Jump to content

Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Prior discussion

[edit]

Please add links to prior discussions and pages you've notified here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Notability guideline – original draft [1], advance notice [2], discussion leading to the draft [3]
  • WikiProject Tree of Life – advance notice [4]
  • WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES – advance notice [5]
  • WikiProject Palaeontology – advance notice [6]
  • Village pumps – June 2024 discussion
  • Wikiproject Paleontology - (fossil species guideline) [7]
    • Wikiproject Paleontology Discord server (offsite but public, join link can be found on the project page)
  • Wikiproject Dinosaurs - (fossil species guideline) [8]

FAQ

[edit]
Isn't this just spelling out what WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES has said for years?
That's the goal.
Does this change the number of notable species, compared to the existing rules?
It's not intended to. It might make it easier for non-specialist editors to recognize which should be presumed notable and which are non-notable, though.
What if there are no sources or only sources I don't think are reliable?
It is literally impossible to have a species accepted by taxonomists unless there are academic publications about the species. In some cases there are additional documentation requirements beyond published reliable sources. Information about the relevant academic sources are included in each entry in all reputable species databases. If you need help finding the academic sources, ask for help at the relevant WikiProject.
How many species qualify under this?
Maybe around two million, half of which are insects. That's the same as the current system. We already have articles on about about one out of six of these species, including most of the accepted vertebrates (i.e., birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals).
Aren't there nonillions of bacteria and viruses in the world?
That's individual organisms. Your body probably has more than 30 trillion microbes, but there are probably less than 1,000 different species in your body. At the moment, there are only about 15,000 recognized viruses and 25,000 recognized prokaryotes.[9][10] Estimates of how many non-recognized species there are in the world vary significantly, but non-recognized species are not presumed notable under either the current or the proposed system.
Could a non-recognized species be notable?
Yes, that happens rarely. For example, the virus that causes COVID-19 was temporarily notable according to the WP:GNG before it was officially recognized by taxonomists.
Does this apply to fossil species?
No. The discussion about fossil species concluded with a decision to address fossil species separately, at a later date. If you are interested in joining a future discussion about fossils, please put this page on your watchlist, or sign up for notifications at Wikipedia:Feedback request service#Wikipedia policies and guidelines.
Does this exempt species from the usual rules about mass creation or change the rules about mass creation?
No.
Won't people just spam in millions of WP:UGLY little articles?
They haven't during the last 20+ years, and this draft has the same rules that we've been using for the last 20+ years, so it seems unlikely to change the rate of article creation.
Does this prohibit merging articles?
No. Wikipedia:Notability#Whether to create standalone pages (aka NOPAGE and PAGEDECIDE) applies to all subjects, as does the Wikipedia:Consensus policy.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:27, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Background and interpretation section

[edit]

Any objection to removing the "Background and interpretation" section? I would be in favor of removing it because it doesn't really say much of substance. The guideline doesn't change whether it's included or not included, which suggests to me that the section is not needed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:38, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah it seems out of place, like something that should be attached to an RfC rather than the guideline itself. – Joe (talk) 18:48, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I put it in and think it's a good idea but it was a Bold edit and if someone objects please remove it per "R" in BRD. ; I have no objection and would not be even slightly miffed. North8000 (talk) 20:44, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My rationale was/is:

  1. As Joe mentioned, another possibility is to include it in the RFC. There is debate above about whether or not this would make the RFC wording biased. This would resolve that.
  2. "Notability" decisions incorporate other factors than just notability guidline criteria. (Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works) Even though prima facie this is not a notability criteria, it does provide a relevant consideration in "notability" decisions when utilizing this SNG, and one which aligns with what I think is the intent of the majority of the folks working on this. We don't want this to trigger big changes, including new mass or "assembly line" creation.
  3. There IS a danger that this guideline could unintentionally change the status quo rather than codify it. The status quo is that most new species articles violate (or are edge cases) regarding the current wp:notability guidelines. So being in this "twilight zone" probably makes creators more cautious......maybe adding more sources and material to fall less-short of GNG. And avoiding mass or production line or completionist type creation. This provides a bit more safety on that. And maybe a bit of extra assurance for folks who might otherwise oppose this SNG due to the above concerns.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:02, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Kevmin reverted the revert, so some talk page discussion is needed I think. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:54, 3 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I felt the addition appropriate, as the discussion has touched several times on the premise that any editor not directly involved in this part of the process may very well think this is fully novel and doesn't have the 2 decades(ish) of history and precedent behind it as a "cultural behavior of wikipedians".--Kevmin § 00:07, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe, but I don't think that belongs in the proposal itself. The best course of action, in my opinion, is to go into detail about the history of the proposal in the Support section. C F A 💬 00:11, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm inclined to omit this. It is true, and it's what I expect to happen. (Actually, regardless of whether this proposal is adopted, rejected, adjusted, etc., I expect that the community will continue doing the same things as they have been – my goal here is to write down what the community is doing, for greater clarity and transparency, without trying to change what the community is doing.) However, it's not necessarily helpful in applying this proposed guideline, especially to someone unfamiliar with Wikipedia's history in this particular area. It's a bit like saying "Drive down the street until you get to where the yellow house used to be". If you don't know where the yellow house used to be, or if you have two editors with different beliefs about where the yellow house used to be, then those instructions aren't helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:19, 4 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As described above, I think that it's a good idea but will not be unhappy or upset if it is removed. Let's just weigh in and decide one way or the other and then move on:North8000 (talk) 13:43, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Suggest Keeping per above rationale North8000 (talk) 13:43, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No one seems to be interested in a straw poll, so here's what I'm going to do:
    • I'm going to move that section to the talk page.
    • I'm going to archive most of the talk page, keeping the list of prior discussions and notifications (please expand, and please notify pages that seem relevant to you), the FAQ I wrote, and the ==Background and interpretation== section.
    • I'm going to start the RFC with the simplest/shortest question above. I'm expecting a fairly large number of responses, so instead of the Most popular formatting option, I'll add ===Discussion=== and ===Survey=== subsections.
    WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @WhatamIdoing: Should this section be archived? voorts (talk/contributions) 00:44, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think so, but I wanted to give the people in this discussion at least a chance to see it beforehand. Anyone who feels like it's been long enough should feel free to archive it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:59, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Background and interpretation

[edit]
Moved from Wikipedia:Notability (species)

The intention during the inception of this guideline is to align with existing practice and not cause any major changes regarding creation or deletion of articles. It should be interpreted in that context.

—moved here by WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:14, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to adopt this guideline

[edit]

Shall Wikipedia:Notability (species) be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:25, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Jump to: Discussion Survey Notifications

Discussion (NSPECIES)

[edit]

My intention in drafting this has been to match the long-standing practice of the community as closely as possible. I would like to thank the other editors who have spent the last month helping me collect all of the information in one place and who have patiently explained things that I didn't know. The proposal is stronger for their involvement; any errors remain mine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:27, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

