesticated in the Neolithic', vs 'The horses in that field are running away' — a useful distinction, and close enough to common usage Carandol

I disagree that "moon" is ever a proper noun (unless it's someone's name). I have seen "Luna" given as the name of our moon. Mackerm 09:50, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

See Moon, first paragraph. Luna is occasionally used, but Moon is the most common term, and a proper noun. It's a standard convention.Carandol

OK. I'll grant that you can use "the moon" as a proper place name. It would have a separate encyclopedia entry from natural satellites in general. Mackerm 10:31, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

I hope I'm not being inconsistent here, but I would not normally capitalize "horse" or "wolf" (or "coyote"), I guess because they are a class of organism and not a particular or proper type. I would use "Arabian horse" (rule cited by Mackerm above) and also "Timber wolf", but the latter only if a rule is adopted here about common name capitalization across all animal/plant groups. Otherwise, I'm more used to "timber wolf", being a non-birder biologist. But I agree with whomever said it above. Since there is such inconsistency across biology subdisciplines (how dare the avian biologists depart in the practice from the ichthyologists), then we can be bold here and just set up a rule(s). I like the idea of partial caps (first part only - Timber wolf) as it shows that this is a specific type of wolf, but that there are other wolf(s). I would accept Timber Wolf if concensus leads that way. In botany, my current field of employment as a biologist, caps are not generally used for common names (except one should use "Chinese violet", not chinese violet - proper noun to adjective rule again), but I'm ready to go there - Marshman 04:06, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Not "wolf". Gray Wolf yes, Timber Wolf perhaps, but not wolf. *grins* and I agree with MPF below. - UtherSRG 12:55, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Two problems; first that "Whatsit thingy" effectively in English capitalises the species but leaves the genus lower case (as per my comment above); second, it leaves irregularity in the capitalisation: if we are going to have meadow violet, we should also have chinese violet for internal consistency. The latter is of course Viola sinensis, not Viola Sinensis, in scientific nomenclature. Otherwise, the taxa appear of unequal status. And as I've pointed out before, there are plenty of cases where determining whether a name 'should' be capitalised or not is impossible to determine, or open to dispute. It is so much better to have everything with equal capitalisation, regardless of the derivation of the name. - MPF 10:21, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

I like to go along with the reasoning of UtherSRG. All the books I possess use capitals for the common names. I give some examples :

• Red-legged Frog (Rana aurora) (Western Reptiles and Amphibians - Peterson Field Guides)
• Beaked Hazel (Corylus rostrata) (Trees of North America - A Guide to Field Identification of)
• Oat Grain Margin Shell (Volvarina avena) (Field Guide to North American Seashells) (Nat. Audubon Society)(as do all books published by Audubon)
• Vermillion Rockfish (Sebastes miniatus) (Pacific Coast Fishes - Peterson Field Guides)
• Roseate Tern (Sterna dougallii) (Field Guide to American Wildlife)
• British books
  • Large-flowered Mullein (Verbascum densiflorum) (Wild flowers of Britain and Europe - Hamlyn Guide)
  • Hairy Finger-grass (Digitaria sanguinalis) (Grasses, Sedges, Rushes & Ferns of Britain and Northern Europe - Collins Pocket Guide)
  • Great Grey Slug (Limax maximus) (A Guide to Snails of Britain and Europe)
  • Paper-bark Birch (Betula papyrifera) (Trees of Britain and Europe) (Hamlyn Guide)

Shouldn't we adopt the same rules ? JoJan 08:21, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes!! - MPF 10:21, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

UtherSRG reasons that the nouns "horse", "coyote" and "human" should always be capitalized (no word on "marigold" or "person"). I actually own one of those books you mention (Trees of North America by Brockman) and its listings are mostly in all caps, i.e. "QUAKING ASPEN". I hope you're not suggesting this is acceptable. In my experience, specialty guides and dictionaries produce strange results. If you look at general-purpose dictionaries, encyclopedias and articles, you get what I say. The plant listings in my 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica are as I've suggested. My Merriam-Webster dictionary, my Random House dictionary and The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language are equally consistent. Mackerm 09:23, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

You give weakness to your argument as you make it. General-purpose dictionaries document how words are used in common, ordinary speech and writing. They do not document how words are used in more highly specialized speech and writing, and I would saywe've come a long way since 1911. And I did say "person" shouldn't be capitalized, and I'll now say "Marigold" should. I would actually prefer the ALL CAPS method of denoting an organism's common name - I know I've said that before - but that means we have to make the article title in all caps as well: MARIGOLD not marigold, BLUE WHALE not Blue Whale or Blue whale. After this preference, I prefer the style we've been arguing over: Blue Whale not Blue whale. - UtherSRG 12:55, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

