[Taxacom] Wikipedia classification

[Tony.Rees at csiro.au]

One observation - I imagine that there would be plenty of Wikipedia pages to be changed to disambiguation pages - maybe too many to be tractable?

For example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica currently goes to the botanical Erica, while http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_(disambiguation) lists also the zoological genus (spider), the person name, some places...

In the model you are proposing, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica should really be the disambiguation page, with a new page for the plant along the lines of the zoological one, currently http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_(zoological_genus) 

In this case only 2 homonyms are already causing this problem; unlisted are a further 3 (invalid) Erica instances, 2 more in Botany (more heaths) and one more in Zoology (mollusc). So the suffix (zoological_genus) and (botanical_genus) is not really the complete answer either, since there are multiple instances in each.

You will have to give thought to whether it is really possible to retrofit the model suggested over the existing Wikipedia content, plus things that already link to it.

(The above is also noteworthy in that it is the example cited on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homonym_(biology) , but 2 instances only)

Just a thought,

Tony


-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Una Smith
Sent: Monday, 6 July 2009 11:21 AM
To: TAXACOM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Wikipedia classification

Kleo Pullin wrote:
>Oh, left the years off: also included with the names on the disambiguation pages of many things besides taxa, this is where the years or simply listing that one is a senior synonym, or listing, beside the junior synonym, its currently accepted name would be the equivalent.

In the case of Latreillia, both homonyms were published in 1830.  In
any case, as often happens on Wikipedia, while we have been talking
the page has changed, and a discussion and meta-discussion have been
started:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latreillia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Latreillia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_life#Homonyms

Better?


>There are many ways to go that would make a taxa disambiguation page more useful than a shot in the dark, particularly when what you don't know is what type of organism it is.

Sure, but recall that this disambiguation page has no incoming links,
and one point of having a disambiguation page is to capture and fix
incoming links so that they go to the relevant article.  (After I made
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latreillia a disambiguation page, I fixed
the incoming links.)  So the only way a reader will find the page is
via a search.  A search on the species name or on the homonym and
authority will send the reader directly to the relevant article, not
to the disambiguation page.

One problem we have is that Wikipedia has no concept of a "taxon
disambiguation page";  we barely manage to have a plant common names
disambiguation page.

	Una Smith

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