BilledMammal, I've put a place for discussion first per this discussion at WT:RFC. We need to find ways to encourage questions and discussions instead of pushing editors straight into voting. For example, this would be an appropriate place for you to link to User:BilledMammal/NSPECIES and explain why you think that merging up to the genera level could be better than the community's current practice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:03, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The biggest issue with this proposal is that it violates both WP:PRIMARY and WP:NOTEVERYTHING. According to a subject-matter expert The situation of a species being described and thereafter having nothing published about it in secondary sources probably is true for at least 90% of all described species.
This means that for 90%+ of species no secondary sources will exist, and thus PRIMARY forbids us from having an article. Further, for most of those 90%+ of species there will be insufficient information for us to present merely a summary of the topic, rather than all knowledge on the topic, and thus NOTEVERYTHING forbids us from having an article.
As written, this guideline violates two of our most important policies, WP:OR and WP:NOT, and we cannot pass a guideline that is so contradictory to established consensus. BilledMammal (talk) 04:13, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • BilledMammal, this is a question for you: I think everyone was well aware you were going to oppose this proposal. But what do you want instead, if this fails? Should a section be added to WP:AADD, like after the WP:SCHOOLRFC (now WP:OUTCOMESBASED in AADD), stating that editors should not cite WP:NSPECIES (the section in WP:OUTCOMES) in deletion discussions? I think you can see the fallacy here. Citing NSPECIES (a common outcome), especially if the community rejects a proposal to formalize it, is a circular argument and unhelpful. But I am sure editors will continue to do it if this proposal fails. Do you think it should be removed altogether from WP:OUTCOMES? If so, should editors be able to take species articles to AfD and delete them if they fail GNG? If the proposal fails but nothing else happens, we are just going back to the default-to-keep status quo which is no different than if this passed. I hope you choose to clarify your oppose vote. C F A 💬 04:44, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Perhaps if this were to fail, he'd like to propose a different approach. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:53, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I would, and I will expand on that if this doesn’t pass in consultation with the relevant Wikiprojects.
    However, I have a question of my own for you and CFA; if this does pass, how do you propose we handle articles that pass this guideline but violate WP:PRIMARY, particularly considering that when a guideline and a policy conflict we are required to defer to the policy? BilledMammal (talk) 06:02, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    But what does this have to do with notability? Article content (including the exclusive use of primary sources) is independent of notability. Nothing in this guideline says that you can't upmerge a series of species articles to genus in the event that only primary sources can be found (though I would suggest you be exceedingly thorough in your search for sources both online and offline before attempting such a merge) - you may face community opposition independently of this guideline, but the goal of this guideline is to codify existing practice that species articles are not deleted, not to say that you cannot pursue reasonable alternatives to deletion when appropriate. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 06:20, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If policy says that we can’t have articles on 90%+ of the topics that this guideline says is notable, then clearly there is an issue with the guideline. Worse, it is certain to result in the guideline being misused, with editors citing it in deletion discussions even when the issue is WP:PRIMARY rather than WP:N.
    Keeping in mind that WP:PRIMARY is about the content of the article, I would suggest a resolution to this conflict - add a line to this guideline saying that stand-alone species articles cannot be created unless a non-primary source is included.
    Would this be acceptable to you, CFA, and WhatamIdoing? BilledMammal (talk) 06:26, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Is the creation of new stubs with only primary sources (or none at all) an issue at the moment? SNGs don't override core policies so this seems like a matter to be discussed with new page patrollers. I'm not familiar with their standard practice for dealing with such articles but I don't anticipate their response will change with the adoption of this guideline. Are SNGs required to delve into matters of article creation and quality standards? This guideline is just codifying the general consensus that all accepted species are notable and should not be deleted, not that they are required to have a standalone article or that new page patrollers/AfC reviewers must approve them regardless of their quality. I just don't think this is something that needs to be specified here.
    Continuing further off topic from notability: I must also note that @Dyanega's comment you quoted regarding 90% of all described species also says The expectation of secondary sources is nonsensical when viewed against the massive literature where species are described. If a species can't be "notable" until and unless there are facts about it that are discussed in non-primary sources, then practically the only species that will be notable are birds, honeybees, butterflies, sharks, flowers, trees, some mammals, and a few dinosaurs. Frankly, it should be entirely possible, and entirely acceptable, to compose a species article in Wikipedia using a single primary source and nothing else [...] deleting an article, or refusing to allow its creation, because all that exists is one paper in which its identity and everything else known about it has been established, does a serious disservice to both the scientific community AND the lay community - a sentiment I, and I imagine several others here, wholeheartedly agree with. Wikipedia policy (particularly WP:OR stating that articles should not be based solely on primary sources, despite the fact that primary sources are not necessarily worse than secondary sources) was not developed with topics like this in mind, and it needs to evolve to suit the needs of readers. It is out of step with the scientific community in this regard, to the detriment of our goal of building the encyclopedia. We know that excellent taxon articles can be written solely based on the paper that described the taxon, and readers are not benefitted by deleting such articles. Would an article with secondary sources be better? Most likely, but deleting articles based only on reliable primary sources before they have a chance to be improved is not in anyone's best interest. Just my two cents - probably best to move this discussion about primary sources and policy elsewhere. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 07:35, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    In a situation where an article passed an SNG but was all primary sources, an NPP would probably add a primary sources maintenance tag, then mark it as reviewed. NPPs mainly look for CSDs and check notability. When problems with other things are found, a maintenance tag can optionally be added to help signal others that it needs cleanup, but it is not NPP's core mission to fix problems with OR, NPOV, etc. if the article itself passes notability. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:41, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for the explanation!
    So, we can establish that at the moment, barring significant issues, articles with only primary sources will be marked as reviewed and tagged in such a way that other users may address their issues. We know that taxon articles like this are already astronomically unlikely to be deleted regardless, so the best course of action currently is to either improve the article or upmerge per WP:PAGEDECIDE as a last resort. This current system would remain unchanged under this proposed guideline. @BilledMammal, am I correct in saying that you oppose this current system and want to see no articles of this nature created at all, regardless of potential for improvement/upmerging? Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 08:02, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    We shouldn't be creating articles that violate a core policy, and we can't create a guideline that suggests it is appropriate to create two million articles when 1.8+ million of those articles would violate a core policy. BilledMammal (talk) 05:46, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    BilledMammal, I'm sympathetic to this, but you'll probably have better luck drafting a broader proposal about upmerging or clarifying use of primary sources. Right now, this proposed SNG is already common practice. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:27, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Thebiguglyalien: I was in the process of drafting such a guideline, when this guideline was drafted to block my efforts.
    If it doesn’t pass I’ll continue my efforts, but if it does I’m not sure it would be appropriate to continue my work? BilledMammal (talk) 02:40, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I mean, from a functional perspective would it not be easier to make adjustments if there was a concrete policy rather than an unwritten consensus? Curbon7 (talk) 03:03, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Given that the intent was to prevent my proposal being considered, I’m not sure that would be appropriate in line with our behavioural guidelines like WP:IDHT?
    However, if you don’t believe this would establish a consensus against upmerging, I would happily write an amendment and open a discussion on editing this guideline, after sufficient discussion with the relevant Wikiprojects. BilledMammal (talk) 03:06, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No one is trying to block your proposal. We are proposing this guideline because it's what we think is best, not because we're out to get you. Regardless of the outcome of this RfC, you are welcome to continue developing your proposal and put it up for consideration when you feel it is ready. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 03:09, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    BilledMammal, I don't think that you have accurately summarized the policy, which says "As a temporary measure, if a guideline appears to conflict with a policy, editors may assume the policy takes precedence."
    In answer to your underlying question, I assume that "what to do with a notable species subject, when we have only [what some editors call] primary sources" will be the same as "what to do with a notable medical subject, when we have only [what MEDRS calls] primary sources". This comes up all the time around experimental pharmaceutical products, which often can't even produce any truly independent medical sources either (because the pharmaceutical company controls who gets access to the compound, and therefore who can test it). The answer appears to be that we create the article anyway, with the WP:BESTSOURCES that we have. We don't even usually bother to taag it with {{primary}}. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:46, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Can you clarify why that means I didn't accurately summarize it?
    As for the rest, if you think there is an issue with a core policy then you should seek to change the policy. Introducing a guideline that conflicts with the core policy is not a viable solution, and will not stop species articles being correctly taken to AfD. BilledMammal (talk) 05:46, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Even if you take the most reductive reading of WP:OR/WP:PRIMARY, this seems like an obvious WP:IAR situation. The encyclopedia would be improved by making more information about species widely accessible to the lay public, even if the only source provided is the "primary" (but still entirely reliable) paper that described it. To delete an otherwise decent article on a species just for that reason would not only fail to improve the encyclopedia, it would actively make it worse. You saying that these articles should be correctly taken to AfD, not dealt with through improvement or even alternatives such as merging as you had previously suggested, is concerning to me. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 06:18, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    How is interpreting Do not base an entire article on primary sources as meaning we are not allowed to base entire articles on primary sources reductive?
    And you can't WP:IAR the same rule for 1.8+ million articles. That's the point where you either need to change or follow the rule. BilledMammal (talk) 06:30, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Last I counted, we didn't have 1.8+ million articles on species. It's less than 5% of Wikipedia's articles.
    This guideline wouldn't be the first time that the community has set up a notability guideline that doesn't require supposedly mandatory elements. See also Wikipedia:Notability (academics), which has eight different ways of justifying an article on an academic, and only one of them (the first) is requires the fulfillment of that criteria to be "demonstrated by independent reliable sources". The only mention of secondary sources is in the nutshell, where it says academics don't get that kind of coverage. Wikipedia:Notability (geographic features) doesn't even mention secondary sources.
    Fun fact: Wikipedia doesn't have a rule that actually requires the policies and guidelines to be logical and consistent. I think it's highly desirable, and I've pushed hard for it, for many years, but wikis are consensus-driven projects, and if the community wants to say X in one page and not-X in another, and it thinks it can make it work – well, we can't actually stop them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:34, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    According to you, this would endorse the creation of 2+ million articles. According to the SME, 90%+ of those - 1.8+ million - won't have secondary sourcing. BilledMammal (talk) 06:39, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Adopting this doesn't change what's notable. WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES already "endorses" the same. (Actually, more, since SPECIESOUTCOMES doesn't exclude fossil species, and this proposal currently does.)
    I don't think the SME's offhand guess is correct, but it's going to vary significantly by field, and even more dramatically according to the definition of secondary source that an editor chooses to apply. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:49, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That is a hyperbolic slippery slope argument, and I am not particularly convinced that subject matter expert you're quoting would agree with you, given the full context of that quote. The insistence on policy above all else, including all possible benefits to readers, is bordering wikilawyering at this point. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 06:51, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    BilledMammal, what would you consider to be a secondary source? High quality taxonomic databases that list valid species and their synonyms? A press release from an institution employing a scientist who described a new species? A news item derived entirely from a press release? A news item with additional reporting beyond what's in a press release (e.g. interviewing unaffiliated scientists about the impact of a discovery in their field).
    The status quo with species articles has a major underlying understanding that taxonomic databases are secondary sources.
    Most new species don't get press releases, but almost every new species that comes to the attention of the general public has a press release, and reporting doesn't typically go beyond the press release. Peltocephalus maturin is a very large fossil turtle with a pop culture namesake; the sources are the primary description, a press release, and something that doesn't mention the subject of the article. Sphaerotheca varshaabhu is a frog discovered in densely populated area; the sources are the primary description and newpaper rehashing a press release. Plantdrew (talk) 18:41, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    None of the things you listed are valid for determining notability. Secondary sources are those that collect and analyze information from primary sources or other secondary sources. Press releases and original reporting rarely do this. Notability also requires WP:SIGCOV, and databases are often used as the archetypal example of sources that do not provide SIGCOV. A secondary source on a species with SIGCOV would most commonly be an academic book or journal article describing aspects of the species or its discovery (which is distinct from a novel study, of which the findings are also primary). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:35, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think that "we are required to defer to the policy" is rather different from "As a temporary measure, editors may assume", don't you? BTW, I wrote that section, so it'll generally be safe to interpret the word may in it in accordance with the definitions given in RFC 2119. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:24, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I disagree. It's clear that policies take precedence over guidelines (and core policies take precedence over policies).
    As this would be a dispute between a core policy and a guideline, it is obvious which one we should defer to. BilledMammal (talk) 06:30, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I believe it's more common to say that legal policies take precedence over all other policies (copyvios get deleted, no matter how notable, verifiable, and neutral they are), and from there to say that whatever policy I think will help me win is the one that "objectively" is more important. Alternatively, if what I think will win is a guideline, then the guideline is "more relevant", and if what I want is one of the many unwritten rules, then it's the immemorial custom of the sea, I mean, the long-standing practice of The Community™.
    But this particular one is a bit simpler than that: I wrote that sentence. I am telling you what that sentence means. So long as we are talking about a sentence that I wrote, if you think that you know more than I do, then I invite you to check your assumptions and try again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:38, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No offense, but having written the sentence gives you no special authority regarding its meaning.
    Further, you didn't write the specific line under discussion, you merely moved it from a different section of the policy. BilledMammal (talk) 06:40, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually, having written a sentence does make me have special authority over what I intended that sentence to communicate.
    Check the diff again; you have misread it. BTW, if you are not intimately familiar with RFC 2119, then I gently suggest reading that before replying again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:44, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your interpretation of WP:OR with relation to primary sources may not be monolithic in the community; see Anomie's comment at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#we may need to fix wp:or. May be something worth having a wider discussion about. Curbon7 (talk) 05:01, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As currently worded, WP:OR is very clear that we cannot base articles solely on primary sources; Do not base an entire article on primary sources.
It’s possible that this will change, but until it does we can’t create guidelines that violate it - and I think the discussion you linked is about a related but different issue and won’t result in changes to the quoted aspect. BilledMammal (talk) 05:59, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The community can create any guidelines it wants, as they always have.
The line you quote from WP:OR was added in 2009. The context on the talk page (the line itself was not discussed) indicates that editors were concerned about WP:NOTPLOT problems. Relevantly, the definition of a primary source said "published notes of laboratory and field experiments or observations written by the person(s) who conducted or observed the experiments". It seems to me that "published notes" is not the same thing as "a peer-reviewed scientific journal article" or "a reference book". Consequently, I don't think the intention was to ban Wikipedia articles based on journal articles and reference works. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
None deleted? What about redirected? What about smerges? SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:19, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The only time someone's tried to merge more than a couple in recent memory ended up with him being dragged to ANI and all the edits (500+) getting mass reverted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:24, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Survey (NSPECIES)

