Category talk:Fungi

The study of fungi in general is bedevilled by naming differences and the changing names of species, genera and families. This is especially a problem for Wikimedia Commons where users rely on the names to find material. Species names are the most stable, genus name changes are very frequent, and there is even less consensus as to how the fungi should be classified into families.

[Index Fungorum] is a very useful up-to-date resource which can be used to find synonyms, check the current names and see the taxonomic hierarchy of fungi. This reference is already used by other contributors to Wikimedia Commons. In my opinion the best approach is to treat only the preferred names from Index Fungorum as correct and to mention older names as synonyms with redirection links. There are many families (e.g. Amanitaceae) which are not recognized by Index Fungorum, and these should be regarded as outdated.

Partly because of the difficulty of finding a universally agreed tree classification, the list of all species under Category:Fungi is very useful.

Strobilomyces 14:20, 18 December 2005 (UTC)Reply

Direct inclusion of species in Commons:Category:Fungi edit

User Eugene van der Pijll is currently deleting the direct inclusions of Category:Fungi in Commons fungus species, so there will no longer be a list of all species visible under this category. I think this is a mistake. I have copied the correspondence here from our user pages. Strobilomyces 18:27, 19 February 2006 (UTC)Reply


Direct inclusion of species in Commons:Category:Fungi edit

Hello. Why are you deleting direct links from species in Wkikmedia Commons to category Fungi? Do you have any justification for this in terms of agreed policy? The complete list of species in Commons:Category:Fungi is a very useful resource which you are destroying.

Forcing the users to descend a taxonomic tree of categories is not a practical substitute. This is mainly because there is no consensus as to the form which the taxonomic tree should take, and the classification keeps changing and will continue to change. For instance family Amanitaceae is wrong according to the Index Fungorum system, and there are many more examples. There are already many conflicting systems in use in the various Wiki- projects. Also, using a taxonomic tree is much more difficult for non-expert users and does not provide a quick overview.

Please restore the links from all Commons species pages to category Fungi.

Strobilomyces 15:42, 19 February 2006 (UTC)Reply


Category:Fungi on commons edit

Hi,

It is general practice not to include an article or image in two category when one of them is a subcategory of the other. The category Fungi on commons it to large to be practical. If images can be included in more than one category in the same hierarchy, it is no longer clear where to look for an image on a particular species: an image can be in 1 or more of several places, so when looking for an image to illustrate a wikipedia article I have to look both at the Fungi category, as on the subcategory of the family. It's very inconvenient. Eugene van der Pijll 17:00, 19 February 2006 (UTC)Reply


Reply of Strobilomyces edit

Hi.

You say "If images can be included in more than one category in the same hierarchy, it is no longer clear where to look for an image on a particular species: an image can be in 1 or more of several places, so when looking for an image to illustrate a wikipedia article I have to look both at the Fungi category, as on the subcategory of the family. It's very inconvenient."

But if there are several categories, you can look either in one of them, or in the other. The existence of the other category doesn't do you any harm when you are searching for pages. Any method will need attention to know that the set of pages is complete; if you prefer families, you can concentrate on maintaining that system.

But the system based on families will not work for the reasons I give above. Classifications above the level of family are even worse. There is not a single consistent system; different sources put the same mushroom in different families. Some of the families used in Wiki-projects are wrong, e.g. Amanitaceae is obsolete. These differences will lead to edit warring and to further difficulties for users. Also this system makes it very difficult for users who are not familiar with all the family names (current and obsolete) - whether adding photos or seeking them. There will continue to be changes to the taxonomy and rival systems will always exist in the future. Unfortunately there is as far as I know no agreed policy for dealing with these problems.

By the way, I think the lack of consistency is also a major part of the reason why Wikispecies is so poor for Fungi. Fungi are less settled than other organisms, and we should be pragmatic so as to try to avoid relying a lot on a particular taxonomy.

The consequence of this should be that we have a permissive system for the various categories and links until there is a clearly agreed policy. Your destructive edits will make it more difficult for users to know what is available, to find material, and to add material logically. Please reconsider.

Strobilomyces 18:12, 19 February 2006 (UTC)Reply

Return to "Fungi" page.