The marigolds are a whole genus (Tagetes), BTW. Stan 13:21, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Two genera, actually! The true marigolds (Calendula, about 20 species), and the "french" marigolds (Tagetes, about 50 species, actually a mainly New World genus, not from France) - MPF 13:31, 20 May 2004 (UTC) .... Oh, and also Chrysanthemum segetum (Corn Marigold) MPF 14:24, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Capitalization seems to be common in field guides, possibly by convention and probably helped along by publishers, who tend to imitate each other. Of the books within arm's reach at the moment, Gledhil's Names of plants (whence my funny examples above) does not capitalize, nor does Gullan&Cranston's entomology textbook. Epple's A Field Guide to the Plants of Arizona uses all caps for the "main" common name, and lower case for the "alternates". Red Rock Canyon Plants does not capitalize, nor does Mojave Desert Wildflowers by Stewart. The giant AHS encyclopedia of garden plants does not, but just to make things interesting, Fishes and Fisheries of Nevada usually does, but is not internally consistent. The authoritative online sources FishBase and ITIS also don't capitalize. What concerns me most about the push to be consistent is that outside of birds and maybe mammals we don't actually know why some sources capitalize and some don't - random, personal preference, society standards, what? - let's really research and find out before making a declaration. Stan 13:21, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, as user MacKerm indicates, the guide "Trees of North America" capitalizes every common word, when used in a title. In a normal text 'Quaking Aspen' is used (see page 88 of that book), or simply look at the Foreword page 4, where the author speaks about Sugar Maple, Eastern Redcedar and White Oak. I am not suggesting that full capitalization is acceptable, even in titles. I prefer the way we work now. JoJan 13:34, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Stan, especially that people should do research before making a declaration. Unfortunately, that's the reason I suddenly showed up on this talk page. One among you has over the last month or so been going around moving and editing plant articles (perhaps hundreds of them from what I see) so that all the words in the names are capitalized. These are articles that have been established for quite a long time. A personal appeal didn't work, so I came here to get a consensus. Although nobody's provided an authoritative citation saying common names at the species level are proper nouns, I'm willing to endorse a Wikipedia exception for bird names. But I'd definitely want to change the example on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life from Peregrine Falcon to something like Black oak where the second word is lower-case. This is the way it's been for a long time, and unless somebody can cite something authoritative to the contrary, it's proper English. Mackerm 16:09, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

Ah, but what is proper English? Is it what is in the rule books, or is it what is used? Most lexicographers agree that the dictionaries and rule books describe the language, they do not define it. The true definition of the language comes from usage. These definitions then get formalized and placed into books as a snapshot of what was being used at that time. Of course, different usages exist simultaneously depending on many factors: location, subject matter, social factors, etc. This is why birders can rigidly use "Peregrine Falcon" while ITIS can use "peregrine falcon", and both are correct usages. These rules are not rigidly defined; usage dictates which format to use. I think "Peregrine Falcon" and "Blue Whale" are much better for our (taxonomic) Wikipedia article usage than "peregrine falcon" and "blue whale". - UtherSRG 16:46, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

(And you didn't seem to come here seeking concensus - your initial post here was "Please stop capitalizing common plant names.". That does not seem to be looking for concensus to me.) - UtherSRG 16:46, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Continuing my rules vs usage: Previously on this talk was a discussion on what to use: Binomial nomenclature or Binomial name, etc. We knew what meaning we wished to transmit and used the dictionaries to find the best words to fit that meaning. Here, our situation is not so easy. The language rules do not help us to convey meaning. In fact, the rules obscure the meaning (the designation of common species name) that we wish to transmit. If we wish to clarify, we need to either use another rule or create a new rule. Some have decided to create a new rule: they use ALL CAPS to denote a common species name. Others, such as MPF and myself, feel that raising the common species name to the level of a proper noun, and then using the existing rules for that (First Caps) is better suited to Wikipedia. - UtherSRG 17:00, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

As the person cited, I agree with Uther; no, no-one has cited any "authoritative citation saying common names at the species level are proper nouns", but neither has anyone cited the reverse, either, because no such authority exists. What is more conspicuous, is that the pro-caps people have cited various logical arguments in favour of their case, while the pro-mixed case have only tried to appeal to the "authority" of other authors. Yet as has been demonstrated, other authors are differ widely in what they do. There has, despite repeated requests for it, still been no logical reasoning given for mixed capitalisation. - MPF 17:09, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

I've clearly been arguing from the beginning for standard English capitalization. If I find a grammar book which specifically says that words should be lower-case except as specified in the capitalization rules, will you follow those rules? Mackerm 17:53, May 20, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, that isn't logical reasoning, it is just an appeal to rules of past, which are not unchanging nor immutable. No doubt, as the trend towards capitalisation in the books that actually deal directly with wildlife continues (as JoJan clearly demonstrated), the grammar books of the future will include species names as within the bounds of normal capitalisation. Several excellent reasons have been given for the unsuitability of traditional (for which, read 19th-20th century) grammar in wildlife texts. It is time to leave the past; change is already here (again as witness all those cited field guides), and will stay. To the younger generation, brought up on the new capitalised field guides, anything other than "Xxxxx Yyyyy" seems just as absurd as you think full capitalisation is now. - MPF 20:15, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Except species names appear in far more than just wildlife guides, and looking at other biological literature doesn't support the claim that full capitalisation is taking over. We shouldn't base our standards on one possibly idiosyncratic part of the literature. -- Josh

But they are the most influential, with their wide readership, particularly among younger naturalists who will be writing and editing the next generation of biological literature. And there are still the practical advantages associated with their system of caps usage, which no-one has yet found good logical reason to deny - MPF 15:51, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

This is English, there's no logic in it! :-) Not only that, but we're talking about common names, whose basic confusedness is so bad that some guy - what's his name again? :-) - even proposed a standardized naming scheme based on Latin. The #1 reason not to capitalize common names is that it is not the usual practice; if I open my daily newspaper and see capitalized species names, then I'll agree that it's become the standard practice. It's a real stretch to say that because some books in some areas do capitalization, that's clear evidence of a trend. We don't actually have very many biology experts on WP, and I'm concerned that if a small number of people try to establish this as a local standard now because it's "logical" or whatever, that experts coming later get a bad impression of WP. All I think we should do now is to make the standards be per-area, and invite new participants in each area to think about which way they want to go in the future. Stan 16:55, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

I've pretty much given up on this point. When I edit now, I still use only lower-case names, which then get knocked up to capitalized names by others, so then I pretty much walk away from the article. This issue has been discussed several times, and there's been no agreement, but the cap advocates are enforcing their own policy whatever we think. But then, I'm just a Human Being who owns two Cats, and has a couple of Sugar Maple trees in his yard, one of which Mockingbirds nest in. jaknouse 17:44, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

