User talk:Brya/Archive 01

Welcome to Wikidata, Brya!

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Best regards!

--DangSunM (talk) 07:48, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Recent edits

Hi Brya! Your recent edits have caused a complaint on the admin noticeboard. It is not that you did something wrong, but that there is currently no consensus on how to handle certain situations. We might need an RfC so we have a future reference that everybody agrees on. Can you comment on the complaint at Wikidata:Administrators'_noticeboard#User:Brya? Best wishes and thank you for all your contributions. --Tobias1984 (talk) 07:35, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

BHL page ID (P687)

BHL page ID (P687) ist jetzt verwendbar! mfg. --Tobias1984 (talk) 10:23, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Danke! - Brya (talk) 10:47, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Q13418111 / Q9020667

It would be nice if you would do something more than removing claims (see item-history of Q9020667 and WhatLinksHere). --Succu (talk) 14:45, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

An be careful if you change sourced claims e.g. [1]. --Succu (talk) 16:00, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. As to the Laser matter, I felt I was doing well to find dublication at the genus level, but given that Q13418111 had a lot more editing history than Q9020667, it would have been more efficient to move the interwiki to Q13418111. It is just that it has a lot higher number, which is supposed not to be a good thing?

I did'nt found Q9020667, thus I created Q13418111. You should merge all information and you have to look at WhatLinksHere. The rule is to keep the lower item number. --Succu (talk) 06:40, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

        As to the matter of parent taxa I assumed it was safe to follow APG III, as that seems to have great support. For all that I can see the classification proposed in "A phylogenetic classification of the land plants to accompany APG III" does not have much support anywhere. What would be the argument to follow the latter? - Brya (talk) 16:42, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I tried to add the APG III paper as a source (where appropriate) but that does not seem to work? - Brya (talk) 17:08, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

What was the problem? --Succu (talk) 06:40, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't know. I clicked on "add source" and copied "An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG III" into the field (from Q13683362) but am not allowed to save it. Apparently the system does not know it as something that may be a source? I also tried just the number, but that does not work either. - Brya (talk) 17:39, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Click on "add source", than add property stated in (P248). Next you can copy An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG III (Q13683362) in the opening field. --Succu (talk) 19:46, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Sounds complicated . However, it does not seem to work. I can copy in "stated in", "stated in (P248)", or {{P|248}} but it makes no difference, I can then add "An update of the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification for the orders and families of flowering plants: APG III", or {{Q|13683362}}, but nothing. I tried it in Chrome and in IE, but no difference ... - Brya (talk) 04:32, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Finally, it does work. I can copy in "stated in" and if I am very careful I get a very narrow field (one space wide) and after a few tries I can copy something in! Not very user-friendly, but I can now get on with it. - Brya (talk) 05:12, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

ex taxon author (P697)

Hab gerade ex taxon author (P697) erstellt. mfg! --Tobias1984 (talk) 08:51, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Danke. Sehen Sie auch hier. - Brya (talk) 16:22, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Merge tool

Just so you know, there is a gadget in your preferences that allows you to merge items automatically. It also automatically reports them to WD:RfD so you don't have to list them yourself. Info on how to use the merge tool can be found at Help:Merge. Thanks. Del_♉sion23 (talk) 20:08, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I did notice that (at an early stage) and even read up on it a little. It always takes me quite a bit of time to find out the dangers in automatic processes and tools and how to get them working. As I intended to be here only long enough to disentangle the plant taxonomy items, I decided to just get on with it and keep my focus on the plant taxonomy. Given how many items there were to merge, this probably was not the right decision. The sweep to find the merged items (this was the first installment of a total of two or three) does not take that much time, but it does take time and is sensitive to error. On the other hand this sweep helps me to double check what I did in the first place. - Brya (talk) 04:42, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Brya

Hello Brya,
Are you the friend with which I worked on APGIII on fr.wikipedia and commons ?
Regards Liné1 (talk) 10:15, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Hello Liné1,

Yes and no, it was Cronquist, APG I and APG II (but not APG III). Otherwise, yes. I am not actually doing much on Wikipedia and Commons these days, but it seemed important to help untangle Wikidata, at this initial stage, so that later it can grow unencumbered. - Brya (talk) 11:03, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Cool, happy to see you again.

I have a botanic question arround my back for a while:

On fr wikipedia, we provided Cronquist+APGIII but APGIII only partially (order+family).

We don't have any Cronquist source for a long time.

So I proposed to migrate to APGIII only.

Strange thing is: I faced the refusal from contributors saying that APGIII was too cladistic....?

They claim themself anti-cladists ?!?

One of them proposed to migrate to APGIII by Chase and Reveal 2009 which correspond to 'M. W. Chase et J. L. Reveal, « A phylogenetic classification of the land plants to accompany APG III' that you can find here.

Tropicos, ITIS and Taxonomicon seems to have migrated to that classification.

Did you hear of this alternate version of APGIII ?

Cheers Liné1 (talk) 10:31, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello Liné1,

Yes, this is a well known publication (officially available here). It has been entered in Wikidata already (see here), and it may be possible to automatically generate a Taxobox based on it (see the Taxonomy task force talk page). Indeed Tropicos has migrated to this system. This is not to say it is all that popular, especially the use of the name Equisetopsida for the embryophytes has raised many objections. And yes, it is the same as APG III, but with different names, so you could just use APG III and just add the extra names (for example: "angiosperms / Magnoliidae". It will need care with the linking, as there are many Magnoliidae ...). - Brya (talk) 11:03, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Property creator

Hi Brya! Two things. You haven't added Babel (e.g. {{#babel:de-N|en-3|es-1|fr-2|nl-3|it-4|da-0}}) to your user page yet. It might help people address you in your mother-tongue. I was also wondering if you would like to be involved in property creation. We can always use people that are actively participating in the discussions and help with the creation. If you feel like it, I would like to nominate you. (watching your page) --Tobias1984 (talk) 10:00, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi Tobias1984, thank you. I don't like Babel much, as it is used mostly by users who want to boast about their language skills. Also I much prefer to keep any serious discussion in English, for reasons of accessibility.

        As to property creation, I am a little hesitant. I am always slow to get the hang of software, and there may not be all that many properties that need to be created. On the other hand, there still is some need for reorganization in the area of plant taxonomy (starting with the author citations), and there is no real telling how much work needs to be done before a firm foundation is established, and the area is ready for real growth. Also, I feel it is quite an honour to be asked. I will try and keep this under consideration, if I may. - Brya (talk) 05:23, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi again! I completely missed your reply. Sorry about that. Babel also has an extra feature on Wikidata, because it lets you view more than one label at once. That can be quite useful because you see at least one label even if the language your viewing Wikidata in, does not have that label. I also use it to quickly translate items to German.
I was also wondering if you would like to add your name to the participants of Wikidata:WikiProject Taxonomy. Sometimes it is useful to ping the members of a whole project and you are very active there. It ensures that your not missing anything. Especially because your input is usually very useful. All the best! --Tobias1984 (talk) 17:07, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I just created and added you to the Wikidata:WikiProject_Taxonomy#Ping_Project list. If you want to opt out you can just delete your name. --Tobias1984 (talk) 07:58, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Appeal

Hi Brya. If you remove P70 (P70) and taxon name (P225) / taxon rank (P105) are not present, can you add them please?! That would be helpfull. --Succu (talk) 18:56, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

I will think about it, but it sounds like a lot of work ... I do try to add P71 (P71) if it is not there already. - Brya (talk) 19:04, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Of course it will slow down you current work. But I think taxon name (P225) is a very importend property. --Succu (talk) 19:12, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Oh yes, but that also makes it harder. There is the occasional error in Wikipedia titles (I just put in an × before a bunch of orchid names that did not have it), and checking these to any degree of reliability may be hard work. - Brya (talk) 19:21, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Ignore the ambiguous names... --Succu (talk) 19:27, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Handbuch des Schachspiels (Q369324)

I think that was not intentional. ;) --Succu (talk) 08:31, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Ha! Good catch! The layout of the screen is very user-unfriendly and I can not really read the title of the reference (once selected), so there is no check back. Mostly it is doable to enter the reference, but there remains an element of guesswork involved ... - Brya (talk) 11:17, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Found two more: Plumbaginales (Q2059792) and Amaranthaceae (Q155931). :) --Succu (talk) 11:25, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. - Brya (talk) 11:39, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Grant proposal about Wikidata

Hello, I am preparing a grant proposal with the title "m:Grants:IEG/Understanding Wikidata". I would be very grateful if you could have a look and comment. Ziko (talk) 18:50, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Property proposal

Hi, a property you proposed has now been created, see code of nomenclature (P944). --Jakob (Scream about the things I've broken) 12:19, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for informing me. - Brya (talk) 17:38, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Re: Merging

Yes, you are totally right. I'm terribly sorry for the mess I did. It's not that I don't know the difference between a family and a subfamily (or between a family and a genus) but in those three cases apparently I read too fast, or who knows. I'm glad you corrected them.

About Prunoideae and Amygdaloideae, well, it seems to be a bit more complex: there is a classical definition of Amygdaloideae (Amygdaloideae sensu stricto) and that definition is synonym of Prunoideae, but allegedly that group has been deprecated and is no longer accepted taxonomically. Currently there is an extended definition of Amygdaloideae taking it place. So we actually have two definitions of Amygdaloideae: the old one, which is synonym of Prunoideae, and the new extended one, which is accepted taxonomically. You can read about this in w:en:Rosaceae (see diagram) and in w:en:Amygdaloideae. Threfore, I extracted from the Wikidata item about the deprecated subfamily Prunoideae the interwikis and properties related to the newly built subfamily Amygdaloideae while trying to point out the difference between them through the description.

Have a nice day and, again, I'm sorry about my three mistakes. --Canyq (talk) 19:37, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

The problem about merging w:es:Prunoideae into w:es:Amygdaloideae and then, merging Q854082 into Q15216083 is that even if we manage to build a single wikidata item, it would comprise two different definitions of Amygdaloideae (the traditional and the modern one) depending on which interwiki is considered. And what's worse, currently there are far more languages on the deprecated circumscription (Prunoidae). So, all in all, I feel rather uncomfortable with merging and instead I'd prefer to see more articles about the modern sense of Amygdaloideae being created in different languages and added to Q15216083 but well, it only my opinion: I don't know if there's an established policy to deal with these cases. --Canyq (talk) 19:11, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

OK, you've convinced me. I've merged back Q15216083 into Q854082, verify them if you want. The work that remains is merging es:Prunoidae into es:Amygdaloideae and then deleting Q15216083. I'm busy now but I've added that task to my list of things to do. --Canyq (talk) 18:09, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome. --Canyq (talk) 19:05, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Removing of P225=novalue

Dear Brya, I set for several items P225=novalue, if they are former duplicates. For example, Q2972287 is not a taxon, it represents articles about Sibley's historic definition of Ciconiiformes (Q21716), while the latter is item about Coconiiformes). By removing P225=novalue, the next user/bot will add P225=Coconiiformes again, which will again result in a constraint violation (as we have an item about Coconiiformes: Q21716. So please stop reverting my manual error corrections.  — Felix Reimann (talk) 14:34, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Dear Felix,

I am having difficulty understanding this. I saw some such items which were described as being a list, and I took this at face value. As a list is not a taxon, I removed P225=novalue, and I don't see why any user should want to add a taxon name where it is not appropriate. Don't know about bots, but that sounds like a awkward work-around.

        Upon closer inspection, these Wikipedia articles don't look like lists to me but like pages on taxa. These are just on taxa that are out of fashion now, mostly, but that does not make a real difference. There is no reason why a Wikipedia can not have more than one page with the same taxon name, but on a different circumscription or internal taxonomy (as I pointed to another user recently the English Wikipedia has two/three pages on Magnoliidae and the German Wikipedia has two pages on Magnoliopsida). The real problem would be if the wrong parent taxa were to be put in, but why should there not be a whole taxonomic tree according to Sibley, connecting pages on Sibley taxa? - Brya (talk) 18:17, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Removed taxonomy claims

Hello there!

I have seen you delete some taxonomy claims. Is there an official ruling on this issue and I have missed the information? Because I have a lot to made work and if it's wrong, I will attempt to delete the taxonomy claims that I have made already. Sorry if my English is poor. -- Wagino 20100516 (talk) 11:48, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for asking. As you point out, putting in ranks is deprecated, and these ranks will be deleted in the future. The essential claims that should be included in each item are "taxon name", "taxon rank" and "parent taxon". Of these, "parent taxon" is hardest because it should ideally have a source (from real taxonomic literature), but in practice "genus" in an item on a species, and "family" in an item on a genus should be fairly safe. - Brya (talk) 14:42, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Alright! So I'm still continuing contributions as usual before any definite rules and regulations on it. If later on the way left then I'll try to help removed them. -- Wagino 20100516 (talk) 03:13, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, there are "definite rules and regulations" on it, there just is no particular hurry to remove ranks. By the time every item has the important three claims, it should be easy to run a bot to remove ranks. - Brya (talk) 06:43, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Re:Durian

I couldn't combine vi:Sầu riêng to en:Durian because one's about the genus and the other is about the fruit. So, I created another article in viwiki about fruit vi:Sầu riêng (quả) and linked it with en:Durian. All information was translated and copied from enwiki included the taxobox and it's a GA. I think a taxobox in an article about fruit isn't waste. Best regards!AlleinStein (talk) 15:18, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Cepheidae

Please point me at existing item about this family of ticks. Infovarius (talk) 12:30, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I see. For the future it would be a good idea if you marked this kind of error clearly. - Brya (talk) 17:41, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I still don't understand, homonym of what it is? Infovarius (talk) 20:32, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

It is a homonym of Cepheidae (Q2307123). A name like CEPHEIDAE may be in use for only one family. Usually the name that was first published is the one to be used, but the zoological Commission may make a different ruling. - Brya (talk) 06:30, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Leptodactylinae and Quiinaceae

Hi, I noticed you undid my merges. I don't know much about taxonomy therefore I usually don't edit these items. However it seems odd to me, that there are two different families Leptodactylidae (Q1721438) and Leptodactylidae (Q55475) with the same name and two different (sub)families Quiinaceae (Q132800) and Quiinoideae (Q13635621) which, at least according to the articles, contain exactly the same four genera. Maybe you can add some properties to explain the differences between them.--Debenben (talk) 13:47, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi, yes, I did. Yes, it is somewhat odd that there are two different families Leptodactylidae (Q1721438) and Leptodactylidae (Q55475) with the same name. However:

1. I did not make those separate pages on the German Wikipedia; they are just there.
2. A taxon is a scientific hypothesis about what belongs together (fits in one unit) and how distinct the unit is. There can be any number of scientific hypotheses on a topic, and if these are notable enough, different circumscriptions of taxa can each have their own page. In practice there will not be more than three or four different pages with the same name, and they will be the exception anyway.

Very likely Quiinaceae (Q132800) and Quiinoideae (Q13635621) are the same taxon, but assigned a different rank. From the perspective of data organization and extraction it is much preferable to have two separate items, and anyway, the moment some Wikipedia has a page on both it will be inevitable to have two separate items. There are a lot of different taxonomic situations, so it is not really possible to make general statements that always apply. Often enough, taxa are not constant (will vary from treatment), and things can get messy. - Brya (talk) 16:41, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

invalid rank

Hi Brya, you mentioned at [2] that valid is a loaded term, and (if I understand correctly,) thus invalid may not be a good name for a rank below deprecated...? Is there a name for a rank lower than deprecated which would have an appropriate meaning within nomenclature statements? Maybe 'incorrect' or 'false'? John Vandenberg (talk) 11:25, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, "valid" is a minefield, with a particular meaning in zoological nomenclature, and a different one in botanical nomenclature, and may also be used in taxonomy (different yet again). Probably, "invalid" is at least as bad. "Incorrect" is not as bad, but not free of problems; "false" has no nomenclatural meaning. An issue is that there are differences on a case by case basis: spelling variants do not exist from a nomenclatural perspective, while synonyms do exist (many synonyms would be taxon names, but of other taxa).

        The one advantage of making qualifiers of these things is that actually they do apply to taxon names, and not to taxa. - Brya (talk) 16:29, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Old block on enwp

Sorry if this is not something you wish to discuss... I saw you were blocked on enwp a very long time ago, and wonder if you would be interested in being unblocked there? I hope old problems can be put in the past, and new fruitful collaborations replace them. John Vandenberg (talk) 11:30, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, it does bother me, but it may not be simple. As you may have noticed I was blocked for refusing to violate the NOR- and NPoV-policies. Some of the users then around are still active. The English Wikipedia is cladist country and resentment against the NOR- and NPoV-policies is pretty strong for all pages on living things.

        On the plus side, policies have been rephrased and made more explicit. The core content policies now have a passage that they may not be overridden by a local consensus, which was what happened. The NOR-page is more explicit in that new syntheses are not allowed, so that they can no longer use lines like "this system of classification that we are forcing all users to use on every page may be nonsensical and a new synthesis, but no research whatsoever went into putting it together, so it is not a NOR-violation". BTW: some years after I was blocked they did switch to a system of classification that exists in the outside world, so this no longer is an issue.

        Once upon a time I did put in an appeal (here), but that got nowhere very fast. Apparently, I first need to make an email address to do the correspondence, and I never seem to get round to doing so. - Brya (talk) 16:45, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Q10370960

Could you take a look at Shankar Purushottam Agharkar (Q10370960) please. I merged the pt.wp sitelink from Shankar Purushottam Agharkar (Q16750545), but maybe I am wrong... This shows four 'records' of the same person (all having ASA Botanist ID: 103121) however it appears the middle name is mispelt, which then was reproduced into Portuguese Wikipedia, but I would like a second set of eyes on that. John Vandenberg (talk) 10:17, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I think this article will help. --Succu (talk) 10:29, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I dont think it does. I need something to confirm that S Purosottum Agharkar = S Purushottam Agharkar, and that article doesnt mention 'Purosottum'. Or assert that the Harvard University Herbaria data has lots of junk in it. I cant see any pubs or specimens in there database which use their S P Agharkar botanist record.

