User talk:VGPaleontologist

Red links in Langs you don't know

Stop making pages in languages you don't know. You could be propagating mistakes you aren't aware of. Vininn126 (talk) 23:35, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

That is a possibility. However, if I find enough sources to back up these pages, then they must be somewhat legitimate, right? VGPaleontologist (talk) 23:45, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

Also, It's kind of difficult to mess up considering their translingual taxonomic name (at least for Catocala sponsa, the dark crimson underwing) is featured on most if not all of the websites I found containing information on them, English or not. VGPaleontologist (talk) 23:51, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

That's not the issue. The issue is you're missing tons of information and not formatting it according to the various languages standards. Have you even checked to see how the pages you made were fixed? Vininn126 (talk) 15:54, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I can understand, in particular, the lack of inflection tables. You have a very good point there. I recognize that. However, do you expect the articles to be more fleshed out with synonyms/antonyms, etymology, and others? I'm just trying to figure out the standard of quality you wish me to meet. VGPaleontologist (talk) 15:58, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Check out the changes I made on your Polish entries. If you are unsure, you can also make a request. Vininn126 (talk) 16:01, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I do not want to scare you away - the other problem is sometimes the translations can be wrong or formatted weirdly, et cetera. Vininn126 (talk) 16:04, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

I just have a problem with putting them in requests because 1. I don't want to backlog the requests page with relatively irrelevant things and 2. I think that they'll just be overlooked. I originally started making these articles to meet the attestation criteria for adding certain entries to the English translation tables, which I only started doing due to the saturation of the English sections of Wiktionary compared to all of the others.

Also, I want to thank you for your help with all of this. But, if I were to give some constructive criticism, I wouldn't start with "Stop doing x" and instead I think a more cooperative way would be to notify them of the standards for other language's entries. Your help is appreciated nonetheless. VGPaleontologist (talk) 16:15, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Understandable. I've dealt with a lot of people who don't listen and such and the site has a tendency to be very direct. Vininn126 (talk) 16:32, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

See also Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2019/March § Translations in languages you don't know. See also Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2019/February § Stub entries and minimum required content. As far as I know, the project has not established inflection tables as part of minimum entry. However, accuracy is very important so if there are any issues with accuracy of translations, that needs to be worked on. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:33, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Your Dormer-Zwergfledermaus is now in RFV to maybe it does not meet WT:ATTEST. The most important policies: WT:CFI, WT:EL. The term is in Wikipedia, but we do not accept Wikipedia as a source for verification. --Dan Polansky (talk) 17:44, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Translations

Hi, it's me again. Where are you getting these translations? If it's google translate or wikipedia you should be careful. Wikipedia is rife with protologisms, which we don't accept. Just trying to warn you. Vininn126 (talk) 19:55, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the warning. VGPaleontologist (talk) 19:58, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Conjugation boxes

Have you got consensus on this? They seem rather a waste of space for English entries, even if collapsible. Equinox ◑ 20:14, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Personally, I believe that they might help newer Anglophones to help them better understand some words. VGPaleontologist (talk) 20:17, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Red links in languages you don't know v2

If you can't provide things like gender in the entry you're adding, then you probably shouldn't add it. Vininn126 (talk) 19:40, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Does that mean I can add words from languages with no gender that I don't speak but at least understand? VGPaleontologist (talk) 19:44, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

It means you should do more research on the terms you're adding. I don't even think Mejroniszki meets CFI. Have you read CFI? Vininn126 (talk) 19:46, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I understand the basic criteria for inclusion, yes. It states that you must have a minimum of three sources stating using the term for the page not to be eligible for speedy deletion. VGPaleontologist (talk) 19:48, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

It says 3 quotations, not three sources. Those are not the same thing. Mentions are not uses. The other point is you are creating terms that are severely lacking in many forms of information. You are blindly guessing that the things you are adding are correct and have no way of verifying other than knowing that someone has added it on Wikipedia, which is not something you should rely on for Wiktionary. Please take more care. It's not enjoyable cleaning up after you or having to check to make sure the things you are adding are real. Vininn126 (talk) 19:52, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I understand those are different things. I find that reply to be somewhat nitpicky, but this is a Wiki, so that is to be expected. VGPaleontologist (talk) 19:53, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I know you mean well with your edits, but the problem is careless editing can cause more harm than good, as not every language has someone double checking other people's work. Gender is only an example, it's more representative of a lack of knowledge about any of the nuances in the languages you're adding. You can't copy paste entries changing the language code and hope it's correct. Vininn126 (talk) 19:56, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I handwrote each of those entries' codes for each page I've created. I have a basic concept of rules, despite what you may believe. You need not respond to this reply, as I have an understanding of your intentions, and I shall no longer add any toponyms from other languages, unless I find them from their respective versions of Wiktionary, whose knowledge I shall use to flesh out our wiki. VGPaleontologist (talk) 20:04, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

