The following discussion is an archived debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. The result of the discussion was Withdrawn by operator.

Polbot 13[edit]

Operator: Quadell

Automatic or Manually Assisted: Auto.

Programming Language(s): AWB

Function Overview: Add ((italictitle)) to articles with species or genera as article names.

Edit period(s): One run (or in small batches until complete)

Already has a bot flag (Y/N): Yep

Function Details: If an article's title should be italicized, you can add ((italictitle)) and voila. (Example.) This should be done for all articles named with binomial species names (e.g. Oxalis corniculata) or genus names (e.g. Oxalis). There are, of course, many such articles. Polbot will find all articles that transclude ((Taxobox)), see if the article title is the same as the "binomial" or "genus" field of the template, and if so, add ((italictitle)) if it's not already there.

Discussion[edit]

Removal of the name parameter seems a more elegant solution. I would like to see some more detailed reasons for opposing this before discounting it as the best option. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 23:16, 29 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
One downside, mentioned at the previous discussion, is that it removes a template parameter that other tools may rely on. But the bigger downside, in my opinion, is that it's not intuitive. Even an experienced editor who thinks "Oh, the title is italicized, how do they do that?" won't understand from the syntax how it's done, or how to remove the italicization in a copy-and-pasted article that shouldn't have the italicization. But if they see ((italictitle)) at the top, it's clear what that does. Consider also: when an editor looks at a change like this, it's not at all clear that the removal of the name parameter will have the effect of making the title italicized, and it could easily be reverted in good faith as an edit that simply removes valid information and (seemingly) does nothing else. I would prefer the more understandable and intuitive option. – Quadell (talk) 02:14, 30 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]


