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Robin Finck

Robert John "Robin" Finck (born November 7, 1971) is an American guitarist. Finck is the longest-serving touring musician for Nine Inch Nails, performing with the band from 1994 to 2000, and returning in 2008. With Nine Inch Nails, Finck contributed studio performances on The Slip (2008).

Finck also was an official member of Guns N' Roses from 1997 through 2008. With Guns N’ Roses, Finck wrote and recorded on the long-delayed Chinese Democracy (2008), notably co-writing the song "Better".

In 2020, Finck was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Nine Inch Nails. (Guns N' Roses were inducted in 2012, however Finck was not inducted.)

Career
Finck grew up in Marietta, Georgia and played with several unsigned bands based primarily in the Atlanta area, including acts such as Prowess, Bat Your Lashes, Sik Dik (bandmates of which included Steve "Holiday" Childress and Michael Allen, currently of The Goodies and Greg Thum), and Impotent Sea Snakes.

He joined Nine Inch Nails as part of their touring band in 1994–95 for their Self-Destruct and Further Down the Spiral tours following the departure of previous guitarist Richard Patrick. Finck appeared with Nine Inch Nails at Woodstock '94, and saw his first official release with them, the "Closer to God" single, released in 1994. Once the tour was completed, he took a job playing for the circus troupe Cirque du Soleil in the original tour of Quidam. In 1997 Finck signed a two-year contract with Guns N' Roses as the replacement for Slash (who had quit the band at the end of the previous year) and began work on what was ultimately to become the band's long delayed album Chinese Democracy. When the two years were up the album had not been completed, although the song "Oh My God" was released on the End of Days soundtrack. Whether or not Finck played on the song is in dispute; GNR vocalist Axl Rose says he did while Finck himself says he did not. Finck rejoined Nine Inch Nails as the band embarked on their Fragility v1.0 and Fragility v2.0 tours in support of the 1999 album The Fragile. These tours were recorded and released as the live album/DVD, And All That Could Have Been. He also played on a studio-recorded version of "The Day the World Went Away" on the companion album Still, which was included with the deluxe version of And All That Could Have Been and later made available as a standalone CD through nin.com. Shortly after the tour ended in 2000 he returned to Guns N' Roses, playing four shows with them in late 2001 followed by a brief tour of Europe and Asia in mid-2002 and a live appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards. A planned US tour was meant to continue through the remainder of 2002 but was called off by the promoter after two cancelled shows led to rioting by fans. Around this time Finck and then-bandmate Buckethead contributed to the soundtrack of the John Carpenter movie Ghosts of Mars, playing alongside members of thrash metal group Anthrax and guitar virtuoso Steve Vai. After his touring obligations with GNR were fulfilled he joined the LedZAerial production (a performance by acrobats set to the music of the band Led Zeppelin).

Finck was invited to rejoin NIN to tour in support of their 2005 album With Teeth but chose not to and the position was filled by Aaron North. In the summer of 2006, he toured Europe with Guns N' Roses playing in front of over 700,000 people. They finished up by touring North America for the remainder of the year, and went to Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and Japan in 2007.

On April 4, 2008, it was announced via nin.com that Finck would be rejoining Nine Inch Nails as a member of the live band. He subsequently contributed to the Nine Inch Nails album The Slip, earning a performance credit alongside then-band members Josh Freese and Alessandro Cortini.

In November 2008 Guns N' Roses' long-awaited album Chinese Democracy was released. Finck has a co-writing credit on the song "Better", which was later released as a single, as well as 7 other songs on the album. He also played guitar on every track, performed 7 of the guitar solos and has additional credits for keyboards, arrangements and pre-production. He chose to remain with NIN after the album's release and, on March 21, 2009, was officially replaced as the lead guitarist of Guns N' Roses by Sixx:A.M. guitarist DJ Ashba. The official Guns N' Roses website stated that "Robin continues to be part of GN'R, by virtue of Guns' history and his involvement in Chinese Democracy".

Following the departure of NIN live band members Alessandro Cortini and Josh Freese at the end of 2008 Finck and bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen re-grouped with band leader Trent Reznor and new drummer Ilan Rubin and the 4-piece band completed an 8-date tour of Australia and New Zealand between February and March 2009. Finck continued to perform with the band throughout the 2009 Nine Inch Nails/Janes Addiction (NIN|JA) tour, with shows throughout North America, and the subsequent Wave Goodbye tour through Europe and Asia. The band then returned to the US to play a series of shows.

In October 2009 Finck and former Guns N' Roses bandmates Axl Rose, Tommy Stinson and Buckethead were named in a lawsuit by electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss's record labels Independiente and Domino alleging that they had committed copyright infringement by using portions of his compositions in the song "Riad 'n the Bedouins". Finck appears on the 2010 album The Lady Killer by artist CeeLo Green, performing guitar on the track "The Lady Killer Theme (Outro)".

On March 12, 2012, Finck appeared on-stage with Guns N' Roses, performing "Better", a song he co-wrote with Axl Rose.

On May 17, 2013, it was announced by Trent Reznor via his Twitter account and the nin.com home page, that Finck would be rejoining Nine Inch Nails for the 2013–14 tours. Finck has since performed with the group on each subsequent tour, although he only remains a touring member.

Personal life
Since 2001, Finck has been married to acrobat Bianca Sapetto, by whom he has two children. They met while working in Cirque du Soleil. Besides being a musician he also creates artwork and displays some of his own drawings and photos on his website. In 2007 he contributed artwork in the form of ink drawings to the album Frames by Oceansize at the request of their guitarist Gambler. In 2003, Finck was credited as one of the writers of a production called "My Birthday Party", which incorporated acrobatics, storytelling, music, acting, and clowning. The show included actor Viggo Mortensen and was performed at the Miles Memorial Playhouse in Santa Monica, California.

On February 23, 2009 session drummer Josh Freese, who has been a bandmate of Finck's in both Guns N' Roses and Nine Inch Nails, announced that as part of the pricing strategy for his new solo album Since 1972 a one-off package costing $75,000 would include "a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN" followed by a visit to Robin's place afterwards where "his wife will make you raw lasagna".

Finck is known for his theatrical appearance when performing, making use of makeup, costumes and clothing to enhance his stage presence. He has also been known to break out into eccentric dance moves during songs with various facial expressions. Between tours and appearances he frequently makes radical alterations to his image, and is particularly famous among fans for his many distinctive and often unusual hair styles. Axl Rose has described him as leading "one of the most different lives I know of starting with the trapeze in his backyard to the tv in his closet"

Equipment

Finck is closely associated with Gibson Les Paul guitars and uses different versions of the guitar that are built from a variety of woods and equipped with numerous pickup combinations (in 2006 he was photographed at the New York City Gibson Guitar showroom collecting a Custom Les Paul Standard '58 Reissue for use on tour with Guns N' Roses). Many of them have been customized and he often moves the pickup selector switch from the top of the guitar's body, as he has said the standard configuration is obstructive. After re-joining Nine Inch Nails in 2008 he began using several other guitars on stage, including Jerry Jones baritone guitars (similar in shape to Danelectro guitars), Fender Jazzmasters, Fender Telecasters and Gibson ES-355s. In 2020, Finck and Reverend Guitars unveiled a signature guitar for Finck based on Reverend's Sensei using Railhammer Chisel pickups. Finck removed the tone knob as he only uses the volume and bass contour knobs.

In 2009 Finck signed with Schecter Guitar Research as an official endorsee and started using a number of Schecter guitars while touring with NIN, including custom versions of the PT Fastback and Ultra III. He also ordered a custom "Tempest Classic" guitar with gold top finish, an in-built compressor and a wah effect in place of the two tone controls. In late 2009 Schecter issued a press release which announced a limited edition Robin Finck signature guitar based on the Ultra Cure and Ultra III models was entering production. Finck is also listed as a user of Godin guitars on the company's official website and can be seen playing Godin guitars on the Nine Inch Nails live DVD And All That Could Have Been.

He uses a broad range of guitar amps (various models by Marshall Amplification and Mesa Boogie) and effects (including the BOSS DD-5 Digital Delay, Dunlop wah-wah, Devi Ever bit, the legend of fuzz, and RockTron Vodoo Valve) and is known to work very hard to re-create studio tones and textures when playing on stage. He frequently shoves the body of his guitar up against the speakers of his amplifiers during live performances to generate feedback and increased distortion. For some NIN songs he has been known to use an e-bow, as seen during the clip for "La Mer" on the And All That Could Have Been live DVD.

While his primary role in Guns N' Roses was that of lead guitarist, Finck is credited with playing some of the electronic keyboard parts on Chinese Democracy. Similarly, although he performs with Nine Inch Nails mainly as a guitarist he often plays other instruments on stage, including lap steel guitar (with effects pedals mounted to the body of the instrument), ukulele, mandolin and keyboards/synthesizers. He also contributes backing vocals.

