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Automated taxobox system
Taxonomy templates
Taxobox templates
Taxoboxes display the "taxonomic hierarchy" for a taxon. ("Taxon" is a general term for a named group of organisms, such as a subspecies, a species, a family, an order, etc.) The taxonomic hierarchy shows the location of the taxon within a particular classification system; e.g. for a genus, it may show its family, order, etc. up to kingdom.
Taxoboxes can be created manually by using the {{Taxobox}} template. Each taxobox must specify the complete taxonomic hierarchy to be displayed in the article. However, this results in a great deal of redundancy. As of பெப்ரவரி 2012[update], there were 38 articles on the species of Mammillaria. Using the Taxobox template means that it has to be repeated 38 times that the genus Mammillaria is in the family Cactaceae, which is in the order Caryophyllales, and so on up to Kingdom Plantae. Any one of the 38 articles could easily have a taxobox which was inconsistent with the others.
The automated taxobox system is a set of templates plus some Lua code which between them automatically generate the taxonomic hierarchy for a taxon. Thus knowing that Mammillaria tetrancistra is in the genus Mammillaria, the system can work out and display the complete hierarchy, from species up to kingdom. It can do the same for taxa at all ranks, including those below species.
(Its advantages and disadvantages are described in more detail below.)
There are two parts to the system.
The taxonomy templates are pages with titles of the general form "Template:Taxonomy/taxon" where taxon represents the name of the taxon. To show that a plant genus with the nonsense name Junkia is in the family Junkiaceae, you would create a page with the title "Template:Taxonomy/Junkia". When finished, the page would look something like this:
Rank: | genus |
Parent: | Junkiaceae |
other information |
This says that Junkia (the last part of the name of the page) is a "genus" and has the parent "Junkiaceae". Then to connect up Junkiaceae, you would need to create a page with the title "Template:Taxonomy/Junkiaceae" which gave the rank and parent of Junkiaceae. This process would be continued until you found that the relevant template already existed.
A large number of taxonomy templates have already been created, so that for a real genus it's likely that the relevant templates are already there, or at most the genus template needs to be created.
The autotaxobox templates use the taxonomy templates to show a taxonomic hierarchy in a taxobox. As of திசம்பர் 2018[update], there are eight top-level display templates, including:
These templates are alternatives to the manual Taxobox template, and require less information. Thus, provided that the taxonomy templates already existed, an article whose title was Felis which was about the animal genus Felis could use a template like the following:
Felis | |
---|---|
உயிரியல் வகைப்பாடு | |
திணை: | விலங்கு |
தொகுதி: | |
வகுப்பு: | |
வரிசை: | |
குடும்பம்: | பூனைக் குடும்பம் |
துணைக்குடும்பம்: | பெலினே |
பேரினம்: | {{{1}}}
|
{{Automatic taxobox | taxon = Felis }}
which generates the taxobox shown on the right.
Notice how the ranks above the genus Felis have been supplied automatically in the taxobox, using the taxonomy templates. (Have a look at Template:Taxonomy/Felis, for example.)
(If the Automatic taxobox template above is placed on the page whose title is exactly "Felis", then even the taxon = line can be omitted, as the name of the taxon will be picked up from the title of the page. However, this practice is deprecated. Specifying the taxon parameter documents the taxobox and ensures that it remains correct if the page is moved.)
In a real use, other parameters would also be needed, e.g. to supply an image and a caption for it, or to supply an authority for the genus name.
For a species, such as Felis chaus, a template like this could be used:
Automated taxobox system/intro | |
---|---|
உயிரியல் வகைப்பாடு | |
திணை: | விலங்கு |
தொகுதி: | |
வகுப்பு: | |
வரிசை: | |
குடும்பம்: | பூனைக் குடும்பம் |
பேரினம்: | பெலிசு |
இனம்: | F. chaus |
இருசொற் பெயரீடு | |
Felis chaus | |
{{Speciesbox | taxon = Felis chaus }}
which generates the taxobox shown on the right.
The benefits of the automated taxobox system are as follows:
There are some costs:
If you want to use the automated taxobox system, there's a lot of documentation available. Many more facilities exist than are discussed here.
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