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".

Full examples and guidance for stem-group and total-group?

Hi folks- I see that the usage of /stem-group and /total-group are mentioned here, but only in the very basics. It would be great to have examples and guidance along the lines of the "Questionable assignments" subsection. I did not initially find this documentation, and started a discussion at Template talk:Automatic taxobox#Automated taxobox system that resulted in an unresolved dispute over how these constructs work.

I tried to document what I thought was correct (which appears to match what is here), but was informed by @Peter coxhead and @Jts1882 that that way of doing things lacks sufficient consensus to be documented.

I'm hoping that posting here will get the attention of whoever added the documentation that is already here, and that they can help resolve the debate.

I don't much care how this works, I just want to be able to use it without being told I'm doing it wrong. That discussion has now resulted in Template:Taxonomy/Ctenophora/stem-group being handled in a way that contradicts what is documented here. As you can see in that talk thread, we were unable to find consistent usage of these terms in various papers.

In particular, I'd like to know (and would be happy to help document if there is sufficient agreement and no one more knowledgeable is available):

• Explaining the rationale behind which groups get which parent (this is the heart of the disagreement in the other thread)
• When to use the total group vs the stem group (we discussed the use of total group as an alternative, but I assume it has an expected use already?)
• When to use either of these at all- it seems to be common in very high level taxa, where there isn't anything grouping between, say, a phylum and "Deuterostomia" or even "Animalia". But I don't think you ever use it for something like "stem mammals": You'd use Mammaliaformes or Mammaliamorpha. A more ambiguous case would be the class Crinoidea, as most of its orders are outside of the crown group, but I don't recall seeing a lot of things assigned to stem-Crinoidea (Paleozoic Echinoderms in general are an unresolved mess, but Crinoids are relatively well-understood)
• How to handle ambiguity- my sense is to leave it under the non-variant because while it is ideally the crown group, it's a bit ambiguous. Or should this be done with /? tacked on somewhere?

Ixat totep (talk) 04:12, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Guidance on duplicate names

Are there conventions for handling taxa with identical names that are still both in use for whatever reason? One that already exists is Stylophora, which is both a genus of corals and class of echinoderms:

• Template:Taxonomy/Stylophora (page: Stylophora (coral))
• Template:Taxonomy/Stylophora (classis) (page: Stylophora)

Is the convention to put the rank in parentheses?

• Is that just done for whichever is added second, regardless of rank? In this example, the higher rank got the "(classis)", but Template:Taxonomy/Rhombifera already exists as a class, while there is no entry for the genus Rhombifera within that class (I'm writing pages for these two taxa at the moment).
• What if the ranks are the same, as is the case for Rotadiscus (gastropod) and Rotadiscus (an eldonioid)?

I'm happy to help write up documentation given clarity on what should be documented.

Ixat totep (talk) 04:25, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

@Ixat totep: the taxonomy templates should, ideally, correspond to the article titles, so I think that this is an article title issue, not an automated taxobox issue.

Thus I think that the two Stylophora taxonomy templates should be changed to follow the article titles. (Btw, as both the gastropod and eldonioid Rotadiscus are names under the ICZN, one must be a junior homonym.) Peter coxhead (talk) 07:46, 28 December 2024 (UTC)