With Nine Inch Nails
Contributions:

 * March of the Pigs - live music video performance
 * Closer To God – "Memorabilia" (Soft Cell cover)
 * Further Down the Spiral – Remixes
 * And All That Could Have Been – Live Performances
 * Still – "The Day The World Went Away"
 * The Downward Spiral – "Hurt" Live
 * The Slip – guitar, electronics

With Guns N' Roses
Contributions (on Chinese Democracy):

 * Lead guitar on all tracks
 * Guitar solos on "Chinese Democracy", "Better", "Street of Dreams", "There Was a Time", "Catcher in the Rye", "I.R.S." and "This I Love"
 * Acoustic guitar on "Sorry"
 * Keyboards on "Better" and "If the World"
 * Co-writer, arrangements, drum arrangement, digital editing and initial production on "Better"
 * Co-writer on "Chinese Democracy", "Shackler's Revenge", "Street of Dreams", "Catcher in the Rye", "Riad N' the Bedouins", and "Prostitute"

Other contributions:
 * Co-writer on "Hard Skool" (2021)

Miscellaneous
Contributions:
 * 02. Love Siege
 * 03. Fight Train
 * 07. Power Station
 * 12. Ghost Poppin'

Contributions:
 * Album artwork – ink drawings

Contributions:
 * 14. The Lady Killer Theme (Outro)

Contributions:
 * 01. I Am Dust
 * 06. Lost
 * 09. Where I Can Never Be
 * 10. We're The Unforgiven

Contributions:
 * Composed soundtrack for the video game with musician Wordclock.

Contributions:

 * Scored the opening credit Title Sequence of the video game, with additional audio by Omar Khan and directed by Jon McKellan.

Contributions:

 * A cover of the "Hero" song from Serious Sam 3: BFE called "Hero Too".

title: Robin Finck


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Buprestidae

Buprestidae is a family of beetles known as jewel beetles or metallic wood-boring beetles because of their glossy iridescent colors. Larvae of this family are known as flatheaded borers. The family is among the largest of the beetles, with some 15,500 species known in 775 genera. In addition, almost 100 fossil species have been described.

The larger and more spectacularly colored jewel beetles are highly prized by insect collectors. The elytra of some Buprestidae species have been traditionally used in beetlewing jewellery and decoration in certain countries in Asia, like India, Thailand and Japan.

Description and ecology
Shape is generally cylindrical or elongate to ovoid, with lengths ranging from 3 to 80 mm, although most species are under 20 mm. Catoxantha, Chrysaspis, Euchroma and Megaloxantha contain the largest species. A variety of bright colors are known, often in complicated patterns. The iridescence common to these beetles is not due to pigments in the exoskeleton, but instead is caused by structural coloration, in which microscopic texture in their cuticle selectively reflects specific frequencies of light in particular directions. This is the same effect that makes a compact disc reflect multiple colors.

The larvae bore through roots, logs, stems, and leaves of various types of plants, ranging from trees to grasses. The wood boring types generally favor dying or dead branches on otherwise-healthy trees, while a few types attack green wood; some of these are serious pests capable of killing trees and causing major economic damage, such as the invasive emerald ash borer. Some species are attracted to recently burned forests to lay their eggs. They can sense pine wood smoke from up to 50 miles away, and can see infrared light, helping them to zero in as they get closer to a forest fire.

Ten species of flatheaded borers of the family Buprestidae feed on spruce and fir, but hemlock is their preferred food source (Rose and Lindquist 1985). As with roundheaded borers, most feeding occurs in dying or dead trees, or close to injuries on living trees. Damage becomes abundant only where a continuing supply of breeding material is available. The life history of these borers is similar to that of the roundheaded borers, but some exceedingly long life cycles have been reported under adverse conditions. Full-grown larvae, up to 25 mm long, are characteristically flattened, the anterior part of the body being much broader than the rest. The bronzed adults are usually seen only where suitable material occurs in sunny locations.

Systematics
Jewel beetle classification is not yet robustly established, although there appear to be five or six main lineages, which may be considered subfamilies, possibly with one or two being raised to families in their own right. Some other systems define up to 14 subfamilies.

Subfamilies and selected genera
The commonly accepted subfamilies, with some representative genera, are:

Agrilinae – cosmopolitan, with most taxa occurring in the Northern Hemisphere Buprestinae – cosmopolitan
 * Aaaaba Bellamy, 2013
 * Agrilus Curtis, 1825
 * Anodontodora Obenberger, 1931
 * Asymades Kerremans, 1893
 * Brachys Dejean, 1833
 * Chalcophlocteis Obenberger, 1924
 * Discoderoides Théry, 1936
 * Entomogaster Saunders, 1871
 * Ethiopoeus Bellamy, 2008
 * Madecorformica Bellamy, 2008
 * Meliboeus Deyrolle, 1864
 * Pachyschelus Solier, 1833
 * Paracylindromorphus Thery, 1930
 * Paradorella Obenberger, 1923
 * Pseudokerremansia Bellamy & Holm, 1985
 * Strandietta Obenberger, 1931
 * †Burmagrilus Jiang et al. 2021 Burmese amber, Myanmar, Cenomanian
 * Agrilozodes Thery, 1927
 * Anthaxia Eschscholtz, 1829
 * Bubastoides
 * Buprestis
 * Calodema – found only in Australia and New Guinea; usually in rain forests
 * Castiarina – about 500 species, found only in Australia and New Guinea, previously considered a subgenus of Stigmodera
 * Chrysobothris
 * Colobogaster
 * Conognatha
 * Eurythyrea
 * Hiperantha
 * Metaxymorpha – found only in Australia, New Guinea, and Indonesia; usually in rain forests
 * Stigmodera – 7 species remain here
 * Temognatha – About 83-85 species, found only in Australia and New Guinea, previously considered a subgenus of Stigmodera

Chrysochroinae
 * Capnodis
 * Chalcophora
 * Chrysochroa
 * Chrysodema Laporte & Gory, 1835 (= Cyalithoides)
 * Euchroma
 * Halecia
 * Lampetis Dejean, 1833 – sometimes included in the tribe Psilopterini, but actually not very close to Psiloptera (tentatively placed here)
 * Lampropepla

Galbellinae Julodinae
 * Perotis
 * Psiloptera (tentatively placed here)
 * Galbella
 * Aaata
 * Amblysterna
 * Julodella
 * Julodis

 * Neojulodis
 * Sternocera

Polycestinae
 * Acmaeodera

Archived links

 * The World of Jewel Beetles (Buprestidae Home Page)
 * Jewel beetles of Prague, with pictures
 * Bibliography
 * Taiwanese Site Images Binomial Names
 * Images of types at NHM(London)
 * Hampshire Museum - Beetles in jewelry

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Buprestidae


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Talk:Spoken greeting

While the use of "verbal" to mean "spoken" is a fact in modern English (in U.S. at least), the usage is ambiguous since the word can also be used in its traditional and continuing sense of "consisting of words". (To see its survival, note that "non-verbal communication" is intended to exclude both speech and writing, and to be limited to gestures, grunts, posture, eye contact, etc.)

I'm renaming Greeting (verbal) to Spoken greeting to eliminate ambiguity and avoid unnecessary parens. --Jerzy(t) 06:07, 2004 Aug 10 (UTC)

 * Just for clarification, do you intend a second page for written greetings to complement the spoken one, and what differences between spoken and written greetings do you see as important enough to warrant the separate pages ? Ta. - TB 08:05, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Spoken greeting


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U.S. Route 98

U.S. Route 98 (US 98) is an east–west United States Highway in the Southeastern United States that runs from western Mississippi to southern Florida. It was established in 1933 as a route between Pensacola and Apalachicola, Florida, and has since been extended westward into Mississippi and eastward across the Florida Peninsula. It runs along much of the Gulf Coast between Mobile, Alabama, and Crystal River, Florida, including extensive sections closely following the coast between Mobile and St. Marks, Florida. The highway's western terminus is with US 84 in Bude, Mississippi. Its eastern terminus is Palm Beach, Florida, at State Road A1A (SR A1A) near the Mar-a-Lago resort.

Route description
U.S. 98's western terminus is in Mississippi, and its eastern terminus is in Florida. Much of its route through Alabama and Florida falls within coastal counties.

Mississippi
US 98 enters the state from the southeast and immediately widens to four lanes. It bypasses Lucedale to the north, and an interchange with Mississippi Highway 63 provides four-laned access to Pascagoula on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, increasing road capacity for hurricane evacuations. At Hattiesburg, an interchange with U.S. Route 49 provides four-laned access to Gulfport (to the south) and Jackson (to the north). The road continues west from its intersection with US 49 to Interstate 59 at exit 59, with which it is concurrent through exit 65 (Hardy Street). The highway runs westward through Columbia before meeting US 51 in McComb. It then joins Interstate 55 from exit 15 (South McComb) to exit 20 (Summit). The last remaining two-laned section of US 98 in Mississippi then runs northwestward to its terminus near Bude in Meadville at US 84.

US 98 serves as a primary hurricane evacuation route in southern Mississippi, connecting cities along the Mississippi Sound to inland destinations further north.

The Mississippi section of US 98 is defined in Mississippi Code Annotated § 65-3-3.

Alabama
In Alabama, US 98 is paired with unsigned State Route 42 (SR 42). The route enters Alabama from the east near Lillian in rural Baldwin County. At Daphne, US 98 begins a concurrency with US 90. US 90 and 98 junction I-10 at Daphne on the eastern shore of Mobile Bay, then again on the western side of the bay as they enter downtown Mobile. As the two routes approach the Mobile River, US 98 is split into two routes, with a US 98 Truck route crossing the Mobile River via the Cochrane–Africatown USA Bridge, co-signed with US 90. Passenger car traffic passes directly into town under the Mobile River via the Bankhead Tunnel. Once the truck route rejoins the main route in downtown Mobile, US 98 assumes a northwestward trajectory, and enters Mississippi near the community of Wilmer in western Mobile County. US 98 is the southern terminus of two major U.S. highways: US 31, at Spanish Fort, and US 45 in Mobile.

The safety of the route, or the lack thereof, has earned the road the nickname "Bloody 98". The existing route between Semmes and the Mississippi state line is a two-lane undivided highway, and widening the route has been delayed due to a lack of budget and concern over pollution of Big Creek Lake, which supplies drinking water to the city of Mobile and other area towns. A project to construct a bypass route, State Route 158, was completed in October 2023, at a cost of $200 million.