I have received positive feedback at w:Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics#Purushottam vs Purosottum that they are the same, but I will wait a bit longer to see if there is any stronger stake with which to kill this dup and then request a correction from HUH. John Vandenberg (talk) 10:53, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, these are the same. The three different spellings look immaterial to me (different translitterations of the same name). I don't see that the Harvard University Herbaria database has lots of junk in it; as there is just the one ID it is clear that it is one person. - Brya (talk) 11:30, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

None of the four use 'Purushottam', but they also dont have any record for that name. John Vandenberg (talk) 11:42, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

The Harvard database now has three entries and they do use "Purushottam" .... - Brya (talk) 16:30, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

That was in response to the correction request that I sent to them. Thanks for your help confirming that they were the same person. John Vandenberg (talk) 16:49, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

OK. It is always interesting to see the WMF-world have an impact on the real world! - Brya (talk) 16:57, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Myrsinoideae

Hi Brya! The problem is that the family Myrsinaceae doesn't exist any longer and it is now only the subfamily Myrsinoideae. But I see that some wikipedias have articles for both, although Myrsinaceae definitely is only a synonym of Myrsinoideae. I also don't know how to solve this in wikidata. All the best --Josef Papi (talk) 15:27, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

It is not possible to say "the family Myrsinaceae doesn't exist any longer". Definitely forbidden in Wikipedia (NPoV, which is the cornerstone of Wikipedia). Wikipedia allows "APG III does not recognize a family Myrsinaceae", or "APG II does recognize a family Myrsinaceae", as these are verifiable facts. By contrast "the family Myrsinaceae doesn't exist any longer" is a theocratic pronouncement and is only good for those who hold the same belief system. - Brya (talk) 18:58, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Ok, you are right, but this does not solve the problem, that actually the Myrsinoideae-article of e.g the German wikipedia has no interwiki-link to the english article Myrsinaceae. Do you have any idea? Best regards --Josef Papi (talk) 07:27, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

You are right about that, but that is a multidimensional puzzle (taxonomic relations can be very involved) without a clear solution (so far). Best. - Brya (talk) 11:26, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

An old one...

[3] - Can you fix this please. Thx. --Succu (talk) 16:07, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Done. - Brya (talk) 16:37, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Albertia

Hallo Brya, Ik stuitte op Q17517019, die helemaal is leeggehaald door jou. Ik vermoed omdat dit een taxonomisch synoniem is en niet meer gebruikt zou moeten worden. Maar er zijn wel twee inkomende links en daarom lijkt het me onwenselijk dat het item geheel is ontdaan van Properties. Okay om die terug te zetten en jouw "taxon synoniem" in stelling te brengen? Groet, Lymantria (talk) 05:56, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Hallo Lymantria,

Ik heb dat inderdaad leeggehaald, maar niet voorgedragen voor verwijdering, omdat het mogelijk nog nuttige metadata bevatte. In de geschiedenis kan je zien dat het hier om een later homoniem gaat, dus een naam die nooit en te nimmer gebruikt mag worden en waarover dus nooit een Wikipedia lemma mag bestaan (synoniemen op zich kunnen soms nog wel encyclopedie-waardig zijn). Ik ben kennelijk indertijd vergeten om die inkomende links te controleren, maar ook daar gaat het om namen die nooit en te nimmer gebruikt mogen worden voor een taxon (al zouden ze eventueel nog wel gebruikt mogen worden als basioniem). In dit geval gaat om zulke obscure namen dat het www ze niet kent (behalve waar die bot ze tot Wikipedia-lemma's heeft gepromoveerd) en ik heb er maar redirects naar de familie van gemaakt. - Brya (talk) 11:01, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Ik begrijp het, als het een later homoniem is met kennelijk hetzelfde type of met volledige consensus dat het om hetzelfde gaat, dan kan er geen twijfel bestaan. Maar nu vraag ik me wel af wat de zin is van het behouden van een pagina met alleen een Duits label "Albertia". Het lijkt me dat we dit ofwel weer wat moeten aankleden, ofwel moeten verwijderen. Een keer gaat het verwarring opleveren. Groet, Lymantria (talk) 16:44, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Nou, als het hetzelfde type heeft, dan is het geen homoniem (per definitie) . Ik ben bang dat ik alle labels en beschrijvingen anders dan engels negeer. In voorkomende gevallen geef ik zo'n pagina de inhoud "instance of later homonym" (c.q. "instance of unavailable for use"), maar dan zie ik daar wel graag een reden voor (bijvoorbeeld omdat zo'n naam inderdaad een basioniem is). Een grijs gebied (de vi-wiki heeft stapels van dit gevallen).

        Als er geen andere reden voor een item bestaat dan "ooit heeft iemand deze wetenschappelijke naam gepubliceerd" dan hoeft het voor mij niet. We kijken al tegen twee (tot drie) miljoen namen aan die gebruikt worden voor erkende levende wezens en dus een Wikipedia-pagina krijgen, en meer dan 80% van die Wikipedia pagina's zal nooit een zinnige inhoud krijgen. Dat is al erg genoeg. - Brya (talk) 17:22, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Jouw zorg over het bestaan van zeer veel botartikeltjes is mij bekend. Maar inderdaad als we alle ooit gebruikte taxon-namen nog eens toevoegen, dan wordt het wel erg omvangrijk. Ik ga deze weggooien. Bedankt voor je discussie en meedenken. Groet, Lymantria (talk) 05:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Mijn zorg betreft niet zozeer dat ze met een bot gemaakt zijn, maar dat ze gebaseerd zijn op hooguit 5% van het bronnenmateriaal dat eigenlijk nodig zou zijn. Er bestaan op het www wel degelijk botgemaakte beschrijvingen die heel bruikbaar zijn (al blijf je er aan af zien dat ze niet handgemaakt zijn). - Brya (talk) 05:40, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Q13434158

Hi Brya, I had found the same ref. of Efetov, 2012 that wikispecies (Artona (Balataea) octomaculata): Balataea octomaculata Bremer, 1861 and Balataea aegerioides Walker, 1865 are synonyms. Cordialement, Minerv (talk) 12:49, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi Minerv,

I see. Well you can add a property "taxon synonym" in the item Balataea octomaculata with as a value Balataea aegerioides, and adding this reference (this will require first making an item for this publication). The property "taxon synonym" is best used in its general meaning that a synonym is a name other than the correct name, that is Balataea aegerioides is a synonym of Balataea octomaculata but Balataea octomaculata is not a synonym of Balataea aegerioides. - Brya (talk) 16:27, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Beervlinders

Hoi Brya, Onder taxonomen is het tegenwoordig gangbaar om de beervlinders te beschouwen als onderfamilie van de spinneruilen. Oftewel: de familie Arctiidae is nu ingedeeld als onderfamilie Arctiinae bij de Erebidae. Nu is het probleem dat Arctiinae natuurlijk voorheen ook de benaming was voor een onderfamilie van de Arctiidae. Om die reden heb ik Arctiinae (Q18392591) afgesplitst van Arctiinae (Q655316) en vermeld dat die waarschijnlijk dezelfde is als Arctiidae (Q15043775). Ik beschouw jou als grotere autoriteit over hoe om te gaan met taxonomie hier op wikidata. Kun jij je vinden in de wijze waarop ik dit heb gedaan? Er komt natuurlijk een Contraint violation op P225 bij en bij geslachten zou je eigenlijk twee moedertaxa moeten aangeven - in de oude indeling en in de nieuwe. Daarom twijfel ik er nogal over. Graag je input. Groet, Lymantria (talk) 11:04, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Dit soort dingen blijft lastig, en het hangt van de exacte details of er een mooie oplossing is. Van mij mag deze oplossing. Het belangrijkst lijkt mij eigenlijk of er afdoende betrouwbare referenties toegevoegd worden, die aangeven wiens taxonomie gevolgd wordt (dat heb je nog niet gedaan). Vaak is daarbij wat taxonomische kennis vereist omdat anderen een bepaalde taxonomie overnemen, en dan maakt een verwijzing naar een van die latere auteurs niet duidelijk wie de eigenlijke beslissing genomen heeft (er kan dan een wolk ontstaan van verwijzingen naar latere auteurs die eigenlijk allemaal één en dezelfde oorspronkelijke beslissing volgen). De typische Wikimediaan komt niet verder dan verwijzen naar een online database wat niet informatief is (en soms worden die databases ook zomaar veranderd).

        Voor vogels zijn er een aantal aparte items met de taxonomie volgens Sibley (Tyrannidae according to Sibley (Q3546270)), dat is wel zo duidelijk. - Brya (talk) 07:31, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

De Noctuoidea zijn nogal opgeschud afgelopen tien jaar. Aanvankelijk lag geloof ik een op een lijn krijgen van Noord-Amerika en Europa ten grondslag aan stevig onderzoek. Uiteindelijk is

|Zahiri, R., Kitching, I.J., Lafontaine, J.D., Mutanen, M., Kaila, L., Holloway, J.D. & Wahlberg, N. (2010) A new molecular phylogeny offers hope for a stable family level classification of the Noctuoidea (Lepidoptera). Zoologica scripta doi:10.1111/j.1463-6409.2010.00459.x

de basis voor het beschouwen van de beervlinders als onderfamilie van de Erebidae. Inmiddels is daarvoor wel brede steun, maar bijzonder veel mensen (wikipedia's incluis) lopen achter. Zou jij suggereren bij de P105 dit artikel als bron aan te merken en voor die bron een apart item aan te maken? Nooit eerder gedaan, maar ik wil het best doen. Groet, Lymantria (talk) 09:34, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Als dat de bron is, dan lijkt me dat inderdaad de goede actie, maar het lijkt me logischer om de referentie toe te voegen aan P225 (de rang volgt al automatisch uit de naam). - Brya (talk) 11:43, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

 Done Bedankt voor het meedenken. Lymantria (talk) 08:17, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Mango

Can you please explain to me why you reverted my edits on the mango-related items? My edits were far from ill-informed. It's very clear that Q161807 (Mangifera) is the genus, Q3919027 (Mangifera indica) is the common species, and Q169 (mango) is the fruit. In addition, descriptions must provide enough information to be able to distinguish one item from another on their own merit, not because someone decided to add instructions to one of them. Having "as few words as possible" is not the primary goal; descriptions must first and foremost disambiguate what they are referring to. Help:Description outlines all of this quite clearly. And as for the aliases, they are intended to be used to help people find the right item. Mango the fruit is common to many species within the Mangifera genus, and Mangifera indica is the the "common mango", which is also known as the "Indian mango" because of its origin. The only actual problem with my edits is that, for reasons which are unclear to me, scientific names must be listed as instances of taxon rather than the more specific genus or species, which should, in my opinion, be subclasses of taxon. Kindly undo your wholesale reversions of my edits and change only those specific entries which you believe are inaccurate—and include an explanation in your edit summaries as to why you believe that. — GPHemsley (talk) 12:26, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Well, I put in explanations into the first reverts, until it became clear you were just soapboxing without caring about consequences. As to "instance of taxon", personally I am not happy with this, as it can be deduced from the presence of "taxon name" and "taxon rank", but a lot of users want it there, and it has been included in constraint violations, so I suppose it cannot be stopped. However silly "instance of taxon" is, "instance of genus" is a lot sillier as the information that it is a genus is already present; duplicating information just for the sake of making edits is really far out.

        And indeed a description serves to disambiguate the label; in the case of Mangifera the important thing is to make clear that it is not a genus of animals (or a genus of prokaryotes, etc). Anything beyond that is really superfluous. Adding a family is not helpful, that is information that the item itself holds (or one of the items in the line of "parent taxon"). Besides, to most users a family is just a confusing string of characters. Also, your Help:Description emphasizes that detailed and potentially controversial information is to be avoided, and assignments to family are a matter of taxonomic judgement; it is fairly common for these to differ from taxonomist to taxonomist. As to length, your Help:Description emphasizes that a description should not be long, which is logical as these show up in searches and the longer a description is the more it hinders a search. So, OK, the page then contradict itself by coming up with cumbersome examples which are out of style with the other examples.

        Your "It's very clear that Q161807 (Mangifera) is the genus, Q3919027 (Mangifera indica) is the common species, and Q169 (mango) is the fruit." mystifies me, as it is not compatible with your actions, you wiped that information. From a pragmatic point of view, it is very important information as it proves again and again that all too many users do not make that distinction and start to rearrange links to wikipedia's according to some scheme that only they understand, even while the description explictly draws attention to that distinction. - Brya (talk) 17:50, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

PS, as to your Indian mango, I don't really care one way or the other. There should really be properties for common and vernacular names to put these into, but as long as there are not, putting these into "aka" will yield a pretty uneven and irregular result. - Brya (talk) 17:56, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

I do not understand what you're talking about. I can't imagine how I could possibly turn items about mangos into "soapboxing" and I don't see how my actions contradicted my assertions about them. You are the one making these accusations, so I wish you would describe in detail what you are interpreting and how. I don't believe I added anything to any of these items that I didn't take directly from the English Wikipedia articles associated with them. The aliases serve mainly as search aids, particularly when linking items, as matches are made only by a "starts with" algorithm. Aliases do not have to be unique. — GPHemsley (talk) 02:14, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I do not see how it is relevant that you did not add "anything to any of these items that [you] didn't take directly from the English Wikipedia articles associated with them", Wikidata exists to support Wikipedia's (and other Wikimedia projects) not to copy material from them. - Brya (talk) 06:27, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Since you have shown an unwillingness to engage in a productive discussion, and are now also questioning the contents of Wikipedia itself, I have come to conclusion that it is you who is soapboxing and have gone ahead and reverted your previous changes myself. — GPHemsley (talk) 16:33, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

You can be as crazy as you like, draw what conclusions you want, but there is no point in working the other way about as the rest of the database. - Brya (talk) 16:39, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Valerianoideae

I see you reverted my changes on Valerianoideae. The family Valerianaceae does not exist in APG III. The old Valerianaceae is a natural group and its circumscription has not been changed, but the group is now considered the subfamily Valerianoideae in Caprifoliaceae. Some wikipedias use APG III and others older classifications. The items Valerianoideae (Q15074600) and Valerianaceae (Q156682) should probably be merged. Trurl (talk) 14:01, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Your facts may be in order but your conclusion is not. Merging across ranks works out poorly, because (for starters) Wikidata has no way to define taxa, and different circumscriptions in different Wikipedia's are possible.

        There are two ways to handle the situation as you describe: 1) change the nowiki page from Valerianaceae to Valerianoideae and then move it to the other item, or 2) to make a new page on nowiki on Valerianoideae, in addition to the one on Valerianaceae, and then add the new page to the other item. - Brya (talk) 17:22, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Mistake

Hi! Can you make me a list, please? I will investigate every case. Ok, I will run the code only once. I have seen in your contributions: Q311852. In that case, it is the only species in the genus. Some wikipedia talk about genre and other about species. That's origin of "mistake" (maybe it's not the best category, but it's not really a mistake).--KRLS (talk) 17:36, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, thank for the quick response! See my contributions. Yes, it is possible to make a case for making a non-matching link to Commons when there is only one species in a genus, but this is least objectionable in a Wikipedia. It is certainly not a good idea in Wikidata: in the item Platonia insignis we had a link to Commons category Platonia, and in the item Platonia we had a link to Commons category Platonia insignis. It can get very messy and confusing.

        Also keep in mind that an opinion that there is only one species in a genus is just that, an opinion. One taxonomist may decide that there is only one species in a family, and the next taxonomist may decide that there are 525 species in that same family. - Brya (talk) 17:54, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

is pollinated by (P1703) & is pollinator of (P1704)

Properties is pollinated by (P1703) & is pollinator of (P1704) are ready. Thank you for discussing them. --Tobias1984 (talk) 19:10, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. - Brya (talk) 05:58, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Triple categories

Why are you trying to make three categories for 1 taxon instead of possible two (unfortunately, 1 is impossible due to duplication in some wikis)? And, may be unrelated, what about these: Category:Discoglossidae (Q8934309), Category:Painted frogs (Q8983859) and Category:Alytidae by common name (Q9436413)? I can't decide if they correspond to 1 or more taxons. --Infovarius (talk) 13:46, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Infovarius, This kind of thing tends to be a headache. It appears to be that this may be one taxon (with two different names), or two taxa. In such cases I tend to take pages at face value (so, just accepting the name they use). As sv-wiki has three categories, it follows that we end up with at least three categories here also. BTW: the other day I saw a case where fr-wiki had five categories for a family. - Brya (talk) 17:33, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

5?? Oh my God. But if there aren't 3 categories in 1 wiki, I tend to create no more than 2 items (for example, common one connected with taxon item and "with scientific name"), do you agree? Infovarius (talk) 13:18, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

I haven't imported any category, so I am not causing any multiplication of items. But it is not silly to have both a category by scientific name and one by common name. - Brya (talk) 17:21, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Taxon names and references

Hi, I'm thinking about how best to handle references for names on items like Mycocepurus goeldii (Q13867042).

Currently, the name stated using taxon name (P225) is supported by a reference to the item Integrated Taxonomic Information System (Q82575), which I find not useful because this does not lead to a place where the validity of the name of Mycocepurus goeldii (Q13867042) can be assessed, even though an ITIS URL exists that would do the trick. Wouldn't it be better to link to such URLs, perhaps via a dedicated property for "Taxonomic Serial Number", instead of linking to the item Integrated Taxonomic Information System (Q82575)?

Independent of that, I am wondering how best to reference the relevant circumscriptions. I tried that by linking to Forel's Formicides de l'Antille St. Vincent, récoltées par Mons. H. H. Smith (Q19361647), which contains the original description. I could not add that under "Mycocepurus goeldii" because Forel had used "Mycocepurus göldii". I see why you removed the latter, but given that there are many cases in which the currently valid name differs from the one used in the original description, I still think there should be a way to

• link items of taxa to the items of their original description (and possibly later circumscriptions)
• express synonymy without having to start new items (as using taxon synonym (P1420) would require), and taking into account rules from the Code (ITIS states "Mycocepurus goeldii (Forel, 1893) -- valid", presumably because there is some rule that converts Forel's "ö" into "oe" for the purposes of establishing validity, but that's an area I am not familiar with).

Finally, there are also aliases. I haven't seen any consistent use of them on taxonomic items, and you left in both Mycocepurus göldii and M. göldii, which helps address the synonymy but aliases can't be referenced.

Cheers, --Daniel Mietchen (talk) 23:57, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Just noticed that ITIS TSN (P815) already exists. --Daniel Mietchen (talk) 00:18, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Daniel,

• Yes, the link to ITIS is not all that valuable, but it is apparently unavoidable.
• I agree that references documenting circumscriptions are very desirable. It is indeed non-obvious how they are best placed. They can be placed 1) as an independent claim (for instance "BHL page Id"), 2) attached to "taxon name", and 3) attached to "parent taxon". I tend to prefer attaching them to parent taxon ("accepted as a component of" in "this reference"), but I am using both other options as well.
• Also, it is possible to use the qualifier "original spelling" to taxon name, with whatever string was used in the original publication.