One thing I have seen is editors adding ((italictitle)) to pages which already have italic titles (Charnia). Perhaps the bot could remove this, as it's unnecessary, but perhaps there is no harm in unnecessary clutter. I would suggest that removing the name and using the edit summary "removing redundant 'name' parameter to produce italicised title" would educate, rather than confuse, editors. I have yet to see an example of how tools use the name parameter; any metadata continues to be produced if the name is generated automatically. Ideally, the italictitle template would not be necessary at all. Sorry - that's a somewhat random scattering of thoughts! Hope I make some sense. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:37, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There was a fair amount of discussion of this at the Darwinius talk page recently. This bot seems the appropriate solution to the problem. I agree that the unintuitive "removing the name parameter" fix is problematic, for the reasons cited above. Exactly what Quadell mentions above happened a couple of times with Darwinius -- people see that someone removed the "name=" parameter, assume it's vandalism, and replace it. Agathman (talk) 14:35, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That discussion suggests that it is a good idea to get the bot running soon, one way or another! I hope my quest for the optimal output isn't delaying things. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 14:40, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, if there are concerns that people won't realise why "name" has been removed could the bot not add some kind of note using the <!-- --> format to the article? I think that removing "name" is definitely the most elegant way and if an informative edit summary is left too then people will understand - I have been putting in a link to the ToL discussion so that others can see how use it. From the new articles I've seen recently people don't seem to be using "name" anymore anyway. Perhaps one other thing to consider is that if we use ((italictitle)) people may start adding it to films, books etc in which as far as I can tell there isn't consensus to make these titles italic. Smartse (talk) 16:40, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Also BotanyBot has made titles italicised as long ago as 2007. e.g. [1] I'll point the user who ran it in this direction. Smartse (talk) 20:14, 31 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, BotanyBot was just removing those name parameters because they were redundant; the title of the taxobox has automatically been generated for years now (e.g., if the genus or binomial parameters, the taxobox title is automatic). Article title italicization has only been possible by removing the name parameter since December 2008. Regardless, I agree that the best option here is to have the bot remove the name parameter. I haven't poked around much in these discussions, but I'm not convinced by Quadell's argument about external applications/tools. We need to do what makes the most sense to us, and that, in my opinion, happens to be the most parsimonious. --Rkitko (talk) 01:23, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Any idea about how many articles will need to be fixed with the bot? MBisanz talk 13:35, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know exactly, but it's a lot. Nearly 26,000 articles transclude ((taxobox)), but only a fraction of those are genera or species. Let's guess that 18,000 are. Then around 1,000 articles already transclude ((italictitle)), and nearly all of them are species and genera. So that leaves 17,000. But then, some of those are already italicized through the "name parameter hack", described above. So my best guess is 15,000 changes, probably correct to within an order of magnitude. – Quadell (talk) 14:31, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, that seems reasonable to me. MBisanz talk 00:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If there really is a reluctance to remove the name parameter, would it not be simplest just to alter ((Taxobox)) so that the italicising decision code from ((Taxobox name)) is called for all instances of Taxobox, not just those where name is undefined? I mean only to do the italicising of titles decision, rather than rewriting the name parameter. Then the page title<->species/genus matching would be done in all cases by the template, without the need for an edit to every page. Celefin (talk) 23:25, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand what you mean. – Quadell (talk) 23:52, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ok at the moment, Martin set up ((taxobox)) for the "name hack" so that:
– if the name parameter is undefined, call ((Taxobox name)), which then compares the page title with the Species or Genus etc., and if they match, italicise the page title using RealTitle –
However, unless I misunderstand, we could alter ((taxobox)) so that the page title comparison and subsequent italicisation if appropriate is done in all cases, whether the name parameter is defined or not, thereby correcting all the page titles in one go without needing to edit any articles. It would also seem to be more "intuitive" – perhaps easier to explain to editors that adding a taxobox to the page is sufficient to give correct scientific italicisation. I hope that was a bit clearer... Celefin (talk) 00:17, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good - but if such an approach would always get it right, then we could allow it to over-ride the name parameter altogether, couldn't we? In which case, we might as well remove it from the templates, and stop editors thinking that they need to specify it.
At present, would it do any harm to remove the name parameters from taxoboxes where it is was added before {taxobox name} was invented, and is thus not changing the output, except by suppressing the italicisation? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 03:33, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I didn't meant to imply that I don't think that removing name is the way forward, I was just proposing an alternative or an intermediate step if User:Thorwald is really finding that a problem. Definitely the best solution in my opinion would be to define the taxobox specification more precisely - at the moment the name parameter is used by editors for both scientific names (which are as we know implicit from the other fields) and for common names. We should remove name in all cases where it is a scientific name, and rename it to say common_name. That would seem to give more useful output if anyone is parsing the data anyway. Celefin (talk) 07:57, 7 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I still think that ((italictitle)) is the best way forward, because it's simple and intuitive. (Also, it doesn't have the problem of messy exceptions, where a species article should be italicized but isn't automatically, or vice versa.) If there's consensus to go forward, I'd like to add this to species articles, and I'd prefer this not be done automatically through the template. But if people would generally rather do it through the template, then I don't guess the bot would be useful. Any other opinions? – Quadell (talk) 13:38, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So long as the title is italicised, I don't think it matters a great deal how it is accomplished. I still think it would be good if the bot were to remove redundant parameters from taxoboxes in addition to adding an italictitle, but if you are reluctant to do this, then so be it. Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:35, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If the bot is only linked to the template ((Taxobox)) , then what about the redirects from a scientific name to a another scientific name or to a common name. Are those redirects to be excluded ? JoJan (talk) 13:25, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I personally don't think it would be useful to italicize the title of a redirect. – Quadell (talk) 14:56, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know all the details of this, but I'd prefer just fixing the templates to do it automatically rather than make 15,000-some edits. If you really want to use the bot, I'd go with the template. I think it's okay to include the name in the box even if it's autogenerated. Heck, I don't even like italics in titles at all; it looks really tacky. But I guess others do. Reywas92Talk 03:07, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Options[edit]

The current situation
Currently the ((taxobox)) template automatically italicizes page titles when the taxobox omits the "name" parameter and the "binomial" parameter is the same as the page title. I find this unintuitive and unfriendly to new editors, as I've said above. Some genus and species articles use this method to italicize page titles; others use the ((italictitle)) template; others don't use either method, and have unitalicized titles.
Option 1
My bot could remove the "name" parameter from taxoboxes in genus and species articles where appropriate, so that the titles are italicized. It would still not italicize the titles for articles like Homo (genus) where the article name is not the same as the binomial parameter. (((italictitle)) works for these, by the way.)
Option 2
The taxobox template could be modified so that it always italicizes titles when the "binomial" parameter is the same as the page title, regardless of whether there is a name parameter or not. This does not require a bot run, but it may break articles in ways I'm not aware of -- the template is used in lots of articles. It also wouldn't work for Homo (genus), of course.
Option 3
My bot could run to add ((italictitle)) to all genus and species articles. (Optionally, the ((taxobox)) template could be modified as well to not automatically italicize titles.) I find this solution the most intuitive, but others disagree.

