Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system

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

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

Aquaterraves‎

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

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

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

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

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

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

Automatic links to species, commons, data

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

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

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

Instead of duplicating the effect in the taxobox, we can perhaps work to make the taxonbar available on mobile. - UtherSRG (talk) 14:46, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunate side-effects to that would include:

1. people complaining about WP:OVERLINKING
2. people removing {{Commons}}, {{Commons category}}, etc., due to the presence of a link in {{Taxonbar}}

I don't agree with this behavior, but it happens relatively often.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:09, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm not against an unobtrusive addition at the bottom of the taxobox. However, as an infobox, the taxobox is supposed to summarize information on the taxon, so it is probably better for links to other resources to be elsewhere.

There was a previous discussion about including wikispecies and commons in the taxonbar or only using the templates {{Commons category}} and {{Wikispecies}} to avoid redundancy. In the end the status quo was kept (with Wikispecies in the taxonbar). I'm not adverse to adding the commons gallery or commons category.

The taxonbar doesn't appear on mobile because it uses Navbox, which is not allowed on mobile view for some reason (possibly because you can't collapse large navboxes or they are condised too large for downloading on phones). I believe there were some proposed changes aimed at making a mobile compliant navbox. @Tom.Reding: do you know anything on this? It would certainly be possible to make an alternative output for the taxonbar without using navbox, although this may go against decisions made elsewhere for such content (e.g. authority control). —  Jts1882 | talk  15:03, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Mobile & style issues are sort of a black box to me. My impression is that there's a desire, and some work being done, to, at some point, make navboxes viewable on mobile, but I don't keep up with that at all. I don't know of another navbox-like utility (not that I've looked for one). If there were a flag or something in Lua that would designate a user's device as mobile or non-mobile, then an alternate method could be used (even something dumb like an un/ordered list, assuming consensus, etc., etc.).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:22, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

There is no way of detecting the skin in Lua. It can only be done in JS or CSS. Without Wikimedia support, this means any solution must use CSS, which can be customised for different skins (including the mobile one, Minerva). I'm not sure how Navboxes are blocked in Mobile view, but I assume it's server side, as the HTML code for navbox is not on the page (although strangely their templatestyles is). An alternative output could mimick the navbox styles and hav different displays for mobile and desktop (or narrow and wide screen).

An alternative output from taxonbar shouldn't be too difficult. I did some experimenting in the module sandbox some time ago, using horizontal and vertical lists, with collapsible options. However, it would be good to find out what Wikimedia plans are for navboxes and mobile. —  Jts1882 | talk  07:39, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

---

Taxonbar appears to be overpopulated, uncurated, containing numerous links to, from a reader's perspective, low-quality sites (database dumps); on mobile devices this would be one half of the screen full of some links. On the other hand, I know that a link to the commons category/gallery will take me to moderately well-curated images of the species, which are made and heavily used by us. Since our articles don't have more than a picture of two, and many readers probably want to see more, I am still not convinced that adding a wikispecies link and one or two commons links would be a bad idea, as unobtrusive as we want it to be. While the taxobox is intended to summarize information on the taxon (meaning: classification), we already deviate from this by incorporating images, statuses, and range maps. Should this be discussed anywhere else? Can we BOLDly add it and wait for the avalanche? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ponor (talk • contribs)

Back in the old days, we did try putting those links in the taxobox. It got shot down. This is why Tom said what he did above. Those were the arguements against. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:04, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Taxonbar links are curated to some extent. We've decided not to include databases published by governments of non-English speaking countries. And there are many Wikidata properties for taxonomic databases that aren't included in taxonbars (where there has never been any discussion to include or exclude them).

I'm against including (potentially) 4 links to Wikispecies in desktop view. Currently links appear in the desktop sidebar, in the taxonbar, and via {{Wikispecies}} (if present). A link the in the taxobox would be a fourth. Sidebar and taxonbar links don't appear in mobile view. It would be good to enable links to Wikispecies and Commons in mobile in some way aside from {{Wikispecies}} and {{Commons}}. Plantdrew (talk) 19:51, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I concur, PD.

Let's see if I can sum up. There's a desire for links to Wikispecies/CommonsCats/CommonsGal/Wikidata to be available to mobile users, if they exist. Taxonbar is where these are already present in desktop, but is suppressed in mobile, as is the sidebar where some of these links are present in desktop. Links to CC, CG and WS should be listed on WD, if they exist. So it seems that only a link to WD would suffice, though providing all four would ease the burden on the user to click through WD to get to the others.

This seems to be our list of current options, though they weren't all stated above:

1. Add these links as originally requested to the Taxobox system.
2. Add these links as originally requested to the Taxobox system, but have them appear only for mobile users; so CSS or JS changes
3. Tweak the CSS or JS (or ?) so that the Taxonbar appears on mobile
4. Tweak the CSS or JS (or ?) so that the Taxonbar appears on mobile, but in a limited form with just WS/CC/CG/WD, if available.