- Brya (talk) 05:45, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

I created Atta goeldii (Q19535797) and applied some changes to Mycocepurus goeldii (Q13867042). --Succu (talk) 10:52, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

This raises further questions. Would it not be better to attach the taxon author and date of taxon name publication to the (P1403) original combination? - Brya (talk) 11:42, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it would be better to have Hermann Luederwaldt, 1918 there. And I would prefer this way, but our taxobox is not supporting this. --Succu (talk) 11:49, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

In theory it might be nice to have Hermann Luederwaldt, 1918 as the author of Mycocepurus goeldii, but it would be very confusing to the users of the database. However, it is sad to have the datastructure determined by a particular implementation of a taxobox-generating routine. - Brya (talk) 17:25, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, people are used to see (Auguste Forel, 1893) in taxoboxes and not (Auguste Forel, 1893) Hermann Luederwaldt, 1918. They would simply enter Auguste Forel, 1893 missing how to model the parentheses. We heve to change the provisional way instance of (P31) = recombination (Q14594740) in the future. Same is true for instance of (P31) = first valid description (Q1361864). --Succu (talk) 17:40, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

As you know, I am not particularly happy with the way author names are handled. It is too hard to get them entered and the average user can not be expected to be able to read them out accurately. - Brya (talk) 18:34, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

undo adding German categories

Hi Brya! I noticed that you undid my additions. in German biological categories are always two types of categories: the scientific one and the one with German names. usually the links to other languages are always with the category woth the german names e.g. Kategorie:Katzen and not the scietific Kategorie:Felidae is linked with the english Category:Felidae. If now a German Category has no popular name, there are still two categories: eg. Kategorie:Leotiomycetes (Klasse) for the popular one and Kategorie:Leotiomycetes for the scientific one, but only the first is linked with the other languages. So what I did was right and I ask you to undo your cancellations. Best --Josef Papi (talk) 07:36, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi Josef Papi,

Yes, the fact that dewiki has two categories for every family and higher order taxon is going to cause problems no matter what is done, as most other wiki's don't have this practice. It seems obvious to me that as the vast majority of all such categories (for families and higher order taxa) across all wiki's are by scientific name, that this (arrangement by scientific name) is the default condition. Those wiki's that have categories by common name are the exception, and all the exceptions (the categories by common name) can be put together. It would be even more clear if dewiki were consistent and would actually put German names in the category for German names, and scientific names in the category for scientific names. I see that those categories for fungi put the scientific names in both categories, making the whole thing rather pointless. However, other wiki's are consistent (putting common names in the category for common names, and putting scientific names in the category for scientific names), so it still makes sense. I suppose it is understandable to make an exception for de:Kategorie:Katzen, as it has many common names and thus is an exception, but this exception seems based on sentiment rather than logic. - Brya (talk) 11:51, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

This is Bananas! (Q503)

According to WD:D there is really no reason to have a item description contain refences to other QIDs like you've done with banana (Q503) In fact it actually makes things like search kind of confusing see https://www.dropbox.com/s/vfw74f4co6akpws/Screenshot%202015-03-26%2000.15.47.png?dl=0 If each similar/related item has a high quality description and aliases are set up correctly then referencing other items in the description seems unnecessary. Is there a specific issue you were hoping to avoid by having this description? Jaredzimmerman (talk) 07:19, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

The opening sentence on WD:D starts "The description on a Wikidata entry is a short phrase designed to disambiguate items", which is exactly what happens here. That these descriptions are shown in various applications is unfortunate: Wikidata is not a dictionary. For anyone familiar with Wikidata it will be clear that "If each similar/related item has a high quality description" is not going to be the case for a long time. Anyway, in practice it proves, time and again, that a description needs to be very explicit if users are not going to be confused. And even if that is the case some users will make silly mistakes. The fact that Wikidata can now be viewed from all sorts of devices makes it more important that this information is given to provide guidance and to reduce the number of silly mistakes. (What I think is Bananas! is that there is an alias "Banana" to the label "banana".) - Brya (talk) 11:39, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

Brya, the one thing I'm missing still is what use case having the mention of the other QIDs is solving for this specific item Jaredzimmerman (talk) 20:23, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

It is the only way to direct users to the proper item. Otherwise they will just go by the common name, or the scientific name, and just dump everything together. - Brya (talk) 06:01, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Brya, have you seen this happen in practice as it relates to banana (Q503), Musa × paradisiaca (Q10757112), and Musa (Q8666090)? as they all have pretty distinct names. Jaredzimmerman (talk) 18:35, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, time and again, among multiple items. Putting in descriptions of this kind cuts down on it, but does not eliminate it completely. There are many kinds of users, and all too many are quite undiscriminating. - Brya (talk) 18:53, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Brya, anything you can link to, after the 3 items in question were as disambiguated as they are now with people still having a problem. I don't deny that when the names of the other items was "banana" that could have confused people Jaredzimmerman (talk) 23:17, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

There is no telling what will confuse users. In all likelyhood users who are in one of those games don't pay much attention to anything. Disambiguating it clearly with properties does not help: this was marked as clearly by properties as it possibly could be, but some users are not noticing anything. - Brya (talk) 05:28, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Magnolia dandyi

Hello Brya, it is a synonym according to the update taxonomy. Greenknight dv (talk) 03:32, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello Greenknight dv,

That does not matter.

• These are heterotypic names, and each should have its own item.
• Whether or not heterotypic names are synonyms is relative, and is so only from a particular point of view, a particular taxonomic book or paper. Another source may well see things differently. This kind of synonymy should always be referenced.
• That these names are sometimes considered to be synomyms is already recorded: here. It can also be recorded in the other item as "instance of synonym". It is just a pity there is no better reference than The Plant List, which is not always reliable.

- Brya (talk) 06:23, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Solanum aculeatissimum and Solanum khasianum

Hi Brya, if you see on the chinese page 喀西茄 I have corrected the taxon name Solanum aculeatissimum Jacq., and Solanum khasianum C.B.Clarke. is a synonym (with references). Cordialement, Minerv (talk) 18:12, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Looks good! - Brya (talk) 10:34, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

No initial articles in descriptions

Hi! I see you added an article here. We don't do that. Take care! Palosirkka (talk) 10:55, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, I think it looks really silly to use "fruit, the". - Brya (talk) 11:51, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Your personal opinions really don't matter. We follow rules here. Palosirkka (talk) 21:15, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Palosirkka, your rules? --Succu (talk) 21:26, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Why the trolling? I quite clearly linked to the rules Succu... Grow up. Palosirkka (talk) 12:25, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Quote from the page cited: "Descriptions should not normally begin with initial articles (a, an, the). In the English language, there are some phrases that require an initial article, and in those cases you can use the initial article, however if it is not needed, it should not be used."

        And indeed descriptions should not normally begin with an article. This is not a normal item, but a item on a very high-profile topic: the overwhelming majority of persons on this earth know what a banana is (or think they know what it is is): this means it is a special, and especially confused, situation. The article is there to make a grammatical distinction (as in "In the English language, there are some phrases that require an initial article, ..."). - Brya (talk) 05:35, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

I see you're convinced. Perhaps you are right. Consider this settled. Palosirkka (talk) 12:25, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the vote of confidence. - Brya (talk) 17:50, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

ginger

Why you revert my revision in Zingiber officinale?--David1010 (talk) 11:07, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

I listened to it, and it seems to me there is no way that it represent the pronunciation of Zingiber officinale. Rather it will be the pronunciation of the Georgian equivalent of "ginger", so I moved it to the item on ginger. - Brya (talk) 16:25, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Discussion at Handling sitelinks overlapping multiple items

FYI: Help talk:Handling sitelinks overlapping multiple items Kaldari (talk) 22:41, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Reversion after merging

Hi. I don't understand this. According to WoRMS (CoL) and GBIF Tachyrhynchus reticulatis is synonym to Tachyrhynchus reticulatus, the same is written in enwiki. Is this the right way to store synonym pages in wikidata or it is only for misspellings? Regards. --Termininja (talk) 11:21, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

A "taxon name" is a currently accepted name for the taxon. 1) Never put two taxon names in an item (a few higher-order taxa axcepted) unless both are the accepted name in several Wikipedia pages each. 2) Misspellings are not names of taxa, ever.

        What exactly a "synonym" is, will vary from place to place, but misspellings are rarely synonyms (there are some places that have very odd ways of looking at things), Here, the prime meaning of a synonym is a name that could be the name of the taxon, if a different taxonomic point of view were to be adopted. - Brya (talk) 16:42, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm agree, after your edits with Succu Q4169967 looks much better.. Maybe will be good idea some bot to create report about items with more than one taxon name. --Termininja (talk) 18:06, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Termininja, see Wikidata:Database_reports/Constraint_violations/P225#Single_value. --Succu (talk) 18:11, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

• About the "currently accepted name for the taxon", is there such thing as source priority, for example: IUCN > ITIS > NCBI > GBIF, or it is better to check the recently-updated source. --Termininja (talk) 18:40, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

The "currently accepted name for the taxon" is relative, so if there are more taxonomic viewpoints, there can be more than one "currently accepted name for the taxon". IUCN, ITIS, NCBI, GBIF are none of them reliable sources, although IUCN comes closest (ITIS and GBIF have lots of junk, and it really means nothing if something is in there). Reliable sources are something else. - Brya (talk) 19:06, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Swallenia

I just want to show you the separate articles for vi:Swallenia and vi:Swallenia alexandrae if you don't really understand why I have changed those entries. --Ghiutun (talk) 19:38, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

The situation before you acted was that we had an item for the species, Swallenia alexandrae, and an item for the genus, Swallenia. The iw-links (sitelinks) were almost all in the item for the species. This is not unusual, for cases where it is believed that there is only one species in the genus: then the hard-core users at enwiki allow only a single page, which mostltly describes the species, but carries as its title the name of the genus.

        In most cases, at Wikidata these mixed-up enwiki pages are put in the item for the species. In general, Wikimedia-users like to have as many pages connected as is feasable. So, often enough a Wikidata item for a species has iw-links to pages titled after the genus.

        Any belief that a genus has only one species tends to run up against reality: others may not share that belief, and allocate more species to that genus. Or may have allocated more species to that genus in the past. Or allocate fossil species to that genus. Etc. In other words, it has to be looked at case to case.

        What you did was switch the items for the genus with that for the species, but incompletely, so that the outgoing links to databases were mixed up. So I reverted to the state where they were in order. I kept the ruwiki page with the species because it looked to me to be following the enwiki model, and mostly is about the species, in contrast with the ptwiki page, which is only about the genus. - Brya (talk) 05:20, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

LPSN URL (P1991)

LPSN URL (P1991) is ready. --Tobias1984 (talk) 09:31, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Plazi ID (P1992)

Plazi ID (P1992) is ready. --Tobias1984 (talk) 09:38, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. - Brya (talk) 12:52, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Duplicated taxon names with aliases

Some times I remove duplicated aliases with taxon name from items. I hope such duplication is not needed. --Termininja (talk) 13:11, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

It is hard to say. In a well-ordered world these would be ugly duplicates, best deleted. In a Wikimedia project, who knows what will happen? - Brya (talk) 16:45, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Avibase id

Hi Brya, mnd to propose? Used by Template:Avibase (Q6706037). Regards --Succu (talk) 19:44, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Paraquilegia caespitosa

Hi my friend. I haven't understood why you reverted my edit ? I just merged two pages that are the same. Did I forget something ? --Helmoony (talk) 03:19, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi Helmoony,

The items are not the same. What is (or should be) the same is the taxon (the group of organisms). What is not the same are the names, and everything that comes with the name (each name has its own Tropicos number; also IPNI number, etc.). So this is problematic no matter what is done.

        The most problematic is to put everything in one item (merging the items), so I am moving towards a "one name - one item" approach. You can see I moved the iw-link, so as to have all the links to Wikipedia's together in the same item. I also put in a "taxon synonym" in Paraquilegia caespitosa (Q2131862), referenced to the Flora of China, linking to Isopyrum caespitosum (Q20747377), so that the user can get from one to the other. In Isopyrum caespitosum (Q20747377) I did the reverse.

        I feel that this is the cleanest approach, with the most growth potential: it provides the framework to add as many references as need be. And only references are going to give Wikidata solidity and reliability in the long run. - Brya (talk) 03:58, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

strawberry (Q13158)

What does it mean this description? Is it a typo? Because I think strawberry is a plant. --Termininja (talk) 21:30, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi Termininja,

Well, it think a strawberry is a fruit (in the culinary sense). But Fragaria ×ananassa is a hybrid (a cross between two species), and the prescribed term is "nothospecies". - Brya (talk) 04:41, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Two images

Is is possible to add two images in case when we have male and female: Paectes medialba (Q7124047) --Termininja (talk) 14:43, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Oh yes. There is no policy on it. But this also means some other user may take it upon himself to bring this back to one image per item ... - Brya (talk) 16:22, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

your revert

https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q120311&oldid=prev&diff=241447865

To my knowledge Eucoleus aerophilus is the obsolete name of Capillaria aerophila. see also en:Capillaria aerophila#Taxonomy and description --Uwe Gille (talk) 09:18, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

I am not sure what the question is. As you will have noticed I entered "taxon synonym: Eucoleus aerophilus" in the item of Capillaria aerophila: thus the relationship you refer to has been laid in. So you should be happy? (Personally I would be more happy if there was a good reference added to substantiate this)

        On the other hand, the frwiki feels that Eucoleus aerophilus is a valid name (otherwise this name would not need be included in Wikidata at all). - Brya (talk) 09:45, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Synonyms examples

Hi Brya. Could I ask you to name a few examples of taxons with synonyms that illustrate the current principles ? There's some info on the tutorial but it's not very helpful. Thank you very much, Tinm (talk) 19:05, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Q12106

Please leave yi:ווייץ where it is. Thank you. --Redaktor (talk) 20:26, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi Redaktor,

As you will know, the intent is to connect Wikipedia pages on alike concepts together. Q12106 is an item about the genus Triticum, its taxonomic position, etc, etc. Q15645384 is an item about wheat, the stuff that bread and pasta is made from. As far as I can see yi:ווייץ is a page entirely about wheat. - Brya (talk) 05:21, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

The lead paragraph is a direct cognate of the hewiki and simplewiki articles under this head, and references the genus. --פוילישער (talk) 08:34, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I suppose it may well have been derived of the hewiki and simplewiki pages, and likely the simplewiki page is derived from the enwiki page. As to the concepts treated, the enwiki page is not an example of clarity, but rather a mash of concepts. The simplewiki page is actually only about wheat, but with an inappropriate taxobox thrown in.

        But I see you have now thrown in a taxobox, so I suppose the page is now confused enough to be put in with Q12106. - Brya (talk) 10:51, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Taxon names and references - reliable sources

Hello Brya!

I've read some of your comments on taxon names. You write that many unreliable Internet sources are being cited in Wikipedia, specifically you state that the Catalog of Life is not reliable. Could you maybe help by providing a list of sources you consider reliable? I would very gladly use those. You might say that there is already a list of Internet sources at the WikiProject Tree of Life. They do, however, seem to consider a lot of Internet sources reliable (for example the Catalog of Life, of which you say it isn't). I'd very much welcome a list of reliable sources. Thanks a lot!--Anna Mayerhof (talk) 15:28, 18 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello Anna Mayerhof,

I should start by saying that Wikidata won't gain dept, and won't mature until it has included a significant amount of taxonomic papers and books as sources. At present there are some included, but percentage-wise these are almost invisible.

        Taxonomy is a difficult topic in the sense that often enough there may be two, three or more different respectable viewpoints that have considerable following and backing. This tends to vary from field to field: some areas are tranquil, while others appear to be in continuous upheaval. And tranquil areas may be peaceful because there is a beautiful consensus, or because nobody cares (resulting in an abandoned wasteland).

        "Internet sources" are not monolithic, but vary greatly. There are pure nomenclatural databases, like IPNI; these don't express any taxonomic viewpoint. There are databases that are organized on a nomenclatural basis, but with taxonomy included, like Tropicos. Then there are databases which are organized from a single taxonomic viewpoint (with "wrong" and "right" names). So, it is always important to keep in mind what kind of database one is dealing with.

        This variety also means that judgment of quality is not straightforward: Tropicos is very good at what it does, but it is a work in progress, which means it has a lot of entries that are waiting to be cleared up and that should not be relied upon, until these are cleared up. Also, it is not unheard of for a database to be mostly reliable, but then to have a patch of utter nonsense, apparently representing a blind spot. As a rule of thumb, it is safe to say that the bigger the database is, and the more grandiose its claims, the worse it will be. A list soon runs the risk of being self-defeating, as there will then be those who will follow it blindly, while every database should be approached with the right perspective in mind. But, an example of a database that is very tightly edited, and that it will be hard to find any fault in is GRIN Taxonomy for Plants. - Brya (talk) 06:21, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Wheat

Hi Brya. Why did do separate Q15645384 from Q12106? It's the identical theme. Best regards. --Holder (talk) 07:08, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Ok, I see, you're postulating that there is a difference between the taxon and the cereal. But is there any language where these are differentiated by two articles??? --Holder (talk) 07:16, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Holder,

I have no need to postulate anything: there is a pretty fundamental difference between the genus Triticum and wheat. Wheat of course is a Big Topic, easily deserving one or more pages on its own. Unfortunately, it proves that Wikipedias tend to be messy about these things. There are pages about the taxon, pages about the taxon that also include material about the product, and pages about the product, not sharply demarcated. See Apple and Malus pumila for such a mess. Hopefully, in time all Wikipedias will have separate pages for the genus Triticum and wheat. - Brya (talk) 12:01, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Of course, these are different aspects but as I see in case of wheat all Wikipedias do write about these different things in one article. --Holder (talk) 14:18, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

I see no such thing. There is a lot of variation: cebwiki and warwiki restrict themselves to the taxon. On the other hand, enwiki and simplwiki restrict themselves entirely to wheat (if one leaves the mismatched taxobox out of consideration). In fact, enwiki has a page en:Taxonomy of wheat that goes a fair way to being a page about the taxon. - Brya (talk) 17:23, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Q10998

please I want explanation about this undo. --وهراني (talk) 20:27, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi وهراني,

There are two items involved: potato (Q20668426) and Solanum tuberosum (Q10998). Of these, potato is the bigger, more popular topic: it deals with the potato as food, with features such as the nutrient content, crop production figures, and in what dishes the potato is used. On the other hand, Solanum tuberosum deals with the plant, with features such as its taxonomy and nomenclature, and the description of the plant. For similar pairs see orange (Q13191) and Citrus ×sinensis (Q3355098) and apple (Q89) and Malus pumila (Q158657).