[edit]
  • Support this formalization of WP:NSPECIES. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:27, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: this has been the de facto consensus for years. Species with a valid/correct name are never deleted at AfD (usually citing WP:NSPECIES), so this is the next logical step to avoid circular arguments. For a species to have a valid/correct name, there has to have been at least a significant description in a reputable, peer-reviewed academic publication. Makes sense to me. C F A 💬 23:54, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support with the understanding that this codifies NSPECIES and that "presumed notable" in the context of this guideline implies an irrebuttable presumption, in contrast to the GNG's rebuttable presumption. The better way to achieve this would be to change all instances of "presumed notable" to "are notable". voorts (talk/contributions) 00:16, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I also think that adding an example of a notable species would be helpful for editors who don't know much about taxonomy. My understanding is that in a species article, a link to particular database showing the species's name status is sufficient to meet (the current version of) NSPECIES. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:13, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Glancing through the prior discussions in the archive for this talk page, I see these species listed as examples: Ginkgo biloba (plant), Persoonia terminalis (plant), and SARS-CoV-2 (virus). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:49, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support As others have mentioned, this is already defacto practice pulling from WP:OUTCOMES, As of 2022, no officially named species listed in Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Organisms has been deleted since at least mid-2016.. The guideline could be fleshed out in the future to explain more to less technical audiences about the reasoning behind this, but this is a solid threshold to start the guideline at. In short, having an entirely different walk of life is a big deal, and that's solidified in the real world when scientists confirm it has been formally described and given a full (and correct) species name. This would also help avoid WP:NOTBURO issues at AfD with nominations of existing species. KoA (talk) 01:48, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. First, we already we have hundreds of thousands of species sub-stubs such as Phobaeticus hypharpax, Sorhagenia cracens, and Asteromyia euthamiae. Most can never be expanded, per a subject-matter expert who said The situation of a species being described and thereafter having nothing published about it in secondary sources probably is true for at least 90% of all described species.
    Per the drafter, this guideline would endorse the creation of millions more, and editors supporting this should ask themselves if they really want a third of the articles on Wikipedia to be species sub-stubs. These species do warrant coverage on Wikipedia, but there is no reason they have to be covered in a standalone article, and our readers would be better served if they weren't.
    Second, it would violate both WP:PRIMARY and WP:NOTEVERYTHING. The former tells us Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them, and 90%+ of the articles that would be created under this guideline would violate that. The latter tells us that an article should not be a complete presentation of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject, and for the 90%+ of described species which lack coverage in secondary sources it is not possible to present a summary of accepted knowledge, as there is insufficient accepted knowledge to do so.
    Finally, any new SNG should be careful to discourage mass creation, to avoid the disruption caused by NSPORTS and similar guidelines, but this proposed guideline would encourage mass creation. Simply by existing it will lessen the requirements that must be met for mass creation to be permitted, and according the drafter it would be appropriate for individual editors to churn out between 24 and 49 boilerplate articles "per day" - in other words, between 8,760 and 17,885 articles per year. For context, this would exceed the rate Lugnuts created articles at. BilledMammal (talk) 02:38, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Addressing each point in order:
    1. Why aren't editors served by having individual articles? Every species sub stub I've seen has an infobox that presents the info in a logical manner along with citations to one or two reliable sources. They're concise and tell the interested reader everything they need to know about the species. Presumably the alternative would be lots of list articles with even less information on each species or unwieldy and lengthy tables. As a reader, I prefer the page. There are worse things in the world than a third of WIkipedia being relatively complete and concise sub stubs.
    2. I think you are misapplying NOTEVERYTHING. As the introduction to the list of NOTs, it's merely stating that we should not jam articles with cruft (i.e., the things listed in the following sub sections). It isn't saying that you can't have an article that summarizes what is stated about a topic in all available independent reliable sources. By that logic, nobody could create an article about a subject that only has five significant, reliable sources written about it, no matter how detailed those sources are.
    3. 24-49 boilerplate articles per day (which is a range where someone might run afoul of the bot policy according to MASSCREATE) is only an issue if you have a problem with these articles. As noted, I don't think there's a problem with species sub stubs, so I don't see a problem with someone manually creating 24-49 species articles per day if that's how they would like to spend their time improving the encyclopedia.
    voorts (talk/contributions) 03:54, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    1. When the articles are only sub-stubs, they aren't served because they are given very little information. They would be given more information by an article that covered both the species and the genus - and for such sub-stubs, its very possible to have a list or table article with just as much information as the sub-stub, and indeed the alternative proposal which encourages the creation of such list and table articles would have explicitly supporting creating species articles when there is too much information available to include in the table or list.
    2. You misunderstand. The issue isn't using every source, it's using everything from a source - presenting the totality, rather than a summary. Further, because these are primary sources, as I mentioned this also violates WP:PRIMARY.
    3. A huge part of the backlash to NSPORTS was the mass creation of such sub-stubs. Even if you don't see a problem with such articles, you should seek to avoid their mass creation to avoid the same backlash occurring here. BilledMammal (talk) 04:04, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Well, mass-creation is never a good idea, and this policy doesn't in any way endorse it. Cremastra (talk) 14:25, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    NB that I never said it was "appropriate" for an editor to "churn out" that many articles 365 days per year, nor do I say that any editor has actually done that for a year (or even for a few months). I have only said that the existing rules in the Wikipedia:Bot policy, which were implemented because an editor (who is still an admin) was occasionally dropping a couple hundred articles at once on the new article feed, do not apply to editors who create articles at a rate of one or two an hour. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:30, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Voorts I disagree with your characterization of lots of list articles with even less information on each species or unwieldy and lengthy tables. Most genera pages already have a plain list of all species in the article (up to a few dozen) or in a spinoff article (if more). The information in a typical sub-stub (including the taxonbox) usually just consists of the species name, the name of the person who discovered it, the year discovered, maybe conservation status, maybe habitat, maybe 1-3 sentences extra. All of that can be included in a reasonably small table (in comparison to existing lists), with nothing left out, if you include an "additional notes" column (and obviously, if a specific cell in that column becomes too unwieldy, a separate article would be warranted). Mach61 20:03, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The issues that you raise here are not likely to change (for better or for worse) under this proposed guideline. Stubs will be made regardless, and even then, stubs are not harmful. Improving stubs is my main passion on Wikipedia - it is often very easy to transform a one sentence stub into a informative and relatively comprehensive article. Wikipedia is a work-in-progress, and the current state of an article being poor does not mean that the subject is not notable. An article being a stub right now is not especially helpful, but it is even less helpful to dismiss the subject of an article because of its current state. Simply having a speciesbox and taxon identifiers can be useful to readers! That said, for a taxon to be presumed notable under this guideline it must have "a significant description to be published in a reputable academic publication" and be "accepted by the relevant international body of taxonomists" - this is to say, a taxon presumed notable under this guideline will have at least enough information published about it to build a Start class article. The issue of taxon stubs on Wikipedia is not an issue of notability, but an issue of manpower to improve these stubs.
    Furthermore, this guideline does not overrule WP:PAGEDECIDE - you may encounter opposition from users, but this policy does not prohibit merging, and I can think of several scenarios in which I would personally support upmerging (one that comes to mind is certain species complexes, the members of which are likely individually notable under this guideline, but are better presented in a single article due to their similarity). This guideline only states that (accepted) species are presumed notable, not that they must have individual articles or that they cannot be merged. That said, it is evident from previous discussion that there is community opposition to general upmerging, and this will be the case regardless of whether or not this proposal is accepted.
    Ultimately, this guideline remains a reflection of existing practice, and its adoption seems unlikely to have any impact on the issues you've raised. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:11, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    In re you may encounter opposition from users: Looking at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1112#Undiscussed mass article merging and redirection by BilledMammal from 2022, it appears that he already did encounter opposition from other editors. After 200+ comments amounting to about 0.9 tomats of text, I think the main result is that he boldly made more than 500 merge-related edits to species articles over the space of about 36 hours that all got rolled back, and a few people suggested that it might be a good idea to have an RFC about whether to formalize WP:NSPECIES as an WP:SNG. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:51, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I just expanded two of the substubs mentioned by Billedmammal above, supposedly as examples of substubs that can never be expanded. I welcome the purportedly inevitable tide of millions of species articles predicted to swamp the encyclopaedia by formalising this guideline. Esculenta (talk) 03:31, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    One of them is still a sub-stub, and the other you expanded by closely paraphrasing a sole primary source, exacerbating the WP:NOTEVERYTHING and WP:PRIMARY issues and potentially introducing WP:COPYVIO issues. This is the issue with allowing the creation of standalone articles without any secondary coverage.
    Please also note that I said most, not all could never be expanded.
    Plus, if I hadn't mentioned them, would you have worked on them? They hadn't been expanded in six years, so I doubt it. BilledMammal (talk) 03:38, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Neither is a sub-stub; if you can't use the accepted terminology correctly, the communication problem is on your end. The other article is properly paraphrased from the original source, as it should be; WP:NOTEVERYTHING doesn't really apply here, as one expects to find a description of a species in the Wikipedia article about the species. You gave these three examples of species articles, and then followed with the comment "Most can never be expanded...", so you can't flip flop and claim "I didn't say that", because we know what you implied. You whined about these articles, giving them as examples of unexpandable articles, and they were noticed by other editors and expanded. So Wikipedia works. You say most could never be expanded; I say you're just plain wrong. Esculenta (talk) 03:49, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict) Please be civil. Saying an editor whined and similar does not contribute to a productive editing environment.
    And again, I did not say these were unexpandable. I had no idea if these specific examples were or weren't, and I fully expected that an editor like you would try to expand them. However, it is very relevant to note that you weren't able to do so without violating two or three Wikipedia policies, including core policies, and I consider that very strong evidence for why this proposal cannot pass. BilledMammal (talk) 03:54, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This seems very pedantic and unproductive. Esculenta's point is very clear - it is possible for an editor to find sources and improve taxon stubs with relatively little effort, and your assertion that most can never be expanded is speculation, not fact. Esculenta is showing that they are willing to actually address substubs in a way that benefits Wikipedia - by putting in the effort and improving them, not dismissing them as non-notable or unfixable simply because of the current state of their article.
    Plus, if I hadn't mentioned them, would you have worked on them? Not sure what you're trying to say here. You provided examples of substubs, and someone proved that they could be improved with five minutes worth of effort. Taking this question in good faith: I personally find substubs to improve by through maintenance categories, or by searching manually for taxa I'm interested in working on and picking the most neglected articles. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:47, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @BilledMammal, @Ethmostigmus and Esculenta - The logic of "this is a stub that can't be improved" has already been proven wrong once. [list] had thousands of stubs that BilledMammal thought could supposedly never be improved. Yet I've been able to improve many of these with limited materials.KatoKungLee (talk) 15:34, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I just expanded two of the substubs mentioned by Billedmammal above. Diffs for convenience: 1, 2. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:58, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reluctant support. I have reservations about anything that amounts to "don't bother with sources or general notability, just make the article". But in terms of P&G following practice, this is more clear cut than most notability issues. Some of my concern would be alleviated if it were acknowledged in the text that this does not invalidate WP:PAGEDECIDE. That might actually be worth considering for all SNGs. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:18, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I thought the idea that this guideline does not invalidate WP:PAGEDECIDE was self evident, but I agree that this could be made more explicit. I would definitely support adding it to the See also section alongside WP:MASSCREATE (and, outside the scope of this proposal, doing the same for other SNGs/making changes to PAGEDECIDE to explicitly address SNGs) Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:57, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I also think adding PAGEDECIDE as a reminder in "See also" is a good idea. Cremastra (talk) 13:17, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No SNG invalidates PAGEDECIDE; to do so would invalidate the use of editors' judgement and the WP:Consensus policy. We could, if it seemed useful, add that as a ==See also==, but I am reluctant to make any changes, even one so small as this, during this RFC. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:07, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This seems to be a consistent point of confusion so I do think putting it under the See also section of the guideline is warranted. I think it's also worth adding to the FAQ section above. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 10:24, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
     Done [12] WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:51, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This is not a new SNG in practice, but a codification of the existing consensus. I do not think this would negate WP:NOPAGE, which is listed just a few sections below WP:SNG at Wikipedia:Notability. Curbon7 (talk) 04:54, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the mass creation point is not a concern. Any mass creation request for thousands and thousands of stubs will likely be declined, and any out-of-process mass creation will be dealt with swiftly and strongly. Curbon7 (talk) 21:05, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support given that this guideline codifies existing practice and changes very little (bar providing explicit guidance on non-accepted taxa, hybrids, subspecies, etc). The issue of species notability has already largely been settled via community consensus (per WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES) and it's just a matter of putting it to paper. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 05:09, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, this formalises what I always hoped was true, that properly accepted species were notable, while doubtful names were not. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:40, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. We should bring our PAGs into alignment with actual practice whenever possible. I first added species to the "De facto but unwritten SNGs" section of my SNG notes back in 2021, and nothing has changed since then. Species are almost always kept at AFD. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:05, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Policies and guidelines are meant to be descriptive of practice, and this proposal meets that standard. I have read and considered BilledMammal's comments in opposition but I am unconvinced by them. Thryduulf (talk) 10:23, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: I have my concerns about sub-stubs, and restrictions on them, but my first goal is getting some kind of reasonable actual guideline that represents existing de facto consensus. Cremastra (talk) 13:16, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per CFA. I find Voorts' rebuttal to the upmerging opposition rationale persuasive. Sdkb talk 13:41, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support A guideline which is intended to codify existing practice. For many reasons it's bad when current practice violates the rules, and so this will solve that problem. I have a few concerns which will/would be assuaged by considering "intended to codify existing practice" to be a key element of this RFC. Current practice is that since these technically are breaking the rules, new articles tend to be cautions and include extra sourcing, content and images. We don't want to trigger a lot of assembly-line or completionist type article creations, nor some type of deletion-fest of established articles. I would encourage other respondents to say the same thing and if this passes perhaps that could be included in the close. North8000 (talk) 15:35, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was previously an advocate (in general) for up-merges but I have reversed myself because: 1. I would get very confusing as where to find the material 2. When non-experts edit, it likely to have misplaced items. 3. As long as there is at least some material (which I think should be the norm)(and it's a highly encyclopedic area like species) what not have it be an article, which is the way that Wikipedia is organized. North8000 (talk) 14:14, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Reinforcing what is already a reality, if this is successful and becomes an SNG it can then be tweaked and evolved like any other SNG. IMO nobody is going to be saying that approval locks in every detail of the initial SNG. Despite of lot of careful work on this by many people prior to the RFC, I think that all would acknowledge it would be a miracle to have the initial version be complete and perfect. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:04, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as intended to codify existing practice, per Dyanega's statement, North8000's Background and interpretation, & #Background and interpretation section.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:39, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Per WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES, this has already been a de facto SNG for at least 8 years. Charcoal feather (talk) 16:35, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Per long standing application in the wild of WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES, and per the numerous comments by Dyanega, North8000, CFA, Voorts, an Esculenta. I find nothing compelling about the hyper-what-ifing and over-dissection of other policies made by BilledMammal in their commentary. --Kevmin § 16:58, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, at least for NSPECIES' current state. I accept that actual deletion of species pages is off the table, but up-merging and redirecting, while uncommon now, is an underexplored solution, and may have a chance of actually being adopted. I base this off an experience I had with a page on a species of ladybug (can't remember the name RN), where every singe mention of it I could find cited the same 19th century German book. I ultimately decided to WP:BLAR to the genera page. Perhaps we should set the bar for auto-notability at genus. Mach61 19:11, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You don't seem to have created any redirects to anything that looks like a binomial name, and nothing in Category:Coccinellidae genera has a redirect created by you. Very few binomial names redirect to ladybug genera, and most of those few were created by Dyanega before you created your account.
