Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Protista

WikiProject Protista

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Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:58, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Mesomycetozoea listed at Requested moves

A requested move discussion has been initiated for Mesomycetozoea to be moved to Ichthyosporea. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 14:17, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

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Obsolete and paraphyletic taxa

Following up on the the discussion at Template_talk:Taxobox#Rank_of_infrakingdom I've copied the last part here. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:08, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

@Jts1882 I understand that, but at the same time, Apusozoa is an abandoned taxon whose only usage is within Cavalier-Smith's hierarchical classification, not the current cladistic classification of eukaryotes. If we apply this rule that every abandoned taxon should be added into the automated taxobox system, we would end up with a lot of outdated para- or polyphyletic taxa whose only parent is Eukaryota or something nearly as big, because its parent taxa are also abandoned. Which doesn't make sense to me. I don't think the disputed taxa should intermingle with the automated taxoboxes.

Would the creation of articles for Diacentrida and Sarcomastigota be a good solution of this? —Snoteleks 🦠 13:39, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

@Snoteleks:, why not put it in Category:Obsolete eukaryote taxa, and remove the taxobox? This is what's done for some other Cavalier-Smith taxa, e.g. Archezoa and Cabozoa.Plantdrew (talk) 16:27, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

If it is deserving of an article, then I think it should have a taxobox. The taxobox has more information than just the taxonomy and the taxonomy is still relevent if the taxon is no longer used. The question is which deserve articles. I've seen enough independent coverage of Apusozoa to warrant an article, but Diacentrida and Sarcomastigota are little used by others. That is why I think a taxobox reflecting the taxonomy shown in the phylogenetic tree would be better. Just adding |auto=yes to the existing taxobox gives a suitable taxobox. I've added it here (see right) with a few tweaks. —  Jts1882 | talk  16:41, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I guess that's the more useful outcome. I'll do that instead.—Snoteleks (Talk) 17:24, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

I just noticed, what about Heliozoa? The (non-automatic) taxobox clearly shows Actinopoda and Sarcodina as parent taxa even though those are also obsolete. Where should we draw the line? I think maybe polyphyletic ones such as Heliozoa could retain a non-automatic taxobox, while paraphyletic ones that still "fit" in the Tree of Life (such as Apusozoa, Eolouka, crustaceans, etc.) can be transferred into the automatic system. Does that sound good? —Snoteleks (Talk) 17:29, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

What to do with obsolete and paraphyletic taxa is a difficult question. I think this depends on coverage. Some are clearly notably like Protozoa. Others like Apusozoa and Heliozoa are less clear but I think there is a good cases for articles, although there will always be a question as to whether they would be better covered in a section of a broader article, e.g. as Sarcodina is covered in Amoeba. In the case of Diacentrida and Sarcomastigota I think they should be discussed somewhere, but this might best as part of another article. Perhaps there could be a section in Protozoa dealing with Cavalier-Smith's more recent classifications.

On taxoboxes, I think if a taxon is considered significant enough to be an article it should have a taxobox. I see no reason not to use the automated taxobox system as this helps consistency between articles. It also allows us to get an overview of the classifications with the taxonomy browser. Clearly I have a bias here, but the bias is why I made the effort to write the script. —  Jts1882 | talk  09:08, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

@Jts1882 Would you apply an automatic taxobox to Heliozoa then? —Snoteleks (Talk) 16:59, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, in my opinion there is no good reason not to use an automatic taxobox and several advantages in doing so. However, with eukaryotes there are so many taxoboxes still using manual taxoboxes there are other priorities. I think getting the higher level taxa organised with consistent taxonomy templates should be the priority. That will make it easier to add taxoboxes at lower levels (less taxonomy templates to create). —  Jts1882 | talk  07:59, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

B-checklist in project template

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council § Determining the future of B-class checklists. This project is being notified since it is one of the 82 WikiProjects that opted-in to support B-checklists (B1-B6) in your project banner. DFlhb (talk) 11:51, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

New images

Please see and make use (here and on Wikidata) of images in c:Category:Openly available illustrations as tools to describe eukaryotic microbial diversity. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:00, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Nice. The images are also available without labels. Strangely the zip files with the jpegs and svgs are missing three images which are available at high resolution in the pdfs (Chytrid, Choanoflagellate and Choanocyte). Perhaps this was an oversight. They also don't give high resolution images for CRuMS, higher plants, fungi and animal terminals from Fig 1 and the thumbnail file, but most of these aren't microbial. A shame they don't provide the thumbnails as separate files. —  Jts1882 | talk  11:06, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I have just written to the authors to let them know we are using their images and thank them for the initiative. I took the opportunity to ask about the unlabelled and missing images, also. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:37, 27 November 2023 (UTC)