Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life/Template union proposal

Could you clarify what you are attempting to do as I don't quite follow you. Is the purpose to have the extra features which all TOL projects share, such as article assessment and importance, and then each project modifies for their own needs with text and an image, OR is it to only have one banner for all of these different projects? If it is the first where they will all share a common feature base, which each project modifies then I'm for it. If you want to replace all the different projects banners with one banner, then I don't think this is a good idea as I think it will stop people finding out about the various projects, and the projects themselves will loose their sense of community. Could you please expand what you mean. I couldn't quite understand from the examples you gave on the main page. Thanks, Mehmet Karatay 19:50, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

:I also would like some clarification. It may be a good idea to clear up talk page clutter (but most of Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs talk pages are uncluttered already, having never had an edit other than the talk page banner). However, I do worry about:

:1. Recruitment. How many people interested in dinosaurs who would join WP:Dinosaurs will even realize there is a WikiProject Dinosaurs based on a "Tree of Life" banner?

:2. The loss of the community feel within the WikiProjects. I don't see a whole lot of TOL participation down at the dinosaur level anyway. Firsfron of Ronchester 20:23, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

::As it is, it would list any applying subprojects on the template, as is the case for the templates with "workforces". If worse come to worse, people can easily be redirected to the most appropriate subproject from WP:TOL. It's not like WP:TOL doesn't already act as a "hub" for coordination between the subprojects. I do realize that some subprojects are more restricted/specific, but that doesn't seen to be an issue for, say, WikiProject Karnataka. Circeus 20:25, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

:::Kinda selfish I guess, but I just don't see what this does for WP:DINO except make us less visible. WP:TOL should rightfully be called a "superproject" rather than WP:DINO (or WP:BIRD, WP:BANKSIA, etc.) be called a "subproject" of WP:TOL, I think. With the amount of effort that a half-dozen writers and another half-dozen artists have put into WP:DINO, we certainly don't see ourselves as a subproject. Certainly dinosaurs are a part of the Tree of Life, but we haven't received a huge amount of help from WP:TOL, to be honest. Sheep81 05:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

::::I feel bad for saying this (because obviously a lot of thought, planning, and work has gone into this proposal), but I agree with Sheep. We never thought of ourselves as a "subproject", and we've worked a lot harder than several other full-fledged WikiProjects with a lot more members. I'm so proud of the work we've accomplished, with no more than six writers and four artists. There has been support from a few TOL people, but for the most part, we've been on our own. The banner we recently designed is so small on the prototype that you can't even see the picture on it clearly (it shows five dinosaurs, but you can't tell that now; they just look like four tiny splotches). And now we've become a sub-project of the Reptiles and Amphibians sub-project. I'll leave aside the observation that Reptilia is paraphyletic. Firsfron of Ronchester 06:20, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::I agree. I'm not sure what combinig all these projects into one will accomplish. I rarely, if ever, see participants in other TOL projects working on WP:DINO, and I have to say I hardly ever contribute significantly to "sub-projects" i'm not a member of because they're outside my area of interest/expertise. I don't think combinging the projects will change this, so, I'm not clear on what you hope to accomplish. Dinoguy2 06:42, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::To clarify, I didn't mean to imply that we have received NO help from WP:TOL. That is certainly not the case. I also did not mean to downplay the contributions of some of the less active editors who have toiled on our Project. However, it is not inaccurate to say that the vast majority of the massive amount of work has been done by only a handful of editors. We are very proud of our self-sufficiency, perseverance and independence, and to call WP:DINO a "subproject" and stick us at the very bottom of some other Project's banner is kind of insulting. I'm sure other Projects feel similarly even if they don't whine as much. :) Sheep81 07:28, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Wow, Circeus, you've been busy! Excellent job, here. I had been wondering if that was possible, but I'm a template novice. I set up both WP:CPS and WP:PLANTS assessment/project templates. I haven't taken a look at the template script, but a few questions:

1. Do we maintain the "needs-taxobox" and "needs-photo" etc. parameters for each WikiProject so that the categories remain project-specific? (Something like "plants-needs-taxobox=yes"?)
2. How about logistically replacing existing templates? I've been trying to think of a way to allow BotanyBot to do it with AWB, but for the life of me with all the complicated changes, I don't think AWB will cut it. Can someone with a bot weigh in on how easy it would be to change these templates out?

If we can figure out those, I'd definitely support the simplification/unification. Oh, and one suggestion. I've noticed a lot of WikiProjects use "{{PAGENAME}} is within the scope of..." instead of the simple "This article..." since some of these templates invariably are applied to many non-article pages. Not a big issue, but a style I prefer. Cheers, --Rkitko ^(talk) 00:52, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:A good idea, but it would be nice if it reduced work for taggers. If the lowest major taxon info can be extracted from the taxobox on the article page instead of having to enter arthropod =yes insect=no etc. it would be idea. This may perhaps not be technically feasible, and in that case only the lowest taxon name and its taxon rank (class,family...) should be required rather than a series of yes, no entries. The project names should be internally picked based on the taxon provided. Shyamal 02:16, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