That's still not reliable; other Wiktionaries have their own CFI that do not match ours. The most important thing is quotes; making sure the word was/is in use. And the ability to describe the grammar of the word. All of these things many of your entries fail to capture. Vininn126 (talk) 20:06, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I would, but it is very difficult to find uses of words in other languages unless the script changes. VGPaleontologist (talk) 20:07, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

So you see the problem now? I don't add quotes to most words I add, but I can at least discern that they exist and I check if they exist. Vininn126 (talk) 20:09, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

This conversation has gotten stale and repetitive. I have already told you: I have read the rules, I agree with your side. If you can please stop messaging me, we can both move on with our lives. VGPaleontologist (talk) 20:12, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Creating entries in languages you don't speak.

Stop creating entries from redlinks in languages you don't speak. For real. Just stop. — Fenakhay ^{(حيطي · مساهماتي)} 11:03, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Sources...

...are your friends. Please add them whenever possible, especially to smaller languages. I don't know about you, but I get a lot of satisfaction from seeing entries like 1, and not so much from 2 :) Thadh (talk) 19:53, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the tip! VGPaleontologist (talk) 13:56, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Deprecated vs depreciated

See this edit I made. Depreciate seems to be mainly a business term, referring to decrease in value and such. Deprecate is a term I know from studying programming and such, and seems to be a fitting term to use to describe these taxonomic names which are no longer used. Acolyte of Ice (talk) 15:15, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Ah, thank you. I was somewhat confused between the two terms, as they tend to have roughly the same definition, but thank you for clarifying that "deprecated" was the taxonomic jargon used for this purpose. VGPaleontologist (talk) 15:31, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Template:taxlink

I would appreciate it if you would use this instead of linking to a non-existent Translingual entry. It was designed to incorporate taxonomic-name links into an organized workflow for creating translingual taxonomic entries. It places the entry into a category that's used by those who are creating taxonomic entries (mostly @DCDuring) to see what needs to be done. DCD runs a query to see what taxonomic names are linked to the most by the template in order to decide which entries to create next. I'm sure he can give you some pointers on what goes into a good taxonomic translingual entry for when you create them yourself.

The template links by default to the taxon of that name at Wikispecies, but you can change where the link points to using the |wslink= and |wplink= parameters. I always preview my edit (it has the added feature of warning you if you're linking to an entry that already exists) and open the link in a new tab to make sure the name is correct and to see how Wikispecies classifies the taxon. I also like to compare Wikipedia's and Wikispecies' treatment, because they often don't agree on many aspects of the classification, and it may change where I want it to link to.

There's also a template called {{vern}} that does similar things for vernacular names.

Thanks! Chuck Entz (talk) 03:01, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Extremely questionable etymology

Why did you add this? Theknightwho (talk) 01:48, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Because I thought it might have been the etymology for the stated term. I may have been incorrect, as your etymology is clearly superior and more well-researched. At the time, I had a much lesser understanding of different languages than my own, but I have now gained more practice on this website and I can see that etymology is wrong. Honestly, I did not know the term " zhōngwén" (which has a foreign origin to me) and there was another (formerly and seemingly) much more likely other language that starts with "zh" and is an English word, Zhuang. So forgive me for assuming that an ISO language code, which many have English origins irrespective of their native languages' name for them, might have done exactly that. VGPaleontologist (talk) 01:58, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

So you're saying you simply guessed, and decided to pick a completely different language because it starts with the same letters? Come on. That's seriously low effort. Theknightwho (talk) 02:10, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Block

Hi. It seems that you haven't taken the repeated warnings given to you on this page to heart seeing that you're still mass-adding faulty translations in languages that you have no command of ((history) language isolate). Two months ago you were blocked for 3 days for the same kind of behavior so I have now given you a week. Please stop editing entirely in languages that you don't know, it's not a service to the project. Thanks for your understanding. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 07:51, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Im guessing you got the translations from Wikipedia. I can explain what you did wrong for at least Romanian .... the Romanian Wikipedia article is at the plural form, limbi izolate. This is what traditional print encyclopedias do, but the English Wikipedia among others has long since chosen to put most articles at the singular form, which in Romanian would be limbă izolată. (If youre curious, I suspect that making the singular form basic helps with adding links, ... languages with an additive plural form like English with -s benefit a lot from being able to include the singular within the plural, as in [[language]]s, whereas for Romanian with its fusional plurals it really provides no advantage to make limbă basic since limbi does not contain it.)