        The arzwiki page is a good example of a page that deals strictly with the potato as food, and the arwiki matches this, except that a mismatched taxobox has been added. - Brya (talk) 04:08, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Q144253

When a genus is monospecific there is just one page for the genus and the species. On it.wiki we use the species name as page title, while the others seem to use the genus name, but it's the same topic --Bultro (talk) 13:29, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

There are Wikipedias that have just one page for the genus and the species when somebody judges a genus to be monospecific. There are also Wikipedias that have a page each for both genus and species, and why shouldn't they? In such cases, Wikidata always has a page for the genus, and usually a page for the species. How else to keep data organized? It is possible to use "instance of monotypic taxon" instead of "instance of taxon" if this is felt to be desirable, and if this taxonomic viewpoint can be referenced (after all, one person's monospecific genus is another's polyspecific genus). - Brya (talk) 17:36, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

just like pizza's are vegetables?

I didn't understand your allegory. I use property natural product of taxon (P1582) which leads to "pizza is made of vegetables" which can be true. --Infovarius (talk) 12:53, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

How odd. If I put "pizza" and "vegetable" into Google, I get the reference at the top of the list. And yes, if one wants to push things for the sake of pushing things, pizza's can be argued to be "natural product of taxon (P1582)", on the basis of "all natural ingredients", and so are all other foodstuffs. This may be attractive from the perspective of exercising logic, but it has nothing to do with providing information. Pizza's are not made from taxa, but from ingredients.

        An orange is a "natural product of taxon (P1582) C. ×sinensis", a product instantly recognizable by a majority of the people on this planet. Everything derived from oranges is best linked to "orange", not to "C. ×sinensis". Orange juice will usually be factory produced, and most of it will not be derived from an orange anyway, but added in the factory. - Brya (talk) 18:02, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Q89

Ahoj, proč myslíš, že je jablko pouze plodem jabloně domácí (Malus domestica)? Všechny jabloně rodu jabloň (Malus) přece produkují jablka.translate--Rosičák (talk) 06:56, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

English, please. There is no such species as Malus domestica, see the reference provided. - Brya (talk) 07:00, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Malus sylvestris-apple

Malus sieversii-apple

article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malus --Rosičák (talk) 12:56, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

OK. I would hardly call enwiki a reliable source, but I suppose that these two species yield a product that can be called apples, if only just. - Brya (talk) 13:42, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Malus pumila

Look here- http://www.ipni.org/ipni/simplePlantNameSearch.do?find_wholeName=Malus+pumila&output_format=normal&query_type=by_query&back_page=query_ipni.html --Rosičák (talk) 07:14, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Dead link? - Brya (talk) 07:22, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Ha, it's coming through, showing the place and date of publication of Malus pumila. What do you mean by that? - Brya (talk) 08:57, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

• http://www.biolib.cz/en/taxon/id39552/
• http://www.biolib.cz/en/taxon/id214890/

--Rosičák (talk) 12:22, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, these are wrong and need to be updated. - Brya (talk) 12:41, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

In case you somehow missed these: Tropicos, GRIN,Committee for vascular plants. - Brya (talk) 13:31, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Commons categories

I am sorry if I made some mistakes in adding Commons categories.

I found the Commons links on Category:Sospita Hewitson (1860) non Mulsant (1846) (Q15026315) and Category:Welwitschia (Q18246764), which in turn have topic's main category (P910) connectors to Sospita Hewitson (1860) non Mulsant (1846) (Q13862071) and Welwitschia (Q15044266) .

If those commonscat links are wrong, could you please also change the P373 links (and possibly sitelinks) on Category:Sospita Hewitson (1860) non Mulsant (1846) (Q15026315) and Category:Welwitschia (Q18246764) as well, to point to the correct Commons categories ?

Thanks, Jheald (talk) 12:18, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, Category:Sospita Hewitson (1860) non Mulsant (1846) (Q15026315) deals with a fictitious genus of butterfly: it should not have a Commons category; there is a Commons category which deals with the real genus Sospita. I think it is dubious to put P373 in Category pages (why have two links to the same Commons category?). - Brya (talk) 12:31, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

In general, it's useful to have a P373 on a category item, so that a category page on a Wikipedia can link to the Commons category -- eg, using a version of the template Template:Commons category (Q48029) that may draw directly from Wikidata.

In several wikis there is also maintenance code written into the Commonscat template, so that if a manually-added value is different from the Wikidata value (or not on Wikidata at all), this is automatically noted in a tracking category. This also relies on there being a P373 present.

In the case of Sospita there are categories sv:Kategori:Sospita, ceb:Kategoriya:Sospita, and war:Kaarangay:Sospita which could all rely on a P373 value for them to show a link to c:Category:Sospita.

However, if you are right that Category:Sospita Hewitson (1860) non Mulsant (1846) (Q15026315) (to which they are all currently sitelinked) is fictitious, then it may be that there is a different category-item that these wiki-categories should be sitelinked to, and it may be that that different category-item should carry the P373 link to the Commons category c:Category:Sospita. Jheald (talk) 13:27, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Well, it still seems odd to include the same Commons category in more than one item. Also likely to produce errors. With only a little more effort it would be possible to read out the Commons category in the item of the category's main subject.

        And yes, there is Sospita (Q4049794), which should be linked.

        For Diervillaceae Q135193, Linnaeaceae Q134924, etc it is dubious to add a Commons category, as these are hybrid redirects, and there is a user who has a bot which has been converting these to the category-redirected-to, at which point these become mismatched and have to be removed again. We are now likely to see a repeat of this cycle.

        I also see you are re-adding Commons gallery (P935): as these are duplicates of Commons in "Other sites" we have systematically been removing these. Don't know why the property has not been deprecated yet. - Brya (talk) 18:06, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

The talk page indicates the property should only be used in case of multiple galleries. - Brya (talk) 18:11, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Not much of a discussion there, just one user's proposal to rename the property, that was never carried out.

A similar proposal made for Commons category (P373) (to remove it when it duplicated a sitelink) was swiftly rejected in this discussion.

The level of use of the property has been essentially unchanged since September 2014 (see these tables), so I don't see any great drive to remove it.

Part of the issue is that the sitelink to a Commons category might be held by either a category-item or an article-item (Commons people prefer the latter, some Wikidata people prefer the former), so it is not certain that an article-item will be able to sitelink to even one gallery. (See again table just linked for numbers).

Given that this property exists, it therefore seems preferable to me to use it for all sitelinks to galleries. If necessary, additional/secondary galleries can be identified as such by a qualifier.

It also makes queries much easier, if all the information is held in the same way; also, it is significantly easier, eg in SPARQL, to query properties than to query sitelinks.

So for all these reasons, it does seem to make sense to me to try to fully populate Commons gallery (P935). Jheald (talk) 18:55, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

• I am counting half a dozen users.
• The table shows that P935 is consistently used for one in ten galleries.
• I don't think you should start such a reversion of policy without first having a general discussion (preferably in Project chat). - Brya (talk) 19:17, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

+1 --Succu (talk) 19:19, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Commons gallery

Triticum (Q12106) has a sitelink to the Commons gallery c:Wheat

If c:Wheat is an inappropriate value for the property Commons gallery (P935), it may be inappropriate for the sitelink too.

(Maybe another item should have the sitelink ?) Jheald (talk) 18:07, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, big mess. When I have time. - Brya (talk) 18:09, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Insults

Instead of using insults and edit warring could you please explain your actions in the discussion I started. What you consider a correct taxon or not is of course irrelevant. What has been used and is considered a synonym is. To just delete the name is of no help. --Averater (talk) 15:38, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

I tried to answer the question you did not ask. In effect it is stating the obvious, but I guess redundancy never hurts. - Brya (talk) 15:49, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Ellipsoptera blanda etc.

Why did you revert it? Cicindela blanda is senior synonym for Ellipsoptera blanda. All species of Ellisoptera were in Cicindela before, because Ellisoptera was subgenus of Cicindela. Reference to ITIS for name Cicndela blanda in element Q14940707 is wrong. In ITIS page for TSN 697674, there is clearly informations: invalid and Valid Name: Ellipsoptera blanda (Dejean, 1831). The same applay to others Ellipsoptera species and others former subgenera of Cicidela, which were elevated to genus rank. Generally WD has thousands multiple elements for taxons, which need to be mergend. Carabus (talk) 08:10, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

So, no information is lost by doing things in an orderly way. We don't really know what exact taxon is indicated by a particular name. All we have for sure are names. What we can do is put in as many (preferably referenced) relationships: "this name is a synonym of that name (according to this reference)" and "this name has the following synonyms (according to this reference)". So, the best we can do is have an item for each name, and (at this stage, at least) put the sitelinks in one of the items so linked. - Brya (talk) 08:18, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

I don't think that "the best we can do is have an item for each name". Is it a rule, policy or something? Was there any discussion about it and this is a consensus? Fundamental aim of exist WD is to substitute of interwiki on individual wikis. Interwikis serve as way to connect articles from different wikis that are about the same thing. As a result readers can check articles on other languages to serarch for more/diffrent informations and maybe translate it to their natives wikis. If we disconnect articles about the same thing, only because some wikis (most or all wikis indeed) can't keep up with the changes in systematics or just using other systems of classifications, we indispose them to do this. Moreover, we create illusion that there is more taxons. In many wikias, where articles were created by bots, there are duplicated stubs about the same animal. This is an effect of using databases. Relevant interwikis can prevent this process. Articles should be connected on the grounds of what they contain, not just names. Names are not all we have. Preferred references are peerreviewed scientific literature, not databeses, and in this literature we have informations about nomenclatural relations. Of course, sometimes we have more that one names that are valid in diffrent scientists' opinion, but it has no implications to merging elements with different names. There exist also situations when taxon are treat as synonym by one author and valid taxon by another, but we don't talking about this situation (possibility of existence more than one taxon), we talking about situation when we just have alternative names depending of classification or/and taxonomic rank (without any doubts to synonimity). There is huge diffrent between this two situations. Only second of them may need to additional item. I don't see any justification for to keep/create diffrent elements about the same, only because names. What are notable (and can have it own article) are taxons not names. Synonyms (sensu older/alternative names) will be never have owns articles (and therefore items) cause we creating encyclopaedias not databases. We don't creating item for redirections. Carabus (talk) 09:44, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

As I pointed out above, as like you will have seen, the sitelinks (interwikis) are put in one item, at least until such a time as we have software sufficiently sophisticated to handle it differently.

        Wikidata is not an encyclopedia, but is a database, and should be organized like a database. There should not be a one-to-one correspondence with Wikipedia pages, nor is this possible as different Wikipedias have different content.

        It is quite true that there are Wikipedias which have multiple pages for what is likely a single taxon, and this is indeed caused by injudicious use of the wrong databases. Even worse, these Wikipedias have lots of pages on fictitious taxa (manufactured by those databases.

        As to "Articles should be connected on the grounds of what they contain", once upon a time I thought so to. But I spent three hours to get a single item so that all the sitelinks connected to a taxon with the same circumscription, and then the endresult looked totally wrong and unbelievable. It could only be checked by somebody else if he also was going to spend three hours. It is not doable. Names are all we have.

        And, yes, as the cornerstone of Wikipedia is NPoV (treat all points of view in reliable sources, proportionally to their importance) there are no 'right' names, there are just referenced points of view. - Brya (talk) 10:30, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikidata schouldn't be organized just like another taxonomic database, because function of WD is to serve to conecting articles on wikipedias (and other wikias such like wikispecies). WD are not serving to themselves. If WD aren't performing their function propertly, we can turn in WD and back to adding interwikis to individual articles. Names are not all we have. We have all relations between names too (we have lines too, not just points) and we schould merge names that mean the same. This not a matter of PoV here. Decision on what name is "main" may be a PoV, but decision on what of them are synonyms in this situation not. If you transfere taxon to another genus or elevate it to another rank, you don't create new taxon. You just change classification of it. Synonimity of this names are not matter of any dispute. It's not matter of PoV, cause there not exist any scientist who could question it. Combination of specific epithet, author and year show unambiguously that is the same taxon (marked by "=") and we have only references which confirme it. Idea of creating different items to all synonyms is nonsense. All details about nomenclatural history of taxon are in text of articles on wikipedias and wikispecies, where they have only one article for one taxon, ad here we just connect this articles. We have technically abillity to introduce more than one name to the same object, linking redirections is banned and WD is substitute of interwiki in articles <=that all means that we schould merge this items. This is too obvious to me, and you schould linking to disscussions ednded by consensus or rules that constitute something else. Carabus (talk) 12:06, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

As to "If you transfere taxon to another genus or elevate it to another rank, you don't create new taxon." there is no telling if this refers to the same taxon: the taxa may be recircumscribed simultaneously and thus change. Also, it is quite possible for a taxon to change without a name change: a certain family (with a particular name) may consist of one species according to one point of view, but have almost six hundred species according to another point of view (and still bear that same name). There is no telling. At best there are patterns: if it concerns a species of insect the likelyhood of recircumscription is lower than for a family of plants. But we are working across the board.

        Nowhere in the aims and goals of Wikidata is it said that there should be a one-to-one correspondence to Wikipedia pages, and anyway this is manifestly impossible, as Wikipedias are not the same. But, as I pointed out twice already, sitelinks (iw's) are kept together in one item, where it concerns homotypic synonyms (when possible: if the Swedish Wikipedia has three separate pages on three homotypic synonyms, nothing is to be done), so connectivity now is much better than when iw's were placed in Wikipedia pages. - Brya (talk) 13:17, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Carabus, your core assumption „because function of WD is to serve to conecting articles on wikipedias“ is wrong. WD matured far behind this early goal to be a simplistic link container. --Succu (talk) 20:43, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Oplismenus undulatifolius

Hi there, I apologize for any trouble caused by my edits. I think there is a lot for me to learn to make proper edits to wikidata taxonomy. When I first looked at "Oplismenus undulatifolius" (Q13936842) and "Oplismenus hirtellus subsp. undulatifolius" (Q7098364), the pages were showing no indication that Q7098364 is no longer accepted. I of course thought it worked like wikipedia and tried merging the entries, which I've now learned not to do.

I very much want to make sure they are updated properly to indicate Q13936842 is the accepted taxon, and Q7098364 is just a synonym. It is not the other way around. Please make updates to these species according to WCSP and Flora of China/Flora of NA. To not properly indicate which is the accepted taxon and which is the synonym would be a big mistake in my mind. Taxonomy issues have caused a lot of issues for this invasive species and I just wanted to fix the entry but obviously I didn't know what I was doing at first. --MCEllis (talk) 00:03, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi MCEllis,

Thank you for asking for directions! Taxonomy is a large and complex field. Except in the case of nomenclatural decisions there tend to be no black and white situations. There is a wide range of possibilities, from cases where there is widespread agreement that a name not used in half a century "is just a synonym" to cases where there are two (or more) sides which each vehemently insist that their approach is the only right one, and that those who hold other views are just a bunch of nincompoops who don't have a clue. I am aware that black and white thinking is encouraged by contemporary molecular phylogenetic papers, which contain statements like "we have established that ...", "we have proven that ...". I don't really know why they use such statements; perhaps it is easier to get funding if they do ("no wishy-washy fooling around, we demand important breakthoughs!"). Anyway, observing some distance it is noticeable that such "proofs" often only last till a new paper appears, which "establishes" or "proves" something differently.

        What Wikidata aims to do is to document all notable points of view, and especially to document what references support that particular point of view. When a sufficient density of reliable references is achieved, the degree of acceptance can be read off from the item. So, it is nothing special to have in one item both a "taxon synonym" and an "instance of synonym" referring to the same other species, when the taxonomy is contested. Both should be supported by references, although quite a bit can be read off from the links in each of those items (that is, if one of those items has a link to Avibase, then Avibase supports that particular choice of name).

        In fact this is no different from what Wikipedia aims to do. The NPoV-policy is the cornerstone of Wikipedia and prescribes that situations that consist of shades of grey should be described in shades of grey, with each shade given its right proportionial weight. So Wikipedia should hold no black and white statements like "Palotina & al. (2014) have established that ...", but should observe appropriate distance. - Brya (talk) 05:29, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

About your rollbacks on my (auto) edits recently

Hi, I noticed you reverted some of my edits, but I don't mean to break anything. Actually those edits you reverted are because I added foreign language versions on Chinese Wikipedia (by clicking "Add links" when there's no other languages for this article, like zh:金腺莸 and the program of Wikimedia did the edit on Wikidata for me automatically. Since you are going to revert such revisions anyway, how about we suggest Wikimedia to modify their program so things would not be messed up? I don't want to receive alerts when I clicked one of them out it shows irrelevant message in the future and also don't want to do anything harmful to this project whether I am intentional or unintentional. Thanks, have a good day :) --PhiLiP (talk) 03:37, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi,

As best I recall, such cases all involved merges of two items. I have no idea who or what actually made the merge. But yes, it is true that edits that are done automatically (however it is done) have a significant degree of error. I tend to go and find out exactly who or what causes this only if it happens on a large scale, and then the cause is usually easy to find. This looks a lot harder. So I have little to offer here in the way of direct guidance. - Brya (talk) 06:05, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Synonyms Q5435776 and Q3806271

Hi,

I have to admit that I am not a specialist in biology, but my understanding is, that synonyms in biology refer to the same species having two different names. If the entry in the Swedish Wikipedia is correct, then Pleurobema coccineum and Pleurobema cordatum are synonyms. Is this not correct ? Is there a reason why synonyms should not use the same wikidata entry ? Inwind (talk) 06:35, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

First of all, I would not trust the Swedish Wikipedia for anything taxonomical, as it bases itself on a source known to be unreliable. As far as I can tell Pleurobema cordatum is a good species found in the rivers of the US, not a synonym. While Pleurobema coccineum is not a current species at all (the Swedish Wikipedia claims ITIS as a source, but ITIS does not accept this name). Secondly, they are heterotypic names, so there is no cause to even think about putting them together. Thirdly, it proves that putting more than one taxon name in an item causes no end of problems and errors (for starters, any claim would need a qualifier to indicate what taxon name it applies to). - Brya (talk) 06:53, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

p2695

type locality (geology) (P2695) is ready. --Tobias1984 (talk) 18:19, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. - Brya (talk) 05:23, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Pomatia Bolten, 1798

Maybe of some interest: According to Francisco Welter-Schultes (was active for some time at dewiki) the genus (and the work the name was published in) was wrongly attributed to Joachim Friedrich Bolten (Q1690078). See Pomatia [Röding, 1798] and Peter Friedrich Röding. --Succu (talk) 17:30, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. Very likely he is right, for old names authorship can be uncertain, shifting from time to time. I will adjust the item, trying to reflect this. - Brya (talk) 05:17, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

asparagus (Q28367)