Looking back, Josh Grosse did a major rewrite of WikiProject Tree of Life on February 24, 2004. This rewrite appears excellent overall, but it includes as an example, Peregrine Falcon though many people agree that birds are a unique case. MPF used this example as a pretext to "improve" dozens or hundreds of plant pages with all caps. I'm going to restore it to a grass example, which is what had been there previously. Mackerm 18:53, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I spoke too soon. User Jimfbleak Added the "Peregrine Falcon" example on December 6, 2003. Mackerm 20:39, May 21, 2004 (UTC)

Which shows its been around for 5 months without any major complaints until now :-) . . . and I've added masses of other new information to all those pages, as well as what I consider a perfectly reasonable naming convention which is also liked by several other major contributors here, too. And what's more, most of the source books I use, use this system as well. Above all, it is practical: everything gets equal treatment. What's so terrible about that? - MPF 00:07, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm not going to complain about bird capitalization, because various ornithological organizations have apparently agreed to do things that way. But in the case of fish, FishBase is now up to over 188,000 common names of species, and doesn't capitalize any of them. So I'm not comfortable with changing all of the fish articles in WP, and don't think it's a good idea for other people to do it, but I'm also not going to do a Wik and start a big edit war every time it happens. (If not engaging in edit wars is being interpreted as agreement, then perhaps it's time to start? :-) ) Stan 10:59, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

Again looking back at the February 24 changes to the Wikiproject page, I notice that immediately after the major edit, people started arguing about capitalization. The old page addressed birds as a special case, and contained useful, authoritative links too. As far as I can tell, nobody specifically approved the deletions on Feb 24. And on that point, shall we move this chat page to the archive and start a new one about the Feb. 24 rewrite? Mackerm 13:34, May 22, 2004 (UTC)

Searching for middle ground

New section, because discussion is running long ...

I can see the arguments on both sides --- I, too, have a strong urge to say "Giant Sequoia" (based on reading sources), but capitalizing House Cat and Dog just seems completely wrong to me. I realize this seems like a binary yes/no style argument, but is there any middle ground that everyone can grudgingly agree to? I've lost track of the number of times someone has pulled a rabbit (Rabbit?) out of a hat in Wikipedia and came up with a creative solution that made everyone only slightly unhappy.

Here's one off-the-wall idea --- capitalize species names, but usage must refer only to the species, not to an individual of the species:

1. I own a cat.
2. It is fun to chase cats.
3. The House Cat is a carnivore.
4. Giant Sequoia is a species of tree.
5. The largest Giant Sequoia is XXX meters tall.
6. Giant sequoias are taller than other trees.

There has to be some way of resolving this. --- hike395 04:17, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. A few days ago, somebody moved giant sequoia (along with dozens of other pages) so that you go to the capitalized version with a redirect message. This tells authors that capitalization is correct, and they will tend to improperly capitalize the term on other pages. Prior to the move, your suggested solution would have worked. Mackerm 05:06, May 22, 2004 (UTC)

I'd by and large agree with what Hike says; in particular domestic animals are not biological taxa, so do not (under the 'Field Guide rules', if I may call them that!) take capitals (e.g. domestic cats are derived from the African Wild Cat, and dogs from the Wolf). Under the same 'rules', as has already been stated earlier by Tannin and others, generic use takes lower case, e.g. I have a pine in my garden; it happens to be a Japanese White Pine. As page titles refer to the species as a species, I would think that my move of 'giant sequoia' to 'Giant Sequoia' comes well within this - for Mackerm, why does my having made the move make Hike's solution unworkable? I don't understand the problem there. - MPF 08:47, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

I thought that there were species for each domestic animal? From memory:

• Domestic Dog Canis familiaris
• Domestic Cat Felis domesticus
• Domestic Ferret Mustela putorius furo
• Domestic Horse Equus caballus (sp?)

In any event, the common name has the word Domestic in front (right? except maybe for horses?), so you wouldn't use this in common writing. And, it seems that the usage would be "a cat", "cats", "the Domestic Cat", for an individual, a group, and the species as a unit. The article title, being about the species, should be capitalized.

Mackerm: if all of the pro-cap people commit to this usage, is this OK with you? -- hike395 18:27, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

I admit that I fell into the trap described by Mackerm --- I changed giant sequoia to Giant Sequoia in a bunch of pages I was interested in. But, don't get too discouraged. The really wonderful thing about Wikipedia is that errors are always fixable. I'm completely willing to change my capitalization to match whatever consensus we reach.

I've got three ideas to fix the title capitalization propagating out to body text. First, post the consensus rule clearly on the main project page. Second, publicize the consensus on other appropriate community pages. Third, after the boldface species name in an article, put a {{msg:Species_capitalization}}, which would map to ^{[[Wikipedia:Species_capitalization|*]]}. The article Wikipedia:Species_capitalization should make it super clear that only the species name should be capitalized, not references to individuals, groups of individuals, or multiple species. Does this help enough for you, Mackerm? --- hike395 18:27, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

That's a really good idea about putting the boilerplate link at the bottom of pages. Reading the archives, it appears that the only consensus is that the bird-article authors are copying the capitization scheme in certain bird books. Perhaps that consensus should be included in the main Wikiproject page, along with a note that there are standard English capitalization rules, and (of course) a couple examples of books which do and don't follow those rules. Mackerm 17:13, May 23, 2004 (UTC)

Hi, Mackerm. I'm trying to elucidate your position, to understand what you would find acceptable. Hopefully we can find something that would also be acceptable to people like UtherSRG and MPF. I think the vast majority of people would agree that proper nouns should be capitalized and noun phrases should not be capitalized.