Florida
Within Florida, US 98 is marked as an east–west road from the Alabama-Florida border to Perry. Throughout the rest of the state, the road is marked as a north–south road.

Concurrencies include US 441 from Royal Palm Beach to Okeechobee, US 27 from South Sebring to West Frostproof, US 17 from Fort Meade to Bartow, US 301 from Clinton Heights to Moss Town, SR 50 from Ridge Manor to Brooksville, SR 50A then US 41 in Brooksville, US 19 from Chassahowitzka to Perry, ALT US 27 from Chiefland to Perry, US 319 in Medart and from St. Theresa to Port St. Joe, and US 90 in Pensacola. The hidden designation for most of US 98 across the panhandle of the state of Florida is State Route 30. Between Chassahowitzka and Palm Beach, the hidden designation is State Route 700. There is a 60 mph speed limit east of Tyndall Air Force Base outside of Panama City all the way to Perry.

History
US 98 was first commissioned in 1934. At that time, its entire route was within Florida, traveling from Pensacola to Apalachicola. In 1952, the eastern end was extended to its present terminus in Palm Beach, Florida. In 1955, the western terminus was extended westward to Natchez, Mississippi. In 1999, the western end of US 98 was truncated to its intersection with US 84 at Meadville, Mississippi, although it continued to be signed concurrently with US 84 to Washington, Mississippi until 2008.

Major intersections

 * Mississippi
 * in Bude.
 * in Summit. The highways travel concurrently to McComb.
 * in McComb
 * in Hattiesburg. The highways travel concurrently to south of Hattiesburg.
 * in Hattiesburg
 * in Hattiesburg

 * Alabama
 * in Mobile
 * in Mobile
 * in Mobile. The highways travel concurrently through Mobile.
 * in Mobile. The highways travel concurrently to Spanish Fort.
 * in Mobile
 * in Spanish Fort
 * in Daphne. US 90/US 98 travels concurrently through Daphne.

 * Florida
 * in Pensacola. The highways travel concurrently through Pensacola.
 * in Pensacola
 * in Pensacola
 * southeast of Santa Rosa Beach
 * in Panama City
 * east of Apalachicola. The highways travel concurrently to west-southwest of St. Teresa.
 * in Medart. The highways travel concurrently to north-northeast of Medart.
 * in Perry. US 19/US 98 travels concurrently to northeast of Chassahowitzka.
 * in Perry
 * in Chiefland
 * in Brooksville. The highways travel concurrently through Brooksville.
 * west-northwest of Ridge Manor
 * in Lacoochee. The highways travel concurrently to south of Dade City.
 * in Lakeland
 * in Lakeland
 * in Bartow. The highways travel concurrently to Fort Meade.
 * east of West Frostproof. The highways travel concurrently to west-southwest of Spring Lake.
 * in Okeechobee. The highways travel concurrently to Royal Palm Beach.
 * in West Palm Beach
 * in West Palm Beach
 * in Palm Beach

In popular culture
Blue Mountain recorded a song titled "Bloody 98," specifically referring to a two-laned section of the highway between Mobile, Alabama and Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Special and suffixed routes

 * U.S. Route 98 Business in Pensacola, Florida
 * U.S. Route 98 Toll from Pensacola, Florida to Navarre, Florida
 * U.S. Route 98 Bypass in Panama City Beach, Florida
 * U.S. Route 98 Alternate in Panama City Beach, Florida
 * U.S. Route 98 Business in Panama City, Florida
 * U.S. Route 98 Truck in Brooksville, Florida
 * U.S. Route 98 Truck in Dade City, Florida
 * U.S. Route 98 Business in Dade City, Florida
 * U.S. Route 98 Business in Lakeland, Florida
 * U.S. Route 98 Business in Bartow, Florida
 * U.S Route 98 Alternate in Fairhope, Alabama

title: U.S. Route 98


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Vespoidea

Vespoidea is a superfamily of wasps in the order Hymenoptera. Vespoidea includes wasps with a large variety of lifestyles including eusocial, social, and solitary habits, predators, scavengers, parasitoids, and some herbivores.

Description
Vespoid wasp females have antennae with 10 flagellomeres, while males have 11 flagellomeres. The edge of the pronotum reaches or passes the tegula. Many species display some level of sexual dimorphism. Most species have fully developed wings, but some have reduced or absent wings in one or both sexes. As in other Aculeata, only the females are ever capable of stinging.

Phylogenetics and taxonomy
Research based on four nuclear genes (elongation factor-1α F2 copy, long-wavelength rhodopsin, wingless and the D2–D3 regions of 28S ribosomal RNA—2700 bp in total) suggests the historical view of family relationships need to be changed, with Rhopalosomatidae as a sister group of the Vespidae and the clade Rhopalosomatidae + Vespidae as sister to all other classical vespoids and apoids. In a study in 2008, the superfamily Apoidea was found to nest within the Vespoidea, suggesting the dismantling of Vespoidea (sensu lato) into many smaller superfamilies: Formicoidea, Scolioidea, Tiphioidea, Thynnoidea, and Pompiloidea in addition to a much more narrowly defined Vespoidea (restricted to Rhopalosomatidae and Vespidae). Their research also found families Mutillidae, Tiphiidae, and Bradynobaenidae to be paraphyletic.

A later study in 2013 confirmed the need for revision of high-level relationships, and the pattern of sister-group relationships within the putative Vespoidea largely matched the same basic pattern as the 2008 study. This study also noted a paraphyletic Bradynobaenidae and Tiphiidae.

The extinct family of Armaniidae also was formerly considered to be a group of "ant-like wasps" and was also classified under Vespoidea. However, additional work by Borysenko in 2017 found these species to be basal members of Formicidae, placing three genera under Sphecomyrminae and considering the rest incertae sedis.

Families retained in Vespoidea

 * Rhopalosomatidae – rhopalosomatid wasps
 * Vespidae – paper wasps, hornets, potter wasps, yellow jackets, and relatives

Families represented by Formicoidea

 * Formicidae - ants

Families represented by Pompiloidea

 * Mutillidae – velvet ants/velvet wasps
 * Myrmosidae – myrmosid wasps
 * Pompilidae – spider wasps
 * Sapygidae – sapygid wasps

Families represented by Scolioidea

 * Scoliidae – scoliid wasps

Families represented by Tiphioidea

 * Bradynobaenidae – bradynobaenid wasps
 * Sierolomorphidae – sierolomorphid wasps
 * Tiphiidae – tiphiid wasps

Families represented by Thynnoidea

 * Chyphotidae – chyphotid wasps
 * Thynnidae – thynnid wasps

title: Vespoidea


text:
Wikipedia talk:Taxobox usage

Fossil Range charts?
What's the story with the fossil range charts being added, as in Lizard and Therizinosaurus? I suppose it's a good idea, though it makes the boxes that much more cluttered... but at present, the diagram does not appear to correspond with the listed range, at least in my browser (Safari). For example, the green range highlight is under Paleogene for Therizinosaurus when it should be Cretaceous. Lizard range is Jurassic to recent, but the highlight only extends into the early part of the Cretaceous. Dinoguy2 00:04, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

 * Agh. I'd tested it in Firefox and IE, and had assumed that Safari would follow suit - evidently it's being problematic as usual. Grr! Just when I thought I had a day off...
 * My rationale behind producing it is that "late Permian" doesn't mean anything to the average layman, and providing a timeline brings the fossil range into context for the vast majority of our readership without forcing them to click on links to pages which often don't help that much anyway... Verisimilus  T  09:03, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

 * Actually, I like the idea (though I missed the implementation for some reason). But indeed, squeezing everything from Precambrian to Holocene into 250 or so pixels is wellnigh impossible... Dysmorodrepanis 10:15, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

 * For those of us who missed it, can we see a screenshot? I've thought about doing something like it before too, but compressing hundreds of thousands of years into just hundreds pixels is quite a challenge. —Pengo 13:10, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

 * I just moved it to Template:Fossil range for present. See example on the right. Verisimilus  T  14:44, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Synonyms list
Is there any preferred way how to list synonyms? I.e., alphabetically or by date of publication? I have found myself doing either, and found each approach to be equally advantageous and disadvantageous. Depending on the specific taxon, either may be easier to maintain. Usually, an alphabetic list will be easier to read and maintain. But e.g. in Falcon, there have been so many preoccupied names and names that were later "fixed" believing they were preoccupied (but weren't) that there is no getting around a chronological listing. Dysmorodrepanis 10:15, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Marshall, Texas FAR
Marshall, Texas has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Okiefromokla•talk 17:40, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

New rank needed
I am currently working on the Lepidopterans, whose taxonomy presents a rank "series" between superfamily and family. It is not the same-named "series" in the botanical sense of the term, but a distinct and different rank. We need to have it added to the taxobox template... For the time being, I am using the variable "series" in my lepidopteran taxobox (knowing that the taxob appears at the wrong place) and waiting for something better. Oeropium 23:27, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I am currently working on the genus Epidendrum of the plant family Orchidaceae, whose taxonomy presents a rank "subsection" between "section" and "species" (not "series"). For now, I will use "series" for "subsection" to avoid moving "section" to "subgenus." I await something better. Jay L09 (talk) 20:37, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Meantime, there is possible to add any rank like this, for example in Argnidae, but it will appear as unranked. Other possibility is to add anything with br tag, for example like this: |sectio = Schistochila subsection Carinata Even if there is no needed taxonomic rank yet, there can not be written different rank in taxobox. --Snek01 (talk) 21:17, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

