Formatting Taxonomy "Categories" (1 Viewer)

Hey guys. So I've been trying to get a lot of these categories into shape - it's quite a task!

1) Making sure the genus is linked from species pages.
2) Making sure all genera categories EXIST.
3) Making sure all genera searches are redirected to their proper category (e.g. now "Aix" redirects to "Category:Aix" instead of to a "nothing found" page)
4) Making sure all genera pages link to their proper family page.
5) Making sure all family searches are redirected to their proper category (e.g. "Anatidae" redirects to "Category:Anatidae")
6) Making sure all family pages link to their proper order page.

Also, I've been thinking a lot about people finding pages. We need to make sure all common names go to their proper order / family / genus category-page. Check out what I did with Flycatcher

ALSO, I've recently posted up a whole taxonomic listing for Anatidae. Check it out. If we like it, we can do that for all taxonomy pages - as much as is appropriate - for example, now that we have ALL of Anatidae, we can take the Anser genus section, and plop that down on the Anser page.

ALSO, when it comes to monotypic genera - e.g. White-backed Duck, I've begun to REDIRECT links from it's genus Thalassornis directly to the actual species account itself.

Feedback?

Alex,
First of all, a big welcome as active on Opus! If you put in just a tenth of the work here you have put in on the Id forum, that will be a quantum leap forward.

A few comments:

regarding Flycatcher, this looks good, but as usual, the devil is in the details (cannot remember where that quote comes from). The category you want to have this registered under is called Disambiguation Pages http://www.birdforum.net/opus/Category:Disambiguation_pages. By the way, you have used a formatting I am not familiar with {{Disamb??}} in linking to the category, where I am used to seeing [[Categoryisambiguation pages]]; how come?

I am not sure I agree with what you are doing to "Thalassornis": how would a user get from White-backed Duck to anywhere else: clicking the link for genus is just a circular link, going right back to where you came from, with no possibility of even going to Anatidae. There might also for some monotypic genera be information that fits better on the genus page, for example on species that used to be part of the same genus before the genus was split etc. Additionally, on which features made people think that this species should have its own genus rather than being included in e.g., Anas or Aix.

The list you made for Anatidae looks great, but I am not sure I would recommend making more. The difficulty relate to keeping this up to date. If the Anatidae page only contains the genera that has linked to it as categories, (as well as date that is not species specific) then changes made elsewhere are likely to result in changes on that page. With a listing that is made as actual text, someone will have to make an edit here as well as on another page next time there is a lump or a split. (Clear as mud? )

Cheers
Niels

AlexC said:

ALSO, when it comes to monotypic genera - e.g. White-backed Duck, I've begun to REDIRECT links from it's genus Thalassornis directly to the actual species account itself.

Click to expand...

As Niels points out, this doesn't work because it leads users into a loop of no return. The structure I set up for these things really does require a separate page (not a redirect) for each genus, so that all get filed into the appropriate families. Yes, that's going to mean a bunch of relatively boring pages along the lines of "this is a monotypic genus."

The code for the disambiguation pages is great... I will see about moving the pile of these we have now into this new format.

AlexC said:

ALSO, I've recently posted up a whole taxonomic listing for Anatidae. Check it out. If we like it, we can do that for all taxonomy pages -

Click to expand...

I thought about doing this myself a while back... it looks like a great idea, but several of us concluded that the maintenance burden is quite simply overwhelming. (The category-based version is a lot simpler to rearrange for taxonomic changes.)

Thanks for creating redirects for the family names, and new genus categories... this is an ongoing project that desperately needs more user attention. I don't think we need straight redirects for genus names, since the page text search results lead users to the proper pages the way it is. (eg, searching for "oxyura" yields the six ducks of that genus, plus Sumatran Green Pigeon which carries that species name.)

Comments on how to improve/streamline this system? I'm sure there are places where it's still very clumsy.

Thanks for the feedback guys! I'm happy to be onboard.

DISAMBIG:

njlarsen said:

The category you want to have this registered under is called Disambiguation Pages http://www.birdforum.net/opus/Category:Disambiguation_pages.

Click to expand...

jthoppes said:

The code for the disambiguation pages is great... I will see about moving the pile of these we have now into this new format.

Click to expand...