So, my proposal is that, in Wikipedia, a common name for a species only when referring to the species as a whole is a proper noun and should be capitalized. This makes sense to me: a name of a species seems like an ideal candidate for a proper noun; much like a name of a person, corporation, province, or country.

Notice that individuals of a species ("a field marigold"), groups of individuals of a species ("a flowerbed filled with field marigolds"), and groups of species ("marigolds") are not the same as a species considered as a whole, so are not proper nouns and should not be capitalized.

Part of the slipperiness of the discussion is that a species is an epiphenomenon, you only make a species out of a mass of individuals. Worse, the individuals have the same referent as the species name. But, I think we can make the distinction clear enough where we know when we are talking about the species as a whole and when we are not. Further, we can sprinkle enough guidance through Wikipedia to ensure proper usage is known.

Does this make sense to all the discussants? Can we agree to this, or do we need further discussion to find a different area of overlap and agreement?

-- hike395 17:25, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

I understand your position, but I completely disagree with it, as do other who've posted here. I'm about to throw my hands up (except for the minor addition to the WikiProject page noted in my last post). I guess whover wages the best revert war is the "winner", but I'm not up to that. Thanks for your diplomacy, and give yourself a pat on the back. Mackerm 18:15, May 23, 2004 (UTC)

Mackerm: I believe there is some compromise we all can reach. Often, when I feel strongly about something in Wikipedia, it seems like everything is black or white --- either something is right, or wrong. But, then other people come along and rephrase the problem, and then I realize that there are ways of looking at things that make it possible to reach consensus. I'm hoping that will happen here. Can you please tell me what are the issues with the suggestion that species names are proper nouns? Or, even better, can you think of a different way of using proper nouns in the Tree of Life? I'm not wedded to my proposal at all --- I was just trying to find common ground.

Of course, you are perfectly free to bow out of the discussion --- sometimes that is the best thing to do, to make sure that you keep enjoying contributing to Wikipedia. -- hike395 18:36, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Proper names are used for groups of items, but way below the species level. With people, it's clearly related people: Jackson family. With plants, it appears to be at the cultivar level: Red Delicious apple. <strike.>(And the last word is lower-case in both). I really like your boilerplate link idea. Instead of getting into a revert war/move war, we could stick the capitalization message on disputed pages. Mackerm 19:00, May 23, 2004 (UTC)

As an aside, cultivars are not relevant here - their formal naming & capitalisation is a completely separate issue, governed by the ICNCP, in much the same way that scientific taxon names are governed by the ICBN and ICZN. More on other matters later - too busy just now! - but on one note posted earlier by Mackerm, I think that all significant contributors to Wiki taxon texts should be allowed their say, not just "the seven people who've been posting here lately" - MPF 20:06, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Also posted by Mackerm on Hike's user talk page: "I rewrote my last comment at the Wikiprojet page, basically saying there's apparantly no consensus except that the birders are following the convention in certain bird books. I can't stop people from writing pages the way they want, but MPF really went on a tear re-capitalizing other people's work" — I find this a bit disingenuous; a fair number of the pages concerned are ones I started myself, and many more (the majority) I converted from pretty bald stubs to something tolerably decent (and will be adding more detailed info to all of them from time to time, too). BTW, plenty of plant books, as well as "certain bird books". - MPF 22:00, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

It sounds like Mackerm is suggesting something like Disputed English grammar. In that article, the disputes over grammar are treated in an NPOV way. We could do something analogous in Disputed species capitalization, which perhaps could describe the multiple capitalization behaviors in an even-handed, descriptivist, NPOV way. We could have a subtle link to that page^* just after the initial boldface species name on pages with disputed species capitalization. Or, perhaps a see also. Comments? --- hike395 20:17, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

The top paragraph of that page is amazingly like the two sides of the debate here! - logic or functionality vs precedent - uncanny, "there's nothing new under the sun" MPF 22:00, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'd find having a link in the first line of every article about a member of the tree of life extremely ugly. Every other book or website picks a capitalization convention and sticks to it without a footnote explaining why on every page. Part of our problem is that our scope is so wide.... can we face a situation where sub-projects are allowed to select their own convention (as we do in practice with fish vs. birds/mammals right now). Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:45, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary to have it at the top. I suggest a general-information box like at the bottom of Malta. It would have some links to the various Tree of Life pages, AND a link to "capitalization dispute" which would very briefly describe each side's case, and list a couple books using each style. Mackerm 23:25, May 23, 2004 (UTC)

On each page that has "disputed" capitalization? That would end up being a majority of the taxonomy articles. I don't think that's reallistic. - UtherSRG 00:00, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

One revision to my last comment. The line in the general-information box would be something closer to, "Common name capitalization" and the linked page could be as short as, "There is disagreement on the capitalization of common names of biological organisms. The following three sources capitalize all the words in names: (List of sources). The following three sources use standard English capitalization: (List of sources).

The capitalization line would be one of several items in the information box, and could legitimately go on any page about an organism. I can think of lots of useful links which could go into such a general-purpose information box. Mackerm 01:49, May 24, 2004 (UTC)

There are at least two possible ways of doing this. One way is a {{msg:Taxonomy}} at the bottom of pages, which would have taxonomical links of interest to both Wikipedia readers and editors. A second way is similar to what we are doing in Wikipedia:WikiProject Mountains: we put Template:Mountain on every talk page in the project, which points back to the wikiproject. That box can be full of information just for Wiki editors who want to contribute to Tree of Life. This keeps meta-information out of the article (which is what Talk is for). --- hike395 02:37, 24 May 2004 (UTC)

caps vs no caps stalemate

And so yet again we've come to a stalemate, with those of us desiring the more modern Common Name feeling we're right, and those who want the older "proper"-style common name feeling they're right, and those inbetween still inbetween. I also note there are a few issues that have been recently archived that fall into this stalemate position. Stalemates are not conducive to concensus.... - UtherSRG 19:32, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

There's a stalemate on American and British spelling, and it isn't so bad, so long as neither side attempts to enforce their position on the other. In this case, we do need some idea of what to do with page names, however. The problem is that people are talking past each other.