 * I assume you're talking about the taxobox at an article like Epidendrum denticulatum? My first answer would probably be to keep subgenera, sections, subsections, etc, out of taxoboxes. Now, that's a great answer when there are dozens of species.  When there are 1100, as with Epidendrum, I'm not sure whether to stick to it.  But calling a subsection a series seems confusing (well, inaccurate, really). Incidentally, how many species are left in Epidendrum if the segregate genera are recognized?  For Eupatorium, I pretty much decided that there wasn't much choice but to accept a narrow circumscription of the genus for taxobox purposes, because the wide circumscription is darn close to the whole tribe Eupatorieae (well, the fact the specialists seem to agree on the narrow circumscription certain helps there). One more detail: there's an issue with where these links point to.  Right now this article has a section link to Schistochila which is a Marchantiophyta genus.  I think the right link is Epidendrum sect. Schistochila (probably with some piping to put in some italics) but you might want to double-check that at WT:PLANTS. Kingdon (talk) 00:43, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Viruses
It might be helpful to have a complete example of a Virus taxobox on the usage page. After all, they are quite different from plant and animal boxes. Rl (talk) 11:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

IUCN Red List status
An IUCN representative contacted me, asking if I could make a minor change to Template:Taxobox so that "(IUCN Red List)" is shown instead of "(IUCN)" when conservation data comes from the IUCN Red List. In order to keep discussion together, please leave any comments at Template talk:Taxobox. Thanks, – Quadell (talk) (random) 13:50, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Another color for animal-taxobox?
I almost exclusively work on animals (mammals) here and I don´t like this ugly pink box very much. I am always happy when I go back to the german wiki. How do you like this nice green-brown-grey box down here for example:-)

I dont think, it would collide with any other taxobox color.--Altaileopard (talk) 16:58, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

 * I'm fine with this change. – UtherSRG (talk) 21:26, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

 * I've never liked the pink. That said, there are a ton of articles that would either need to be changed to this color or updated to display the color automatically.  I think there are still a lot out there that are pink because they say "taxobox color = pink" instead of being pink due to the kingdom.  --Aranae (talk) 22:21, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

 * It's easy to remove all these unnecessary parameters with a bot. I have a bot lying around that could do this, and I have code that parses taxoboxes; I could do this, if you want this. Best would be to first convert all taxoboxes, and then change the code in the template. That would switch the colours in all taxoboxes at once. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 22:30, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Hadn't given it much thought but, yes, I think I'd prefer the grey-green colour too.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:52, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, good! Thank you all. I think it would be best to use the bot from Eugene van der Pijll. Probably we also should ask some other users, which work a lot on animals, what they think about a new color. --Altaileopard (talk) 16:32, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

 * In my view, pink is a very intuitive colour for animals, just as green is for plants. I think that the benefits of being able to tell the classification at a glance outweigh aesthetic considerations.  The colour scheme should be as logical as possible (and preferably change as rarely as possible so people don't have to relearn it) to give it any value.  Otherwise we may as well just set one standard colour for all taxoboxes.  I do agree, however, that the current shade of pink is a bit putrid: maybe someone could suggest a more pleasant shade of pink? Verisimilus  T  17:13, 31 January 2008 (UTC) P.S. I've posted a note of this discussion on WP:TOL; it might be worth advertising it elsewhere too?
 * Hmm, why do you think that Pink is intuitive for animals? I think there are more brown animals than pink animals on this earth and aesthetic considerations weigh quite a lot, if you look at something every day! I think the relearn process should not be too difficult.... and you can have a look at the taxobox, if you are not shure if a creature is an animal or not:-) Thanks for posting it on TOL.--Altaileopard (talk) 21:04, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

 * Quick note that I also like/support the change to the "green-brown-grey" colour too. I don't think the colour has to "say" animal, just as we don't use a different font or shape of taxobox or anything else to "say" it's an animal taxobox. The colour will become a symbol by itself. —Pengo 23:29, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

 * What Pengo said. Even if we don't do this though, it would be good to have a bot remove color overrides from taxoboxes as they're a bit of a vandal magnet. Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 03:27, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

 * IMHO the new colour is just a bit too close to the one used for incertae sedis. As animal taxoboxes are the most frequent in wikipedia (about 51,000 of them...), and i.s. taxoboxes are so very rare, this will be confusing for people landing at a i.s. article. Better change that one as well. Perhaps to pink?
 * Altaileopard, pink (or any shade of red, extually) is a very intuitive colour for animals. Have you ever tried to cut one open? Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 18:01, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

 * What do you want me to open? A snail, a beatle or a sea cucumber? Actually when I think of a vertebrate, I do not think about an open one at first.
 * joking apart.. I think there are not so much incertae sedis, we can change this color. We can also search another color for the animals and I would be also fine with one color for all taxoboxes. But I would love to have a nicer color than this pink.--Altaileopard (talk) 19:16, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

 * I have asked for bot approval for this task: Bots/Requests for approval/Eubot 5. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 17:42, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much.--Altaileopard (talk) 16:30, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

 * Just going to add my support for changing the animal taxobox colour, I like the one used above. Sabine's Sunbird  talk  23:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

 * One question: I know that originally some considerable work was done to make sure that the various box colours were separable by those with all forms of colour-blindness. Will they still be able to distinguish the new colour from all of the others? MeegsC | Talk 21:17, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

 * Update -- The bot run is done; the color parameter has been removed from almost all animal articles, and the taxobox color may be changed now. (I will do another bot run after the next database dump, to catch all articles created in the last 2 months.) Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 10:21, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Well done, thanks a lot! When I go through this talk, it seems to me, that no one is really against the new color and many like it. I don´t know how to check this thing with the color-blinds, but I think it would not be a very big problem, as the taxonomy is written in the box, too. --Altaileopard (talk) 07:09, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Color-blindness isn't really an issue—even some of the existing colors may well be more difficult to distinguish for some people with color-blindness, but the Kingdom name is there for backup. The issue instead is color contrast; if the foreground and background color intensities aren't enough different, some users won't be able to read the text at all. The proposed new color passes in that regard.--Curtis Clark (talk) 13:27, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Discussion seems to have stopped, so to rekindle the interest in this issue, I've just pulled the switch... Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 16:18, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I am deuteranomalous and cannot distinguish the new animal color from the ''incertae sedis' color. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 17:30, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

 * I love the change, but as someone who is color-blind, I see virtually no difference between incertae sedis and Animalia now. I don't consider it a major issue, since the text stands out, but I thought I should mention it since it was mentioned in earlier discussion above.  Justin  chat 17:32, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * As an aside, when making color changes can help color determinations for us colorblind folk.  Justin  chat 17:39, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

 * I think the colors should at least not be too alike. If you are weak in green/yellow hues as I am, animals and incertae sedis are really all but identical. Perhaps change incertae sedis to WhiteSmoke (F5 F5 F5) or Linen (FA F0 E6) – distinct colors, and also good because they are almost but not quite white, with an indiscriminate hue that "can be anything". Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 17:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Note that this problem is almost non-existent: there are 14 articles in wikipedia that have regnum incertae sedis: Pteridinium, Arkarua, Mawsonites, Charniodiscus, Yorgia, Hiemalora, Aspidella, Parvancorina, Bradgatia, Nimbia, Chondroplon, Swartpuntia, Trilobozoa, Picobiliphyte. I'll list some possible colors for these articles below (please add more options, if you have them). I suggest to wait a week to see if people like the new colour for the animal boxes, and to change the incertae sedis boxes when we're sure about that. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 18:38, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, and there are another 24 articles that have their colour hardcoded to the current i.s. colour (including e.g. Eukaryote and Opisthokont). I'll change those taxoboxes so that they will be handled automatically. Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 18:43, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

 * Whitesmoke and linen both have too little contrast with the background; they are barely distinguishable from no colour at all, which is aesthetically unpleasing. And we've just managed to get rid of the "horrible pink colour"... let's not bring it back already!
 * We do need to change the IS colour – but I think we need to find a better solution.
 * Also, worth nothing that the last time I looked, VISCHECK website linked to above only works on images, not on hard-coded #XXXXXX values.
 * Verisimilus  T  09:41, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Any ideas why Dinosaur is still pink? I see it as such on two computers, have refreshed the cache, and my PC is set up to delete cache and browsing history after a session anyway. It is linked to Animalia and has no embedded color element. J. Spencer (talk) 13:06, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It was pink for me as well, so it was probably an internal wikipedia cache problem. If you see another pink one, just do a null edit (click "edit", and save without changing anything), and it will be fixed. Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 17:20, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Fixed now. J. Spencer (talk) 18:11, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

 * Thanks a lot, Eugene van der Pijll!!!! The articles are looking much better now and it is more fun to upgrade an article in style and text. For I.s. I would prefer the whitesmoke as it appears somewhat undetermined to me --Altaileopard (talk) 17:05, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