Okay - great - so do we want to have BOTH? We can have those disambig pages with the disambig header, AND put them in the Categoryisambiguation_pages? In fact, I just tweaked Templateisambig so that all articles with the {{disambig}} header are automatically placed in Categoryisambiguation_pages.

njlarsen said:

By the way, you have used a formatting I am not familiar with {{Disamb??}}

Click to expand...

I molded it from the format on another wiki. I can do some coding, but not enough to come up with that.

MONOTYPIC GENERA
You guys are right. I'll revert the few that I changed - if you come across one of my little messes, feel free to fix it up.

TAXONOMY LIST

njlarsen said:

The list you made for Anatidae looks great, but I am not sure I would recommend making more. The difficulty relate to keeping this up to date. If the Anatidae page only contains the genera that has linked to it as categories, (as well as date that is not species specific) then changes made elsewhere are likely to result in changes on that page. With a listing that is made as actual text, someone will have to make an edit here as well as on another page next time there is a lump or a split. (Clear as mud? )

Click to expand...

Hmmm... you have me intrigued now... Because you know what the solution to "too difficult to keep up" is? Template! I'm gonna start feeling out coding ideas for creating a Taxonomy template with full taxonomy, but only sections of the template are shown in varying orders, families, or genera. That way, if there's a change in the taxa, all it takes is one change in the template, and it automatically alters it in all pages the taxa are listed on.

jthoppes said:

I don't think we need straight redirects for genus names, since the page text search results lead users to the proper pages the way it is. (eg, searching for "oxyura" yields the six ducks of that genus, plus Sumatran Green Pigeon which carries that species name.)

Click to expand...

I'm not sure if I agree - I mean - if someone searches "Accipiter" they come up with nothing? I feel like our best bet is to ensure streamlining of the Opus. What if for messier one's like Oxyura, we had a disambig page listing Sumatran Green Pigeon and the genus in Anatidae?

AlexC said:

Thanks for the feedback guys! I'm happy to be onboard.
<snip>
I'm not sure if I agree - I mean - if someone searches "Accipiter" they come up with nothing? I feel like our best bet is to ensure streamlining of the Opus. What if for messier one's like Oxyura, we had a disambig page listing Sumatran Green Pigeon and the genus in Anatidae?

Click to expand...

If someone currently search for Accipiter she will currently get about 50 species listed starting with
Accipiter tachiro (29 bytes)
Accipiter virgatus (19 bytes)
Accipiter bicolor (28 bytes)
(I think these are all redirects). If clicking any of these, you will be taken to the species page, where you are then one click away from the genus page. I think that is direct enough. If we make a redirect for the genus name, we then also make it impossible to make a search in opus of this type, something that I have often found helpfull. I therefore propose limiting the redirects to the above genus level categories, at least at this time.

Niels

njlarsen said:

If someone currently search for Accipiter she will currently get about 50 species listed starting with
Accipiter tachiro (29 bytes)
Accipiter virgatus (19 bytes)
Accipiter bicolor (28 bytes)
(I think these are all redirects). If clicking any of these, you will be taken to the species page, where you are then one click away from the genus page. I think that is direct enough. If we make a redirect for the genus name, we then also make it impossible to make a search in opus of this type, something that I have often found helpfull. I therefore propose limiting the redirects to the above genus level categories, at least at this time.

Niels

Click to expand...

But that's what the search button is for. "Go" streamlines to the page, "search" displays all articles with that word in it, regardless whether or not there is a page by that title.

EDIT: What I'm saying is, creating a redirect does NOT lose that search option - that redirect is only if you click "go".

AlexC said:

But that's what the search button is for. "Go" streamlines to the page, "search" displays all articles with that word in it, regardless whether or not there is a page by that title.

EDIT: What I'm saying is, creating a redirect does NOT lose that search option - that redirect is only if you click "go".

Click to expand...

True, but most of our users have a difficulty with the meaning of the two buttons. It took me quite a while to figure out, and I repeatedly have seen others not know the difference.

Niels

njlarsen said:

True, but most of our users have a difficulty with the meaning of the two buttons. It took me quite a while to figure out, and I repeatedly have seen others not know the difference.

Niels

Click to expand...

...I mean, it's how every wiki works, so...

Plus, redirecting "Accipiter" to "Category:Accipiter" - well, if "Category:Accipiter" works as it's supposed to, there should be all Accipiters listed on that page. Additionally, with the Taxonomy Template I'm working on, scientific names will also be present.