    That 19th-century book was probably the 'authority' for the species. A specific document, often a monograph that compares and contrasts related species (and thus is definitely WP:SECONDARY in Wikipedia's terms) is often designated as the official source of the species name, and will always be cited in any scholarly effort to collect and systematize species. If the authority was actually German, then it might have been Georg Wolfgang Franz Panzer, but if you just meant a German-sounding name, then Ludwig Redtenbacher is also possible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:34, 10 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with your concerns RE upmerging and redirecting in some cases, but this seems to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. NOPAGE is still a guideline and this guideline can always be amended to give some guidance on when BLARing/upmerging are appropriate. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:50, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Voorts and Mach61: Would it address your concerns about upmerging and redirecting if the guideline was updated to say that stand-alone species articles should not be created unless a reliable secondary source was included? BilledMammal (talk) 05:47, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Based on your discussion above with Ethmostigmus, that would appear to eviscerate the goal of this SNG. voorts (talk/contributions) 06:46, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It would endorse the creation of hundreds of thousands of species articles, and it would endorse the coverage of millions more in higher-level articles.
    I don't think that is eviscerating the goal of this SNG, and it would have the added benefit of ensuring that this SNG complies with core policies. BilledMammal (talk) 06:47, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    So far, the community has only required the citation of a source for articles about BLPs. All other subject areas operate under WP:NEXIST rules, which state that notability is never to be judged on the basis of whether a source has already been "included". WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:51, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    And sports figures, living and dead. In that guideline, it was added to prevent the creation of articles that would be very likely to violate policy - it’s unclear why such a clarification would be unhelpful here, unless you support the creation of policy-violating articles. BilledMammal (talk) 07:00, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This seems like wikilaywering to me. Many SNGs do not require secondary sources. Most local village articles, for example, only cite government census data. They are still notable. There isn't even a requirement for academic BLPs to have secondary coverage as long as they meet WP:NACADEMIC. And the "primary" sources in this case are the highest-quality possible because they have been peer-reviewed before being published in a reputable academic publication. C F A 💬 14:31, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Hmm. NSPORTS says that Sports biographies must include at least one reference to a source providing significant coverage of the subject, excluding database sources, but does not appear to say that this source must be a secondary (e.g., analytical) one. For example, an autobiography provides SIGCOV but wouldn't count towards notability at all. However, an autobiography would appear to meet the citation requirement in NSPORTS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:13, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm very confused by this. I understand how an autobiography would appear to meet the referencing requirements in NSPORTS, but how would it ever "provide SIGCOV" since it is not independent of the subject? Cremastra (talk) 00:58, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Because SIGCOV is about how much information is in the source, not whether the source is primary, secondary, independent, self-published, biased, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:41, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @BilledMammal - WP:NOTPAPER - If it's justified for hundreds of thousands of new articles to be made, it is not a problem. There are no space or article limit concerns. KatoKungLee (talk) 16:11, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    There's nothing stopping you merging species articles now and there'll be nothing stopping you after this is adopted. Per WP:PAGEDECIDE, the question of whether to have one or many articles on related subjects is independent of notability. I don't think this option has been 'underexplored' in that it comes up in every discussion not just of species' notability, but any topic prone to large numbers of stubs (places, sportspeople, etc.) and has done for years. It just seems that the people that actually write our coverage of these topics don't think that it's a good idea. – Joe (talk) 11:01, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: I've watched the hard work of creating this and though it will not please all, it is good and it is an improvement on the previous consensus at WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES. SchreiberBike | ⌨  00:21, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I don't spend a lot of time on articles about species, but I have created or expanded a few, and I think the proposed guidance is resonable. - Donald Albury 12:15, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Seems reasonable. Lavalizard101 (talk) 17:08, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - this seems altogether helpful. There doesn't appear to be much positive in the opposing argument: thin and - as has already been said - smells of wikilawyering. Ingratis (talk) 18:09, 11 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support You mean this isn't an official guideline already??? —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 02:47, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per 115.188 and everything that voorts says above. Also: for most editors, it's hard to create a species page from scratch. If these pages aren't created, then Wikipedia is going to miss out on the contributions of editors who had something to add to a species page, but who were scared away by the prospect of having to figure out all the rest of it. - Dank (push to talk) 03:16, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Dank: regarding it's hard to create a species page from scratch, the alternative proposal to up merge these would have included support for automatically creating the page from scratch at the click of a link, so that editors who want to expand the content would be no worse off than they are now. BilledMammal (talk) 03:24, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That kind of thing always still has some minimum level of complication: users have to know the functionality exists and feel confident enough to use it. It's hard to do better than having the page already exist, which also makes it more discoverable. Mrfoogles (talk) 19:00, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This seems to cover everything needed. Properly recognized and named species by the relevant authority are notable, per our purpose as an encyclopedia, but temporarily named species or just described species without any further recognition yet (or any of the subspecies and other such things mentioned in the proposal) are not automatically notable and must meet the WP:GNG to qualify for notability. So major subspecies that have a lot of scientific and even news coverage, such as many of the mammal subspecies, would meet the GNG and thus be notable separate from this proposal. That seems like how things should be. SilverserenC 03:19, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support This seems entirely reasonable to me. When issues of promotionalism or neutrality are involved, which is not an issue in cases like this, we should require references to multiple reliable sources devoting significant coverage to the topic, to prevent misuse of the encyclopedia for the wrong reasons. An article about a lesser known species based on only a single article in a respected peer reviewed scientific journal ought to be enough to establish species notability, in my view. I see such articles as great contributions to the encyclopedia with excellent possibilities for expansion in the future, as other researchers look into these specifics. Cullen328 (talk) 06:26, 12 August 2024 (UTC) (moved from VPP – Teratix ₵ 10:06, 12 August 2024 (UTC))[reply]
  • Oppose just because it's de-facto practice doesn't mean we should exacerbate the problem. There are more eukaryotic species than there are en.wp articles. If you want to create a bunch of taxa infoboxes Wikispecies is that way. Traumnovelle (talk) 08:43, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Traumnovelle, this proposal only covers species with accepted names, of which there are about 2 million (half of which are insects). There are currently 6.8 million articles on the English, of which about 300K are about species. If every single one were created (extremely unlikely, since it's taken us 20+ years to get 300K), then it could represent 25% of the articles (assuming no new articles are created about athletes, actors, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:40, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That again is still too many. You already have a de-facto consensus about it. Making it official just removes any real chance of the consensus changing without going through a tiresome process to change the policy.
    Right now if I feel an article on a species should be deleted. If this is policy I'll have no grounds to oppose a shitty stub no matter how horrible in quality it may be and how impossible improvement may currently be. Traumnovelle (talk) 18:48, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    no matter how horrible in quality it may be Deletion is not for deleting poorly-written articles (except for WP:TNT cases). voorts (talk/contributions) 18:56, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If an article has no potential for improvement to anything beyond a sentence because there are no reliable secondary sources it should be deleted. Furthermore Wikipedia articles should not based solely on primary sources. Traumnovelle (talk) 20:27, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Well... that sounds fair, if it were true, but my experience in these discussions is that the facts don't align with that. To investigate a little further, can you name a couple of examples of articles about valid species that meet the conditions you name? Specifically, can you find an article or two that:
    1. would be accepted under this proposal,
    2. you believe has "no potential for improvement to anything beyond a sentence", and
    3. contains only one sentence (because if currently contains 2+ sentences, then it obviously has potential for improving beyond a single sentence)?
    Another editor named three WP:UGLY stubs above, asserting that "Most can never be expanded", and all three of them have since been expanded and cite multiple reliable sources. One's now over 500 words long. I've seen this happen in multiple discussions: assertions of alleged unexpandability turn out to be false.
    If you don't happen to have an example in mind, I suggest clicking on Special:RandomInCategory/Articles with 'species' microformats for a while. That seems to give random articles about species. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:39, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't have the time to find examples. Even if none currently exist that meet that criteria allowing for articles that meet the criteria (or lack of) be kept based on a SNG is not a good thing for the project.
    If those articles were expanded there likely exists enough coverage to qualify as GNG anyhow. Traumnovelle (talk) 21:59, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think what we're trying to tell you is that if it meets the criteria of this proposal, it will always be able to expand the article beyond a single sentence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:02, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Right now if I feel an article on a species should be deleted ... then... what? Cremastra (talk) 20:04, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Then I can propose deletion without it being shutdown due to some silly notability carve out it has been given. Traumnovelle (talk) 20:26, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Do you think that's different from what would have happened last year? Or the year before? Or five years before? The last time a (valid) species article was deleted at AFD was in 2016. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:41, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Not really, per WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES. And "silly" is an unnecessary add-on; no need to heat up the discussion. Cremastra (talk) 21:06, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    They have to actually argue and make a strong case as to why this single sentence stub on this fly that is only found in the hills of Mongolia should have it's own article. With a policy in place they can just write Keep WP:NSPECIES and that will be the end of it. Traumnovelle (talk) 22:01, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, they can do that now too and have been doing so for the past decade. This guideline doesn't change that. And editors will still be able to merge species up to the genus level if they believe that is the best option. C F A 💬 22:07, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Spulerina lochmaea looks like a typical species AFD from earlier this year. It's basically six variations on "keep per NSPECIES". That appears to be all editors have to do right now. I don't see this proposal changing that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    And, taking S. lochmea as a stand-in for Traumnovelle's Mongolian fly (it is a South African moth), I'll try to expand that article to something passably non-sub-stubby. The original description is available and detailed, so at the very least we should have a decent physical description section (if I can parse and summarise the technical language). Cremastra (talk) 22:31, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Ignoring that it violates the idea of Wikipedia articles not being based solely/largely on primary sources: if a good article exists it won't be voted for deletion anyhow. Traumnovelle (talk) 04:38, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Non-policy based comments are supposed to be ignored. Just because it doesn't happen and that many discussions are treated as votes doesn't mean we should change anything. Traumnovelle (talk) 04:37, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    More precisely, arguments that directly contradict relevant policies are usually discounted, but we also accept arguments from common sense, editors' judgment about what serves Wikipedia best, and established practice. Note, too, that one of the policies is that "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it", so it's perfectly 'legal' for editors to say that they believe, e.g., that the best way to improve Wikipedia is to create another notability-related exception to WP:PRIMARY. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:16, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I would hardly describe one sentence articles sourced to DBs/primary sources as improvements to Wikipedia. Traumnovelle (talk) 05:57, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Each editor is entitled to their own opinion on points like that, but I'm curious why you think that it's relevant to mention the number of sentences. Only a small minority of species articles have just one sentence, and all of those few (as far as we've been able to identify) could be expanded. It is a general principle of notability that the present size of an article does not tell us anything about whether the subject qualifies for a separate, stand-alone article, and this proposal says nothing about the contents of the resulting articles. So why mention "one sentence articles" at all? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:39, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I understand that perspective, but here's mine: while a substub with few references does little to improve to the encyclopedia, deleting it does even less to improve the encyclopedia. Setting aside this whole primary/secondary sources discussion, any crappy substub species with a scientific description can be expanded to at least Start class - while it is not much of a contribution in its current state, a substub of this nature always has the potential to be an improvement to the encyclopedia. from my personal work, Dendrobium atroviolaceum was a one sentence substub before I started working on it, as was Pilularia minuta. These aren't GA quality or anything now, but I think they help explain why we should keep WP:ARTN in mind and not judge the potential of an article by its current state. I hope this helps you understand my perspective. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 07:35, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose for the reasons BilledMammal provided in detail. In particular, I'm not swayed by either: A) "A substub provides a useful taxobox", since all the information in that taxobox will also be available in the taxobox on the genus or the species entry in a list/table at the genus article, so there is no reason to not upmerge to the genus in such a case. And B) "I was able to expand two of these substubs", since in the case that a species article can be expanded beyond the substub stage, then it should have a stand-alone article. That is, it is no longer a good upmerge candidate, and it no longer being one has zero implications of any kind for substubs that remain good upmerge candidates.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:10, 12 August 2024 (UTC) (moved from VPP – Teratix ₵ 10:06, 12 August 2024 (UTC))[reply]
    Regarding your point B: The point of this guideline is that any species this SNG would consider notable, an accepted species with a scientific description, has an existing source with which at least a basic article can be built on (in the form of that original description). That is to say, any substub this guideline would consider notable can be expanded in such a way, and likely does not need upmerging. And I must emphasise that this proposal does not override WP:PAGEDECIDE or put any new restrictions on upmerging. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 10:18, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You appear to be ignoring previously detailed policy objections to this idea, namely that we are prohibited from creating entire articles out of a primary source or even multiple primary sources, and the original describer's species description, as the only available source (other than listings in tertiary sources that reguritate that one), is by definition a primary source. This proposal would put an in-practice (if not in-the-letter-of-the-law) restriction on upmerging, because any article that can survive a notability criterion will not be forcibly merged (or deleted) at WP:AFD, and any "hash it out on the article talk page" merge proposal will be stiffly resisted by everyone in support of this species notability criterion, simply because it's a species and without any regard to the rationales in favor of merging (we know that because they are already stiffly resisting, right here and now, all the rationales in favor of merging).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:07, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    There is no reason to not upmerge to the genus in such a case – one reason that I find compelling is that the vast majority of our coverage of biological taxonomy (hundreds of thousands of articles written by thousands of editors) is organised at the species level and nobody has stepped forward to upmerge them on a systematic level. The idea is often floated in policy discussions such as this, but the editors that actually work on species articles evidently don't think it's a good one. – Joe (talk) 10:57, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:NOTFIXEDYET / WP:NOEFFORT: That a bunch of work needs to be done is not a reason to shirk it much less to make it harder to do. Also WP:BEENHERE and WP:NOT#PAPER: That a poor decision was made a long time ago about what to do, information-architecturally, with this content does not mean we are stuck with that decision forever. And WP:CONLEVEL and WP:OWN: editors from a topical wikiproject or otherwise with more editorial devotion to a subject do get to, for "their" subject, veto, undermine, or prevent the formation of broader community decisions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:07, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Some of us are, in fact, working on improving species stubs. Mass-upmerging is a large amount of work for no actual benefit besides "less stubs", and removing stubs makes it harder (and thus less likely) for editors like myself to actually build the encyclopedia. Regardless, mass-upmerging does not appear to be a popular idea and seems unlikely to gain enough support to be implemented. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 11:20, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Ethmostigmus: The proposed methods of upmerging will ensure that it requires no effort to recreate the current sub-stubs such that editors who do wish to use them as the basis for creating a genuine article are not impeded.
    Even better, these efforts will not be limited to sub-stubs that currently exist, meaning that if you wanted to create an article on Phobaeticus annamallayanus you would be more supported in doing so than you are today. BilledMammal (talk) 11:53, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    While I absolutely appreciate and endorse your plan to make redlink taxon article creation easier, it is does not fully address my issue with upmerging, which is that I find it more likely for a crappy article to be made better than for a new article to be made at all, even if the process is made easier. I primarily choose topics to work on by finding stubs in categories like Category:Stub-Class plant articles, Category:Orchid stubs, Category:Cite IUCN maint, etc, and I imagine I'm not the only one - that's what those categories are for, after all! I think awareness/uptake will also be something of an issue (how will users know that this is an option?), but we're getting a bit off topic for this thread. If you develop this idea further please keep me in the loop! Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 12:11, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Such a tool can be created independently of the outcome of this request for comments discussion, so it's not really a differentiator for either viewpoint. isaacl (talk) 14:00, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    But it shouldn’t be, as without policy controls it will be easy to abuse for mass creation.