I think the central idea here is in the comment a species can be though of as a single entity. When a species is a collection of individuals, it shouldn't be capitalized. Thus I found a praying mantis in the parking lot, and praying mantises were introduced to North America. When a species is considered as a single entity, it probably should, as is done for other abstract ideals. Thus the Praying Mantis first appeared in Europe. This distinction was raised once, but I don't think many people, including myself, payed attention to it. It strikes me as reasonable, though. The only question that needs to be answered, then, is whether the article is about the species as a single object or about individuals. My vote would still be for the latter, since it makes it easier to link to (e.g. considering the three sentences given). -- Josh

You could use that reasoning to justify, the Electric Guitar first appeared in Europe... Mackerm 22:17, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

You could, and that isn't done, but English isn't consistent. The point here is that both practices are used, and we need to strike a balance.

How about Mackerm's idea (above) of making a Wikipedia page about the controversy (Species common name capitalization) and linking to it, either in an footer at the bottom, or (my preference), from the top of talk pages of species? Perhaps I'm reading more into Mackerm's suggestion than he intended, but I would think that it presents both sides fairly and lets the individual editors make up their mind. -- hike395 03:25, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm still trying to figure out how to do it in a non-sucky manner. In the meantime, could somebody tell me why WikiProject Birds says, "Note that capitalisation for species applies to articles about fauna, not to the whole encyclopedia."? Why are the bird authors interested in how fauna in general should be capitalized? Mackerm 00:45, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, here is a specific suggestion --- how about if you put the following at the top of every Talk page?

This article is part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life, a project to systematically present information on living species. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit the article attached to this page. For more information, please see

Contributing FAQ Species common name capitalization .. any other resources people think are appropriate ...

--- hike395 02:06, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Let's not forget that some other websites copy Wikipedia articles verbatim. I don't think that showing our disagreements about capitalisation to the world, would show us from our best side. Therefore I suggest :

• either we put the box suggested by Hike 395 on the talk page (or perhaps a more elaborate boilerplate)
• or put it on the main page, preceded by <!-- comment here --> . This way the comment should only visible to someone wanting to edit the page and not to the rest of the world. This way, the would-be editor would be advised to which rules to stick.

By the way, I think the off-the-wall idea, made by Hike 395 on 22 May 2004, is a very sensible idea, around which a common ground could be found. JoJan 18:25, 2 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Angiosperm Phylogeny Group

I have been doing some background work on the APG, and have become convinced that we should standardise on using their (APG II) classifications for everything they cover. I have done a page about them, which essentially explains why. Their major oeuvre is conveniently available online (you can get it as a pdf if you want a printout). I'd welcome comments on this proposal, especially if other contributors have reasons why we shouldn't follow APG - although I have been doing a lot of plant pages lately, I am not a botanist at all (though I have been working with cluster analysis since almost before it existed, so I do understand what taxonomists are up against). seglea 00:16, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Motion seconded. I'm not a botanist either, but I looked at a variety of classification schemes, and those based on modern phylogenetic techniques tend to be very close to APG when not identical. The current list of dicot orders follows APG. By the way, shouldn't this be on a separate page, like Talk:Magnoliophyta or Wikipedia:WikiProject Magnoliophyta? -- Josh

I mostly agree with Josh on both points. APG II seems like the right way to go. It's always difficult work to create Wiki taxonomic articles (or other taxonomic websites) knowing that the rug could be pulled out from under your feet at any moment. APG II is rather young and may need corrections, but any revisions would come out way before the work here was completed, so I don't see any reason in that regard to hold off from starting. A WikiProject should be created to help shepherd this effort, although I don't think talking about starting a project needs a project. *grins* - UtherSRG 11:45, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Taxonomy authority links

I have noticed that we now try to give proper scientific names including the taxonomy authority, e.g. for the Rosy Barb "Barbus conchonius Hamilton-Buchanan 1822", typically with the name and year linked. Is there aleady an agreed link format for these authorities? Now "Hamilton-Buchanan" is a simple case, for there will most probably never be a name clash with something completely unrelated.

However, take Girard for instance: that link goes to a disambig page for places. Not exactly what I'd expect when I see the link as a taxonomy authority... I have therefore started to use the canonical format [[Name (taxonomy)|]] as in Girard, which I then make a redirect to the page on the person, in this case, Charles Frédéric Girard. The advantage of this format is that I don't have to worry about inadvertently linking to some place or other unrelated entry, and I don't have to go figure out the full name of the person just to add the link.

Only when the link just added turns up red, I have to go do some research and find out something about the person. (Incidentally, I believe when one adds a taxonomy authority link, one should also do some reasonable effort to write the article behind the link, even if it's just a stub. Just adding lots of red links doesn't help. And in some cases, articles on the person already exist, and one needs just to do the redirect.)

