Category talk:Flora of Mexico

Validity of Mexican regional breakdown

Hey @Kippenvlees1: and @Mangoe: -- hello -- I'm looking at this categorization in light of the deletion discussion about the set of articles that divided Mexico up into eight regions. That discussion was closed on 6/20/17 and those eight articles rightfully deleted as original research. No outside source could be found that justified such a political subdivision. The project to clean up the (many) pages linked to those imaginary regions of Mexico brought me here.

So, here it gets a little bumpy. I was assuming all this would get dismantled. Not so fast!

The text here asserts "For the purposes of this category, 'Mexico' is defined in accordance with the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions. That is, the geographic region is defined by the political boundaries of its constituents." That turns out to be true (mostly). So these regional categories look like they have some validity. According to the current version of this plant scheme (which is available here, pgs 30-31), the World Geographical scheme has Mexico in its entirely as its own "level 2" region #79. That makes it tidy: level 2 equals political Mexico. For the next level down, level 3, Mexico breaks down into seven smaller areas, based on collections of states. Hey, look -- those all match up to these existing flora categories (mostly). For example "level 3" code MXN represents Mexico Northwest, which is Baja north, Baja sur, Sinaloa & Sonora, which makes this corresponding category referenced and valid. Level 3 code MXC is Central Mexico, which checks out against its category, and so on.

So what? Here's my opinion about the best way to straighten this up.

• I think we ought to keep this grand "Flora of Mexico" cat and all its flora-related Mexican subcats as they are. The structure and contents conform with all of the other categories in Category:Flora by distribution categories that follow the World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions, and there's a citable source.
• If that's a good idea, it needs corrections to bring it into alignment with the source. For instance, wikipedia has a Category:Flora of Southern Mexico and there is NO SUCH THING in the World plant scheme. That needs to be eliminated and its contents re-distributed. Two, same story with Category:Fauna of Western Mexico -- there is no such thing in the World plant scheme. And the World plant scheme has a level 3 code called MXI for the Mexican Pacific Islands which is not reflected in wikipedia. That should be created and populated. I think I have a handle on this.
• The regional division is sourced and valid for flora, so there are still appropriate places to use this File:Regions of Mexico.svg image. It should carry a note that it has no political significance.
• The other categories based on the imaginary regions of Mexico should have a CfD drafted.... more work to do.

Let me know if this makes any sense, your thoughts. Just wanting some other eyes on this. thanks! --Lockley (talk) 07:04, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Well, that was going to be my next problem area in this. As you can see, I'm taking apart the region categories one by one because it looks as though in a couple of cases the sub cats may need to be moved rather than just losing this category. But I have seen those two northern and southern cats and I was going to put them off for a bit because it wasn't clear to me whether they needed to be confronted. Mangoe (talk) 10:41, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm hugely in favor of your proposal. This would make the categories consistent with its supercategory. You can see that these regions defined by the WGSRPD are quite different than the ones in the original region articles. For that reason I disagree that there are appropriate places to use File:Regions of Mexico.svg, as these are not the regions defined by the WGSRPD. The map currently used on the category's page, is the correct representation of this region definition. - Kippenvlees1 (talk) 22:42, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Great! Thanks for your responses. I'll be working away within the category structure of Flora of Mexico to bring it into conformity with the WGSRPD. I'll end up with a couple of categories for deletion and the category tree much better off. Kippenvlees1 I see and appreciate your point about the image -- plenty of work to do, we'll get around to it. --Lockley (talk) 00:30, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

from flora to fauna

Hello @Kippenvlees1: and @Mangoe: -- assuming your continued interest in this cleanup project, please excuse me if that's not true. The good news is that the bulk of Mexican flora is cleaned up and in appropriate categories. There are some trailing ends to snip off, for example a couple of categories for deletion, and how to deal with that map, but all Mexican flora articles have been re-sorted into the legitimate regions.

For fauna -- I'm still considering how to handle. It's another fairly large recatting job but not as straightforward as flora. Fauna classification IRL (or elsewhere in wikipedia) does not appear to have the same standardized geographical classification scheme that plants do. I've checked external sources for geo data on animals, results not encouraging. I'll keep after it. Ideas welcome, though. --Lockley (talk) 22:38, 26 June 2017 (UTC)