Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system

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

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

Need to remove italics for Candidatus genus

At Template:Taxonomy/Protochlamydia I am trying to create a link of the form "Ca. Protochlamydia". However, the mighty taxobox system is insisting on italicizing the whole thing. Trying to use the template {{normal}} does not work, and a quick examination of the output HTML by inspect element shows that it's been filtered out somewhere. Trying to just type ''Ca.'' Protochlamydia or Ca. ''Protochlamydia'' gives the same result.

There are two routes (I think) to fixing this, given my limited 5-minute read of the call chain.

• It's easy and tempting to just change Module:TaxonItalics, but that comes with the issue of this module not being called for anything higher than a genus – Candidatus higher taxa do exist, and even there you are supposed to italicize the Candidatus while leaving the rest alone.
• The other route is to just directly do the formatting in the callers, which would require similar changes in multiple modules: Module:Autotaxobox AND Module:Automated taxobox. The caller logic would be basically changed to:

  local i, j = linkText.find("^Ca(%.|ndidatus) ")
  if i != nil then
    linkText = "''" .. name.sub(i, j-1) .. "'' " .. name.sub(j+1)
  else
    if italics == "yes" then   -- now an elseif would work here, but i want to make it resemble the original a bit more
      linkText = TaxonItalics.italicizeTaxonName(linkText, false, abbreviated=='yes')
    end
  end
  

  (Because we are supposed to leave the rest alone, there will be no need to call italicizeTaxonName even for a rank that ordinarily requires italics.)

Artoria2e5 🌉 11:53, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Is this something that could perhaps be handled with a parameter for Candidatus taxa in taxonomy templates? I know I haven't worked much on implementing automatic taxoboxes for bacteria because the system can't handle Candidatus status well. Plantdrew (talk) 16:50, 5 May 2025 (UTC)

Updated/improved documentation of acceptable ranks

In several discussions lately, I have realized that unless an editor looks at the raw code of parts of the automated taxobox system, the acceptable ranks and how they are handled were not fully documented. Accordingly:

• I have made some changes to Module:Autotaxobox to support new documentation.
• I have created Wikipedia:Automated taxobox system/ranks which lists all the ranks accepted by {{Anglicise rank}} and notes how they are handled. The numerical values that are used to check consistent rank ordering are now shown here rather than in Wikipedia:Automated taxobox system/taxonomy templates.

I hope this new documentation page should make it easier to explain how the rank part of the system works.

I've checked the test cases very carefully, but changing Module:Autotaxobox is always fraught with danger, so please revert if you see any problems! Peter coxhead (talk) 06:55, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Headers

Why do we have headers? The first line in a taxobox just reproduces the title of the article (unless overrriden by |name=). As far as I've been able to determine digging through TOL and Template talk:Taxobox archives, it's something that has basically just always been done without any question. I'm against redundant repetitions of the article title in a taxobox (i.e. image captions that repeat the title), and I'm not sure what the justification for headers is. Taxoboxes were the first infoboxes on Wikipedia, and other infoboxes mostly have headers, but I'm not sure why. A couple different systems are {{Infobox food}} (see e.g. Pie) where the header floats outside of the infobox), and {{infobox ship begin}}, where a header may be specified or not (USS Enterprise (CVN-65) specifies |infobox caption=, Titanic does not). Plantdrew (talk) 02:52, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

Use with genera of uncertain family placement

I was hoping to convert Neoalbatrellus caeruleoporus' manual taxobox over to speciesbox, but have realised that the genus Neoalbatrellus is unplaced to family within Russulales by Index Fungorum[1] and MycoBank[2]. How should cases such as this be handled? Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 05:40, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

@Ethmostigmus:, set the parent in the taxonomy template to "Incertae sedis/Russulales" ({{Taxonomy/Incertae sedis/Russulales}} already exists, but there are a lot of fungi that are incertae sedis at ranks where an incertae sedis taxonomy template doesn't yet exist).

Another way to handle this would be to just set the parent to "Russulales". There hasn't really been much discussion I am aware of about when to create an incertae sedis taxonomy template and when to just skip a rank. I think when a source explicitly says something is incertae sedis (as Index Fungorum often does), we should use incertae sedis taxonomy templates, and perhaps also if a source explicitly mentions that different data (e.g. mitochondiral DNA vs. nuclear DNA) produces conflicting results. Skipping ranks may be more appropriate for fossil taxa where the data just doesn't exist. 15:48, 7 May 2025 (UTC) Plantdrew (talk) 15:48, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

I favour setting the parent to the order as I think it easier to keep track and having an incertae sedis taxon doesn't provide any useful information. But I'd agree with using them if the source does it that way. Being pragmatic, I'd use them if the template existed for consistency, but won't create new templates.  —  Jts1882 | talk  16:56, 7 May 2025 (UTC)