 * I am not in favour of this change. My first impression was that someone had modified the colour for a dragon stub I was fixing. The grey-green is to close to ... grey and green. This could be a problem when viewed alone in the article. I think it is generally editors that have to look at them 'all day', but if the colourcan 'say' animal then that is a bonus. The pinkish colour was slightly off, certainly in the murky palette above, but it is used overwhemingly in isolation. I agree with the view that a reddish hue suggests animal, just as green suggests plant, that is why I became used to seeing it. I hope to see further discussion on this; perhaps discussion of the change can be directed here, assuming anyone else wants to comment. cygnis insignis 03:30, 20 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, to me, booger just doesn't suggest animal. Werothegreat (talk) 02:22, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, if you don´t like this colour but I think almost everything is nicer and perhaps even more typical for animals than the old pink. @cygnis insignis: I saw, that you work a lot on reptiles. Actually the green element seems perfect for this group in my view......?--Altaileopard (talk) 20:40, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I tend to do more plants, but it is appropriate for that group. I thought someone had modified the colour at a reptile page to their personal preference. I'll use the bikeshed anyway. cygnis insignis 10:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I find the new incertae sedis colour difficult to distinguish from the Archea and Rhizaria colours on my monitor... perhaps the new hue is not ideal? Verisimilus  T  21:11, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * One of my reasons for finally changing that colour is to restart the discussion; I'm happy to see that it worked :-)
 * If you cannot see the difference between the Rhizaria and the incertae sedis colours, you may want to adjust the brightness of your monitor; they are not at all similar IMHO. But I agree about the Archaea. This is less of a problem than the old incertae sedis colour. The average visitor will not have visited Archaea articles frequently enough to be used to that colour, but there are so many animals that he will be conditioned to see that colour as animals; including the very similar old i.s. colour. But yeah, we need a new colour for incertae sedis. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 21:31, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

These changes obvioiusly took place over a year ago, and I do not object to the new colors. However, has anyone coordinated these changes with other languages? I've been looking at other language articles, and the Animalia color seems to still be the old pink. I tested deleting the specified color pink, and the color does not change (i.e., the default color is set in the template). How do thse kinds of things coordinated across languages (or maybe they dont?). Donlammers (talk) 08:05, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Teletaxo
I tried making a telescoping taxobox once (with hide/show bits) and failed, Thanyakij, however, has succeeded, and it's being used on Thai Wikipedia. I think it's cool. I've copied the message from my talk page (which includes links to examples):

 * Hello Pengo, I'm Thanyakij (or Aqua) from Thai Wikipedia. I know that you are making the TeleTaxo. I'm just complete the new Intelli-TeleTaxo which can change the color follow the regnum and collapse un-important data so you can copy and change something to suit different conditions in En-Wiki's work. for a good example see เสือ and หลาวชะโอนทุ่ง. For more information, you can contact me at my user talk page. Enjoy your new taxobox. -- aIqCuEa • 04:59, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

How about this on English Wikipedia? —Pengo 10:37, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

 * Funny, I'd just been thinking about doing something similar myself. It shouldn't be difficult; I'll knock up a prototype when I get the chance. Verisimilus  T  14:14, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

 * And here it is. I've added a couple of parameters so that everything is represented.
 * The presence of the "[hide]" thingy makes the titles off centre. There's not much that can be done about this without alienating users with smaller monitors, but I don't see that it should be a problem. Verisimilus  T  16:31, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Whoops, there are still a couple of issues with the code. Removed for a moment. Verisimilus  T  17:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC) Now repaired (a bit). There will still be a couple of issues to resolve if this is taken forwards. Verisimilus  T  17:23, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

 * It's nice and certainly must have taken you quite a bit of effort, but is there really a need for this? What problem is this addressing? Are there really that many taxoboxes out there that are too long that they require hide/show links? Personally, my initial reaction is that the hide/show links detract from the aesthetic of the taxobox. But I'm sure I could be swayed if an argument for functionality is presented. And I'm just curious, do any other infoboxes on the English Wikipedia do this? Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 16:48, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

 * I think it is nice! I don´t know if there is really need for this feature, but I think it is definitely not a disatvantage.--Altaileopard (talk) 09:55, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It could incorporate default settings, such as "state=auto, collapsed, expanded". Shorter articles could used a collapsed version, while longer articles could use an expanded version. If a taxbox has, say, more than 3 or 4 sections, the main sections (status,classification) can default to expanded while the secondary sections (diversity,synonyms) can default to collapsed. --Old Hoss (talk) 19:13, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Doing that reminded me - is there a point to the separate parameter? What information does it contain that isn't already covered by, and ? Verisimilus  T  16:35, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

 * It is a bit redundant, but I prefer the binomial parameter. Some editors choose to not include the species parameter, so doing away with it might disrupt those taxoboxes (I'm sure that could be fixed by a bot, though). I think it adds something to boxes where infrageneric ranks are included, separating the genus from its abbreviation in the species parameter (e.g. Utricularia dichotoma). In that situation, it reconnects the genus name with the abbreviation (e.g. U. dichotoma). Just my two cents. --Rkitko (talk) 17:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem of taxoboxes that omit the species parameter could be overcome - it would be trivial for a bot to enumerate the articles with a binomial parameter but no species parameter, and possibly even to fix them automatically. As far as I'm aware, the binomial parameter is indeed redundant, and I support the proposal to abandon it.

But if we're going to tackle this, we should be handling the "trinomial" argument too, since these are intrinsically related. As usual, the devil's in the details. :-( The required functionality would appear to be something like:
 * if there is no species parameter, don't present anything (assuming Rkitko's issue above is sorted out);
 * if there is a species parameter, but not a subspecies, variety or forma parameter, present a binomial box of the form Genus species Authority ;
 * if the taxon is an animal, and there is an infraspecific rank parameter, present a trinomial box of the form Genus species subspecies Authority
 * if the taxon is a plant,
 * if there is a forma parameter,
 * if the forma parameter is identical to the species parameter (i.e. an autonym), present a trinomial box of the form Genus species Authority f. forma;
 * if the forma parameter is not the same as species parameter, present a trinomial box of the form Genus species f. forma Authority ;
 * else if there is a variety parameter,
 * if the variety parameter is identical to the species parameter (i.e. an autonym), present a trinomial box of the form Genus species Authority var. variety;
 * if the variety parameter is not the same as species parameter, present a trinomial box of the form Genus species var. variety Authority ;
 * else if there is a subspecies parameter, Authority
 * if the subspecies parameter is identical to the species parameter (i.e. an autonym), present a trinomial box of the form Genus species Authority subsp. subspecies;
 * if the subspecies parameter is not the same as species parameter, present a trinomial box of the form Genus species subsp. subspecies Authority ;

With plants, it is possible to publish a variety of a subspecies, in which case it is legitimate to write either "Genus species subsp. subspecies var. variety" or just "Genus species var. variety". I can't see any objection to the taxobox code mandating the shorter form.

I don't know what the requirements would be for other kingdoms - I think fungi and algae use the botanical code?

If this gets sorted out, there may be a case for revisiting Verisimilus' earlier proposal to automate some of the italicising. Hesperian 23:27, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

 * Fungi and algae do indeed use the botanical code, but as far as I know, they are neglected enough not to have been blessed with subspecies, varieties and so forth... Verisimilus  T  00:08, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

 * I've created the required code at Template:Taxobox binomial. The results of testing can be found in my sandbox.  This template provides the output of the logic specified above.

 * To put it into operation, the following steps need to be taken:

 * Replace this code:

 * - style="background:;"

 * - style="background:;"

 * With:

 * Further amend the Taxobox so that the specific name is not shown on its own line NB this is problematic - consequences need considering and a workaround creating

 * Using a bot, edit existing taxoboxes so that:
 * Existing "binomial" and "trinomial" names are removed, with forma, variety, or subspecies information moved to the appropriate parameters
 * Existing "species" parameters have leading "X." removed where initial letter of Genus has been included.

 * This leaves the following issues:
 * The microformat tags may need amending; I'm not sure about the syntax but I'm sure the relevant people will be able to amend this to their needs with ease.
 * What is the most appropriate parameter for specifying the "authority"?
 * Integration with the existing Taxobox tabular format is not fully tested.

 * Comments and thoughts welcome; I will respond on my return in ~ a week. Verisimilus  T  23:17, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

 * I've reviewed this, and the code seems fine to me, for what it is trying to do; it doesn't solve the whole problem yet though.
 * I may have misunderstood your original proposal. I thought that you were saying that the binomial parameter was redundant because we could code the taxobox to figure out its use for us. I really love the idea of passing the taxobox data rather than marked-up text, and having the taxobox "know" about both the rules of nomenclature and our stylistic conventions, and mark it all up correctly for us. However it now seems that your original proposal was that the binomial field, as displayed, is redundant to the species field; this is true, but I'm not sure whether it should be removed or not. It probably needs to be talked about some more. Fortunately, the issue of whether to remove the species field is a side-issue now. There's enough here to digest, so we might as well swallow it before taking a mouthful of the field redundancy issue.
 * I'm sure I've seen some articles with manuscript names. Unpublished species generally aren't notable, so don't usually have articles, but sometimes the IUCN jumps the gun and adds a species to a threatened list before it has been formally published, and a few such species articles have turned up here. We need to handle that, probably by including code that kills off the "guessed" binomial/trinomial box, and replaces it with a Manuscript name box.
 * I think you have to continue to accept genus_authority, species_authority, variety_authority, etc, and figure out which one should be used in the binomial/trinomial box. This is necessary because some monotypic taxon taxoboxes display multiple authorities (e.g. Emblingia); and to include a separate authority argument would only be re-introducing the redundancy you've worked so hard to remove. It is pretty easy to fix: the functionality I laid out above should be changed to, e.g.
 * if the variety parameter is identical to the species parameter (i.e. an autonym), present a trinomial box of the form Genus species Variety_authority var. variety;
 * Hesperian 00:23, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The other difficulty is how to handle taxoboxes like the one on Minke Whale. Hesperian 06:03, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
 * This looks like incorrect usage. If all species of Minke are being dealt with in one taxobox, the subdivision rank species section should be used, rather than the binomial section. E.g. Apatosaurus (or any dinosaur article, we only create articles down to genus level for most). Dinoguy2 (talk) 07:06, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. But that doesn't mean we can just break it. We either have to handle it, or undertake the agonising process of identifying and correcting the misuses (and possibly convincing people to let them stay corrected). Hesperian 07:09, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorting sections
Posted that before... so as we have the nice example here now, I'll post it again... maybe now someone understands what I mean.