Lupo 07:45, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Another entry where the authority link went haywire is the Zebra Danio, where the link was just Hamilton. I really think when one links taxoauthorities, adding " (taxonomy)|" to the link helps a lot avoiding confusions. Lupo 08:38, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

You are mostly right. Using [[Name (taxonomy)|]] is a good idea when just the plain [[Name]] goes to the wrong place. However, I've had trouble finding just who an author is and prefer to leave the link red for someone to fix who knows how to fix it. Also, it is better to not leave the " (taxonomy)|" trick in the page, once the actual article is know, instead use [["Real Name"|"Name"]] instead. - UtherSRG 11:53, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

But I add " (taxonomy)|" precisely to make sure I get a red link and don't link inadvertently to some place name that would show up blue and give no indication whatsoever that actually nobody has yet checked the name give. And yes, tracking down those names is hard work, some are really obscure and cost me easily an hour to assemble enough info for a short stub. And why not leave the pipe trick in? Anyone who clicks on the link will probably not be surprised if he or she ends up on a page saying "Redirected from...". Lupo 12:10, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

I also think it is a good thing to create a redirect from the non-piped name: Thiele, for example. - UtherSRG 12:04, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

As long as that doesn't conflict again, cf. Hamilton or Girard above! Lupo 12:10, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

If you don't have a full name, just use "Hamilton" or "Girard" by itself - it's effectively a note that more disambiguation needs to be added, and people who are good at that sort of thing will fix it up later. If we do that repeatedly, eventually Hamilton etc will link to a list of Hamiltons that includes voila! the scientist you were looking for. Linking to "Hamilton (taxonomy)" means that no one will notice the needed disambiguation. Stan 12:20, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, take a look at Red Spider Mite. Do you find the Koch link helpful? Does it tell you in any way that in fact none of the Kochs listed is the one that should be linked? Lupo 12:34, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

For those of us who like tinkering with disambiguation, it's totally intriguing - either we're missing a worthy, or one of those guys had an unusual hobby, and finding out which is a good use of a half-hour. :-) Links to "msg:disambig" pages are big red flags to the people who pay attention to that sort of thing. Stan 13:05, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Sorry to insist, but... this is not only a disambiguation problem. Take the Bush Dog, for instance. If my " (taxonomy)|" proposal had been used, we wouldn't link to a Swedish city called Lund there: we'd have a nice red link telling everybody "hey, here's an article that needs to be written: Wikipedia doesn't know who this Lund is". And there's no disambiguation involved at all! Lupo 13:32, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

That just means we need a disambiguator at Lund, which shouldn't be surprising because it's a relatively common surname - almost every name that matches a surname needs a disambiguator sooner or later. Doing the " (taxonomy)" thing doesn't hurt, I just don't think it's that critical, and it's not really what the disambig specialists prefer. On the other hand, more redirs is always better! :-) Stan 14:53, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

There also another solution : there is a "List of biologists" in Wikipedia. If everyone, interested in taxonomy, would add an author (from an existing entry) to this list, as I do, things could be much easier. Of course, you can write a biography of an author yourself (as I did for C. S. Rafinesque). Discussions about disambiguation would become almost pointless. In this list, one can, for instance, also easily see the difference between Louis Agassiz and Alexander Agassiz. Personally, I have printed out this list and I find it very handy in attributing links to the authors. JoJan 08:28, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

ITIS as a taxonomic resource

Please take care when using the ITIS database as a source for taxonomy authorities. ITIS has spelling errors, for instance, they have "Hamilton-buchanon" [sic] instead of "Hamilton-Buchanan", or "Mcclelland, 1893" instead of "McClelland, 1839"! A quick Google search helps a long way in catching such errors in ITIS! Lupo 08:45, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Quite right. ITIS is authoritative in many ways. But when it comes to the class Gastropoda, ITIS clearly has missed the boat and still declares the older taxonomy as valid. Indeed, one must take care ! JoJan 20:45, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Wikiproject Evolution

Hi, would anyone like to help? Duncharris 15:40, May 4, 2004 (UTC)

Citations

FYI, I'm gradually, as I edit botanical articles, adding citations, linking them, and adding short bio articles on the botanists cited if they don't already exist. Some are really obscure, too, let me tell you, like Otto von Muenchhausen. jaknouse 18:28, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Great work too, I might add. Some of that info is really hard to come by, online or off. Stan 22:41, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Taxonomy issues

I would like to start a project with questions and inconsitencies re taxonmy in the wikipedia's. It would be the place to discuss the naming of taxons, the placement of names to taxons, the justification for the name of an article. The point is that LOTS of discussion is going on and, it would be great to have one place where these issues can be discussed with some authority.

An example of an issue: Monocotyledon has a new name "Liliopsida". This does exist as a redirect to the Monocotyledon. This should be the other way round. Having discussed this, it would be changed. An other issue: in the nl:wikipedia, a flora is used to determine native plants. The Belgian flora has a different structure. What to choose eithet or neither.

(The above was added by user:GerardM).

I support this proposal. This kind of discussion tends to break out on the talk pages of particular articles, and generally we've tried to steer it onto this page, or onto Talk pages for daughter WikiProjects. But those Talk pages also deal with other issues, and as a result they fill up and get archived quite regularly, so the discussion gets hard to find. There will never be finality on taxonomy, and probably we won't get full agreement among ourselves about which of the currently available alternatives we prefer, but we need an easy way for a new contributor (or a longstanding contributor who's dealing with a taxon s/he's not familiar with) to find out things like: what sources we are currently regarding as authoritative for particular taxa, what the problems are with them, and what's wrong with apparent alternatives. We also need a good way of exchanging that information between the different language Wikipedias. My own view is that we should try to agree on some standard sources that we will use as default authorities - which doesn't mean that an article has to use them, but does mean that it should explain why if it uses some alternative system. Where we have some degree of agreement, it is generally recorded on WikiProject Tree of Life, but that needs some updating I suspect. seglea 18:12, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm partly supportive of this notion. For taxonomic issues that can be covered under an already existing subproject (Cephalopods, Cetaceans, Primates, etc.) I'd rather see it hashed out on the subproject's talk page, or a taxonomic subpage off of the subproject's talk page. For instance:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Cephalopod
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cephalopod
  • Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cephalopod/taxonomy

Likewise, I think having a dedicated talk page for taxonomic issues not covered by a subproject could be done here, as long as a link is maintained from the top of this talk.