This was only a small error, but even if 90% of your edits are correct, it makes twice as much work for the rest of the community if we have to be constantly checking and correcting the other 10%. —Soap— 13:14, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Take this as a final goodbye. I have contributed over a thousand edits on multiple accounts, for over two years I have been contributing to this dictionary and I have never received any leeway for it. I have been punished multiple times for benign edits, and I can't take it anymore. I'm done. You can have your translations, but you won't gain anything else furthermore from me. Know forevermore that you have stopped an editor of over TWO YEARS with your blocks. I've tried, I have really tried to better my translations. But lo, that means effall, doesn't it? The frivolousness of this website, and furthermore life, have revealed themselves to me. As much as you give, the others will toe the line and take evermore. And I'm done with it. VGPaleontologist (talk) 18:41, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

I'll miss you. Thank you for admitting to having another account ... to be honest, I found you pretty quickly when you switched, but kept my distance as I didn't want to scare you off. I hope you remember the message I sent you on your last account, ..... where I agreed with you that the mannerisms on this community are quite rough, shared my frustration at how we often reward hard work with demands for even more work, and wondered why we can't have a soft touch like Wikipedia ... something I find especially confusing since Wikipedia's and Wiktionary's contributors are quite often the same people. As a fellow contributor who still gets frustrated when trying to help out, I have great sympathy for you and for people like you.

But I also said that the issues people raised on your other account were genuine, and that I hoped you'd return with a slower pace and more careful attention to your edits. As I said above, even if 90% of your edits are good, we have no choice but to comb through every one of them to find the 10% that are not, and that creates more work for us. Arguably, it creates more work for us than if you'd never made the edits in the first place .... which is why a block is sometimes necessary. Your block is only for a week, and I speak for the community as a whole when I say we'd be more than happy for you to come back. We won't hold this over your head. But if you do come back, you really do need to listen to others, slow down, and think twice before you save your edits.

Best wishes,

—Soap— 20:12, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

It isn't benign to add mistakes, and then to continue to add mistakes even after you've been asked not to. The solution is to add things in languages that you know - not just to keep doing it. Theknightwho (talk) 19:17, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm genuinely very saddened to hear that my block made you leave the project and I sincerely hope that you reconsider this decision. It was by no means my intention to drive you away. I'm willing to unblock you with immediate effect if you promise to restrict your editing to languages that you're competent in. All that said, I hope that you also try to view this matter from our perspective. It is simply untenable if some editors continuously add low quality translations. While the share of outright wrong translations was somewhat low (but still far beyond what it should be / what competent speakers of those languages would have), the share of translations that lacked basic grammatical information such as gender was almost 100%. Simply copy-pasting Wikipedia titles into translation boxes could be done by a bot if it wasn't actively harming the Wiktionary project. No content is better than incorrect content. You also have to consider that different Wikimedia projects have wildly different requirements and quality standards. As an example, even the German Wikipedia which is the third largest Wikipedia had protologisms up for many years. Additionally, translations are probably the place where incorrect content goes unnoticed the longest. I still from time to time encounter incorrect translations added by BAICAN XXX and Rajkiandris. The fact that the solution to all of this (which would be you simply not editing languages that you're not competent in) is so simple makes it doubly frustrating and was honestly an aggravating circumstance in my decision to block you. I hope you can at least partly see where I'm coming from and I also sincerely hope that you want to keep editing on Wiktionary. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 21:43, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

kinomaniak‎

Please, listen to me You can't tell if it's masculine personal, animal, or inanimate, the formatting is not in line with other entries. I'm pleading you, I'm tired of cleaning up after you. Vininn126 (talk) 18:53, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Stop!

Brain surgery might be a fun hobby, but you'd end up killing people and getting prosecuted. The consequences for what you're doing aren't as dire, but it's equally inexcusable. You're wasting the time of volunteers who do actually know what they're doing, and you're mindlessly propagating whatever anyone feels like adding on other websites- some of which is absolute garbage.