    Further, the main point of bringing it up is to counter the argument that having standalone articles makes expansion easier.
    And just to clarify; although there are tools that I would build to better support the creation of species and genus articles, the specific aspect under discussion here involves the use of native features so that even IP’s can take advantage of it and wouldn’t be disadvantaged by upmerging. BilledMammal (talk) 14:09, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @BilledMammal I took the liberty of writing a short article on Phobaeticus annamallayanus. It's short, but I don't think it qualifies as a "sub-stub". A physical description can also be added. Cremastra (talk) 14:18, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Your new article is about 300 characters (maybe three sentences?) short of a Wikipedia:Did you know nomination. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:30, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Joe Roe: I stepped up and upmerged hundreds of species sub-stubs. For this, I was taken to ANI. Given that there are editors willing to do the work I don't find that reason at all compelling, and given that the reason it hasn't happened is because of opposition from editors who prefer coverage at the species level - even when such coverage violates policies like WP:PRIMARY - I think the reason is circular. BilledMammal (talk) 11:49, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @SMcCandlish, the point I've found more interesting is that I've never yet seen a species article (for an accepted species) that couldn't be expanded past the substub stage. Someone's already expanded two of the three, and if you look at the third, you'll find a print-only book that (from what I can see in Google Books' snippet mode) contains not only enough information to go past the substub stage, but a comparison between some similar species, which means it's a secondary source. WP:NOTFIXEDYET cuts both ways: if it's possible to expand them past the substub stage – and so far, the community is batting 1000 here – then the fact that nobody's already expanded them is irrelevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:43, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Full text PDF of that book is available here. GBIF only has a record for a single specimen (the holotype), but there is a CC0 image of the specimen. It's possible that there are other specimens in museums that haven't been databased, but it's also possible that there are no other specimens.
    If we were writing a guideline that presumed some (accepted) species deserved articles and some didn't and which set out to define which were which, I'd probably start with species known from a single specimen being undeserving of articles. On the other side of things, I'd start with all hominids (fossil and living) being deserving of articles.
    Homo longi falls right in the middle of that; it's a hominid with only one specimen. And I don't see how we can have an article for it if primary sources can't be used. I've brought it up before in one of these discussions with an editor who maintains that we can't use primary sources for species articles, who assured me that it was fine. I'm just not seeing that. The sources for the H. longi are 3 primary sources (all articles published in the same issue of a journal), two news stories (do those count as secondary?) from the time when the primary sources were published in 2021, one article from 2023 with a note on the nomenclature (SIGCOV? I think not), and 7 sources published before it was described (they provide context, but obviously don't mention the subject of the article). If species articles can't be based on primary sources, H. longi shouldn't have an article, let alone be rated as a Good Article. Plantdrew (talk) 17:03, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the link to that PDF; I've used it to expand Sorhagenia cracens. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Many species articles would be much more useful if they were redirected/merged to lists. Codifying this SNG will only lead to more opposition against such merges. If all you have is a paper describing the species (and often there are a lot of species in one paper) and an authority accepting it, then you don't have the multiple independent sources required for articles in general. In many cases these articles aren't even based on this one source, but on databases or worse (crowdsourced "this photo is this species" sites and the like). If you write decent articles you won't need this SNG at all. Fram (talk) 09:30, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support as a codification of the long-standing existing practice already documented at WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES. The doom-mongering about stubs is particularly unconvincing given that we have applied this de facto standard for years and the result has only been that Wikipedia has become a useful and well-regarded reference work for taxonomy and biodiversity.[13][14][15][16][17][18] – Joe (talk) 10:36, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support in principle, but premature.
    Support in principle per the several “intention” points made above, and it is a needed and good idea, but the guideline is not currently well enough written if adopted as-is.
    It needs a nutshell.
    It needs to not begin self-referencing (sentence 1) and with general background statements (sentence 2). The first paragraph is wordy, generalising and factoids, and it a great draft that is not ready for submission for marking.
    The three substantial sections would be better presented as a table. I would like to see more Wikipedia-historical evidence, such as examples of cases decided in well participated AfDs. “All eukaryotic species that are accepted by taxonomists” needs sourcing, to mainspace content or reliable sources. I expect that such lists exist. I want a definition of the set of taxonomists and where to find them. SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:16, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @SmokeyJoe, I took the "self-referential" first sentence from Wikipedia:Notability (academics).
    I am not aware of any actual rule requiring a nutshell template, and I would personally discourage them on shorter guidelines. Wikipedia:Notability (films) and Wikipedia:Notability (numbers) do not have nutshell templates, and even major policies (Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, Wikipedia:Copyrights, Wikipedia:CheckUser...) do not use that template.
    I appreciate your request for a set of taxonomists, mostly because someone else thought that the proposal was needlessly long because I named them in the microbes sections. However, I wonder whether you understood "All eukaryotic species that are accepted by taxonomists" as intended. I mean that Wikipedia accepts articles on "all the ones that are accepted, and none of the ones that are not [yet] accepted"; I do not make a factual assertion along the lines of "all of the species in the world have been accepted by taxonomists". Most [alleged] species aren't accepted. I'm not sure what sort of statement you want reliable sources to support. Reliable sources don't exist for statements about Wikipedia's choices, and any source that claims taxonomists have accepted every species in the world is unreliable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:59, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Good point about the start of NPROF. However, NPROF has a nutshell. I’ve become used to nutshells. They tell me, without me needing any insight or patience, what the page is about.
    I do think the guideline is too short, and fails to give simple guidance. I feel it errs on the side of expecting too much knowledge from the reader. Notability sub guidelines aren’t just for new article writers, but for AfC NPR and AfD volunteers. Help them not confuse taxonomists with those who preserve dead animals and those who study tax and the economy.
    These were my first impressions. SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:14, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I am not experienced in writing policy, so I will defer to more experienced editors on the actual construction of the guideline, but I think you raise some good points here.
    Regarding historical evidence: A Background and interpretation section was proposed by North8000 (see discussion above), but it was removed because some users felt it out of place in the guideline itself. If other users believe this would be useful, I can see this section being returned to the guideline and expanded to give historical context (eg. last successful species AfD, unsuccessful AfDs since, WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES, etc).
    Regarding taxonomists and where to find them (great movie idea): I do think providing extra guidance on how users should assess the validity of a name is a solid idea. Put very simply: for plants, algae, and fungi, we defer to the guidance of the ICNafp (names listed at IPNI/MycoBank/Index Fungorum), for animals we follow the ICZN (names listed at ZooBank), and for prokaryotes we follow the ICNP (names listed at LPSN), and for viruses we follow the ICTV (names listed on the ICTV website). Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 03:38, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Ethmostigmus - Providing additional guidance in the form of these links is an excellent idea. I doubt that the average editor would be able to quickly grok "accepted names" when, for example, looking to this page for guidance in an AfD; checking against an existing, accepted list would be much more straightforward. I would encourage you to either WP:BOLDLY add these links to the policy page, or add a new section below discussing the change, so that this doesn't get buried. Pagliaccious (talk) 04:56, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Although my proposed addition didn't stay in, I support this proposal. Perfection is the enemy of progress. My proposal is based on acknowledgement that wp:notability decisions are based on additional considerations besides wp:notability (Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works ) guidlines. In this case the status quo is that folks are a little extra cautious with new articles (putting in a bit of extra sources, info, images etc.) beyond a micro-stub because it isn't "official" and so new articles have more of those things. Extra guidance that is more notability related is "homeless" because it is "out of place" in it's most likely home. But I'll still be an advocate of putting something in later towards this end.North8000 (talk) 10:41, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support this formalization into an actionable notability guideline, on the basis that a) this exact approach has worked well for a long time without creating any but the most minor of problems (which are continuously and efficiently dealt with); b) every species stub has guaranteed built-in expandability due to the required minimum sourcing (full description and diagnosis); c) scenarios of being flooded by millions of sub-stubs have not materialized, and are even more unlikely to happen now that the mass-creation guidelines have been clarified; and d) higher-level structure is efficiently provided at higher-level taxa, and while it may feel more satisfactory to telescope stubs into lists until expanded, this trades compactness for barriers to expansion coupled with a potential for substantially screwing up a system that is by now very well curated. The status quo does not need fixing, it needs recognition. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:12, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose as currently formulated I'm not opposed to species articles that contain at least a description, but there is no way we should be authorizing creation of stubs for every species someone proposes, if for no other reason than that taxonomy isn't stable, but Also because the history of the project is that these stubs tend to hang around unexpanded when a ews link in a genus article would provide the same info. Mangoe (talk) 14:18, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Mangoe This is isn't opening the gates, though. This is codifying what we already de facto do. So this isn't a new policy or even a guideline, and certainly isn't going to change anything. It is being proposed because it is absurd to have a de facto SNG under WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES. Cremastra (talk) 14:24, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
IMO there is such a risk because people might have been more cautious (= putting more into any article article they create) because those currently technically violate the rules. That's why I put "intent is to codify existing practice" in my "Support" post and urged others to do the same. North8000 (talk) 14:43, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Mangoe, I'm concerned that you might not have understood the proposal. This is not proposing every species someone proposes precisely because the taxonomy for proposed species is unstable. This is every species already accepted by the relevant taxonomic authorities – and nothing else (unless it qualifies for GNG). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Fundamentally "presumed to be notable" in practice would be treated as "is notable", and means that you would never be able delete or, more crucially, merge these types of articles where it would make more sense to discuss species in aggregate. The amount you can say at the genus level seems like it would fit better than this, because coverage simply isn't there to create anything beyond one-source articles for the vast majority of species, which have very little even in their descriptions for a summary source like Wikipedia, and rely on primary sources. I don't expect consensus to swing this way but I might as well register my strong disagreement with the idea that we just chuck out the entire point of the encyclopedia (a focus on secondary sourcing as the guide for when we cover something) when someone wants to obsessively catalog every ant out there. We rightfully recognize this with almost every other subject out there, which is why our policies are what they are. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 14:39, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • you would never be able delete: this is already the case.
  • or, more crucially, merge: as has been pointed out above, the criteria for merging is separate from notability (See eg. WP:NOPAGE) and this proposal does not affect that.
Charcoal feather (talk) 14:46, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@David Fuchs, how certain are you about the assertion that the coverage simply isn't there to create anything beyond one-source articles for the vast majority of species?
I clicked on Special:RandomInCategory/Articles with 'species' microformats ten times and found a median of three sources cited in species articles (range of 1 to 16; 20% cited only a single source). I looked into one of the two single-source articles (Haemodorum ensifolium) and discovered in less than a minute that there's an entry for that plant in the Encyclopaedia of Australian Plants Suitable for Cultivation, and there's probably an entry in Flora of Australia: Hydatellales to Liliales. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:23, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • support Animal and plants are an encyclopedia's bread and butter, as far as I'm concerned. "species exists", "species has had papers written about it" and "species is recognised by relevant organisations" should be enough to weed out the nonsensense species to the degree that species-categorising academia is capable of. I also agree with other users in this discussion who say that presumed notability isn't much of a problem here. In the end, as our knowledge expands, so will our stubs. I do think there are problems with mass creation, but I would like to see that adressed in the mass creation policy platform-wide. I don't think we're going to stem the tide by trying to adress it here by proxy. That's going to have to be a whole different RFC. Also, perhaps a little philosophically, but as someone with a background in ecology, among other things, I don't think there's such a thing as an unimportant species. --Licks-rocks (talk) 15:43, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - reflects existing consensus and practices. --Enos733 (talk) 16:33, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose as written – needs more clarity on its position on upmerging. (e/c)
After reading through the extensive surrounding discussion, it's apparent the debate isn't about whether species are notable or whether articles on them should be outright deleted at AfD – it's really about when species should be covered in stand-alone articles and when they should be covered in broader articles on their genera.
It's therefore absolutely essential for the guideline to clearly and explicitly articulate its position on this sort of up-merging – even if that position is as simple as "this guideline has nothing to say on editorial decisions about whether information on notable topics should stand alone or as part of a broader article". Otherwise I agree with SMCCandlish, Fram and David Fuchs: there's a real risk that "all taxonomically-described species are presumed notable" (uncontroversial) is taken as "all taxonomically-described species merit separate articles and should not be merged to their genera" (more controversial).
As written, the guideline fails to do this. It acknowledges the idea that we might want to cover a notable species in a broader article instead of a stand-alone page (editors should use their best judgment to determine whether Wikipedia is best served by a separate article, a stand-alone list, or merging content into an article about a broader subject). However, this only appears in the sections on prokaryotes and viruses – it's conspicuously absent from the broader introduction and the section on eukaryotes. By the maxim of quantity, the clumsy implication is editors don't need to judge whether Wikipedia is best served by a separate article, so long as the species is a eukaryote. – Teratix ₵ 16:56, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
all taxonomically-described species merit separate articles and should not be merged to their genera would be misinterpreting the guideline and should be treated as such. That always comes under WP:NOPAGE, which is an established separate guideline. Cremastra (talk) 16:59, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That would be duplicating existing guidance for no reason. All this guideline does, and is supposed to do, is establish that species with a valid/correct name are presumed to be notable. Notability does not require a separate article. WP:PAGEDECIDE still applies here, like any other SNG, and merging is an editorial decision unrelated to notability. C F A 💬 17:05, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you both that's what the guideline is supposed to do. My concern is it's written in a way that makes misinterpretation unnecessarily more likely. – Teratix ₵ 17:20, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Does it? I don't think so. To say that something (anything) is presumed notable is to say that it appears to qualify for a Wikipedia:Separate, stand-alone article. (That's a redirect straight to Wikipedia:Notability.) Being presumed notable, according to WP:N, "is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article."
All topics that are presumed notable (=what this proposal says) could be merged at the discretion/according to a consensus of editors. But if you're concerned about it, we could suggest some text. It could say something like "Exactly like any other subject, editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article". I'd predict a few editors to oppose on the grounds of needless redundancy per Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#­Content, and most not to care either way. Any accurate description will have no effect in the end, except leading to a few extra words on the page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:46, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For clarity, I oppose changes to this proposal during the RFC. But once it's closed, if it closes with adoption (or if it doesn't, and someone wants to re-work it for a second try), then it can be amended, expanded, re-written, etc., just like any other guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:49, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm happy for guidelines to be made slightly more redundant if that means their positions on contentious issues are clearer. There is at least one experienced editor who is explicitly taking the guideline as establishing a presumption against upmerging, and there are several more whose comments only really make sense if they are understanding the guideline as disfavouring upmerges. – Teratix ₵ 02:27, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Teratix: You appear to have !voted three times in this RfC, once in 'support' and twice 'opposed'. Please strike two of those !votes. Donald Albury 17:36, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't, you might be misreading notes I have placed on other editors' comments to indicate they have been moved from VPP, where this discussion was briefly duplicated. – Teratix ₵ 17:38, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see that now. My apologies for my misunderstanding. Donald Albury 18:32, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support: Mostly useful to have articles on accepted species. Ideally these articles would at least link to the original paper describing it so information could be accessed -- maybe that could be added? -- but those are sometimes difficult and time-consuming to obtain so that could be a limitation (e.g. published in 1965 on paper only, good luck). Agree that while these articles may only be able to use primary sources, WP:PRIMARY can be waived when we're talking about a scientific paper which is the best available information on the topic. Do not support the creation of stubs with bots, though.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrfoogles (talk • contribs) 19:07, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Mrfoogles, what distinguishes the reliability and impact of a species discovery paper from any other scientific discovery paper such that we can waive PRIMARY for the former and not the latter? Also, a species does not even need to be reliably published to be formally accepted; see this commentary regarding the taxonomic vandalism perpetrated by one amateur herpetologist who publishes almost exclusively in his own un-peer-reviewed vanity website:

    In addition to naming well over 100 supposedly new snake and lizard genera, this individual has also produced taxonomic revisions of the world’s cobras, burrowing asps, vipers, rattlesnakes, water snakes, blindsnakes, pythons, crocodiles and so on. But, alas, his work is not of the careful, methodical, conservative and respected sort that you might associate with a specialised, dedicated amateur; rather, his articles appear in his own, in-house, un-reviewed, decidedly non-technical publications, they’re notoriously unscientific in style and content, and his taxonomic recommendations have been demonstrated to be problematic, frequently erroneous and often ridiculous (witness the many new taxa he has named after his pet dogs; I’m not kidding, I wish I was).

    In short, the new (and really terribly formulated) taxonomic names that this individual throws out at the global herpetological community represent a sort of taxonomic vandalism; we’re expected to use these names, and – indeed – they’re supposedly officially valid according to the letter of the law, yet they besmirch the field, they litter the taxonomic registry with monstrosities, and they cause working herpetologists to waste valuable time clearing up unnecessary messes when they really should be spending their time on such areas as conservation, biological monitoring, toxicology and the documentation of ranges and environmental preferences.
    ...

    What are these “rules”? As you can see for yourself at the ICZN site, a new name has to be published in a permanent, duplicable form that’s available to others, it has to be clearly stated as a new name, it has to be published within the context of the binomial (or binominal) system, and it must be established on a type specimen – basically, a key reference specimen. Notably, many of the key ideas that we typically associate with the publication of scientific research – like standards of practise, an appropriate level of scholarship, and peer review – are, actually, not required by the ICZN.