What's the best way forward? – Quadell (talk) 13:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

With pages like Homo (genus) could code be written so that only the exact letters in the "genus" section of the taxobox are italicised? Similarly on pages like MRSA could it just italicise the "binomial" section? This would stop horrible bits like <span id="RealTitle" style="display:none">Methicillin-resistant ''Staphylococcus aureus''</span> being needed. Could something be done to the template so that it uses the "binomial" section to italicise titles in all articles? This would remove the need to use ((italictitle)) on articles where there is a common name in the taxobox. I think that whatever is decided we should try and make it so that every (or at least 99%) of the titles can be italicised in the same way. Smartse (talk) 15:43, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's possible that this sort of logic could be built into the ((taxobox)) template, but it would be extremely difficult and (in my opinion) unwise. After all, the taxobox template already includes ((italictitle)), which uses complex and expensive calls through several layers. To expand this through a search on the page title would increase the complexity many times. There used to be a plan to integrate StringFunctions into parser functions, which would make this easier, but that was scrapped, so the only was is to sequentially check each character through repeated template calls. To put this in a template transcribed tens of thousands of times would be bad on the servers, I would think. – Quadell (talk) 16:36, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You'd know better than me! I don't know what all that means unfortunately but I can see that it is already pretty complicated. In that case I think Option 2 is the most elegant way then to italicise lots of titles at once - I assume it can be tested on a broad range of article first to check whether any problems might occur. Smartse (talk) 17:06, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer option 3 since in option 1 there could be a problem when the title is the scientific name and the name parameter a common name (which should not be deleted). In option 2 is see a problem when the title is a common name (which should not be italicized). The same problem occurs in the rare cases when the binomial name contains the html code for a non-breaking space between the two parts. Option 3 does not encounter these difficulties, provided that the name parameter should only be removed if it contains the scientific name. And as an aside : I've encountered a few times a taxobox that had been inserted in a new article with a copy and paste that still contained the unmodified name parameter of the article from which it was copied. Option 3 covers this possibility as it removes the name parameter if it is not a common name. JoJan (talk) 15:08, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Option 3 seems to me the best option, although we'd need a task force to monitor the bot to make sure any accidents are reverted upon sight. I've seen far too many instances of bots ruining pages by mistake.
I propose that we set up a sort of "watch" team to watch the bot during certain times of the day...for example, I'd be willing to check all pages the bot modified between x time and x time on x days of the week. A sign-up list would be appropriate. I'm not sure if a bot-watching team has ever been implemented before, but I think it's appropriate here to ensure no damage occurs, since this is such a large portion of the encyclopedia. Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 17:02, 15 June 2009 (UTC) Retracted by Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) on 17:30, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd certainly be willing to run the bot only in small batches, or only during certain times of the day, as an extended trial. – Quadell (talk) 17:09, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
((minnow))
Yes, I just whacked myself with a wet trout. It just occurred to me that this is such a quick and easy task to do by hand that it would be redundant to check the bot's work when we could do it ourselves quicker, so scratch my idea of a watch team. I think that we could make the bot more foolproof by making sure it replaces the name field if it is missing so as not to cause redundancy.  :) Bob the Wikipedian (talk • contribs) 17:28, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Thanks to The Signpost, I just saw the RFC on this. I obviously won't run this unless there's consensus, and this probably shouldn't be approved unless or until that RFC wraps up. – Quadell (talk) 14:15, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hold up. "There used to be a plan to integrate StringFunctions into parser functions, which would make this easier, but that was scrapped." Actually that's not correct. StringFunctions were integrated into the parser functions,[2] thus there is no need for this bot, IMO. Kaldari (talk) 21:09, 17 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Signpost said that got undone. Either way, it shouldn't affect whether this bot gets approved or not. It would simply make italicizing methods work simpler. – Quadell (talk) 00:38, 18 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawn by operator. If it looks like there's consensus at the RFC, I'll reopen this. – Quadell (talk) 12:37, 18 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]


The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

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