I spend a lot of my time reverting nonsense, so I have an idea as to how much there is out there. I also know that there's a lot that slips through, at least for a while. For one thing, I can't spot- let alone revert- nonsense in languages and subjects I don't know, and there are so many edits I can't possibly check all of them. Other wikis have the same problem, but, on top of that many don't have the level of resources that we have here. Even at English Wikipedia, there are plenty of cases where obvious nonsense has taken years to be corrected.

If someone vandalizes Tamil Wiktionary, it only affects those who can read Tamil. Moving that vandalism to English Wiktionary gives it a far wider audience and does far more damage. Whether you choose to believe it or not, that's exactly what you're doing. You have no clue as whether something there is truth or utter hogwash. You also have no clue about the reliability of the editors responsible for the content you're blindly copying.

You've been asked not to do this. You've been blocked for it. People have been pleading with you to stop, and you're still doing it. If forcing you to stop drives you away- good riddance. A lot of our volunteers will breath a sigh of relief. Chuck Entz (talk) 20:24, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Editing Zazaki is like a brain surgery. Please stop unless you are a brain surgeon. --Vahag (talk) 14:51, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Before I continue, I wish to apologise for my actions a year prior.

As for now, I've been looking at the Zazaki Wiktionary articles and referencing them through the Zazaki Wikipedia, which can give a close translation through interwiki linking. The Zazaki Wiktionary, for many proper nouns, does give translations into English in the translations tab (if sometimes imperfect). However, it is relatively easy to dissect the true meaning of very basic nouns and proper nouns, gender is always given on the Wiktionary, and for those I cannot confidently translate, I leave and do not translate. Sometimes I even leave it alone even when a Turkish translation is given, as I do not find that it is always reliable. If you could give me a clearer reason as to why I should stop transferring these entries from the Zazaki Wiktionary, that would be greatly appreciated. I shall stop editing until a resolution is met. VGPaleontologist (talk) 15:07, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

So you are translating Zazaki Wiktionary into English. Bad idea. Zazaki Wiktionary is a tertiary source and may contain errors. Since you do not know Zazaki and do not use other, more reliable sources, you will not be able to catch errors. Also, even the most basic ideas may not correspond between languages 100%. Zazaki > Turkish translation may not equal to Zazaki > Turkish > English translation. Vahag (talk) 07:46, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

While I believe that this language barrier is one that can somewhat easily be crossed, given not only Wiktionary and Wikipedia entries but also Wikidata's interwiki linking given between Wikipedia articles, I also acknowledge that the Zazaki Wiktionary is also not very comprehensive on its grammatical features and definitions. Many, many of the Zazaki Wiktionary articles simply have "mena?" (which, I roughly assume, translates to "meaning?" or "definition?"), meaning they lack proper entries. So, for the sake of comprehensive in-depth English-language entries, I will stop adding new definitions unless I find a reliable primary source to reinforce the entry.

However, I must share something I found while I was editing this. When using the "add translation" tool on translation boxes, when entering a Zazaki term, it will never link to the Zazaki Wiktionary, even when the Wiktionary does have an article. I assume this is because the English Wiktionary uses zza (ISO 639-3 for Zazaki) instead of the Zazaki Wiktionary's diq (ISO 639-3 for Southern Zazaki). When added manually, there is no problem in interwiki linking, and this is simply a problem with the "add translation" tool.

While I might disagree with this policy, I understand the reasoning behind it and shall respect it. VGPaleontologist (talk) 14:15, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

taxonomic entries, esp. species

I have been editing your species entries to make them conform to similar taxonomic-name entries.

For all taxonomic name entries, the second parameter in {{taxon}} is 'family', 'order', 'class', or 'phylum' to facilitate grouping the entries into relatively stable, informative categories. I add Hypernyms using templates where available (See Category:Taxonomic hypernym templates) and try to add important Hyponyms. I always add projectlinks to make it easier for readers to find more. There is no reason for there to be any extant taxa with redlinks in any taxonomic name entry. Please use template {{taxlink}} to have the missing taxon appear on the lists I occasionally run of missing taxa in decreasing order of the number of links. {{taxfmt}} retains the automatic formatting of {{taxlink}} but takes it off the list of missing taxonomic name links.

For species there is no good reason to have {{taxon|species|genus|'genus name'}} because 'genus name' conveys no information that is not in the headword itself. I also use {{epinew}} to keep track of missing specific epithets.

Please look at the documentation for {{taxon}}, {{taxlink}}, {{taxfmt}}, and {{epinew}}.

Also, I 'subst:' {{PAGENAME}}.

