[Taxacom] Wikipedia classification

[Roderic Page]

Hmmm,

Like Kleo, I can see no reason not to include more information on the  
disambiguation page. Even authority and date would help (telling the  
reader that one name is older than the other).

Also, the disambiguation page states:

Latreillia, a genus name, can refer to:
	▪	Latreillia (crab), a genus in the family Latreilliidae
	▪	Latreillia (fly), a genus in the family Tachinidae

I'd expect the page "Latreillia (crab)" to be about the crab genus,  
but it's a redirect to the family Latreilliidae  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latreilliidae 
  ). This doesn't make much sense. Surely the thing to do is make a  
page for the genus Latreillia Roux, not have it redirect to a family?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latreillia_(fly) is also a redirect (to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belvosia 
  ), but this is less problematic (pages are of same rank, and one  
name is a synonym of the other).

These sorts of niggles, multiplied across the site can lead to the  
kinds of things I documented in http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2009/06/wikipedia-taxonomy-good-bad-and-very.html

With a little more structure, Wikipedia could be a great resource for  
taxonomists.

Regards

Rod




On 5 Jul 2009, at 06:02, Una Smith wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 04, 2009 at 06:05:29PM -0600, Mary Barkworth wrote:
>> What surprised me was that there was no indication which is the  
>> senior
>> and which the junior what should really be used rather than the  
>> junior.
>
> That information belongs on the pages about each genus, not on the
> disambiguation page.  The purpose of a Wikipedia disambiguation page
> is not taxonomic disambiguation.  Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not
> a systematic treatise, and although some editors would like Wikipedia
> to tell the reader what name should be used, others are adamant that
> this is not the job of an encyclopedia.
>
> ZipcodeZoo[1] has a mashup of Latreillia, giving the taxonomy of the
> fly genus, but in the related list of species including crab species.
>
> 	Una Smith
>
> [1] http://zipcodezoo.com/Key/Animalia/Latreillia_Genus.asp
>
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---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
DEEB, FBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
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