Hi, the definition from the BNCF thesaurus: "Genere di piante Liliacee con molte specie diffuse nelle regioni semiaride del vecchio mondo, tra cui molte sono importanti dal punto di vista alimentare, altre vengono coltivate come piante ornamentali" sounds like something that grows in the earth and not like something I would like to eat. Also the LCSH term gives plant books and the GRIN taxononmy as sources and does not even mention any use one could make from it. AFAIK for asparagus there is not a third Wikidata item to distinguish between the plant and the taxon. -- Gymel (talk) 18:34, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Q16054698. --Succu (talk) 18:48, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Succu: Seems OK for me: Subclass of "Gemüsespargel" asparagus (Q23041045) (the food (Q2095)), not of "Gemüsespargel" asparagus (Q28367) (the plant (Q756)). I moved BNCF, LCSH and WebNDL from the vegetable to the plant, but Byra seems to object for reasons not yet clear to me. -- Gymel (talk)

Gymel, if I understand your sources right then they are referring to the genus Asparagus (Q2853420) and not to the species asparagus (Q28367). --Succu (talk) 20:09, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Succu: That makes much sense, thank you for pointing that out. I moved the three statements in question to Asparagus (Q2853420). Hope it's o.k. now. -- Gymel (talk) 20:34, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

With such entries, it is difficult to say "what they are about"; likely the persons making them did not know what they were doing. The fact that a scientific name is mentioned does not mean anything either way, as this is often done when the vegetable product is discussed. So the basic question that matters here is "would this entry exist if the vegetable product did not exist". - Brya (talk) 05:17, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Stop this

The question in your edit summary is answered in the property-talk-page comment which you removed, and which I have restored (albeit nothing is being "hidden away" - you also removed a prominent link to the new page; which I have also restored). Please now undo this edit. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:29, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

I suggest you are the one who has to "stop this" (i.e. finding ways to cause grief to other users). I have seen no argument that supports your actions, except that you think this is prettier, which is relevant only for pages where you are the sole user of the page). - Brya (talk) 17:33, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Do not remove my recent comments from a talk page again. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:32, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Do not put "comments" on pages that have to be kept clear. - Brya (talk) 13:41, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Coordinate with

Hallo Brya, Ik blijf nog even zeuren over het gebruik van this zoological name is coordinate with (P2743) voor soort/ondersoort. Wat vind je van de toepassing op de wijze die ik heb gedaan bij snow sheep (Q918400) en Ovis nivicola nivicola (Q20908578)? Groeten, Lymantria (talk) 12:57, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Hallo Lymantria,

Het lijkt me dat dit een verbetering is, maar maar snapt de lezer ook dat de term "specific name" heeft betrekking op het "binomen"? In het item zelf is de naam met "coordinate status" de "subspecific name", terwijl in het item waarnaar gelinkt wordt het om de "specific name" gaat. Het lijkt me niet moeilijk om dat verkeerd te lezen ... In de ICNafp is dit opgelost door de term "final epithet" te gebruiken; dit is wel eenduidig. Maar als dat vertaald wordt naar de ICZN zou dat "final species-group name" worden, wat niet lekker helder leest. - Brya (talk) 16:36, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Hallo Brya, Ik had het eerder inderdaad andersom staan. Lastig te bepalen of de qualifier op het item zelf of het item waarnaar verwezen geldt... Jouw suggestie is inderdaad een goede, maar leest niet echt fraai. Helder is het wel. Kom er misschien nog op terug. Voorlopig laat ik het toch maar zo staan nog. Lymantria (talk) 18:58, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Berry vs. Botanical berry

Hello, I noticed you undid my revision changing berry (Q13184)'s label from "berry" to "botanical berry". Could you explain why you think this is wrong? --Hardwigg (talk) 17:04, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

This is Wikidata not Wikipedia. The label should be the name (and "botanical berry" is not a name but just something made up for disambiguation), and disambiguation is done in the "description". - Brya (talk) 17:06, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

If I was on Wikipedia, I would have used parentheses. Ok, that's fine. You've also undone a number of my recent edits changing subclassOf:fruit -> subclassOf:berry (cucumber, tomato). Am I misunderstanding something here? --Hardwigg (talk) 17:12, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Cucumbers are fruits, indisputably. Their exact classification is a little more involved. The more detailed a claim is, the more it needs to be referenced (a real reference work); otherwise it is just an opinion. With the big popular fruits a detailed classification has very little added value, and runs the risk of confusing the reader. - Brya (talk) 17:26, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

Ah, ok, so it was references you were looking for. I'll do some research to make sure everything is referenced. If I do add subclassOf:Berry though, I will remove subclassOf:Fruit; since berry is subclassOf:Fruit, having both subclassOf:Berry and subclassOf:Fruit is redundant.

I do think having the botanical classification of a fruit might confuse the reader, but I don't think excluding the data from Wikidata is the correct solution. I wish botany had used special words for their field instead of overloading the meaning of common English words! Having strong references should hopefully help make things clearer. This seems like a good source; if I have some time I'll add the data from there. --Hardwigg (talk) 20:19, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

I get a blank page for this book. It appears to be a textbook, so a low-grade source (especially since it is an Indian book). The issue of "redundancy" is another reason to shy away from more detail. The German Wikipedia has a classification of fruit which is uncommon in English, which means that there is an unpalatable choice 1) adopting this and leaving out the higher (commonly accepted level) on the grounds of redundancy, resulting in Wikidata presenting a fairly weird classification, 2) including this and and leaving in the higher (commonly accepted level) and be faced with users who want to delete it on the grounds of redundancy, or 3) leaving it out, and be faced with users who want to put it in. Anyway, redundancy is only a good argument if there is complete agreement in the literature that it is redundant; there is no reason why Wikidata should not include multiple classifications.

        Reality is the way it is, and Wikidata (like most Wikimedia projects) is supposed to document reality, not create a bright new reality. - Brya (talk) 04:14, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Human

I don't understand your change to human (Q5). Human can't be a subclass of anatomically modern human, because anatomically modern human is a subclass of human. I'm also a bit puzzled about your change to archaic human (Q284851), regarding instance vs subclass. Ghouston (talk) 10:23, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

This is simple: "subclass of Homo" is not allowed. The proper format is "parent taxon: Homo", but this can be used only for subgenera (for animals) and species, neither of which applies here. The "instance of Homo" is not a thing of beauty, but a make-shift placeholder for want of something more elegant. - Brya (talk) 16:27, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Lavatera cretica of Malva linnaei

Hallo Brya, Ik zag dat je vorig jaar Malva linnaei M.F.Ray (1998) (Q4279385) hebt gemarkeerd als nomen illegitimum, ik denk slaand op Malva linnaei. In veel talen staat echter Lavatera cretica als label en eigenlijk nergens bij de verklaringen staat aangegeven welke naam nu nomen ill. is, behalve via de identificatiecodes. Dat lijkt me een beetje onhandig. Misschien name (P2561) gebruiken (dat heb ik hier maar gedaan)? Ook een beetje apart, omdat je dan een taal op moet geven.... Misschien heb je een betere oplossing. Lymantria (talk) 07:53, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Hallo Lymantria,

Ja, dat is een bekend probleem; het gaat dan niet alleen om de naam, maar ook om de auteur en de publicatiedatum. De enige echte oplossing die ik zie is een nieuwe eigenschap, en ik heb indertijd een voorstel gedaan, maar daar was geen steun voor. Kennelijk te technisch; overigens zou het ook nog niet zo eenvoudig zijn zo'n nieuwe eigenschap in te passen in de eigenschappen-boom. - Brya (talk) 10:44, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Dat klopt. Het is een beetje behelpen. Overigens kunnen auteur en publicatiedatum natuurlijk ook als kwalificaties worden toegevoegd. Lymantria (talk) 11:48, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Het probleem is dat dit onmiddellijk constraint violations oplevert (zie hier). Dit is mogelijk te voorkomen door de eigenschappen-boom anders in te richten, maar het wordt wel een puzzel. - Brya (talk) 16:58, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Undoing my merge

Can you tell me why you undid my merge, please? Oreothlypis peregrina (Q23727086) and Vermivora peregrina (Q23727094) are two names for the same species. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 04:05, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

These are two different scientific names, that is, two different formal entities, each with their own entries. They do have the same type, and may, or may not, refer to the same species. Their relationship to each other can (and had been) added to each item. Theoretically, they, and other names based on the same type, could be added to the same item, but this is very complicated (all the entries then need to have a qualifier to indicate to which name they apply), and, in practice, the item becomes unreadable and uneditable. - Brya (talk) 04:16, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

A WD item is unique. If you believe there should be a separate item for each Latin name, then you need to create 10,000 new items as every bird species has at least two scientific names, and then all other fauna and flora! Please link to any other discussions which backs up your reasoning. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 04:31, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Having more than one Latin name for a single species also makes mockery of Wikidata Lists, as more than one species, image, local name will appear eg "Here's alist of all species in the Zosterops genus:" and then follows a multitude of duplicate local names, duplicate images etc etc. rather than a list of the actual/individual species within that genera. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 04:51, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

As you said, this is Wikidata, not Wikispecies. Wikispecies selects / creates The One True Tree of Life, with a selection of what taxa / circumscriptions it believes in and wants to expound. If you feel you are the great authority on birds, knowing exactly what you consider a species of bird, and what is not a species of bird, you can try your luck at Wikispecies, or, better yet, write your own book. Wikidata is not the place for original research, or to expound your own point of view. The world at large does not agree on what bird species there are, or what they should be called (note that Avibase does not pretend to know what bird species there are, although, being a single site, they could afford to select a single point of view without running into consistency problems). Wikidata gathers data, including published points of view on bird species. Such points of view are connected to scientific names. - Brya (talk) 05:03, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

And Wikidata definitely should not have "a list of all species in the [genus] Zosterops", that would be a bad violation of the basic principles of Wikidata. What Wikidata should be able to provide is "a list of all species in the genus Zosterops recognized by Authority A", as well as "a list of all species in the genus Zosterops recognized by Authority B", etc. - Brya (talk) 05:26, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

When I hear words such as If you feel you are the great authority on birds...or, better yet, write your own book I stop discussing. Llywelyn2000 (talk) 05:38, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, if you like you can also hear "If you feel you are the great authority on birds, or are the agent of the greatest authority on birds ...". - Brya (talk) 05:53, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Bird item names

Why are you being so inconsistent and untidy about this? If you think all bird items should be titled by their scientific name - maybe a good idea - then make a proposal that the whole lot be changed. I might well be happy to support it, though I can also see good arguments for continuing the current system used for the vast majority (standard IOC English name for currently accepted species, scientific name for synonyms not accepted by IOC as species). But just having an odd one or two here and there using a different format just doesn't make for good consistency. And no (per your rather rude and unpleasant personalised put-down edit summaries), Acanthis flammea is not my special favourite, I'm just trying to use the same formatting for it that ~99.95% of other bird items follow. - MPF (talk) 10:12, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

As you know, there are three items to which the common name Common Redpoll can be applied. Labelling all three by their common name (your putative "format [...] that ~99.95% of other bird items [follow]") would lead to three items named Common Redpoll. The reader would be be terribly confused. Your position to label only your favourite Acanthis flammea as Common Redpoll is arbitrary; it also makes navigation and editting very awkward. There is no real reason to make a proposal to label items by their scientific names, as this proposal would have to be made to you (you are effectively the only one who is replacing scientific names by common names), and you indicate that you "might well be happy to support it". - Brya (talk) 11:54, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Three items to which the common name Common Redpoll could in theory be applied; but only the one currently accepted to which I am suggesting applying it to, so no risk of confusion. No; the "format [...] that ~99.95% of other bird items [follow]" does not lead to three items named Common Redpoll, only one (the accepted name, not the synonyms). Not "my favourite" (that's your wilful misinterpretation), the one currently accepted as the correct name by IOC (the standard bird list followed by Commons, Wikispecies, en:wiki, and many/most other wikipedias) and all the other bird lists like Clements, Howard & Moore, AOU, BOU, AERC, etc. - MPF (talk) 17:31, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Oh, that makes no difference. Wikidata is a NPoV project, unlike Commons and Wikispecies which are (or have chosen to be) Single Point of View projects. If you want to record IOC names (I will take your word for the importance of the IOC; I had never heard of it) this must be done explicitly, in a claim, for example in "taxon common name" with the relevant IOC publication as the reference. It may also possible to create a special property for this. But for the labels this makes no difference: if Acanthis flammea is called Common Redpoll in English, then so are the other two, by those who accept those names as being the correct name. It makes no sense to play favourites. - Brya (talk) 04:09, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Look up IOC here - I'm really surprised you've not heard of it, for someone who is doing any work at all involving birds it is an essential reference: they are basically an expert referee group who review published scientific papers on bird taxonomy (no, I am not a member of it, but I do strongly respect their expertise). Of NPoV, this is a bit of a nonsense, as the three scientific names are manifestly not equal in status; one has an overwhelming degree of support from scientific data evidence; the other two do not, and one of those two has not been used other than as a historical protonym citation, for well over 100 years. Yes it may be reasonable to have wikidata items for them (though having just read your user page commentary, I'm not sure that they don't just contribute toward the entropy death of wikidata that you lament!), but I don't see any point in having English (or other vernacular language) tags for effectively obsolete names. They do not for example have links to other wikipedias. As @Llywelyn2000: mentions in the section above, there are well over 10,000 bird synonyms (to say nothing of other groups like plants!) that would need to be added to accord with your treatment here - very few birds (if any) have no synonyms. - MPF (talk) 00:12, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Statements like "one has an overwhelming degree of support from scientific data evidence; the other two do not" sound very close to Original Research. There is no way Wikidata can get involved in such reasoning, or can allow such reasoning as a basis for edits. Wikidata records published facts. If one name has more scientific support than another, Wikidata will record the publications that show that support, and the reader will be able to see this in such databases and publications as are recorded. And yes, inevitably this may mean that Wikidata is running behind the latest Scientific Truth, but it also means, conversely, that Wikidata is not jumping off a bridge because the latest scientific publication has jumped off a bridge.

It's not original research, it is derived research. The original research is the papers that showed that Carduelis sensu lato (incorporating C. flammea) is not monophyletic. - MPF (talk) 23:38, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

        The Common Redpoll case seems as good as any to illustrate this: both Acanthis flammea and Carduelis flammea have a number of external identifiers (Carduelis flammea has a few more), showing that the world at large is divided on the issue. The Avibase entry shows the same (and Carduelis flammea is used on Wikipedias, it is just that the links should all be in the same item: there is no special significance to which particular item is chosen for this; there is no real objection to moving them to the other item).

        Given how data storage gets keeping cheaper all the time, entropy seems not much of a danger. What is a danger is that only digitised data is included, causing a bias. As to NPoV, if Wikidata had been set up as support for Wikispecies, it might have made sense to adopt a SPoV policy, but it wasn't. Wikidata is set up to serve all Wikimedia projects, and beyond that, to serve as a general database, to serve the world at large. As it is, NPoV is not "a bit of a nonsense," but is essential to Wikidata. - Brya (talk) 05:44, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

If so, then why (given that virtually all bird species have multiple synonyms) are you not changing all items to scientific names? Why the small, random, haphazard handful? That is what is particularly unhelpful. - MPF (talk) 23:38, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

That is simple, changing all items to scientific names is not a priority. The majority goes by a scientific name already, anyway. - Brya (talk) 05:31, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Like this. Could maybe be done by a bot? - Brya (talk) 10:43, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Sure. The IOC list contains 10814 species with english names. At the moment we are missing 779 scientific names of that list. --Succu (talk) 13:31, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

If you are going to make new items based on this list, it would make sense to do this also for taxa without an English name (that is, for subspecies). - Brya (talk) 16:39, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

I think I start slowly with the missing species names. That will hopefully resolve other problems. I didn't analyzed the IOC master list in detail but it looks like that including the subspecies will double our items about birds. Only a guess. --Succu (talk) 19:24, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Marking names as "IOC-accepted names" may be helpful. Having items for IOC-accepted subspecies may be helpful to resolve synonimies and to clarify relationships. But it is likely to be a lot of work. - Brya (talk) 19:37, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

At species level they are referenced now to IOC World Bird List Version 6.3 (Q27042747). --Succu (talk) 18:23, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Now we have more than 20,000 subspecies referenced to this list. --Succu (talk) 16:37, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Very impressive! It looks like that Wikidata now has a firm hold on this high-profile group. - Brya (talk) 18:38, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

natural product of taxon (P1582) and has part(s) (P527)

Maybe natural product of taxon (P1582) should point at the plant, not its fruit, but why would has part(s) (P527) work in, for example, lemon juice (Q1375049)? Does the juice consist of the fruit, or is juice part of (P361) the fruit? --AVRS (talk) 16:31, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

It is less than ideal, but most juices are made from the fruit, with some other ingredients mixed in. So, "has part" does fairly well, better anyway than "material used". This "has part" seems quite useful in mixed drinks and dishes. A dish that contains, say, lamb, won't have an extract of a whole lamb either, but a very select part, with other parts discarded. - Brya (talk) 16:52, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Permanent duplicates

Why did you remove the permanent duplicated item (P2959) statements from Garlic (allium sativum) (Q23400) and move the sitelinks to garlic (Q21546392)?

gom:लसूण is a page written in the Devanagari script, gom:Losun is the same topic written in Latin script. hy:Սխտոր is a page in Eastern Armenian, hy:Սխտոր (արեւմտահայերէն) is the same topic in Western Armenian. These should be linked together using the property permanent duplicated item (P2959) which was added precisely for this purpose - those sitelinks should be on the same item but cannot be because of Wikidata restrictions.

I don't think it's a good idea to randomly assign one version of the page to the plant and the other to the ingredient. It's misleading because it's not true that those wikis have one article about the plant and another article about the ingredient and it means there's no way to query for the other version of the page (e.g. if they wanted to use Wikidata to automatically display a link to the other version of the page, it would fail here because Garlic (allium sativum) (Q23400) is not (and should not be) linked to garlic (Q21546392) using permanent duplicated item (P2959)).

Also pinging @Jura1: who requested deletion of the items.

- Nikki (talk) 17:46, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

I don't see anything out of the ordinary. There are a lot more people who care about garlic than there are people who care about Allium sativum, so pages about garlic tend to be initiated sooner. So it makes sense to gather such pages together. Things get complicated when users force information about the plant into such pages.