Please feel free to ask questions and make objections on my talk page. DCDuring (talk) 01:44, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I have no objections, and I thank you for your additions. I'll attempt to follow the commonly-applied format of other entries. VGPaleontologist (talk) 01:47, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Also, when adding project link templates ({{pedia}}, {{specieslite}}, {{comcatlite}}), please add "i=1" if the taxon should be italicized.

You might take a look at User:DCDuring/MissingTaxa for taxa that would have relatively many incoming links from other entries when added. I consider these to be have higher priority than other taxa.

I appreciate getting help adding taxonomic-name entries. We will never match even our sister projects in completeness, but we can add things they and most taxonomy databases don't cover well, like gender, etymology, vernacular names, importance to people, etc. DCDuring (talk) 01:57, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

👍 VGPaleontologist (talk) 01:58, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Please don't use taxonomic ranks other than family, order, class, and phylum, as parameter 2 in uses of {{taxon}}, as mentioned above. All species, genera, subtribe, tribe, supertribe, and subfamily entries should use family. I'd appreciate if you would correct all the entries you have made that do not follow this, using, eg, subfamily, tribe, etc. If this is too much for you, perhaps you should devote your energies to another kind of entry. DCDuring (talk) 14:34, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

For starts you could work on the items resulting from this search. DCDuring (talk) 14:41, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Why should the entirety of all taxonomic entries link directly to a family etc., instead of to the taxon they are immediately under? It seems more not only more convenient, but also more sensical to say that a taxon is a subtaxon of the taxon immediately above it. Why wouldn't it make sense to put Calosoma scrutator, for instance, in the subtribe Calosomatina, which would much more accurately describe its taxonomic placement and relation to other taxa than stating it is one of the roughly 34,000 species in the family Carabidae? This not only creates a smoother line from subtaxa to taxa and to supertaxa, but is simply more accurate to the exact placement of each taxon. If definitions are supposed to most accurately describe the terms they are, would specificity and accuracy not be the goal? VGPaleontologist (talk) 14:46, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

To further elaborate, when one describes a guitar, one does not say that it is a tool, but rather an acoustic or electric musical string instrument, which more accurately depicts the guitar's place among other musical instruments than simply calling it a tool. Why not treat taxa with the same definiteness? VGPaleontologist (talk) 14:53, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

The definiens for guitar that you have used include only terms that are relatively well known. Taxa are proper nouns that are not very well known, even at the level of phylum, class, order, and family. To go further into subfamilies, tribes, etc. would put our entries firmly in the specialists-only class. On our best entries we already provide links to specialist taxonomic databases. BTW, very few taxonomic databases provide as much hypernym detail as we do, at least in the entries that have good hypernyms sections. If you take a look at what other dictionaries for general users provide, they rarely mention ranks other than one of genus, family, order, class, or phylum.

I'm inclined to agree. Theknightwho (talk) 15:00, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Spend a little time trying to maintain the data and see if you still agree. DCDuring (talk) 15:58, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Why must you manage this data? Why not simply invoke Wikidata for taxon classification? VGPaleontologist (talk) 16:01, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

Accuracy is paramount, specificity, not so much.

There are multiple reasons to restrict the taxa used as hypernyms in our definitions of taxonomic names:

1. family, order, class, and phylum names are older:
   1. they are more stable and therefore don't require as much tedious and difficult maintenance effort to maintain the veridicality of our entries.
   2. they are more recognized by those of our users who have some knowledge of biology. Most intermediate (super-, magna-, sub-, infra-, etc.) and tribe names are virtually unknown to most casual users.
2. a reduced number of possible text strings of the form 'species|genus|subtribe|tribe|supertribe|subfamily within the [rank]' makes it much easier to search for items needing changes of some kind, including adding categories as Chuck Entz does.
3. A well-constructed entry will have a Hypernyms section that has as much placement detail as one can find, for the curious and those in need of such detail.

There is no reason to stop at tribes and subtribes. One can also add named clades, clades being defined in almost all modern articles on taxonomy.

As for specificity, I believe that our entries would benefit more from more specific substantive definitions, where possible. This would include the importance to humans of the members of a taxon (cuteness, use for food, toxicity, etc.), location (eg, for translations), etc. DCDuring (talk) 15:57, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

While other kinds of taxa may be uncommon to those unfamiliar with taxonomy, that should not be the reason why we discard their usage. We are not Simple English Wiktionary. We should be allowed to use technical words when making entries related to a specific field of research.

All terms can appear as definienda. definiens should be relatively simple.