Wouldn't be better to have the following sequence of taxobox sections:
 * name
 * image
 * Conservation status
 * Scientific classification
 * Binomial name/Type species (depending on taxon; some may have neither)
 * map
 * Diversity
 * subdivision_ranks
 * synonyms

That would make for smoother and more logical reading I think. Because then, the type species would come immediately after the taxon for which it is the type species, and the diversity would come between the taxon's entire distribution and the taxon's subdivisions - the two taxobox items which really show this "diversity". Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:28, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the reorder is good. - UtherSRG (talk) 01:18, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

 * To make it a bit more visual (since the example taxobox is out of sight when you go to this section directly), I have adopted the albatross taxobox for this here purpose.

 * Alternatively, one could do
 * Binomial name/Type species
 * Diversity
 * map
 * I don't know which is better. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 02:21, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

 * The order definitely needs a rearrange - this seems an excellent suggestion. Verisimilus  T  10:53, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

 * The albatross taxobox now suggests that the distribution map is of the type species that is named in the previous line. I definitely think that a map directly after diversity is better. (Also check what happens if type species and map are both given, and diversity is not.) -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 14:01, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

 * I agree with Eugène van der Pijll, that the type species should not be so tight at the map. That might be confusing for some people, which are not so involved in taxonomy. As I think the type species is not so important for the common reader, I would place it at the bottom, probably just above synonyms. Moreover I think "Diversity" and "Genera" should be united. --Altaileopard (talk) 16:23, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

 * The map could be lower (e.g. under "Diversity"), and/or it might simply get a header "Distribution" like any other section in the 'box (it is a separate section).
 * Placing "Diversity" and "Genera" together I think is not good - the titles in the albatross example suggest that they contain similar information, but actually they don't. "Diversity" gives a total overview about the diversity, whereas "Genera" is simply the "subdivision_ranks" and is the next lower taxonomic rank, which here is genera of course. But it can contain any taxonomic rank, and usually will contain a rank not mentioned in "Diversity" at all (see for example Passerine).
 * In short, "Diversity" contains information on biodiversity while what here is "Genera" contains information on systematics. (I simply added "Diversity" here for completeness - usually a family would not get such a section, only the higher ranks like classes to orders would)
 * Type species at the bottom - maybe, but kinda defeats the original proposal, which was to put the relevant information together so that the "train of thought" in reading the box top-to-bottom is not interrupted. Few taxa actually have this (because the correct information is abysmally hard to get... getting easier with more and more of the really old taxonomic works being digitized, but for most invertebrates it is still almost impossible)
 * While we're at it - linking the type species to the species page maybe? So that people can make sense of the strange names that this section will inevitably contain? Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:33, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of a rearrange, but I think subdivision_ranks should be at the very bottom. Diversity should be immediately above it as the two are very related.  Also, type and synonyms should be next to one another, preferably with synonyms on top.  They are also related in the sense that they are a bit for nomenclatural junkies.  --Aranae (talk) 15:26, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Bee
Is there any way to list the superfamily Apoidea above the Anthophila in the bee taxobox? Presently, I think the listing implies that Apoidea is included within Anthophila and is as such misleading. I tried playing around with "unranked_something" parameter, but nothing else than unranked_superfamilia works. --Yerpo (talk) 08:15, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I've moved the Antophila taxon down; it's a bit of a hack. It should be done properly with a parameter "unranked_genus", but that doesn't exist. (Yet.) -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 09:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah, that kind of hack, interesting idea. I tweaked it a bit more but it's still not perfect and should be done the way you mentioned. Thanx anyway. --Yerpo (talk) 09:58, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I've added the unranked_genus parameter, and updated the taxobox at Bee. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 18:05, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

sensu field?
Is there any benefit of an additional field to specify the circumscription reference like "circumscription_ref=Clarke, 2004 " ? (See Uniramia, Bird etc.) Shyamal (talk) 06:47, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Category:Invalid conservation status
Given that Category:Invalid conservation status is robustly populated with fossil organisms that have |status=fossil in their taxobox, would it be feasible (or even desirable, given that many don't have |fossil_range, particularly our numerous ammonite articles) to have a bot go through and remove that element, similar to what Eubot did when taxobox color was linked to kingdom? J. Spencer (talk) 16:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

 * It would certainly be desirable! You can list a request at WP:BOTREQ. Verisimilus  T  17:52, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

 * I will run Eubot to do this, you don't have to request this task. What do you want to replace it with? I don't like the idea of just throwing the information away. Perhaps "fossil = 1"? We can decide afterward how to display that information. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 18:41, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I hadn't really thought about replacement - would "fossil = 1" or whatever be a hidden/nondisplaying field? J. Spencer (talk) 04:11, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * At this moment, yes. But we should change the template to show it in some way, in my opinion. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 09:53, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Would the new "fossil = 1" be an element that should be standard to all fossil organisms, or treated as a placeholder until someone gets around to adding a fossil range? J. Spencer (talk) 02:11, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, it should be standard. We need a parameter that says "extinct"; fossil_range alone does not imply this. See for example Leporidae. Perhaps "extinct=1" would be better, although it overlaps with the EXtinct status code. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 07:52, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

You'd be removing from view the only indication that the taxon is a fossil. How about instead, we simply change the taxobox code to tag fossils into Category:Taxoboxes needing a fossil range parameter instead of Category:Invalid conservation status. Hesperian 23:21, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
 * As I said, a fossil range is not an indication that the taxon is a fossil. If you have a separate parameter "fossil=1", you can change the taxobox to show it. -- Eugène van der Pijll (talk) 07:35, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I see. If you're planning on adding a parameter, rather than just changing the way you use what is already there, then you should be having this discussion at Template talk:Taxobox. Hesperian 11:15, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

 * The more I think about it, the more I think that the problem is that "status=fossil" is perfectly legitimate. It may not be associated with an endorsed status system, but it is still a perfectly reasonable conservation status. The status parameter is never going to be used for anything else in the case of fossils, so "status=fossil" is logically equivalent to "fossil=1". Why don't we propose that "status=fossil" be accepted as valid? Hesperian 04:57, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Type_locality field, if it is not too much to ask
The missing field in the taxobox is type_locality. Would it be possible to implement this?--Wloveral (talk) 02:37, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
 * This talk page is supposed to be for discussions on improving the taxobox documentation. Discussions on improving the functionality ought to be at Template talk:Taxobox. In practice the two talk pages are smudged together somewhat, but I still think you would be better off posting this request over there instead of here. Hesperian 06:00, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'll try knocking on that door.--Wloveral (talk) 21:32, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Usage at Thermococcus litoralis
The taxobox at Thermococcus litoralis is broken; however, I don't know if the edit that broke it is legitimate or not. Is this an appropriate classification? --- RockMFR 14:56, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Automatic color and prokaryotes
Since the color of the taxobox is assigned automatically according to regnum, the color is not assigned automatically for any page on taxa belonging to the bacteria or archaea. Neither of these groups has been subdivided into kingdoms, and their pages do not list a value for regnum. To determine the color for prokaryotes, could the taxobox please check ''domain" for these taxa? --EncycloPetey (talk) 20:09, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

What to use for hybrid animals?
Hi All -

I was wondering whether anyone could suggest what kind of taxobox could/should be used for intergeneric hybrid animals? MidgleyDJ (talk) 21:58, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

New template for in-line vernacular & scientitfc names
I have created Biota for the display of in-line scientific names, with the same draft "species" microformat used by taxoboxes.

So far, it works only for vernacular, binominal, trinominal and genus names (example on template documentation), but I'll add a few other ranks soon ; and more complex processing for ''Foo bar ssp. boo'' and other such formats, later.

It allows wiki-linking, and the optional emboldening of vernacular names, and italicises scientific names automatically.

Comments welcome. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:32, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

 * This is really a broad statement and not intended as specifically targeted to this template, but it does apply. I worry that wikipedia is becoming overly reliant on templates.  I think one of the goals is to have a simple form of markup that "anyone can edit."  If you're a professional scientist and want to put in half an hour correcting the information on an animal on which you specialize, it would be nice if you can make some contributions using not much more than the tools at the top of the edit summary.  My real beef remains with the use of complex markup in inline citations - the last thing we want to do is discourage people from citing`sources - but it applies elsewhere as well.  I guess my question is, and I want to emphasize that there's a polite tone to these words on a page because I really appreciate the work that's done in creating these templates (not my expertise), is what purpose does it serve? How will it make things simpler for the editor?  Is it meant to help standardize?  --Aranae (talk) 16:57, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

←If a template is written well, as I hope this one is, it should not dissuade an editor such as you describe from editing or creating pages. Consider this scenario:

 * 1) Editor A creates a page which mentions in passing "...the Blue Tit (Parus minor) eats ...".
 * 2) Editor B realises that this is a vernacular/ scientific name pair, and adds the template: "...the eats ..." - note that the visual display on the page is unchanged.
 * 3) Editor C (or A, returning), knows that the bird's scientific name has changed, so changes the content of the page thus: "...the eats ..."