    Also curious what @SmokeyJoe thinks about this given our discussions on other primary-sourced topics. JoelleJay (talk) 04:32, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    While the issue of bad taxonomists is worth noting, I think it's fair to say that Hoser's works fail WP:RS as they are self published in what essentialy amounts to a personal vanity "journal", and would not be acceptable to use as taxonomic references even setting aside the question of primary/secondary sources. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 08:07, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think it does seem reasonable to require that the accepted publication be published in a reliable journal. As for want I’m ok with violating WP:PRIMARY: in my opinion scientific papers are kind of on the edge of “primary sources”. Most things are marked primary because they only provide raw details and you have to do interpretation of them. Scientific papers do their own interpretation, so it’s less necessary unless you doubt the correctness of their results. So by relying entirely on primary sources here, we don’t require ourselves to do original research: only to have to trust the species descriptions, being published in a reliable journal, are mostly right. Exceptional claims can require exceptional sources, too. Mrfoogles (talk) 15:29, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I believe that most older descriptions and the works reconciling species with many names (e.g., when Alice publishes one, and Bob, not having seen hers, publishes the same species later under a new name) are published in books, so I don't think we can require a scientific journal only. But the key words are "accepted by the relevant international body of taxonomists", which is very different from "published somewhere and rejected, disputed, or ignored". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:33, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose this sounds like a mass-creation mess. Species entries already have a history of clogging up other wikis, so I feel it might be a bad idea to have liberal notability criteria here too. Allan Nonymous (talk) 19:07, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Allan Nonymous This changes absolutely nothing as regards mass-creation. WP:MASSCREATION applies univerally – to species, to athletes, to villages in Pakistan. Cremastra (talk) 20:05, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support NSPECIES is a fait accompli. We haven't deleted a species since 2016. As for those fearing mass creation, we're past that problem. Yes, Polbot was a fiasco. No, its not going to happen again. NSPECIES has been practical policy for as long as I can remember, and it hasn't caused an issue. As for the upmerging concerns, I don't think this guideline as written is incompatible with upmerging. Notability is presumed, but the point of a presumption is that it is rebuttable. There are certainly some areas, especially for prokaryotes, where writing genera level treatments are much more practical than species level treatments. But its a case by case decision, which would need good evidence (i.e. rebutting the presumption) to show why a genera only treatment would be better. While I'm sensitive to the idea that we should add a paragraph about upmerging, methinks that might be best achieved in a separate RfC. In the meantime, let's ensure our documentation matches practice, and pass this policy. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 19:38, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    But its a case by case decision, which would need good evidence (i.e. rebutting the presumption) to show why a genera only treatment would be better Hold on, the guideline is not supposed to establish a presumption against upmerging. – Teratix ₵ 02:10, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    How do we know it hasn't caused (or won't cause) an issue if so many new species reports are never followed up with any independent verification of the characters they describe? For every other scientific discipline we can point to our policy on primary sources as a reason not to harbor premature standalone pages on new discoveries, thus limiting the potential for hoaxes and self-promo and just plain incorrect material being stated in wikivoice. What makes these species discovery papers so much more reliable and scientifically impactful than anything else? And codifying this as a guideline would absolutely endorse all species irrebuttably deserving of standalones, as editors already insist this is the case without any positive evidence they meet PRIMARY and NOT. JoelleJay (talk) 04:06, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, valid species seem to me to be inherently encyclopedic in nature. However I do support stronger discouragement against a high rate of stub creation in this topic area especially, even if it isn't explicitly "mass creation". PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:48, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose after careful consideration of the discussion above and a few guidelines, including WP:PRIMARY and WP:NOT. I don't oppose on the grounds of article quality, expandability, or mass creation, and I recognize that this essentially codifies existing practice, but this guideline grants eukaryotic species articles undue immunity from WP:PRIMARY. My issue with the guideline is this: All eukaryotic species that are accepted by taxonomists are presumed notable is equivalent to the statement that "for eukaryotic species, if a specific primary source exists, then the species is presumed notable." There is no issue in using a primary source to state accurate, verifiable information on a subject, but a primary source is not enough to establish notability. From WP:N: No subject is automatically or inherently notable merely because it exists. A primary source can establish existence, but only secondary sources establish notability.
I simply believe that a comprehensive taxon database is beyond the scope of an encyclopedia. Pagliaccious (talk) 21:25, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Is not any source documenting that a species has been accepted by taxonomists secondary (and also independent), pretty much by definition? Newimpartial (talk) 21:42, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The proposal isn't "it's automatically or inherently notable because it exists". The proposal is "it's presumed notable because we can guarantee that a scholarly source has been written about it".
Also, technically, "only secondary sources establish notability under the WP:GNG". SNGs take different approaches, with several (e.g., NGEO, NPROF) not requiring secondary sources. That said, if you think that all SNGs should require secondary sources even though they don't, or even that this one should, no matter what the others do, then that's a perfectly valid opinion, and editors are entitled to their opinions. There has always been a wide diversity of opinions in the community about what constitutes a secondary source and whether they are necessary for notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:10, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