        It is quite true that these pages won't be found by using permanent duplicated item (P2959)) when it gets implemented, but these pages can be found now by each other, and by any other page about garlic that may be added. - Brya (talk) 06:11, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

biological nomenclatures

Hi Byra! You changed the some former subclasses of biological nomenclature (Q522190)

• phylogenetic nomenclature (Q2976606)
• botanical nomenclature (Q3310776)
• zoological nomenclature (Q3343211)

to instances of nomenclature (Q863247). Its subclass biological nomenclature (Q522190) subsumes all kinds of nomenclatures in biology so all three should better be classified there. Moreover I am not sure which item is about a specific naming system (instance-of) or about a general group of naming systems (subclass-of). I also found

• nomenclature code (Q2673092)

which I would also rather state a subclass of biological nomenclature (Q522190). I follow this rule:

• if the item is primarily about one naming scheme, it's an instance. For instance planetary nomenclature (Q1463003) is about one system managed by the IAU
• if the item is about a group of naming schemes, it's a subclass. For instance chemical nomenclature (Q6503924) covers all kinds of nomenclatures in chemistry. These individual kinds are instances but not the former.

We may (need to) tidy up the current state by better separating items on the science of nomenclature and items on types/kinds of nomenclature if this is possible. What do you think? -- JakobVoss (talk) 19:39, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, this is a headache. A number of things are clear: there are the various Codes of nomenclature (instances of) each of which is at the heart of a field of naming (instances of). Unfortunately there also is en:binomial nomenclature, which reads like "the Government of North America" (which is a democracy, has a Constitution, etc, with some quaint local customs, and things which are "technically different", but not really). This is copied in many other Wikipedia's. The field covered is the same as "biological nomenclature", which should be all right (the set of; de:Nomenklatur (Biologie) looks all right), but in many Wikipedia's this suffers from the same problem as binomial nomenclature has. Of course, there actually is something that can be called "binomial nomenclature", but it is a general principle, not a system of names. - Brya (talk) 04:59, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Didiscus novoguinensis (Q17133813) - UFO duplicated page?

Where's the original item? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:52, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

That would be here. - Brya (talk) 16:22, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 00:02, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Said to be the same as

Hi. About this: [4]. It was the wrong page. I wanted to connect these two disambiguation pages: [5]. Is it okay like this? Do I understand the meaning of this "Said to be the same as" property and its proper usage correctly?
As I understand it, the property will prevent editors from merging the item. Just look at its edit history: [6]. --Moscow Connection (talk) 04:18, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

One more: [7]. --Moscow Connection (talk) 04:20, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, thank you for getting back to me. At a quick glance, it looks to me that Q227418 is a disambiguation page for the word "Apple" (for homonyms), while Q349354 is a page on the concept of apple, or the word "apple" in composed terms where apple is used for a fruit (the concept of apple). I would say that P1889, "different from" is more appropriate. - Brya (talk) 04:38, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you very much, I didn't know P1889 existed. I'll add P1889 instead.
(This is actually tricky. Examples: 1. The Chinese disambiguation page for "apple" (as in fruit) lists Apple Inc. (cause the name of the company is translated into Chinese). Moreover, here on Wikidata the said Chinese disambiguation page for "apple (disambiguation)" is currently linked to "Apple (disambiguation)". 2. The English Wikipedia disambiguation page "Apple (disambiguation)" obviously lists the actual apple, while in other languages the actual apples are on the other disambiguation page.)
Therefore maybe it would be more logical to add both "same as" and "different from".
Update: Okay, I've moved the Chinese link: [8].
I think I should better add both "the same as" and "different from" properties... Does it sound logical to you? --Moscow Connection (talk) 05:16, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it is tricky. And "said to be the same as" and "different from" are almost complete opposites, so it is not logical to use both at the same time. - Brya (talk) 05:20, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Okay, I've replaced "said to be the same as" with "different from". --Moscow Connection (talk) 05:27, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Okay, let's see what happens. - Brya (talk) 05:46, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Brya, what do you mean "is a page on the concept of apple"? English label is quite misleading. This item is simple disambiguation page for the notions named "Apple" (but in other languages). So it is obviously "the same", not "different from". --Infovarius (talk) 12:07, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Above I said "is a page on the concept of apple, or the word "apple" in composed terms where apple is used for a fruit (the concept of apple)." This may not be far removed from "notions named "Apple". - Brya (talk) 17:31, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Lesser spotted eagle

I am under impression that Lesser spotted eagle is the same as Aquila pomarina (ITIS: 175414) and Clanga pomarina.

• The enclosed ITIS link indicates that species Aquila pomarina is Lesser Spotted Eagle according to C. L. Brehm, 1831.
• The Wikidate record associates Lesser spotted eagle with the name Clanga pomarina.

If that is not correct, what is the ITIS TSN for en:Lesser spotted eagle? --Dcirovicbot (talk) 18:53, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

The Wikidata item for Aquila pomarina is Q23759697; it already has ITIS # 175414. - Brya (talk) 19:39, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Greater spotted eagle

TSN 175411 is the only ITIS ID for Greater spotted eagle. Please note that both ITIS and IUCN call upon the same reference: Pallas, 1811, even though they use different latin names: Aquila clanga and Clanga clanga, respectively. --Dcirovicbot (talk) 19:07, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

The ITIS 175411 is for Aquila clanga. The Wikidata item for Aquila clanga is Q228009, and this has had this ITIS entry for three years. - Brya (talk) 19:32, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Horses

Hi Brya, regaring this revert on horse (Q726), I am pretty confused. The description "domesticated horse" suggests that feral horses are not covered by this item, yet it is listed with instance of (P31) = common name (Q502895) of (P642) Equus ferus caballus (Q26644764). Your comment suggests that there exists a more generic item for "horse as a (sub)species of mammal" that would include feral horse (Q2750918), so could you:

1. let me know, here or on the discussion page of "horse", which item includes both domesticated and feral horses;
2. use different from (P1889) on horse (Q726) to point to that other more generic item;
3. visit feral horse (Q2750918) and adjust as needed - my feeling is that it should be labelled as instance of (P31) = common name (Q502895) of (P642) Equus ferus caballus (Q26644764), for example.

Cheers -- LaddΩ chat ;) 12:24, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi LaddΩ, I am not married to "domesticated horse" as a description. "Horse" is one of those big memes. Just about everybody has some particular perspective on what constitutes a horse. As with other, similar cases I am trying to feel my way into something that works. It seems best to reserve the item Q726 as a focus of these strong feelings, something that individual horses can be linked to, among others.

        I had not given any thought to "feral horse". It seems that this is not a sharply delimited concept, with some horses half-feral. There could be individual feral horses that have individual names, and are sort of famous in their own right. In that respect "subclass of Q726" would be appropriate. However most feral horses will not be known individuals, so in that respect it would not be appropriate. - Brya (talk) 17:45, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Descriptions

I don't think that this is a very good description: https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q26299013&type=revision&diff=414876317&oldid=414876158 --Tobias1984 (talk) 19:37, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

And what would you suggest as the description of a name that may not be used? - Brya (talk) 04:17, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I think the descriptions should be more generic. A user could stumble across the item without even knowing that it is about an taxon. We should work out all the cases, but something like this would be more helpful: "Invalid taxon name for a group of Bacteria, now known as [link]" (with a link to the valid item). If valid and invalid name are in the same item, the invalid name should at least be in the Aliases and the description could say "..., formerly known under the invalid name ....". --Tobias1984 (talk) 10:14, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

And a question: Do you think Verticia Vandamme et al. (2015) (Q26299022) should move the Verticia labels to the aliases and use Verticiella as the label now? And Verticia sediminum (Q26299013) is now Verticiella sediminum? (Based on http://ijs.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/ijsem/10.1099/ijsem.0.001477#tab1) --Tobias1984 (talk) 10:19, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

• That would be more specific, not "more generic".
• It is not about a taxon.
• These are not "[i]nvalid taxon name[s]"; even leaving aside what "invalid" might mean, these are not taxon names. These are names, that is formal entities, existing in their own right, but that may never be the correct name of a taxon.
• Actually, these never meet notability standards (exceptions excepted), and mostly are here only because somebody somewhere has made a mistake.
• The "now known as ..." is unknown in most cases. Where the information is available, I do link to the/a correct name.
• I do not think that it is a good idea to change the topic of an item after it has been created, especially if this means that the content will be lost entirely.
• As to whether or no Verticia sediminum has been replaced by Verticiella sediminum; this seems probable, but not certain (I cannot access the paper).

Brya (talk) 11:48, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

It probably is "more specific" :) - The struggle is how to convey that there are scientific papers that have used the concept, as if the names were valid taxon names, until the error was discovered. In the statements I would prefer something with start- and end-time qualifiers, but am not sure how it would be easy to represent and to query. - In any case it seems that there are hundreds of questions that could be discussed in this context. Maybe a good topic for Wikidata-Con? --Tobias1984 (talk) 13:40, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Names are govered by lawbooks, and these lawbooks are retroactive. So, formally, there is no start- or endtime: these names were never in effect. Informally there is no endtime, either; there is nothing to prevent anybody from wrongly using such a name at any point in the future (there is a case where such a name remained in use, in a particular corner of the literature, for a century after it became known it was wrong). More promising is to add lots and lots of literature: this will solve many questions. - Brya (talk) 18:05, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Revert

Hello Brya,

About those 2 reverts: 1 and 2, you know that it was not a disabiguation.
Subgenus 'Phymatodes (Phymatodes)' name is 'Phymatodes (Phymatodes)', not 'Phymatodes' which is the genus name.
The main reason is that there can be multiple "XXX (Phymatodes)" because the is no unicity on the subgenus name. Only "Genus (Subgenus)" form ensures the unicity.
For further justification, check the wikispecies name (they are a pure taxon DB).
Of course in literature, when listing the subgenera of Phymatodes, we can use the shorter version. (The same way we can use 'P. nigra' if P. is very clear in the paragraph).
Regards Liné1 (talk) 07:13, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Hello Liné1,

The names of animal are governed by a law-book, which states that the name of a subgenus consists of one word, so the name of the subgenus is Phymatodes, and the name of the genus is Phymatodes. These are separate names (with the same type, same author, and same date).

        If it were desirable to disambiguate, it would be possible to adopt "Phymatodes (subgenus)" and "Phymatodes (genus)". But Wikidata does not use disambiguation in the label. Disambiguation must happen in the description. - Brya (talk) 11:51, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

1. The law book was meant for papers, not databases.
2. A subgenus name has no meaning without his genus name. There can be ten subgenera "XXX (Phymatodes)" with different XXX. Because whenever the is supposed to be a unicity for genera name (we both know that it is not really the case), there is no unicity on subgenus name.
3. There will be a huge huge need for disambiguation.
4. In fact, it is exactly the same as the species epithet. It is not given without the genus name, except in the form "G. epithet" when the genus name is written not far.

Liné1 (talk) 13:37, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

1. The law-book (ICZN, Q13011) governs scientific names for animals, whenever and wherever these may be found. If it does not conform to this lawbook, it is not a scientific name of an animal. Any particular database may encode anything it likes in any way it likes, so it could encode the subgenus Phymatodes by "Phymatodes (Phymatodes)" (where either the genus name or the subgenus may be placed between parentheses "()"; it would make most sense to put the genus there), or it may encode it by "#$%hgfj57(*&6" or whatever. However, the name of the subgenus can only be "Phymatodes".
2. A name of a subgenus has a meaning without a generic name. Its usefulness is limited. Mostly it will be useful as part of a classification, like a genus with all its subgenera. Wikidata allows for a subgenus to be placed in different genera, by using parent taxon (parent taxon (P171)), each referenced properly with a taxonomic paper.
3. See directly above.
4. For plants it would be very similar as for species, for example "Rhododendron sect. Pontica" as a whole is the total botanical name, a binary name. But for animals a name of a subgenus consists of one word, it is a uninominal name. Nobody asked me if I think this is good design: this is the way it is, and has been for a long time. - Brya (talk) 18:01, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

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Thank you! --EGalvez (WMF) (talk) 20:36, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for fixes

I hadn't understood that we were retaining synonyms as items of notability. I have made some suggestions to Succu about how that clarity could be provided for those trawling merges. While at it, would you like to hack these three?

1. Q13359162 (nl:Turatia foeldvarii) and Q22286974 (en:Turatia foeldvarii)
2. Q13359164 (nl:Turatia psammella) and Q22286977 (en:Turatia psammella)
3. Q13359166 (nl:Turatia serratina) and Q22286982 (en:Turatia serratina)

source information I looked at doesn't show Turatia synonyms, though the articles show the overlap. Thanks.  — billinghurst sDrewth 10:50, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

It is not so much that we are retaining synonyms, as that it would be a good thing to have all names that have notability, to be able to store data. As things are set up, we also need basionyms and original combinations/protonyms, for structural reasons. Having items for names is OK, as each name is a separate formal entity (this is clearer for plants than for animals). Will look at these three cases. - Brya (talk) 11:15, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Human - means of locomation

Hi Brya. What did you mean by the revert here as "reduplicating"? I don't see human gait given in any other fields on human.--Pharos (talk) 15:49, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi Pharos, no, you don't see "human gait" in Q5, nor should you. This "human gait" is not a feature of a member of human society, Q5, but of the mammal Homo sapiens, Q15978631, where it has been present for more than half a year. - Brya (talk) 17:25, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

monocots

re your reversal of my edits to monocots, this creates an impossible situation with three wikidata items that are synonymous - you removed the aliases - which means that the currently accepted item has no identifiers because they are all attached to the synonyms. Michael Goodyear (talk) 22:55, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

These are three different concepts. Each of these concepts has its own representation in the literature, and is reflected in databases. So Wikidata has three items, each with their own "identifiers". This is convenient and transparent. - Brya (talk) 04:51, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

That's not strictly true. The other two terms have been used historically as synonyms, even if some authors historically used the names at different levels.--Michael Goodyear (talk) 18:13, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

I don't see what you mean. In fact, the name Liliopsida by definition can only be used at one rank, and this is not all that different for Lilianae. The clade monocots is not used at a formal rank. - Brya (talk) 18:43, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Cephalotaxus harringtonia

Please stop pushing an erroneous name emendation! - MPF (talk) 11:41, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Please stop pushing an erroneous name! - Brya (talk) 11:43, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not. Please note confirmation from WCSP. - MPF (talk) 11:47, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, WCSP is a source, but not necessarily right. I guess I could point out half a dozen errors in WCSP on such matters. Harringtonia likely was intended as noun, but as it is a personal name (a title is a personal name), Rec. 60C.1 applies. Unless the proposal is accepted -ii is correct. - Brya (talk) 12:03, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

It isn't a personal name, it's a title - his personal name was Stanhope (see en:Earl of Harrington). What proposal are you talking about, and why do you say that a recent emendation is correct, when no other botanist - many of them far more expert in Latin grammar than modern botanists - had ever suggested so in the previous 160 years? - MPF (talk) 12:10, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

It is a name of a person, he will be introduced by this name, so it is a personal name. The proposal is Prop. 060 to the Melbourne Shenzhen Congress. - Brya (talk) 12:16, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Which says what? Verbatim, please. The article is locked behind a paywall. And you haven't answered 'why do you say that a recent emendation is correct, when no other botanist - many of them far more expert in Latin grammar than modern botanists - had ever suggested so in the previous 160 years?', please do! - MPF (talk) 12:39, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

I am flabberghasted. Where do you get these weird ideas? Can't you just read? - Brya (talk) 17:26, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Do we need fruit at tomato (Q20638126) item - if berry is a subclass of fruit?

fruit (Q1364) simple fruit (Q28791169) fleshy fruit (Q15197056) berry (Q13184) d1g (talk) 11:13, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Tomatoes are not only a fruit (botanically), but culinary they are used as both a vegetable (mostly) and a fruit (sometimes). - Brya (talk) 11:57, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh, I confused "fruit" with "fruit" :-)

What if we change labels of food (Q2095) subclasses to appropriate labels?

fruit (Q3314483): "food, edible in the raw state"

...and move "fruit" labels to aliases? Same about Q11004? d1g (talk) 02:36, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

That is not the Wikidata way. The label should be the name, even if there are more labels with the same spelling. - Brya (talk) 05:38, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

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Mystery items

Why robinia (Q28871644) and lemon wood (Q28871667) are "mystery items"? Tubezlob (🙋) 18:40, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

They consist entirely of undefined terms. - Brya (talk) 18:53, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Acacia is a tree, so acacia wood is the wood of an acacia. Same for lemon tree. Are the labels wrong in English? Tubezlob (🙋) 21:11, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Created to be linked with, Tubezlob or used by? Mind to give references beyond The Bible? --Succu (talk) 21:34, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Acacia is a genus, with two different circumscriptions in use, consisting of trees and shrubs. In both circumscriptions, it runs to something like a thousand species. - Brya (talk) 05:26, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

It's for this page of the WikiProjet France, in order to import data about material of some movable objects of this list (see the discussion in French).

I understand the problem: in French, the word "acacia" is used for Robinia pseudoacacia (Q157417). I changed the item.

Can you give the reason for the lemon please? Tubezlob (🙋) 12:25, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Citrus ×limon is a small tree. Its wood is used hardly at all, and not traded. The French citronnier refers to wood of a particular appearance. - Brya (talk) 17:28, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Maybe it is used just a little bit, but it is used apparently. I searched on the web, and I seen that there is a just: citronnier = Citrus ×limon https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/citronnier, http://dico-sciences-animales.cirad.fr/liste-mots.php?fiche=6575&def=citronnier. In the Wiktionary it's written as example: "Le bois du citronnier est utilisé en ébénisterie." (Wood of lemon tree is used in cabinet-making) and "Meubles en bois de citronnier." (Movabe made of wood of lemon tree). In Wikipedia it's written "Le bois de citronnier est utilisé en ébénisterie." (Wood of lemon tree is used in cabinet-making). There is citronnier in this page.

Can you explain what is this "wood of a particular appearance"? Thanks, Tubezlob (🙋) 18:55, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

You are the user who intends to add new content. So, it is up to you to master the topic, using reliable sources. Just waving words about does no good. - Brya (talk) 04:29, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, but for me I know what is lemon wood (Q28871667): it's the wood of Citrus × limon (Q500). You say that it doesn't exist but you don't explain why! As said by Infovarius (diff), ask for deleting the item with a debate, but don't delete statements like that with just "mystery item".

