Template talk:Tropicos

Author description is Not Accurate

The acceptable formatting is {{Tropicos|2724047|Helianthus petiolaris|last=Gray|first=Asa}} and there is no example of this. Tested on Helianthus petiolaris ref 13. Dave-okanagan (talk) 20:15, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

@Dave-okanagan:, there is an example (Viola sagitta) using |first= and |last= in the "Tropicos projects" section, but that is not a typical use case for this template.

In the typical use case |authors= is used, which is for an author citation (botany). Author citations are standardized abbreviations that may entirely omit a person's first name (and frequently abbreviate the surname). Author citations may include multiple people, and some of the people credited may be enclosed in parentheses, followed by some other people outside of parentheses. Author citations are part of the scientific name of a taxon (although they can be omitted in some situations). Effectively, |authors=} is part of the title of a particular Tropics page/database record.

|first= and |last= are relevant to a very small number of Tropicos pages, where the person credited actually is responsible for producing the text on that page. That is something different than |authors=, where the botanists credited often died long before Tropicos existed and bear no responsibility whatsoever for the Tropicos record. Plantdrew (talk) 21:29, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Done 10 of 300 error fixes

Category:Pages_using_Tropicos_template_without_author_names is triggered when last/first is not input. "Authors:" is at the top of every Tropicos page. Very confusing. Dave-okanagan (talk) 21:52, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

@Dave-okanagan:, there was a problem with how was set up. That has now been fixed. last/first is not needed for most instances of {{Tropicos}}, and pages where last/first should not be used are no longer showing up in the category. Plantdrew (talk) 23:12, 28 April 2024 (UTC)