only secondary sources establish notability under the WP:GNG

That’s not accurate - see WP:WHYN
Further, WP:PRIMARY applies to all articles, and if an article isn’t permitted to exist under a core policy we shouldn’t be considering it notable, as it will lead to confusion and the creation of articles that need to be deleted. BilledMammal (talk) 22:15, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:WHYN is not a policy (or a guideline); it is an explanation. WP:PSTS is a policy, and it observes that articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, but it also notes that whether a source is primary or secondary in a particular instance isn't an attribute of the source itself, but rather the relationship between the source and the claim. Independence is similar.
So I ask again; is not any source we are likely to use to show that a species has been accepted by taxonomists not likely to be both secondary (with respect to the species' identification) and independent (of the researchers discovering the species)? My inclination is to expect that the relevant sources will have these characteristics. Newimpartial (talk) 22:32, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WHYN is a guideline?
And no, it is neither likely to be secondary nor independent. The most likely non-database source to be used - and per an SME, in 90%+ of cases no other sources will exist - is the original description of the species. Further, as it is written by the researchers who discovered the species, it isn’t independent of them. BilledMammal (talk) 22:54, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To answer your question, the WP:WHYN section, as far as I can tell, is intended to provide an explanation for the rest of WP:N rather than itself having the force of a guideline.
Also, I am uncertain why you specified a non-database source just now. An RS database that indicates authoritatively that a species is recognized strikes me as good a source for species as an RS database that indicates that a place is officially recognized and inhabited is for officially recognized, inhabited places. Newimpartial (talk) 23:01, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because per WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE, we can’t mirror databases.
Further, databases are not secondary sources. BilledMammal (talk) 23:08, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why on earth are databases not secondary sources? How does, say, GBIF count as "primary"?
And is User:WhatamIdoing/Database article indiscriminate? Cremastra (talk) 23:17, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because they’re a repository of primary information. And articles based solely on database sources would be a WP:NOTINDISCRIMINATE violation. However, this chain has become a little deep, so I will back out now. BilledMammal (talk) 23:25, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Since I missed it previously; if WHYN isn’t supposed to have the weight of a guideline then it should be in an essay, not a guideline. As it stands it is a guideline, and the consensus of this discussion should be evaluated in that context. BilledMammal (talk) 04:05, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You're correct in the distinction between fact and presumption, but I still stand by my own statement prior to that quote: a primary source is not enough to even presume notability. It's my opinion that presuming notability from an established name is erroneous. You're also correct that consensus-driven SNGs overrule WP:GNG, and it's clear that I'm not in the consensus. I hope that my oppose can encourage other editors to reevaluate the proposal, since I believe that it still runs afoul of WP:NOT, specifically WP:NOTDB. I'd most like to hear the opinions of fellow editors on whether this is akin to permitting in writing a comprehensive (accepted) species database within Wikipedia, and especially whether this is within the scope of Wikipedia as a project. Kind regards, Pagliaccious (talk) 23:20, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What do you think of WP:NPLACE? C F A 💬 23:22, 12 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that it suffers from the same issue of presumed notability derived from properties of the subject other than its coverage in secondary sources. Pagliaccious (talk) 00:06, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. Not everyone agrees on if all articles need to meet GNG. C F A 💬 02:12, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I think Elmidae's comment above summarizes my view fairly well. And per Newimpartial's remarks, I find the concerns about what counts as "primary" versus "secondary" in this context is a red fish of the genus Clupea. XOR'easter (talk) 03:20, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, for the reasons I've laid out before. Including:
  1. "Official acceptance" of a species name can involve nothing more than one organization acknowledging that an unreliable, self-published source has primacy in naming rights. It does not verify that what the publication says about the species is accurate, that its proposed taxonomic position is feasible, or that it is even a new species at all. It relies explicitly on other researchers to adopt or not adopt that name via publication of their own secondary coverage of the topic.
  2. There is nothing to suggest that the primary research papers announcing discovery of a new species are any more scientifically reliable, encyclopedic, or impactful than any other research paper. Certainly they are at least as prone to self-promotional efforts as any other discipline, perhaps even more so due to the ability to name innumerable things after yourself. See for example the centuries-old phenomenon of mihi itch: the state of those whose main ambition is to describe new species (or other taxa: subspecies, hybrids, genera, etc.) as a mean to immortalize their names. Consider also the case of amateur herpetologist Raymond Hoser, who has "published" descriptions of hundreds of new taxa on a personal website he calls the Australasian Journal of Herpetology. Many of these taxa have since been reclassified as not new, are noted to contain egregious descriptive and taxonomic errors, have absurd and unscientific names, and/or have been usurped by actual scientists intentionally ignoring naming primacy etiquette due to the aforementioned issues.
  3. Nomenclature codes for different taxa are governed by organizations that have wildly different requirements for formalizing something as a new species, and in fact can have very different definitions of what even is a distinct species in the first place! Inconsistency between nomenclature orgs and the very fluid boundaries between taxa ranks even within one org contribute to the problem of taxonomic inflation: excessive increase in the number of recognised taxa in a given context, due not to the discovery of new taxa but rather to putatively arbitrary changes to how taxa are delineated.
  4. Combining the above, this guideline will endorse the creation of potentially millions of stubs on organisms based on arbitrary definitions of "species" or even outright PROMO fraud, each containing information exclusively sourceable from a single primary article that may have merely been posted on some amateur collector's personal website, and 90% of these topics will never receive direct attention from anyone else in the world, let alone be the subject of any secondary analysis or any validation of the original paper's claims about range, behavior, larval stages, genetics, or any other characters that aren't discernible from the provided type specimen (if one is even needed).
This would be a guideline that actively flouts our policies on primary sources and INDISCRIMINATE and encourages creation of articles completely divorced from any expectation of coverage, scientific importance, or even confirmation of existence. AFAICT the vast majority of supporters of this proposal are completely unaware of these staggering issues, which absolutely should have been disclosed in the proposal so that people actually know what they're !voting for. A new species discovery is not some rare event that must meet reified, objective, validated standards in taxonomic classification; thousands of new species are announced every year, by people ranging from multiple tenured professors to a single backyard amateur, publishing in journals ranging from Nature to un-peer-reviewed vanity journals to self-published websites, based on the testimony of one group, and very frequently only distinguishable from other species by an arbitrary cutoff like 2% divergence in a barcoding gene (or when even 2% is too high, at the level of individual nucleotide substitutions) that does not have any meaningful taxonomic context. JoelleJay (talk) 03:37, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is quite hyperbolic and fundamentally misunderstands the proposed guideline. Hoser's names are invalid under the ICZN and would clearly not be independently notable under this guideline. (I was mistaken - Hoser's names are not considered invalid by the ICZN, though they still would not be considered notable under this guideline) I must emphasise that guideline states that species are presumed notable, not that all described species are considered valid and must have their own article - species that are distinguishable only by genetic differences are an obvious case in which upmerging to genus level would be warranted, and nowhere in this guideline is there a mandate for individual articles to exist at all. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 03:52, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hoser's names most certainly are treated as valid-until-proven-otherwise under ICZN, which explicitly clarified that they do accept unscientific, self-published, un-peer-reviewed papers such as his for nomenclature claims. This has in fact been lamented in several reliably-published academic articles (emph mine):

In short, the new (and really terribly formulated) taxonomic names that this individual throws out at the global herpetological community represent a sort of taxonomic vandalism; we’re expected to use these names, and – indeed – they’re supposedly officially valid according to the letter of the law, yet they besmirch the field, they litter the taxonomic registry with monstrosities, and they cause working herpetologists to waste valuable time clearing up unnecessary messes when they really should be spending their time on such areas as conservation, biological monitoring, toxicology and the documentation of ranges and environmental preferences.

And since when do AfDs on species require anything more than "meets NSPECIES" to avoid deletion or upmerging? JoelleJay (talk) 04:14, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My mistake, I completely mixed up the ICZN's determination on Hoser's names, I will strike that comment. However, I think you have missed something important - this guideline states that accepted species are presumed notable, not guaranteed notable (and, again, notable =/= must have an independent article). In the case of obvious nonsense like Hoser's names, it is very easy to refute their notability. I don't edit in the herpetology space, but we don't seem to have any independent articles for Hoser's dubious taxa now, and that isn't something that would change under this guideline. His work is dubiously (self) published and widely refuted by other herpetologists - this is suitable to refute the presumption of notability. Currently, we trust editors to use their best judgement in matters of dubious taxa, and that is what will continue to happen under this proposed guideline. If you would like to suggest a change to the guideline to more explicitly clarify guidance on species inquerida/unplaced names, your input would be appreciated. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 07:53, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From the same paper:

What are these “rules”? As you can see for yourself at the ICZN site, a new name has to be published in a permanent, duplicable form that’s available to others, it has to be clearly stated as a new name, it has to be published within the context of the binomial (or binominal) system, and it must be established on a type specimen – basically, a key reference specimen. Notably, many of the key ideas that we typically associate with the publication of scientific research – like standards of practise, an appropriate level of scholarship, and peer review – are, actually, not required by the ICZN.

JoelleJay (talk) 04:17, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Ethmostigmus: I think there is some confusion about the meaning of "accepted species", which I attempted to clarify in the runup to this discussion. Being "accepted" (or "valid", or what have you) under a nomenclatural Code is necessary (because it forces the author to provide a description) but not sufficient for a species to meet the criteria of the proposal under discussion. Nomenclatural acceptance (i.e., "can we use this name as a label for a species") is not the same as taxonomic acceptance (i.e., "is this group of organisms really a species") which is why the latter and not the former is specified in the proposal. The requirement for taxonomist(s) curating the database to agree that the described species is really novel and not something already known is what filters out most of the things Joelle is objecting to. Choess (talk) 11:58, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can’t address point 3, but I think that 1 and 2 would be fixed by requiring that the description be non-self-published at the least and not considered unreliable by the taxonomic community. Mrfoogles (talk) 16:24, 13 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Notifications (NSPECIES)

[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(species)&oldid=1240116966"