This structured approach allows the discussion to happen while reasonably defining the discussion arena. Someone with a taxonomic query is likely to go to the appropriate project page first and then to its talk page. Having a dedicated taxonomy forum link from there would be logical. Likewise, a link from the project's page would work, too, especially from a ==Taxonomy & Resources== section.

When a new subproject is created, taxonomic discussions already handled at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/taxonomy could be moved/re-archived at the new subproject's own dedicated taxonomy forum.

- UtherSRG 19:03, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

In general taxonomic issues should go into the article for the taxon, with mentions in the one (or more :-) ) supertaxa. Lots of articles do this already, with references to the various authorities, dates, and so forth; for higher taxa it tends to become an important section of the article. Authoritative sources used for multiple articles should have their own articles, for instance FishBase and Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, where everybody can read the strengths/weaknesses, then I think the only Wikipedia: namespace thing needed is the list of editor-favored/disfavored authorities for the different categories - it would probably end up looking like the list of PD image resources, each entry with some amount of annotation. (I'm not so keen on project pages because they tend to be in the shadows, and credibility here depends on us being very open about the authorities we're citing.) Stan 19:12, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

To be clear: It would be a centre for ALL taxonomy discussions NOT for en: only discussions. Therefore discussions may have been held in an english subproject/articles but they would have as much standing as a similar discussions on fr:wikipedia or fa:wikipedia.

Obviously when a conclusion has been reached in a local discussion, it should be posted on the new taxonomy thingie. This way it DOES get some standing.

As the objective is about taxonomy STANDARDS, the notion is not so much about democracy but about best arguments.

I am not a taxonomist. I am just looking for the best way of getting all wikipedia's on a sound footing regarding taxonomy. GerardM 19:20, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Just use the interwiki links; it's basically up to the multi-lingual to let us know that fr: has a good suggestion for an authority to use, and to propagate it from there to here, or vice versa. That's one advantage of a list of authorities, it's easy to compare to see which entries are the same, even for the linguistically-challenged. Stan 22:06, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Other information

I am not a biologist, and I don't know much about taxonomy, but I have been thinking a lot about information about plants and animals, especially since I have 4 young children. Information that I have trouble finding and would like very much to find about animals is the following:

1. When did this species come into existance? (And if extinct, when did it become extinct?)
2. What species did this species evolve from? (And, if applicable, what species eveolved from this one?)
3. What regions and types of areas does this species inhabit? (This info should be in such a form as to be able to link indirectly to other species that live in the same places.)
4. Ability to link directly or indirectly to species that this species eats or is eaten by.

Thanks. nroose Talk 04:27, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

(Formatted above)

Welcome! You have some good points and I want to do my best to address them.

1. For many species, a rough estimation of existence can be found and added to its article. Some of the extinct species we do note at the top of the infobox when it lived (although I can't recall a specific article that has it). I know there are some because I did them.
2. This is more problematic as most "previous species" are extinct and not present in the fossil record. One can talk of the type of organism the current species evolved from, or the evolutionary path the species traveled.
3. This is often done already. Gorilla, for instance links to Africa. What links here on Africa would give you all the other articles (species or not) that also link to Africa. An alternative (and this is done for some already) is the have a set of articles like "list of British birds" that you can use for this purpose.
4. An exhaustive list of species eaten or that are predators of the given species would be quite difficult to compile, and is probably more specific that can be found in even the most comprehensive scientific literature. When available, the general types of species are listed. (Squid for example are listed among the diet in several articles.)

I hope this help you to some degree. - UtherSRG 12:22, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Infobox

Yo. Could/should someone update the organism example on Wikipedia:Infobox--it looks like it might be a bit out of date? jengod 21:06, May 13, 2004 (UTC)

Yo yourself. *grins* Thanks for the heads up. I've taken care of it. Cheers! - UtherSRG 21:34, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

Archiving

I moved all sections that hadn't been touched since the end of April to a new archive 5. Note that this page is still at 70k but the debate is too live to do anything about it now. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 02:19, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

Interwiki footer

Over at wikibooks, I have been starting some new projects to draw in some fresh blood. How would y'all feel about a footer on pages like apple with links to the wikibooks pages Cookbook:Apple, [[Gardening:Apples, Pharmacopeia:Apple, Field Guide:Apple and Nutrition:Apple, and wiktionary:apple. (not all of these links exist, but they will; how do you interwiki to wiktionary now that there are separate language domains?). Tuf-Kat 05:38, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

"ae" vs. "æ"

An anon editor has been changing lots of "-ae" suffixes in marsupial and related taxa to display as "-æ", e.g. Vombatidæ. I haven't yet come across this in Wikipedia (or elsewhere), so I wonder whether these changes should be reverted? What's our position on this? Personally, I think we should not use the ligature, if only to avoid ending up with links (and articles named) like "Tarsipedidæ". Opinions, anyone? Lupo 09:11, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

That looks terribly archaic. I wonder if we have someone in over-enthusiastic pursuit of some minor American and British English differences, or something of the sort? But speaking as an English person (and a professional biological scientist) I have never seen the ligature used in modern scientific literature, US, British, Australian or from any other source. I can't even remember seeing it used much, if at all, in older books or papers. It is furthermore an appallingly bad idea, involving the needless use of a symbol that most people don't have on their keyboards. I suggest we adopt a policy that we are not going to do this, and revert them all pronto - if possible tracking down the anon user and gently explaining that the 19th century is over. seglea 18:43, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

I agree with Seglea. Tannin 23:40, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Agreed, revert to -ae. I've not seen æ used outside of the Danish language in any books less than about 150 years old - MPF 00:31, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, but the encyclopedia brittanica still uses the name Encyclopædia Britannica on its website. By the way, does anyone know if writen Latin used Æ, or was that a change made by the later Latin scholars? 'cuz a lot of old books use spellings like Cæsar.

