Àdàkọ:Automatic taxobox

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Usage

This template creates a taxobox on any given page, with the higher taxonomy pre-filled.

Where possible, the template uses the page name to generate the taxonomy. If the page name is not the taxon name (for instance, Quercus is at Oak), then the |taxon= ought to be used to tell the template where it is at. Aside from the taxonomy, other parameters are identical to those at Template:Taxobox.

Error messages will inform you of the action to take if a higher taxonomic level is unspecified.

Example

{{automatic taxobox|taxon=Aves}} gives:

automated assistant

Automatic taxobox
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(Preprocessor node count: 35341/1000000 Post-expand include size: 250664/2048000 bytes Template argument size: 400117/2048000 bytes Expensive parser function count: 3/500)

Converting from a Taxobox to an Automatic taxobox

• Add "automatic" before "taxobox", and make sure the T is lowercase.
• Remove all taxon and authority parameters. If the taxon the article is about is not the title of the page, change it to say "taxon = " instead of whatever taxon it is. If the taxon is monotypic, you will need to set taxon equal to the species (preferred by most zoology editors) or else use the subdivision parameter (preferred by the plant editors and several paleozoology editors). When setting taxon equal to the subtaxon.

Listing subtaxa

You can manually specify subtaxa (subdivisions) using the |subdivision= parameter. Their rank is automatically generated, but can be overridden with |subdivision ranks=. Don't link the rank, please.

You can have the subtaxa automatically generated using the |display children= parameter. Set this to 1, 2 collapse, 3, etc. This list will contain all the children with entries on Wikipedia, to the required deepth: please create template:Taxonomy/child-taxon-name pages for any that don't show up. The lists are updated daily by a bot; to refresh the list on the spur of the moment, click the "update" link at Template:Taxonomy/name-of-parent.

Example:

{{automatic taxobox|taxon=Aves|display children=2|display parents=20}} gives (Preprocessor node count: 37216/1000000 Post-expand include size: 276395/2048000 bytes Template argument size: 408884/2048000 bytes Expensive parser function count: 12/500):

automated assistant

Automatic taxobox
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On pages for monospecific genera, you could use the |binomial= parameter for the species, or list the single species under |subdivision=. Please don't set |taxon= to the name of a species on a genus page (this breaks things).

How is the taxonomy generated?

The taxonomic list you see is generated by reference to a number of templates that begin with Template:Taxonomy/. Each template contains details about a taxon, and a link to its immediate parent. The template climbs this ladder to the top, displaying major taxa as it goes.

To modify the taxonomy, you can click on the Àdàkọ:Edit taxonomy link link next to "Scientific classification" in the taxobox. This will take you to Template:Taxonomy/Taxon-name, from which you can directly edit any of its parent or child taxa.

How do I change the taxonomy that is displayed?

By default, the template displays only the taxonomy necessary to give context to the taxon in question. This includes any major taxonomic ranks: that is, Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species; and any levels between the taxon in question and the first major rank above it. In some cases, editors may choose to display additional taxa:

• To display minor taxa above the first major-ranking taxon, increase |display parents= (default = 1, meaning "immediate parent only"). See example above.

• To force a given taxon to appear in all its children's taxoboxes, add the line "|always_display=true" to its taxonomy page.

• To force a given taxon to appear in only some of its children's taxoboxes is a little more complicated, but should rarely be needed.
  1. Create a duplicate taxon at "Template:Taxonomy/Taxon-name/displayed" (following the instructions in the edit-intro), with |always_displayed=true
  2. Modify the children that should display the given taxon so that their family tree points to "Taxon-name/displayed" instead of "Taxon-name".

Fossil ranges

The automatic taxobox has a couple of enhancements over the conventional taxobox; if you specify a geological period in |fossil range=, then Template:Geological range will automatically display that period in the geological timescale. Alternatively, |oldest fossil= and |youngest fossil= (defaults to "Recent") can be specified to plot out a range spanning many periods. Unsupported periods can be added at Template:Geological range. As before, more complex cases can still be handled by specifying |fossil range={{geological range}} .

Advanced usage

In rare cases (e.g. subgenera), where the name of the taxobox and page should be italicized, |italic_name= can be used instead of |name=. (It should never be necessary to use this parameter.) Never specify name=''something in italics'', because this will conflict with the automatic italicization of the page title.

Technical details

An accompanying page for each taxon, at Template:Taxonomy/Taxon_name, uses a template to list the parent of each taxon. {{Automatic taxobox}} then consults these templates to produce a full taxonomy. It only displays "major" taxonomic ranks (i.e. not sub, super, nano etc), with the exception of the immediate parents to the taxon. Instructions for the manual creation of this page, if it does not yet exist, appear in the automatic-taxobox; it should be easy to create a bot to automatically create pages for higher taxa based on their current taxoboxes. Thus the hierarchy can be automatically generated, minimizing the work for editors of new pages whilst creating a consistent taxonomy, thus increasing the utility of Wikipedia (see Àdàkọ:Cite doi).

A list of all templates involved in generating an automatic taxobox, and their relationships, can be found at Template:Automatic_taxobox/map.

Maintenance

Sandboxing this template is difficult, but for testing purposes, the templates Template:Taxonomy/Test-40 (etc) may be useful.

Extracting taxonomy information via API

This system makes it straightforward to recover full taxonomic information for any taxon using an API. The raw Wikitext of each Template:Taxonomy/Taxon_name is in a consistent format with a line specifying "|rank=taxonomic rank (latinized)", "|parent=Parent taxon", and "|link=Wikilink".

Each parent taxon can be successively queried until the desired taxonomic level is obtained.

An API to browse taxonomy is available at taxobrowser.erikhaugen.com

Background

Discussion of the implementation of the template is/was available at Template_talk:Taxobox#Automatic_taxonomy_generation.

See also