Editors A & C do not need to know how the template works, or even of its existence. As to your latter point, this template not only aids the standardisation of display formats, but wraps the data in a microformat, making it more accessible to machines, and to user tools which allow it to be looked up on other sites, downloaded, aggregated, etc. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 17:21, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Update:You're being represented in the deletion debate as expressing "the opinion that the template is pointless". Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:07, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Biota
Template:Biota has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. Hesperian 03:38, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Withdrawn for now, as it has been pointed out to me that Andy is currently not in a position to respond. Hesperian 03:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Andy is back; TfD is live. Hesperian 00:31, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Not evaluated Conservation status
Taxobox usage - I think that there is discrepancy in notes about using conservation status. There is not valid IUCN red list category Secure in use. On the other hand there is written in Taxobox documentation not to use Not evaluated (NE) category. Not evaluated category with appropriate reference (with date) is much more usefull than a some unreferenced guess about a secure species. I would like to use Not evaluated category in Taxoboxes. --Snek01 (talk) 01:30, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Conservation Status for Infra-specific Taxa
The Northern bluefin tuna is divided into two infra-specific taxa on the IUCN Red List: the Eastern Atlantic stock and the Western Atlantic stock. These two stocks have been assessed with two different levels of endangerment (Endangered for the Eastern stock, and Critically Endangered for the Western stock). Since it seems unnecessary to have two separate articles for these taxa, we're presented with the challenge of trying to figure out how to best represent these data in the taxobox. Currently, the entire Northern bluefin tuna population's status is listed by IUCN as 'data deficient', so in the spirit of wanting to present more information rather than less, it would be nice to have a method for presenting the conservation status of both stocks in one taxobox. Any ideas on how best to do this? Steamroller Assault (talk) 15:38, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I've replied on the talk page. —Pengo 20:15, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Synonyms field guidelines
The text perhaps needs to expand on what exactly should go and not go into the synonyms field. Perhaps this discussion on Talk:Black Drongo could help in improve the guideline. Thanks. Shyamal (talk) 06:28, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Let's consolidate the discussion Wikipedia_talk:TOL.--Curtis Clark (talk) 14:34, 27 February 2009 (UTC)
 * A summary of what has been discussed so far there- it appears that there is no clarity on whether only "true synonyms" should be included or whether pro parte (or in part) synonyms, ambiguous, nomina nuda and misapplied names could also be included. Shyamal (talk) 01:57, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Taxoboxes and phylogenetic taxonomy
See also the discussion at : At this moment we stil use taxoboxes with code based on Linnean taxonomy. This poses a problem when the taxonomy has shifted into the direction of phylogenetic taxonomy, using cladistics, as it is the case in Gastropoda. It is becoming more and more difficult to express the exact relations of the taxa in our traditional taxoboxes. If you look at the taxobox in Bornella and at its code, you'll see how awkward it looks. Can someone re-write the code, so that we can use clades, unranked clades (or subclades) and "informal groups" (see : Taxonomy of the Gastropoda (Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005) for the meaning of "informal groups"). Maybe it would be better if we could split taxobox usage into taxoboxes with the traditional Linnean taxonomy and taxoboxes using phylogenetic taxonomy for taxa above the rank of superfamily (replacing the ranks suborder, order, superorder and subclass), while using the traditional Linnaean approach for all taxa below the rank of superfamily. Any help appreciated. JoJan (talk) 16:00, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_life/Archive23
 * User talk:JoJan

 * This is very complicated matter. I would suggest to divide it into separate tasks. 1) What all information is needed to display in taxobox. 2) How should the taxobox look like for a reader. 3) How should the code look like to an editor.

Task 1) What all information is needed to display in taxobox. There is still possible to display all infomation in taxobox (at least for gastropods). Information is possible to write down in rows: | unranked_ordo = | unranked_ordo_authority = | unranked_familia = | unranked_familia_authority = These few rows can display all possibilities for gastropods because there is no needed to write authority for two of them. Meantime there is necessary to write authority only for very few taxa. (see for example Pleurobranchidae which belongs to most complicated now.) Because there are no monotypic clades which contains mononotypic subclade. Meantime. Maybe there will be needed to write authority for three unranked taxa in the future and it is not possible now.

Are there any other taxa that primarilly uses taxonomy like this? For example, why there is no taxobox in the article asterids? (It is possible to write some.) Is there necessary to write other detailed information in Canellales instead of this?: Kingdom: 	Plantae (unranked): 	Angiosperms (unranked): 	Magnoliids Order: 	Canellales

Task 2) How should the taxobox look like for a reader. Now it looks somethis like this (example Pleurobranchidae):

Class:       Gastropoda (unranked):  clade Heterobranchia informal group Opisthobranchia clade Nudipleura (unranked):  subclade Pleurobranchomorpha Deshayes, 1832 Superfamily: Pleurobranchoidea Gray, 1827

I think that it should look something like this: Class:           Gastropoda Clade:           Heterobranchia Informal group:  Opisthobranchia Clade:           Nudipleura Subclade:        Pleurobranchomorpha Deshayes, 1832 Superfamily:     Pleurobranchoidea Gray, 1827

I think, the word (unranked) is not necessary. Am I right, that every clade is unranked? I hope that it can be done automatically, that such special words (clade, subclade, informal group, group) will be displayed on the left side of the taxobox.

Task 3) How should the code look like to an editor. This is the most complicated and it depends at two previous tasks. Now the code is like this: clade Heterobranchia informal group Opisthobranchia clade Nudipleura This code is quite complicated sometimes even for advanced wikipedians. There is used tag BR, but I am not sure, how to improve it. The only feature is, that we know, where will be rows placed:
 * classis = Gastropoda
 * subclassis =
 * superordo =
 * ordo =
 * subordo =
 * subclassis =
 * unranked_ordo =
 * unranked_ordo_authority =
 * superordo =
 * ordo =
 * subordo =
 * infraordo =
 * unranked_familia = subclade Pleurobranchomorpha
 * unranked_familia_authority = Deshayes, 1832
 * superfamilia = Pleurobranchoidea
 * superfamilia_authority = Gray, 1827
 * | unranked_ordo = is placed always above ordo
 * | unranked_familia = is placed always above familia

We can theoretically make few new rows for taxobox: unranked_1 =, unranked_2 = , unranked_3 = , unranked_4 = , ... unranked_10 =. But if so, then we will lost the feature, that we know, where it will appear.

There is only and example how not to do it: We will choose any rank what we want (we know its position) and if we write a word clade, then that rank will display as a clade.

This code of example above is very misleading. Although it would be possible to display it in a good way similar as I suggested in task 2.
 * classis = Gastropoda
 * subclassis = clade Heterobranchia
 * superordo = informal group Opisthobranchia
 * ordo = clade Nudipleura
 * subordo =
 * subclassis =
 * unranked_ordo =
 * unranked_ordo_authority =
 * superordo =
 * ordo =
 * subordo =
 * infraordo =
 * unranked_familia = subclade Pleurobranchomorpha
 * unranked_familia_authority = Deshayes, 1832
 * superfamilia = Pleurobranchoidea
 * superfamilia_authority = Gray, 1827

I am not sure what exactly JoJan suggested. JoJan, did you suggested to use some new template to be placed inside the taxobox? If so, how exactly it should appear? Are there any templates for phylogenic taxonomy already in use? If so, such templates (or any other solution) have to be easy to use also. I do not know how to solve the task three. --Snek01 (talk) 20:30, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

 * Well Michal, you certainly gave it some thought. Your proposal

Class:           Gastropoda Clade:           Heterobranchia Informal group:  Opisthobranchia Clade:           Nudipleura Subclade:        Pleurobranchomorpha Deshayes, 1832 Superfamily:     Pleurobranchoidea Gray, 1827

 * looks like what I have in mind. It puts the words informal group, clade and subclade on the left side of the taxobox. Codes such as "unranked_ordo", that we have to use at this moment, are misleading, since in this taxonomy we no longer deal with ranks above the rank of superfamily. JoJan (talk) 08:46, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

 * OK, we know how the taxobox should be displayed. If this code below will be displayed as you proposed above, then I will be satisfied.

informal group Opisthobranchia clade Nudipleura subclade Pleurobranchomorpha But we still do not know how the code should be like. My opinion is that this code acceptable, because I do not know a better one. This code is applicable for all existing gastropods. We can only change word "unranked_familia" with something else, but it will not help much and I do not know how to replace BR tag with something better. Suggestions how to improved the code are welcomed.
 * unranked_familia = clade Heterobranchia

Or do you suggest a code like this? (note that there are repeating rows with a word "clade") It seems very simple, but it would demand to place it exactly in the correct place where it should display. But I am not sure if it is compatible with the actual philosophy way how the modern template of taxobox is written. I would like to hear an opinion from template makers too. --Snek01 (talk) 11:48, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
 * clade = Heterobranchia
 * informal_group = Opisthobranchia
 * clade = Nudipleura
 * subclade = Pleurobranchomorpha

 * User:Hesperian and I had talked about this sort of thing a while ago (link). He had some good ideas there and we echo some of the frustrations above. The problem is to know how many clades to put between ranks so that both ranks and clades will be useful to all groups of taxa. How many clades and in what places will everyone need? --Rkitko (talk) 12:04, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

 * Taxonomy of the Gastropoda (Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005) needs to put five clades between classis and superfamilia. It is possible to place it inside the taxobox (see Orthalicidae for example), but how to do it to look good? --Snek01 (talk) 12:47, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

 * We have to get rid of misleading code such as unranked_familia, since we're dealing with a clade and not a family. Instead we should be using codes such as |informal group_1 = ....; |informal group_2 = ....: clade_1 = ....; |clade_2 = .... ---> |clade_5 = ....; |subclade_1 = ....  etc. With such codes the taxoboxes would display the right information in the right way.  JoJan (talk) 18:22, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

 * This area seems to be fertile ground for inconclusive discussions, but my advice is (still) to reduce the number of groups depicted in the taxobox. For example:

Kingdom: 	Plantae (unranked)*: 	Angiosperms (unranked)*: 	Magnoliids Order: 	Canellales