Please, be more talkative! It's hard to understand something. Tubezlob (🙋) 17:30, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Brya (talk) 17:36, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

You like secrets. Tubezlob (🙋) 18:01, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

There is no secret. This is how any Wikimedia is supposed to work: the user who intends to add new content can do so only after mastering the topic, using reliable sources. - Brya (talk) 05:36, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Carotte

Hi Brya, regarding your reverts on Q81 and Q11678009 , I don't understand why French wikipédia w:fr:Carotte and Picard wikipédia w:pcd:Carotte are not in the same value (sorry i don't know the right term ? valuedata , property, ... ?) Amiteusemint, Geoleplubo (talk) 10:25, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

The term you want is "item". With these fruits and vegetables there are three topics:

• the taxon (with details on taxonomy and details of the plant like the floweres, etc),
• the fruit or vegetable (how it is used in the kitchen, nutritional values, the history of its domestication, where it is grown, production figures, etc),
• its cultivation (how it is tended, its diseases, etc). The last rarely gets its own page (or item), but the first two may well have their own page (or item): this varies from case to case.

The French Wikipedia page, w:fr:Carotte, covers all three topics (it might well benefit by being split), so it will be somewhat misplaced wherever it is placed. However, mostly it is about the vegetable, so it is fairly placed in carrot (Q81). The Picard Wikipedia page, w:pcd:Carotte, is embarrassingly empty (it could really be deleted without losing any real information); what little content it has, is focused on taxonomy. If you want it in the same item as w:fr:Carotte, you should delete the taxobox and start writing about the vegetable. - Brya (talk) 11:58, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Magnoliidae

I see now that I reverted your change of the Latin item at Q846071. The article as currently written summarizes both en:Magnoliids and en:Magnoliidae sensu Chase & Reveal, but I thought it proper to link to the more common term. Let me know if you have a strong opinion about this. Lesgles (talk) 09:37, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, this is difficult. The en:Magnoliids is result of a merge of pages on two topics, namely magnoliids and Magnoliidae, which are pretty different topics (enwiki has a Tree-of-Life project which strictly believes There-Can-Only-Be-One taxonomy, and which either deletes or cannibalizes everything not conforming to that believe). The page en:Magnoliidae sensu Chase & Reveal deals with yet a third topic. It is not possible to summarize both (or even just en:Magnoliids) in one page. The lawiki page is an undecipherable muddle. - Brya (talk) 11:58, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

I guess here we differ. I agree that separate articles on different definitions of a term can be useful, but on smaller Wikipedias like the Latin one, it usually makes more sense to begin with smaller summary articles. Our current summary is far from perfect (as are most Wikipedia articles), but I doubt it is that hard to understand for readers of Latin. Lesgles (talk) 09:37, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

This is not an issue of "different definitions of a term", but of different concepts with different names. If a smaller Wikipedia want a small page, it has the option of adopting a disambiguation page (keeping in mind that the name magnoliids should not be translated to Magnoliidae) or of just treating a very limited topic, making a small page on, say, the magnoliids of APG IV. - Brya (talk) 11:45, 22 March 2017 (UTC)

Rude vandalism

Stop spliting normal interwiki connections as you did with w:peanut or w:onion. All the articles are about these plants. Only smaller wikipedias often do not include taxobox but this is no reason to split them. Like lt:valgomasis svogūnas and bat-smg:cėbolė is exactly about the same subject but you somehow want to complicate thing and are searching for problems where they do not exist. After your "order" one can not found bat-smg link from lt page. And why? Do we need to make distinct pages about onion as a plant and as a food (in fact not one wikipedia did it)? Hugo.arg (talk) 20:24, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

With these fruits and vegetables there are three big topics:

• the taxon (with details on taxonomy and details of the plant like the flowers, etc),
• the fruit or vegetable (how it is used in the kitchen, nutritional values, the history of its domestication, where it is grown, production figures, etc),
• its cultivation (how it is tended, its diseases, etc). The last rarely gets its own page (or item), but the first two may well have their own page (or item): this varies from case to case.

It will vary from case to case how prominent these three topics are and how prominent these are dealt with in Wikipedia's. In general, the more prominent the fruit/vegetable, the more likely it is to have prominent coverage. In some cases, there is no choice as there will be separate pages within a Wikipedia. In other cases, it can be argued in more than one way. For the big topics, known to everybody, the question is not if interwiki's will be split, but when. - Brya (talk) 05:05, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

snake

Please stop removing common names of things from wikidata items. Please also stop adding unecessary capitalization. Jane023 (talk) 16:14, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

To start with the last point, I did not add any capitalization. In contrast, you removed required capitalization: the name Serpentes is a scientific name governed by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. This Code requires this name to be capitalized: there is no such thing as "serpentes" (uncapitalized).

        As to common names as labels for taxa, this proves to be practically impossible. It is not really doable to have structured data on taxa, without using the names that are used in the outside world to structure taxa. It is no coincidence that Commons uses scientific names exclusively (also Wikispecies, and, ever increasingly, enwiki). This is even more urgent in Wikidata.

        But I see that this item does not deal only with a taxon, but also with the phenomenon "snake". - Brya (talk) 16:29, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Vandalism ?

You're very welcome to revert edits I've made, if a category's main topic (P301) I have added has linked a category to the wrong species (probably on the basis of a bad commons category), eg [9] -- thanks for doing this.

But I do find it a little offensive to see the reversion tagged with the edit summary "vandalism ?".

This wasn't vandalism, it was an honest attempt to populate P301. Jheald (talk) 21:04, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

I am in doubt. I find time and again that you have added items on completely unrelated topics to items on categories, apparently just because these items have titles with the same spelling. This creates no end of confusion and damage. It is as if somebody copied all the topics in a disambiguation page into a category item as being the main topic.

        I have great difficulty to imagine a mindset in which somebody can embark on such a campaign of damage and confusion and still be in good faith. Your "it was an honest attempt to populate P301." seems weird because in this case there was a perfectly good P301, which matched topics in those items on a one-to-one basis. Not the least need to populate it. - Brya (talk) 04:53, 24 April 2017 (UTC)

P373 point to category redirects

I solve P373 point to category redirects. Why do you rollback my changes? --Steenth (talk) 10:58, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikidata has a lot of Commons categories to redirects. In general there are two acceptable options:

• Don't include Commons categories to redirects (and delete them when found): I am fine with this, but some enthusiast see that there is an entry in Commons and copy-and-paste it to Wikidata.
• Allow Commons categories to redirect if there is one-to-one relationship between the "taxon name" and the name of the category at Commons. This is rather pointless (it provides a very little information, but nothing that cannot be found, better, elsewhere) but does not hurt anybody, unless somebody "solves them".

What is not acceptable is to map Commons categories to random Wikidata items, just because there just something in that category that can, under some point of view or other, be argued to belong to the topic of the Wikidata item. That is a road to chaos. - Brya (talk) 11:08, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Mystery

What's mean P31=Mystery (Q13377795) (it's a disambiguation) in Eulemur [Haeckel (1895)] (Q21440756)? --ValterVB (talk) 18:01, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

It is one of those things imported here from Wikispecies, based on who knows what, for us to sort out. - Brya (talk) 18:27, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

NCBI entry for horse

Hi Brya,

I just added the NCBI entry 9796 for horse (https://www.wikidata.org/w/index.php?title=Q10758650&oldid=487935593), but I see you had previously deleted this, so I'm worried I might have done something wrong here. What was the reason not to have Q10758650 contain the NCBI identifier? Cheers, HYanWong (talk) 20:52, 23 May 2017 (UTC)

Hi HYanWong,

Yes, I had seen that you replaced the NCBI value "no value" by "9796". I had put in the "no value" as a warning.

        This is a headache case; upon examination it proves that this NCBI entry refers to a concept including the domesticated horse and the wild horse ([10]), but excluding the przewalski horse. Taxonomically this concept is no doubt possible, but the ICZN has ruled that it may not be called Equus caballus, but must be called Equus ferus. So there is no match between the Wikidata concept and the NCBI concept.

        The problem is complicated by MSW, which uses the name Equus caballus for a concept including the domesticated horse, the wild horse and the przewalski horse (so different from both Wikidata and NCBI). Here, also the ICZN ruling applies that this may not be be called Equus caballus.

        It is best not to include the NCBI and MSW in this Wikidata item but that leaves the question of where to place these. - Brya (talk) 05:16, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

I see you have reinstated the NCBI and MSW numbers. Thanks for that (it's what I needed). If you still want to preserve a warning, is there perhaps a way of adding a qualifier to the entry that flags it up as potentially problematic? HYanWong (talk) 13:10, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi HYanWong,

Yes, I had already deprecated them. Not sure how well this is going to work, but let's try and see. - Brya (talk) 04:57, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Amharic link to Ginger and Tomato

please do not undo my work in correctly assigning the link for the Amharic Wikipedia articles on Ginger and Tomato. I doubt you read Amharic whereas I am fluent and can assure you these articles are about the species, the plants. Thank you. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 19:31, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

If you are fluent in Amharic, it would be a good idea for you to expand these Wikipedia entries (or to find somebody who will expand these Wikipedia entries), so that these will have some body and it will become possible to tell what these are about. I cannot imagine that would take more effort than to come here and shift these entries and write messages about them. - Brya (talk) 04:07, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

OK, you get "points" for finding a clever way to turn this all back on me when my wiki is the one being victimized by you... But now I am left with wondering the answer to my question: are you, or are you not saying you are going to continue opposing me and resisting me in this effort of mine to correctly assign links for our language? Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 11:04, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

I am not trying to "score points", but just trying to help things along. These Amharic entries are embarrassing, and there are many Wikipedia's that would quickly delete these as being insufficient (not meeting minimal standards). - Brya (talk) 11:11, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

From the tone of your replies, I see NO indication that you realize you are messing up our wiki and causing problems, and NO indication that you have any intention other than to throw the responsibility right back at my feet and prove (to whom?) that you are smarter than me (albeit Amharic-illiterate) and NO indication such as I would expect from a reasonable person, that you won't continue to make problems. I had hoped this would be a small matter easy to resolve between us in a spirit of cooperation, but since I see there is a bottleneck here it may have to move up higher now. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 11:16, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Pity. I had hoped you would be willing to do the normal thing, and would act to help make knowledge available to the reader (which is the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation). - Brya (talk) 11:21, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

I am now asking for a clear acknowledgement from you that YOU acted wrongly and do not intend to make further troubles for me apart from the evident condescension in your replies. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 11:23, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Just as I feared, you are continuing to obstruct my work by edit-warring with me over the content of the Amharic language which you do not read. This will next proceed to the next higher level of dispute resolution. Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 16:34, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Google translate provides a rough translation. It is not as if there is much to translate; if there was ten times as much content, it would rate as a stub. - Brya (talk) 16:36, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Google translation is worthless and should never be used with Amharic. Even so it is not up to you to play judge over our content or demand it be expanded or clarified to your satisfaction (when I have enough other things to do IRL), and continue to edit war with me over what it says now. Accordingly I have raised this matter on the admin noticeboard for this project. Regards, Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 16:59, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Regarding your editions

I am sorry to say that IT IS RELEVANT the fact that "Astragalus tragacantha" and "Astragalus massiliensis" are synonyms according to The Plant List (http://www.theplantlist.org/tpl1.1/record/ild-7647) since it means they are the same plant and, therefore, articles in different wikipedias with these two titles should be linked together, which is what I am trying to do and you keep undoing my job. Maybe I am not doing it the right way and I apologise for that, but could you help me out with it rather than just deleting it? Thank you --Laia lion (talk) 11:58, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

If you feel that the plant treated as Astragalus massiliensis on cawiki and eswiki should properly be called Astragalus tragacantha, then the correct procedure would be to alter the pages on cawiki and eswiki to reflect that. Once these pages are titled Astragalus tragacantha you can add them to the Wikidata item Astragalus tragacantha. - Brya (talk) 12:04, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Based on nomen clature you have the wrong end of the stick. Thanks, GerardM (talk) 16:18, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Probably you will never get it, GerardM. --Succu (talk) 18:27, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Do you really believe what you write on your user page?

When I read what you write, you have no operational clue on how to improve our data. I cannot fathom how you can say what you do without any explanation why what you say must be true. No sources, nothing that supports what you say... REALLY disappointing. GerardM (talk) 16:17, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Blocked

Brya, I really really dislike making blocks for anything other than routine vandalism and spam, but accusing Til of spamming was in clear disregard of my warning and @MechQuester:'s request for you to stop it. I know you are trying to be helpful, and that your intentions are good, but this is a collaborative project and such remarks do not help things at all. If you are correct on the content dispute, then it should not be necessary to refer to the editor you are having a dispute with when discussing the content.

If you wish to be unblocked early, I strongly urge you to promise to not comment on other contributors' actions.--Jasper Deng (talk) 17:09, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

different name but same species

different name but same species so why we keep them separated? - yona b (talk) 04:57, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Firstly, these are heterotypic names, so it depends on the taxonomic viewpoint if these names apply to the same species. To some taonomists it may be one species, to others these may be two species.

        Secondly, even for homotypic names, it proves to be impractical to have more than one "taxon name" in the same item: this is a lot more work. Also the accessibility of such a resulting joint item is much less.

        It is much more convenient, and much more precise, to put in claims describing the exact relationship between two items.- Brya (talk) 10:42, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Q5

I really don't understand why we should specify the value "vernacular name" for the property "instance of". If I try to translate into a sentence that sound weird for me ː A human as an individual is an example of vernacular name of Homo sapiens.--Pixeltoo (talk) 08:48, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

It is an imperfect world, and this is the best way to model the relationship we have come up with so far. A better translation would be "An individual is an example of an animal that goes by the common name of human". - Brya (talk) 10:46, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

How should we describe difference between garlic clove (Q28966859) and garlic (Q21546392)?

d1g (talk) 11:02, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Pay attention that

⟨ has part(s) of the class (P2670) ⟩ subproperty of (P1647) ⟨ has part(s) (P527) ⟩

so

⟨ garlic (Q21546392) ⟩ has part(s) of the class (P2670) ⟨ garlic clove (Q28966859) ⟩

makes perfect sense. d1g (talk) 11:05, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

It seems clear that "garlic head" and "garlic clove" are both manifestations of garlic. - Brya (talk) 11:06, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

"part of" relations are different from P31/P279

see how "body" consists of "head"s:

Help:Basic_membership_properties#Examples

Same is here; abstract garlic head is consists of abstract garlic clove edit d1g (talk) 11:23, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

One could say "garlic wreath" consists of multiple "garlic head", which consists of multiple "garlic clove". - Brya (talk) 11:27, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

That's correct, we should use P2670 for every possible "consists of multiple" relation similar how triathlon consists of other sports

For "garlic wreath" I would add "made from material"="garlic head" because it is an artifact. d1g (talk) 11:45, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

The thing is, garlic is not like apples, oranges and onions. One cannot go into a shop and order "one garlic" like one would order "one apple", or "one onion". Garlic is like ginger or like mustard, one must specify a frame of reference: "a big jar of mustard", "two cloves of garlic", or "one wreath of garlic". - Brya (talk) 16:34, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

This depends on chef. A pie stuffed with garlic among other things isn't something unreasonable.

Both garlic head and garlic clove are used in culinary.

garlic clove is way more common than garlic head in spoken speech. d1g (talk) 23:57, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, both "garlic head" and "garlic clove" are often used; they are both manifestations of garlic, and both could have an item, linking to "garlic". - Brya (talk) 04:11, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Sigh

I have to agree with your edits and the admin noticeboard dispute. MechQuester (talk) 02:02, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you? - Brya (talk) 05:36, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Yeah. Just resolve it quickly. Its quickly get out of hand. MechQuester (talk) 12:08, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Seems like it went out of hand at just about the first edit. - Brya (talk) 16:23, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Yep. I don't get it. He won't at least try to improve the amharic wikipedia articles yet he has to fight here? I have looked at some. The articles are barely 2 sentences....MechQuester (talk) 18:55, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Looks like you changed your mind. --Succu (talk) 19:41, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

yes I have. MechQuester (talk) 21:43, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Rivulus and Anablepsoides taxa

Thanks for your reverts of some of my edits to different Anablepsoides and Rivulus taxa (some in synonymy). After checking your edits I think I've got the hang of it now. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 17:48, 25 June 2017 (UTC).

You are welcome; it is not all that complex, but it no doubt looks strange to a newcomer. Keep up the good work. - Brya (talk) 18:48, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. One thing though. Right now there is only one sister project linking to Rivulus urophthalmus (Q9069743), namely Wikispecies. However (and Wikidata aside), as that taxon is a synonym, the Wikispecies page Rivulus urophthalmus^(WS) only contains a redirect to the legitimate taxon Anablepsoides urophthalmus.^(WS) Hence it is not really a "proper" Wikispecies page describing a taxon, even though the corresponding Wikidata page claims that supposedly it is. Should the Wikidata page Q9069743 be updated to somehow reflect this? –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 13:05, 26 June 2017 (UTC).

My personal preference is to just delete redirects, but at the moment there is a RfC, on whether it is desirable to encourage redirects. I would not mind redirects if only they were instantaneously recognizable as such. - Brya (talk) 16:29, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

I have the same standpoint: redirects are never great but would be okay (ish...) if they were marked in some way, perhaps with an icon next to the link or in some other way. As for Wikispecies we do have some pages for synonyms (for example Salvinia radula), and of course they also have a Wikidata equivalent. Those Wikispecies pages make it very clear that the taxon at hand is considered a synonym, but there are less than 100 such "synonym" pages at WS. All the other synonyms are instead listed on their respective pages for the legitimate taxon. The trouble is that the total amount of synonyms is huge. As of this writing Wikispecies has just over half a million pages in main namespace, not counting redirects. If all of the synonyms listed there had their own page, Wikispecies would instead consist of more than 3 million pages! That's equivalent to roughly 10,000 page creations per active user, hence will not happen any time soon... Anyway, to wrap it up: thanks again for your help. Over and out. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 08:34, 27 June 2017 (UTC).

Less than 100 such "synonym" pages at WS sounds very low. I have encountered such pages very often: User:Stho002 and User:PeterR made them routinely. My gut feeling is that these pages run into the thousands. - Brya (talk) 10:39, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

I come across them very rarely, yet as I'm a 'crat I'm very active on WS. My guess is that many of them have been "incorporated" in the "Synonyms" sections on the pages for their respective legitimate taxon, and then deleted. All of the synonym pages in WS are supposed to use Wikispecies' Template:Synonym (which is only used by 41 pages right now) and be members of Category:Synonyms (which is empty). –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 18:01, 27 June 2017 (UTC).

Looking at User:Stho002's contributions I picked just one page he made. Sample of one, but a 100% rate of synonyms. I guess those users who defy the policy of not having synonyms unless absolutely necessary are also defying the policy of putting in the template! I am going with thousands of pages ... - Brya (talk) 19:04, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the link! Suddenly my workload got a lot bigger though... :-) Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 23:45, 29 June 2017 (UTC).