Option 1 is ruled out by history. It's a good ask, but I don't think it will ever see traction. All the rest, as far as I can figure, need someone who can tweak the CSS or JS so that the good magic happens. Do we need to poke elsewhere for CSS/JS/? support on this? - UtherSRG (talk) 00:38, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Another option is to create a simple template that displays a box with the wikimedia links that only displays on mobile. If could be floated right below the taxobox or placed at the bottom of the page instead of the taxonbar. The taxobox or taxonbar templates could be used to place it automatically. It can be given a class so that it will only be shown in mobile (the CSS would be set using templatestyles). —  Jts1882 | talk  07:03, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

A summary of relevant differences between desktop and mobile views (mostly redundant with above discussion).

• Template {{taxonbar}} is only shown in desktop, so mobile views don't get information that is exclusive to taxonbar.
• In desktop, Wikispecies is shown in sidebar, taxonbar (if other identifiers) and in template {{Wikispecies}} or {{Wikispecies-inline}} (if present).
• In mobile, Wikispecies is only shown if template {{Wikispecies}} or {{Wikispecies-inline}} is on the page.
• In desktop, the Commons gallery or category is shown in the sidebar and in in template {{Commons}} or {{Commons-inline}} or {{Commons category}}
• In mobile, Commons gallery or category is only shown if template {{Commons}} or {{Commons-inline}} or {{Commons category}} is only page.
• Normally only one of the Commons gallery or category is linked. Both the sidebar and the commons templates show the gallery if it exists and the category if there is no gallery. Both can be linked if {{Commons category}} is also added.

In short, mobile users need the wikispecies and commons templates if they are to see wikimedia links. Some numbers:

• There are 314,455 pages with {{speciesbox}}. 25,328 have {{Wikispecies}}, 7,403 have {{Wikispecies-inline}}, 22,989 have {{Commons}}, 4,059 have {{Commons-inline}} and 16,686 have {{Commons category}} (with 28 of them having one of the other commons templates)
• There are 78,809 pages with {{automatic taxobox}}. 5,260 have {{Wikispecies}}, 4,371 have {{Wikispecies-inline}}, 1,955 have {{Commons}}, 1,732 have {{Commons-inline}} and 6,487 have {{Commons category}} (5 with both gallery and category links)
• There are 64,226 pages with {{taxobox}}. 3,415 have {{Wikispecies}}, 563 have {{Wikispecies-inline}}, 2,550 have {{Commons}}, 107 have {{Commons-inline}} and 1,611 have {{Commons category}} (2 with both gallery and category links)
• There are 461,962 pages with {{taxonbar}}. 34,305 have {{Wikispecies}}, 12,474 have {{Wikispecies-inline}}, 27,586 have {{Commons}}, 5,926 have {{Commons-inline}} and 25,121 have {{Commons category}} (39 with both gallery and category links)

In short, only about 10% of the pages on taxa have the wikimedia link templates. I thought it would be higher. A taxobox or taxonbar solution is easier than adding the wikimedia templates.—  Jts1882 | talk  09:04, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

30 June 2024 use stats update

30 June update

Project	Auto	Manual	Total taxa	Percentage auto	# auto added since 30 December 2023	# manual subtracted
Algae	2280	160	2440	93.4	117	67
Amphibians and Reptiles	22711	199	22910	99.1	187	7
Animals	11596	915	12511	92.7	429	243
Arthropods	11355	2719	14074	80.7	581	348
Beetles	26514	11994	38508	68.9	1783	1427
Birds	14405	48	14453	99.7	47	14
Bivalves	1696	28	1724	98.4	22	4
Cephalopods	2020	558	2578	78.4	11	8
Dinosaurs	1624	0	1624	100	-19	0
Diptera	15081	1565	16646	90.6	921	600
Extinction	796	31	827	96.3	NA	NA
Fishes	25302	960	26262	96.3	894	711
Fungi	12194	3932	16126	75.6	1539	1239
Gastropods	32419	2972	35391	91.6	4909	4252
Insects	61302	18450	79752	76.9	3324	2269
Lepidoptera	83659	14801	98460	85.0	9028	8965
Mammals	8401	124	8525	98.5	100	20
Marine life	8990	527	9517	94.4	267	145
Microbiology	7675	5393	13068	58.7	704	637
Palaeontology	15506	3198	18704	82.9	727	276
Plants	81558	188	81746	99.8	1638	423
Primates	983	0	983	100	4	0
Protista	778	150	928	83.8	398	-70
Rodents	3161	25	3186	99.2	24	3
Sharks	833	38	871	95.6	4	7
Spiders	10110	0	10110	100	70	0
Tree of Life	100	0	100	100	11	6
Turtles	760	0	760	100	1	0
Viruses	1736	55	1791	96.9	14	0
Total	407991	57001	464992	87.7	24103	19707

Mammal subprojects with articles tagged for both mammals and subproject:

Project	Auto	Manual	Total taxa	Percentage auto
Cats	185	0	185	100
Cetaceans	445	0	445	100
Dogs	241	0	241	100
Equine	109	0	109	100

Methods and caveats (copy-pasted from previous update)

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

I've added WikiProject Extinction to the table this time. WikiProject Protista continues to have tags added to existing articles, with a net increase in the number of tagged articles with a manual taxobox. WikiProject Dinosaurs recently merged a bunch of largely redundant articles for nodes in a cladogram, resulting in a net decrease in the number of articles tagged for that project. Plantdrew (talk) 17:12, 30 June 2024 (UTC)