 * or

Class: Gastropoda Suborder*: Nudibranchia Superfamily: Tritonioidea Family: Bornellidae

 * (where * means I don't have a strong opinion about whether these say "clade" or "unranked" or pick a rank which seems moderately widely used). Having the text of the article give names for the various groups in between is fine, where it discusses phylogeny (although in some cases I'm not aware of such names existing, for example for the putative clade of Piperales plus Canellales), but they don't necessarily need to go in the taxobox. Kingdon (talk) 14:16, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Incorrect statement, and name field
Am I right to say the following statement is incorrect: Common names of higher taxa are always given in sentence case and in the plural (e.g. Marine hatchetfishes). If so the sentence should be removed. I also think something should be mentioned about the ability for article titles to be italicized when the "name =" field is removed. This is useful for species + genera without a common name. Jack (talk) 00:33, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

 * The part about the plural is correct (right?). As for capitalization, both here and for species, it seems like we should just be referring to WikiProject Tree of life (whose rules are kind of complicated/controversial) - in fact generally the name parameter should be omitted as the considerations for picking the article name itself are pretty much the same as for a taxobox name. Kingdon (talk) 12:42, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

 * Okay, now I've thought about it I'm wrong, and was unclear. I was thinking about article titles not being pluralized, rather than inside a taxobox, and was not referring to the capitalisation. One time where the name parameter can be of use is when referencing the common name authority (for e.g. when referencing MSW3), though that can be put into the lead. Jack (talk) 15:11, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

"Image" section needs update
The main Wikipedia SOP has changed, and in fact the "300px" referral to the MoS is false.

By now, almost every infobox outside ToL has been using fixed-width images for some time now, except for emblems, coats-of-arms and other simple graphic designs. Photos and maps in leading infoboxes are generally set to around 250px fixed-width.

It was argued that "users can set their default thumb width, hence the lead image needs no size parameter". But this is vapid, since only a tiny fraction of Wikipedia readers have an user account - most will have the default thumb with, which in taxoboxes a) looks ugly as hell (due to taxobox width > default thumb width) and b) for most images reduces quality to a point where too little detail can be discerned to fulfill the purpose of a lead image.

Judging from the number of WP editor accounts and the Alexa rating of WP, it seems that less than 10% (perhaps as few as 2-4%) of Wikipedia readers can change thumbnail display size. The rest are stuck with 180px thumbnails.

Thus, to agree with the overall Wikipedia MoS and its prevailing interpretation for article lead infoboxes, the policy should be changed to:

 * use of the image_width parameter in taxoboxes is not mandatory, but encouraged (as it is the lead image)
 * images should not be wider than 300px though
 * (from personal experience: depending on image width/heigth and article length, the image_width param should be between 200 and 260px. 200px for images far higher than wide, 260px for images far wider than high and for very very long articles)

It is also advisable - if you have tweaked your user account's display settings extensively - to view your contributions without being logged in. It is nice if the article looks very great under an editor's particular settings, but if 9 in 10 Wikipedia readers get a layout that sucks, it fails the purpose of Wikipedia.

Note that in-text images should still (almost) never have a size parameter, except when it otherwise breaks or messes up the layout, or for images containing lots of detail crucially relevant to the article. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:35, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

 * You wrote, that Statement of principles (SOP) has changed. Where is the updated statement of principles? --Snek01 (talk) 20:57, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

 * See SOP #1. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 02:57, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Compare image code across Wikipedia as of 2006 and as of late 2008. Also compare in-text imagebox code. I think there might have been a global MoS proposal to drop image width altogether around 2007; if so it was repealed or dropped. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 03:05, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

 * You do have to be aware of the history of the image_width parameter. Part of the discussion in question is here for example. As you can see, the ToL policy does not conform to general Wikipedia policy since over a year. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Italic article titles
It's possible to italicise titles of articles but there is no mention of how to do this on this page. I think that these 4 methods cover all eventualities:

 * If the "name" section in the taxobox is the same as the article name you can simply remove the "name" section. The article will be the same but the the title will be in italics. Here's an example diff:
 * If the "name" section is a common name can be put in the article. e.g.
 * If the article title has (genus), (species) or anything else in brackets in the title then also works - it just changes the first word in the title. e.g.
 * If these don't work there's a manual way using the format: Eurydice (genus) This shouldn't be needed often but I did find some pages. e.g

This is also posted here. Should this manual be changed to take account of this? I posted at WP:MOS but this is probably a better place thinking about it. Smartse (talk) 14:43, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Separation of the basionym from other synonyms?
I would prefer to see the basionym of a species presented separately from all its other synonyms... What do you think ?Phn229 (talk) 04:16, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

 * Oppose I don't see the audience for the synonym section as being taxonomists, I see it as people who want to know whether some name they come across is the same species. If this is true, I don't see how the basionym-ness helps the typical reader. (Most people who care what a basionym is already know how to look it up on ipni.org and I assume there are similar sites for zoology). Kingdon (talk) 16:40, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment What might be more important is separating objective (nomenclatural) synonyms (including the basionym) from subjective (taxonomic) synonyms, since the former are always synonyms, and the latter may or may not be, depending on the reference.--Curtis Clark (talk) 18:22, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Etymology
Could a field be added for including the translation of the scientific name? I think that it would help a lot of people! Craig Pemberton (talk) 23:36, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

 * That's often harder to find than one might think (without WP:OR). We do have a List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names which is a few clicks away (follow "Scientific classification" link in the taxobox, then scroll down to "See also"). Kingdon (talk) 17:17, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Kingdon's probably right. The paper containing the original description is probably the only safe source for most taxa.  An etymology section is completely appropriate within the articles if hat's known.  I have done that frequently when working on recently described taxa.  --Aranae (talk) 18:06, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

New script for species microformat
Those of you using the Operator add-on in Firefox might like to know that there is an updated script to read the 'Species' microformat emitted by the Taxobox. More exciting developments soon! Andy Mabbett (User: Pigsonthewing ); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:42, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Automatic taxobox
Your input is requested in a final round of testing at Template_talk:Automatic_taxobox. We are looking for volunteers to check for problems with the code before it is released. Thanks! Martin  (Smith609 – Talk)  10:39, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

title: Wikipedia talk:Taxobox usage


text:
Roland Martin

Roland Martin may refer to:
 * Roland Martin (fisherman), host of American fishing show on TV channel Versus
 * Roland Martin (journalist) (born 1968), American author and syndicated columnist
 * Roland Martin (archaeologist) (1912-1997), French archaeologist

title: Roland Martin


text:
James David Edgar

Sir James David Edgar, (August 10, 1841 – July 31, 1899) was a Canadian politician.

In his twenties, Edgar was a law student, legal editor of the Toronto Globe, an alderman on Toronto's city council and an organizer for the Liberal Party in Ontario. He was also rare among English Canadians of the time for his sympathy for the rights of French-Canadians. Edgar was married to Matilda Ridout and together they had nine children.

Born in Hatley, Canada East (later Quebec), Edgar was educated at the Lennoxville Classical School (now Bishop's College School), where his father James Edgar was appointed the Second Master by the Rev. Lucius Doolittle, Rector of Sherbrooke. It was reported that despite the young age than his classmates, he is a hard-working student in his class. After the death of his father in 1850, he continued his education in Quebec City. He moved to Toronto as an adult and became a lawyer in 1864. He was elected an alderman in 1866, and was a supporter of George Brown and the Reform Party. He ran as a Liberal in the 1871 Ontario provincial election, but was defeated by a margin of four votes in his attempt to win a seat in the provincial legislature.

He was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in the 1872 federal election, and became Whip in the caucus of Alexander Mackenzie. He helped bring down the Conservative government over the Pacific Scandal. However, despite the election of a Liberal government in the ensuing election, Edgar was defeated in his own riding.

In 1874, he started a railway company called the Ontario and Pacific Junction Railway. This was an attempt to build a line between Toronto and Lake Nipissing. In 1881, it was renamed the Ontario and Sault Ste. Marie Railway. Both ventures failed to win a contract. Fred Cumberland, a partner in the O&PJR venture, formed a rival company called the Northern and Pacific Junction Railway. In 1888, the N&PJR merged with the Grand Trunk Railway.

Edgar was undaunted by these setbacks and in 1889 started a new company called the Belt Line Railway in Toronto. The city's steep ravines made access to some areas very difficult. The land developers of these areas required either a commuter railway or a system of bridges to ease access to their properties for buyers. This new venture sought to build a commuter rail line in Toronto connecting downtown with undeveloped neighbourhoods as far north as Eglinton Avenue between the Don River and the Humber River. Eventually two rail loops were built with 44 stations in total. The passenger railway opened in 1892 but ran for only two years, four months before going bankrupt. (The city built bridges, eventually.)

He used his experience to become the Liberal's railway critic when he returned to Parliament (and the Opposition benches) through an 1884 by-election.

In the 1880s, Edgar became a vocal opponent of the Protestant Protective Association, an anti-Catholic political party associated with the Ontario Conservative Party. He argued in favour of tolerance and cooperation between English and French Canadians as well as between Protestants and Catholics. He also argued against the concept of Imperial Federation, for greater Canadian independence from Britain, and in favour of reciprocity with the United States.

When the Liberals formed a government under Wilfrid Laurier following the 1896 federal election, Edgar was nominated to become Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada, and was given a knighthood by Queen Victoria. Edgar was in poor health, however, and died in 1899 prior to the end of this term.

title: James David Edgar


text:
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/taxobox usage/to do

 * 1) Support phylogenetic nomenclature (or make separate clade infobox).