Also, since taxa may change somewhat frequently, as I recommend above, Wikidata already manages most taxonomy through its 'parent taxon' property. It seems more reasonable to simply invoke that. VGPaleontologist (talk) 16:04, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

That overcomes some technical problems as long as the keep up to date. It does not solve the problem of making definitions as useful as possible for normal users.

Also, while coding this may be slightly more difficult, it is best to do what is most correct for each definition. I, for the longest time, was confused at why I thought so many taxa were thrown in, unclassified, into such large families. With further taxonomic subdivisions, one can more easily find taxa they are looking for without having to wade through possibly thousands of species' entries all linked to a single family. VGPaleontologist (talk) 16:20, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

If you would like to create finer families, then one can semiautomagically categorize entries however one would like. To make this possible it would be nice if there were full Hypernym sections for each taxon.

"Most correct" depends on point of view. You seem to mean most specific for the technician only interested in such details who can't be bothered to use our Hypernyms sections. I don't think our users are principally (or at all) technical users. Technical users have a large selection of taxonomic databases available, to which some of our entries link directly and almost all of which link indirectly via WP. At this stage of our development we cannot be all things to all people. Our best bet for long-term success with respect to taxonomic entries is to focus on what many technical taxonomic databases neglect partially or totally: etymology, gender, English vernacular names, importance to humans, translations to other languages. This is already a very tall order and definitely more worthwhile than trying to duplicate Wikispecies, let alone Catalogue of Life, Plants of the World Online, WoRMS, Fishbase, and all the more specialized databases. DCDuring (talk) 18:01, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I must agree with you that Wiktionary can provide great detail on a taxon's grammatical gender, etc., and that should be its focus. And in that, I must say that it is somewhat unnecessary to utilize a 'taxlink' template. If we are to focus on the grammatical aspects of the taxa itself, why must every single taxa which does not have an entry redirect to Wikispecies? Would it not be better for them to be left red, so that someone may create the page when they come upon it? If we are not concerned with the technicalities of taxonomy, why must every single non-entry redirect to the technical taxon browser? After all, if one is not coming here for the technicalities, what good would they get from being redirected to the taxon browser?

{{taxlink}} serves to help identify more important (more link-to) entries. I know that you don't seem to care about this. DCDuring (talk) 15:23, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Furthermore, if we are not concerned with the technicalities of taxonomy, why even have an extensive 'hypernyms' and 'hyponyms' section? If the surrounding taxon would be better defined by such an abstraction as above three to four clades, than what good does providing every single name that the taxon currently resides in have? Also, if you are concerned with the technical end of taxonomy, it seems it would be quite more difficult to go through each entry and fix the hypernyms and hyponyms sections any time a taxon gets moved.

What system are you using to track changes in subtribe, tribe, subfamily, section, subsection, subgenus, and clade membership? DCDuring (talk) 15:23, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Overall, while I understand why one might want to simplify these definitions for technical and categorical purposes. However, it is my position that it is best to be as accurate as possible when describing a taxon, as taxa are defined most in the context of those taxa immediately surrounding it. In that, I find the best possible entry would give the taxon immediately above it, in order to illustrate where exactly this taxon lies. If someone wishes to find hypernyms all the way up to Eukaryota, they can go to Wikispecies.

Very few sources cover taxa between family and genus. I don't see you providing references for membership in such taxa. Among the purposes of Hypernyms sections is the ability to link to taxa entries at Wiktionary that link to external databases directly or through Wikipedia of Wikidata, to take advantage of their efforts to track taxonomic opinion. DCDuring (talk) 15:23, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Your templates and data mean nothing if the definitions are vague and impractical. For practicality, and for being precise in our definitions, we should include those taxa immediately surrounding the entry, and if someone wishes for a more general overview, they can go to the categor(y/ies) the entries are in, or to the Wikispecies link at the bottom of the entry. VGPaleontologist (talk) 19:54, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think you are living up to your own standards for definitions. Claiming that some term ending in -aceuous or -id constitutes a definition is laughable. DCDuring (talk) 15:23, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Scopulariopsis

What is your source for this being a genus of algae, rather than a fungus in family Microascaceae, as every source I've looked at has it? DCDuring (talk) 15:09, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

My apologies. I seem to have been confused. You are correct. VGPaleontologist (talk) 15:17, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

You might consider adding links to the better external databases, both for their intrinsic value and to confirm your own beliefs. DCDuring (talk) 15:25, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

That's a good idea. I'll implement this in my further editing. VGPaleontologist (talk) 15:28, 25 September 2024 (UTC)