::I believe the default setting is "no" for the WikiProjects that support it. For example, I would only have to answer "yes" to "carnivorous plants" and "plants" for one of WP:CPS's articles. I wouldn't have to worry about answering "no" to the other parameters. And I don't think there's any way to extract information from the taxoboxes, especially since not all articles within our projects have or need taxoboxes. And some projects transcend taxonomic boundaries. I agree it's good to reduce complexity and I think Circeus has done the best job in doing so. Uniting all these templates will eventually reduce the amount of work and complexity. See the mockups that are provided for examples on the use of the template. Best, --Rkitko ^(talk) 05:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:I agree with Sheep totally. We've worked darn hard to get to the place we're in. And not only do you want to make us almost invisible in what's already a project that needs new writers, but you have the ignorance to place us a subdivision of Reptiles?! Everyone knows that dinosaurs are catagorically not reptiles & I'm insulted by the insinuation. You cite the Military history template as an example of this new proposal working. Being a friend of Kirill Lokshin, the manager of that project, it'd be safe to say I'd know the difference between the two. Firstly, the Military History project was set up waay before it's various offshoots - many of the project under TOL have been active for years. Secondly, Military History has task forces, which were made specifically for the purpose of this kind of proposal - this proposal decrees that full fledged wikiprojects suddenly close shop & hide themselves. Now, a better idea would be to create a bunch of task forces (Possibly for the 5 Kingdoms; Plant, Animal, Fungi, Monera & Protista) & put them in place of the wikiprojects on this new template. Then, from those task forces, link to the main wikiprojects (IE, Task force animals could link to a number of wikiprojects such as Dinosaurs, Reptiles, Mammals etc etc). That way, real wikiprojects would still have their banners & rights, whilst TOL would still have a kind of unifying feature to it. Anyway, my vote is to not go through with this current proposal. Cheers, Spawn Man 12:18, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Would article importance be included in the new template? I can see this generating problems - For example, chitin might be of low importance to TOL generally, but of high importance to the insect WikiProject. Debivort 03:35, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:Yes, in the mockups that Circeus created, you can see that there are multiple parameters for importance (i.e. "importance=Low" for TOL and then "plants-importance=Mid" and perhaps "carnivorous-plants-importance=High"). It's something we use now in WP:BANKSIA and WP:CPS, which are subprojects of WP:PLANTS. We've been using such a system for a few months now and Circeus incorporated it into this template as well. Cheers, --Rkitko ^(talk) 05:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:Importance, and the portals, are behind the "drop box", but they are there. Circeus 13:00, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I think this solution while becoming standard across many projects is a worthy ideal. I wonder whether the nesting is in the wrong direction,

example say WP:Banksia

Instead to the main WP tag being TOL

The main tag should be WP Banksia with a reverse tree of Plants, then TOL. That indicates that WP:Banksia is the subjects focus project and that plants, and TOL are broader scope projects that support the subject area. Gnangarra 06:24, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:This, I think, is a better way to go about it. Dinoguy2 06:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

::Yes! That way, if a user is really excited about Banksia, they know to go first to WP:BANKSIA, and that the other projects are there for support. Sheep81 07:08, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:::I suppose we could build a supertemplate like this that would prioritize projects. A parameter would tell it to use WP:BANKSIA's template design/look, so that the template would look like the BANKSIA template, but would still be the supertemplate. Something like {{Tree of Life|project=Banksia|Australian-biota=yes|plants=yes|class=....}} and so on. That way it would still be incorporated in the supertemplate, but maintain the feel of the individual projects and avoid the problem stated above about community. It is able to be done that way. Thoughts? --Rkitko ^(talk) 07:24, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

::::Sounds very promising! I think we'd like to see a mockup though. Most of us are not template gurus, sadly. Sheep81 07:29, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

::::I very much like this idea, especially the thought of TOL being mentioned in each template, but the template being unique for each project. If it's feasible using one super template to save on work, then so much better! Mehmet Karatay 07:40, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::instead of super templates getting over complex, I would have thought that the {{Tl|WP Banksia}} could just be modified to included the Plants, TOL tag lines and populate the plants. tol categories. This would also alleviate the need for a mass template replacement and allow for expansion into other non-tol projects like WP Australia.. Gnangarra 07:40, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

::::::True, {{tl|WP Banksia}} already includes assessment information for WP:PLANTS, as does {{tl|Carnivorous Plants}}, but the point of this endeavor, I think, is to compile all TOL projects into one template so that updates, if ever needed, can be done across the board. That may have some advantages and disadvantages. Another important aspect of it is that not all subproject articles will always be part of its parent projects. Perhaps it's more straightforward in WP:BANKSIA, but in WP:CPS, we have at least one article within the scope that is not a plant (Pameridea), so the super template could include parameters that would indicate that WP:CPS supports that article, though the ultimate project would be WP:ARTH. I know WP:BANKSIA has Dryandra Moth within its project's scope, but that is also not a plant. That's where the super template would be useful. --Rkitko ^(talk) 08:12, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

:::::::As a side note, Pameridea is a prime example of inconsistent assessment. For a far more egregious one, see Talk:Dryococelus australis. Circeus 21:01, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps, for, say... Pinguicula moranensis.

{{Tree of Life

|project=carnivorous-plants

|class=FA

|tree-of-life=yes

|plants=yes

|carnivorous-plants-importance=Mid

|plants-importance=Low

|TOL-importance=Low

}}