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Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.
No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.
However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:17, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Equetus
FishBase places the spotted drum (E. punctatus) in the genus Equetus and the jack-knife fish (E. lanceolatus) in Eques. The type species of the genus Equetus is Equetus americanus which is a synonym of Eques lanceolatus. FishBase has made a clear error here and Catalog of Fishes has both E. punctatus and E. lanceolatus in the genus Eques. I think we should follow Catalog of Fishes in this case. Thoughts? Quetzal1964 (talk) 12:24, 6 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is a problem in a number of cases. Another is here where I provided the info, but it was subsequently "corrected" with the page moves eventually overwriting the actual, correct version. In that case, FishBase decided against following the 2006 taxonomic review where Ophthalmolebias was coined, but when O. ilheusensis was described as a new species in the genus in 2010, FishBase used the genus for just that one species. In direct conflict with the
ICZN Code. It's the same way where we get the complete mess in the current versions of Simpsonichthys
and related genera. These splits are a bit messy anyway (some unresolved poly/paraphyletic issues), but not as much as the current wiki treatment based on FishBase randomness without scientific support.
It usually happens when FishBase follows separate authorities without noticing that they conflict. For example, taxonomic authority 1 splits genus X into two, keeping some species in genus X and moving some species to the new genus Y. FishBase decides to adopt this treatment. Later, taxonomic authority 2, who disagrees with the changes made by authority 1, publish a description of a new species that is part of subgroup Y. However, because they don't recognize the genus split, they describe it in genus X. FishBase simply follows taxonomic authority 2 for the new species, not noticing the issue related to the genus split that they adopted earlier. In other cases, it is related to complete vs. national taxonomic reviews (e.g. adopting a complete taxonomic genus review, then later reversing this for a few species by following a review that only deals with species in one country), or taxonomic reviews where only some species were sampled (in most genera the subgroups are quite well-established and you only really need a genetic sequence from one species in each subgroup to get the full picture). Sometimes I've emailed FishBase about such issues and they've generally been responsive (e.g. they recognized
Theragra
[which is gone for good], but in both they used them without the type species). However, I don't really have the time to contact FishBase each time I notice an issue.
CoF has its occasional issues too (often caused by the same things as the FishBase problems), but they're rarer and typically correct themselves within a few months. FishBase is an excellent resource, by far the best single resource when it comes to basic info on appearance, behavior and distribution for fish species globally, but their taxonomic issues are more widespread and tend to stay up for longer. In taxonomy and nomenclature, the superiority of CoF became clear years ago. However, the format of FishBase is much more accessible to people without a deeper understanding of these things.
I would support following CoF for taxonomic issues, at least some of the time. My understanding is that Fishbase uses the CoF classification and they diverge in two main cases, to which I'll add the above mismatch due to conflicting authorities.
CoF makes a change and there is a lag before Fishbase adopts it because Fishbase has far more information to update (i.e. on the biology and ecology).
There is a taxonomic issue that needs resolving before CoF makes a change and Fishbase has the biological and ecological information ready; in this case, Fishbase goes ahead to put the information out there. This is often new species, but there are also a few new families that Fishbase recognises that isn't in the CoF higher classification (I don't think this updated as often as the genus/species nomenclature information).
Errors due to Fishbase following conflicting authorities (see above explanation by
RN1970
).
In the first case we can follow CoF in the expectation Fishbase will eventually follow, in the second it's the other way round. In the third we can expect Fishbase to eventually follow, but they may need prompting.
I wonder if its worth creating a hidden category and template to flag pages where the Fishbase and CoF taxonomy doesn't match. — Jts1882 | talk 08:03, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Seeking help with Elisabeth Lippitsch
In taxa such as Mbipia and Haplochromis redlinks are made to Elizabeth, rather than Elisabeth Lippitsch. Her Wikispecies bio uses "s", as does her LinkedIn Profile and ResearchGate entry and the articles accessible there. As this is not my normal field of editing I thought I would raise it here, rather than simply being bold and making all the changes straight away. Oronsay (talk) 20:42, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I changed the spelling in Haplochromis. It was already correct in Mbipia. The links are still a redlinks, though. I wonder what the policy is for interwiki linking and whether it is appropriate to link to the Wikispecies bio page. — Jts1882 | talk 06:46, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I will make changes to other taxon articles where that link has been entered in the next day or so. I haven't come across links to Wikisource bios in en:wiki and hers has little information in it, so I think it's probably best left as a straight redlink. Oronsay (talk) 06:50, 23 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Requested move at
Talk:Melanotaenia fluviatilis#Requested move 29 August 2023