Agreed jimfbleak 16:13, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. Revert 'em all. - UtherSRG 11:18, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Placentalia-Marsupialia or Eutheria-Metatheria

Some discussion has been started regarding the naming convention for marsupials (Placentalia-Marsupialia or Eutheria-Metatheria?). I do not know much about the subject but Ingoolemo seems to have looked into it and has started up a vote, which I have moved to: Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life/Placentalia-Marsupialia or Eutheria-Metatheria. Feel free to join in if you have anything to say on the subject. - PlatinumX 07:56, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I've hardly looked into it, really. My goal is to get the community to look into it.--Ingoolemo 08:15, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Taxobox Formatting

Intro

There are two issues I hope to address in this comment. The first is a simple question of appropriate formatting; the second is a much more pertinent assertion with regards to species nomenclature.

Using bold

A formatting standard I have noted often is the fact that the article's topic taxon is boldfaced, but the taxa that have separate articles are not (example at bottom). However, if one were to click on the link to a broader taxon (such as Mammalia), that taxon would be boldfaced. To me, it is most logical to use a boldface font for all taxa, not just the one(s) that is/are topic of the article. This is really just an 'anal' thing, and far less pressing than the other topic.

Taxonomy
Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Mammalia Subclass: Prototheria Order: Monotremata

Species Nomenclature

The topic of species nomenclature is of far more pressing concern than the 'boldface' issue. In the WikiProject Tree of Life page, the standard format for the taxoboxes is listed as having the species name being the second part of the Binomial Nomenclature. This is extremely erroneous from a scientific standpoint, for one very good reason:

The human species is Homo sapiens, not just sapiens as many amateur researches might guess from reading an article formatted in that fashion; nor is a Platypus simpy anatinus, nor a Polar Bear simply arctos. As noted on the taxobox formatting section, the species 'variable' is not exclusive to a certain genus, so in principle sapiens, anatinus, or arctos could be shared by scores of other organisms ranging from Bacteria to Beetles to Wombats.

From a standpoint of simplicity, describing the species in its proper fashion, using the full Binomial name (Homo sapiens, Ornithorhynchus anatinus, Ursus arctos) as the species also eliminates the need for the 'Binomial Name' cell of the taxoboxes.

Hope we can come to some conclusion soon, --Ingoolemo 03:09, 2004 Jun 5 (UTC)

Feedback

Many of these issues have been brought up previously. I'm going to address them in a more succinct format than the one you chose to present them in. These are conclusions that have already been reached. But thanks for thinking.

1. The boldness in the taxobox reflects the boldness in the article. Since it is inappropriate to bold any of the taxon names in the article besides the one(s) the article is about, it is likewise inappropriate to bold others in the taxobox.
2. Genus name = Homo. Full Species name = Binomial name = Homo sapiens. Species epithet = sapiens. The Species epithet is almost never used without a local reference to the Genus name. However, the taxobox provides that local reference. There are plenty of similar structures in the scientific literature that have taxobox-like listings. Some are the way you suggest we should have the taxobox, others are as we have already decided.

I believe that discussions of these decisions can be found in the archive of this talk, probbly archive #2. - UtherSRG 04:16, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I always love it when I'm thanked for thinking. I must apologise; in retrospect I should have bit the bullet and looked through the archives (but seeing how long this part of the talk page alone was, I couldn't help but just present my questions on the current page). While I still maintain that using sapiens, arctos, etc. as the name of a species is incorrect, I will drop the argument for the moment. However, I challenge someone to find a specific encyclopædia (or other scholarly source, such as a university website or textbook) that actually uses that sort of nomenclature.--Ingoolemo 00:57, 2004 Jun 6 (UTC)

Easily: Lemurs of Madagascar - UtherSRG 04:07, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It now seems apparent that the system I object to is perfectly legitimate scientifically, because it is shown on what appears to be a reliable scientific source. Despite this, I maintain that using the binomial name to denote the species rather than just the second element thereof. The reason why is because it eliminates the need for a Binomial Name cell in the taxobox. In short: it's most prudent to use the more common (is it more common?) classification technique, in particular because this may reduce potential confusion. --Ingoolemo 01:22, 2004 Jun 9 (UTC)

Results of the mammalian taxonomy debate.

In the first few days that the Wikipedia: WikiProject Tree of Life/Placentalia-Marsupialia or Eutheria-Metatheria page has existed, four users voted. Since then, there has been no other feedback. Seing this, I intend to make the changes mandated by the outcome on all mammal articles. The results:

• A class mammalia with three subclasses, Monotremata, Marsupialia, and Placentalia -- three of four votes.
• A class mammalia with two subclasses, Prototheria (consisting of the infraclass Monotremata), and Theria (consisting of two infraclasses, Marsupialia and Placentalia).

Based upon these results, it is clear that Wikipedia taxonomy articles in the mammal department should use the former system. However, before making the final changes, I felt it was best to post this on the talk page so I could see if there were any objections. Thanks, Ingoolemo 23:21, 2004 Jun 10 (UTC)