You are welcome! But you indeed have your work cut out for you (there are also pages like this). It would be good to have all synonym pages eliminated. Also, all homonym pages (after all, homonyms are a special kind of synonyms). - Brya (talk) 05:52, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Question 1: disambiguation

Hello Brya,
I know that we are not supposed to disambiguate at label level.
But wikidata has a constraint that Label+Description must be unique.
For example: Category:Apteranthes by Common Name (Q8879903) should be labeled "Category:Apteranthes" but it is not possible because there is already Category:Apteranthes (Q8879900) with the same label+description.
What label should I put to both items ? (I hope it does not involve cheating on the description. That would be dirty)
I think that I saw 2 cases:

• categories for different taxon with the same name (different group: one for insects, one for plants) (I will find an example)
• for the same genus: 1 category containing scientific names + 1 category containing (case of Category:Apteranthes by Common Name (Q8879903) and Category:Apteranthes (Q8879900))

Best regards Liné1 (talk) 12:51, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello Liné1,

There are cases like

• Q2031606: label: Thysanotus, description: genus of plants
• Q16993123: label: Thysanotus, description: genus of insects

These seem very clear to me. The description disambiguates the labels. This also works when a genus and subgenus have a name with the same spelling.

• Q15010561: label: Categorie:Limnophila, description: Wikimedia category (insects)
• Q19637096: label: Categorie:Limnophila, description: Wikimedia category (plants)

This is not as elegant as most categories have a description "Wikimedia category", but there is no real reason why it cannot be "Wikimedia category (plants)". This disambiguates it just fine, which is the purpose of the description. It could also be "Wikimedia category, plants" or "Wikimedia category of plants". - Brya (talk) 17:13, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Perfect. I will do that. Cheers Liné1 (talk) 20:10, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Question 2: german double categories

Hello Brya,
de.wikipedia (and others) seems to have the habit to duplicate the genus categories: one containing vernacular names, one containing scientific names. See Category:Apteranthes by Common Name (Q8879903) and Category:Apteranthes (Q8879900).
I don't know know how to behave on those:

• What label+description should they have ? (See question1: they cannot have the same label+description. Also I would like to be able to distinguish them)
• I suppose that the one with vernacular name should have the link to wikicommons (that uses only taxon scientific names) ?

Best regards Liné1 (talk) 12:55, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello Liné1,

Yes, this is something of an issue. As you say, dewiki does this many times, and sometimes svwiki and nlwiki do this also (it appears these categories are being eliminated). I have been adding the categories by scientific name to the normal category that has the other sitelinks (there are lots of categories with animals that do not have common names), and have been making labels like "Category:Chloropseidae by common name" (Q9552239) for the others. This could also be label "Category:Chloropseidae" with description "Wikimedia category, by common name".

I would put the link to Commons in the item with the scientific name. - Brya (talk) 17:30, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Perfect. I will do that. Cheers Liné1 (talk) 20:11, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Is there a property to link them ? To tell other contributors not to merge them.

Can I put a different from (P1889) on both ?

Cheers Liné1 (talk) 08:22, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I guess it may be a good idea to link them, but there is no risk of them being merged as there are two categories on the same Wikipedia. - Brya (talk) 10:42, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely true. thanks Liné1 (talk) 11:35, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I believe that they should better use said to be the same as (P460) as they are synonims. Or even permanent duplicated item (P2959). --Infovarius (talk) 13:19, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, they are not synonyms. They are items on the same topic, but with different content. Both said to be the same as (P460) and different from (P1889) can be argued to apply, but neither is really a good fit. - Brya (talk) 16:43, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Why not synonims? These categories should contain the same content (the same taxa), but may be under different names (which also does these taxa duplicates). --Infovarius (talk) 15:06, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

As we use "synonym", this is a different scientific name that also applies to a taxon, that is, it is an incorrect name listed in synonymy. Here, there is no incorrect scientific name. All the names are correct. There are not even different names: these categories deal with the same topic. What differs is the content of the categories, at least usually. It is true that the same set of taxa is in principle eligible to be included in both categories, but that does not mean they are actually included. If a taxon has no common name, it will not be included in a category of taxa by common name. - Brya (talk) 16:46, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Removal of fictional or mythical analog of (P1074)

Please explain why you are removing fictional or mythical analog of (P1074). - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 19:53, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi Valentina.Anitnelav,

I see you are reverting my edits on items dealing with individual fictional animal characters, like fictional fox Q19594662. You appear not to have looked at what these are. If you click on "what links here" you will see that these are used for individual fictional animal characters like James McCloud, Disney's Maid Marian.

These do not deal with fictional species or taxa. A fictional species could be Tolkien's Wargs, that is these are lots of animals with the same characteristics. Theoretically these characteristics could be studied by taxonomists, and theoretically these could be (fictional) taxa. - Brya (talk) 11:03, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your explanation. I think there is a misunderstanding as to the use of fictional or mythical analog of (P1074). It's not used for fictional species (that means species having no analogon in the real world - like Wargs).

Its use is to link classes of fictional animals (e.g fictional foxes like James McCloud) or fictional objects (e.g. fictional space ships like USS enterprise) to the corresponding classes of real animals/objects (fictional foxes to foxes and fictional space ships to space ships) (have a look at Wikidata:WikiProject_Fictional_universes, the property description or the property proposal Wikidata:Property_proposal/Archive/17#P1074). It's correct that you have instances linking there - James McCloud is an instance of the fictional fox class. - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 19:53, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

But fictional taxa do exist, like the Wookie, the Gorn, the Tauntaun, etc. On the other hand, the fictional fox is not a fictional taxon: James McCloud and Disney's Maid Marian have different characteristics, abd would be assigned to different taxa. It would be possible to adopt the position that Disney's Maid Marian and Disney's Robin Hood are of the same taxon, and I suppose an item could be made for it (does not look notable though).

        I took a look at the discussion for the property. "Fictional spaceship" does not look like a good example, as pretty much all spaceships are fictional. A better example would be "fictional planet": a fictional planet is basically like a real planet, but fictional, inhabited by fictional people, with a fictional day length, etc.

        This is not the case here: the fictional foxes Disney's Maid Marian and Disney's Robin Hood may be the same species, but they are not basically like a real fox. They are really very different (for example, real foxes cannot talk). At best, they are imaginary (and impossible) mythical creatures, loosly inspired by a fox, and in addition fictional. That is not a workable approach here: all these characters are designed as appealing characters first, and then depicted in the shape of some kind of animal. - Brya (talk) 17:12, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

The problem classes like "fictional A" (e.g. fictional fox (Q19594662)) and the property fictional or mythical analog of (P1074) respond to is the one of how to say that an individual fictional character a (e.g. Robin Hood (Q3437147)) is an A (fox (Q8331)) without conflating the borders between fictional and real things. It should be possible to query all fictional characters being foxes as it should be possible to query all (non-fictional) cats. Those "fictional A" classes are classes fulfiling the need of a buffer relating fictional characters being somehow from type A to the class of animals A and to gather those fictional characters (so that they can be queried or integrated in lists etc.).

Concerning your objection that Robin Hood (Q3437147) is not like a real fox: As far as I see fictional or mythical analog of (P1074) is not based on a theory when a class "fictional A" is analogue to another class "A" - especially it doesn't state that both have to be the same apart from the one having instances in this world as observed by science and the other not. I see that from a biological point of view some (all?) instances of fictional fox would not be considered a fox (because they speak etc.), but it's not the claim that both classes are considered equivalent from a biological point of view. I assume that most people would say that Robin Hood (Q3437147) is a fox - if they would query for fictional fox characters they would expect him to appear in the result and he is referred to as a fox. If they want to exclude anthropomorphic animals they can do so as he is additionally an instance of anthropomorphic character (Q27921916).

Concerning your objection that "fictional fox" is not a real taxon (as the characters are too diverse - some can speak, others don't): It's a class collecting fictional characters being somehow foxes and relates it to the corresponding group of animals. I don't think that it would make sense (from a practical point of view) to create for every (notable) fox appearing in a work an own "fictional A in work x" statement just to be able to relate it to foxes and to be able to query all fictional characters being foxes. Classes like "fictional fox in Disney's Robin Hood" would be absolutely boring (containing probably two statements) because, as you noted yourself, the stories are not (or scarcely) world driven, but mainly character driven.

Of course there are fictional species that are interesting in itself - but not every fictional character appears in a work with such an elaborate taxonomy.

(This time with signature :) ) - Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 19:53, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I agree that it is desirable to indicate that Robin Hood (Q3437147) is based on a fox; using fictional fox (Q19594662) is an obvious option, given that many Wikipedias have a category for fictional foxes. However, "fictional fox" is just a label, just like "animal character based on a fox" could be a label; of these two, "fictional fox" is easier to read as a label, and probably preferable just for that reason.

        The problem is with using the property fictional or mythical analog of (P1074) for fictional fox. A Wikipedia category for fictional foxes contains widely disparate entities, representing a class which encompasses a much bigger variation than would a category that includes foxes. These classes do not match, and is seems wrong to equate them, or to consider them analoguous.

        There are also cases like Lassie (Q941640), which is a fictional character, but portrayed by a real dog. This would meet the "used to link a [animal] appearing in a creative work with the analogous [animal] in the real world", but is very much the exception here. - Brya (talk) 05:55, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

So it seems that the crux of our disagreement is actually the question "When is something an analogue of something else". The concept of an analogy (quite generally, that means independent of its usage in certain scientific disciplines) is a quite vague one. The English Wikipedia states "Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another (the target), or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process." The Stanford Encyclopedia (to have another source) states "An analogy is a comparison between two objects, or systems of objects, that highlights respects in which they are thought to be similar."

In my opinion both definitions allow to call the (disparate) class of fictional foxes an analogue of the class of foxes: First all entities in the fictional fox class are entities that belong to a class of entities referring to foxes by the narration itself (most are called foxes, some are presented in the form of a fox) and thus transferring meaning from the fox class to those entities (e.g. that it's a carnivore). Second the respect in which both classes are thought to be similar can be a superficial respect: e.g. they look like foxes. This kind of analogy is not exploited or exploitable for scientific purposes, but for narrative/expressive ones.

Of course this kind of analogy is not very fruitful from a scientific perspective - and maybe our fictional entity classes stress the meaning of an analogy sometimes quite a bit (nevertheless I don't think that they exceed it). But this property was just designed for pragmatical reasons - to link classes of fictional entities to classes of entities they are thought to be instances of - not to make further statements about the classes of fictional entities (e.g. that they are similarly elaborate or uniform as the species described by biology). Valentina.Anitnelav (talk) 08:31, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

As you say with analogies, it is all about the purpose for which the analogy is made. One dictionary draws an analogy between a heart and a pump (which actually is weird as the function of the heart is to serve as a pump; in other words, a heart is a particular kind of pump), if this taken to mean an analogy between a mechanical metal pump that can be bought in a retail store, this analogy is useful in this one respect, but fails in all other respects.

        It is hurtful to see a property like fictional or mythical analog of (P1074) to be used for one purpose in case A (a fictional planet is a planet in a work of fiction), and for an entirely different purpose in case B (a fictional fox is an anthropomorhic character with some likeness to a fox in a work of fiction). - Brya (talk) 16:59, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I think that if a work of fiction says "character X is a fox, and X also has two tails, speaks fluent English, and wears shoes", we don't need to jump in and say "wait, real foxes don't do that, we should disregard the work itself as a source and not consider its general classification to be a fictional analogue/equivalent of foxes". Whether the in-universe assertion makes sense according to real-world physics or biology is irrelevant. Within the work, the character is a fox, its species is "fox", that's it. The creator did not make up a new species and coincidentally happen to call it "fox", they just changed many attributes within the fictional universe.

I agree that there should also be a class for fictional species which do not have real life equivalents (eg Wargs, Wookies, Gorn, etc), but these should share a superclass with the class for real species in fiction (eg fictional foxes). --Yair rand (talk) 18:50, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

This last point point fortunately is not relevant, as we already agreed above that for individual characters (such as Robin Hood and Maid Marian in Disney's Robin Hood) it is not worthwhile to make an item for the fictional species within a fictional universe to which they may be speculated to belong (such as the species to which Robin Hood and Maid Marian in Disney's Robin Hood may be speculated to belong). - Brya (talk) 05:47, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

If it's a character in fiction, and the work says it's a fox, it's a fictional fox/fox in fiction. A class that is "X in fiction"/"fictional X" is a fictional analogue to X. Do you have a different understand of what that property could mean?

Some of your more recent edits are extremely difficult to understand. How exactly is fictional human (Q15632617) an instance of (P31) human (Q5)? Items with that statement are supposed to be individual actual humans, not a class of creative works. --Yair rand (talk) 20:28, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, "fictional human" is a special case, deserving special consideration. But Disney's Robin Hood (Q3437147) and Maid Marian (Q3291275) are clear enough; they are characters given a shape inspired on the fox, so it is possible to treat them as instances of "fictional fox" (Q19594662). That does not make "fictional fox" a fictional taxon. The essential character of a taxon is that it is recognized by a taxonomist. No taxonomist, no taxon. An example of a fictional taxon is the Hexapuma in Weber's Honorverse, occurring on a highly developed world where sciences are ahead from where they now are: they do have (fictional) taxonomists.

        Theoretically there could be a fictional taxonomist in Disney's fictional Robin Hood Universe who would declare Disney's Robin Hood (Q3437147) and Maid Marian (Q3291275) to belong to some fictional species. But that would hold only within that fictional universe. The next fictional universe would need its own (fictional) taxonomist, if there are to be any taxa there.

        BTW note that "fox" is not a taxon. - Brya (talk) 11:13, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

fictional human

I don't understand why you would consider fictional human to be a special case. I would think it would need to be consistent with all other categories of living entities in fiction.

Do you object to the general concept of these categories being classified together? Or that they be distinguished from classes related to things such as occupation and position? Or is the only issue that "taxon" is problematically specific in the scientific scheme of things? --Yair rand (talk) 06:00, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, to begin with, fictional human is a special case since very many fictional humans are indistinguishable from normal humans except that they are fictional. The categories at Wikipedias containing these fictional humans are not linked to Wikidata's item fictional human. Also, there is the relationship with "fictional humanoid"; an item without sitelinks (the dewiki page Humanoid has practically the content expected with "fictional humanoid"). It seems silly to define fictional humanoids as a class including humans, when humanoid just means "resembling human". It would be like including Cartier watches in the class of "cheap copies of Cartier watches".

        My interest does not go much beyond the interface with real taxa. But I should point out that the division in fictional taxa and fictional animal characters was present long before I took an interest; I just did some cleaning to make it consistent (again). - Brya (talk) 11:20, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Logically your definition of humanoid as "resembling human" DOES include humans: humans resemble humans, it is reflexive relation. But cheap copies don't include Cartier watches itself. Brya, you must be exact, it's Wikidata. --Infovarius (talk) 10:15, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

OK: treating "humanoid" as "resembling human, and including humans" is analogous to "Cartier-like watch" as "resembling a Cartier watch, and including Cartier watches". - Brya (talk) 10:34, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

"Like"? "Cartier watches" are "resembling a Cartier watch, and including Cartier watches" - this is correct. --Infovarius (talk) 04:31, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

That may be what the tourists and other dupes like to believe, but there is a huge (black and white) difference under law: big penalties may be involved. Also, a person may be open to ridicule if he shows off a Cartier-like watch. - Brya (talk) 04:47, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Headings

Do not add headings between my comments, and those to which I respond, on project chat or anywhere else. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:31, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

As it happens there are more users on this project than just you, and other users need headings to make sense of the contorted threads in which you take part, skipping from topic to topic. Must you fight about absolutely everything? - Brya (talk) 04:46, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Q20747334 & Q18721961

Hi. Could you explain your reverts from Bos taurus (Q20747334) & erroneous concept of Bos taurus (Q18721961)? Why do you think articles ru:Дикий бык, uk:Дикий бик, sh:Divlje govedo, hy:Վայրի ցուլ should be linked in erroneous concept of Bos taurus (Q18721961) instead of Bos taurus (Q20747334), and do we in general need an item like erroneous concept of Bos taurus (Q18721961)? XXN, 12:54, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

You will have seen that erroneous concept of Bos taurus (Q18721961) holds an error for Bos primigenius. And ru:Дикий бык, uk:Дикий бик, sh:Divlje govedo, hy:Վայրի ցուլ are such errors. Ideally, it would be better if we did not need an item such as erroneous concept of Bos taurus (Q18721961), but unfortunately we do. It is to be hoped that ru:Дикий бык, uk:Дикий бик, sh:Divlje govedo, hy:Վայրի ցուլ will be corrected soon. - Brya (talk) 16:54, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

So, more exactly what's the error in these articles (in ru:Дикий бык for example)? They all seems to be created as articles about Bos taurus. We have here in WD an item about Bos taurus - Bos taurus (Q20747334), and I moved all these sitelinks in that item, but you reverted. By me, erroneous concept of Bos taurus (Q18721961) is an unjustified duplicate of Bos taurus (Q20747334), or at least all its sitelinks should be placed in Bos taurus (Q20747334) in case you'll want to keep this item. Cc @Succu, Infovarius: you might be interested in this thread as well. --XXN, 17:46, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

It gets tiresome to explain this again and again. These pages are about Bos primigenius, but use a name that has been disallowed for this purpose by the ICZN in Opinion 2027 (Q9052678). It is a pervasive error, regrettably found in too many places. - Brya (talk) 18:41, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

No, you are wrong. ru:Дикий бык is about Bos taurus, and ru:Тур (бык) is about Bos (taurus) primigenius! --Infovarius (talk) 22:38, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

ru:Дикий бык is about Bos primigenius (using a name disallowed for this concept), and ru:Тур (бык) is about Bos primigenius primigenius (using a name disallowed for any concept). - Brya (talk) 04:45, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Vulpes vulpes

Hi. Can you explain me why this edition? Author name and date must go to the uthority item? Thanks in advance. Paucabot (talk) 12:17, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Hello Paucabot,

Let me try to explain. This specific name (Q908437) was published by Linnaeus in 1758 in the binomen Canis vulpes, which can also be cited as "Canis vulpes Linnaeus, 1758". The specific name was later combined with the generic name Vulpes, leading to the binomen Vulpes vulpes, which can also be cited as "Vulpes vulpes (Linnaeus, 1758)"; note the parentheses "(...)". If the "taxon author" and "date of taxon name publication" are put into the item of the later combination the Lua module (and likely any other software used for the same purpose) would produce "Vulpes vulpes Linnaeus, 1758", which would be wrong. The "taxon author" and "date of taxon name publication" should be put into the item of the "original combination"; this should produce the right citation for both binomens. - Brya (talk) 16:52, 2 August 2017 (UTC)