iNaturalist and Wikipedia

It was a quick patch - glad to hear it was of some help :)

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Cassi, Do you know if the taxon box that appears on Wikipedia pages is sourced from places other than Wikidata ?

For instance, can it be manually edited ?

I wrote a Wikidata SPARQL query to find taxon where the iNaturalist identifier is not present.

As an example it returned Wikidata entry for LeConte’s Sparrow, and sure enough it is not there.

But if you look at the Wikipedia page Wikipedia page for LeConte’s Sparrow, the iNaturalist ID number is there.

So where else can it source from ?

EDIT - in this case, LeConte’s Sparow has 2 separate entries at Wikidata, which just turns this to a nightmare if that is the typical state…

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No, the taxoboxes on the English Wikipedia aren’t connected to Wikidata, they’re manually edited and maintained internally.

No, there is clearly some kind of integration between the 2. I just created this species on iNat:
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/894995-Blepharis-edulis

I specifcally found a species to add that already had a Wikipedia page.

I added the iNat # to the Wikidata page, I did not edit the Wikipedia page, yet upon refresh it appeared it the taxon box
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blepharis_edulis

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If you want to try yourself here is a valid species not in iNat, accepted at POWO:
POWO page
Wikipedia page
Wikidata page

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Are you referring to the taxonbar? The taxobox is the taxonomy hierarchy that appears at the top right, while the taxonbar shows the links to other sites.

For linking up iNat and Wikidata taxa, there’s also this tool:
https://tools.wmflabs.org/mix-n-match/#/random/238

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@andrawaag - do you know if there is a property in Wikidata used to express the fact that a taxon name is a junior synonym of another taxon ?

For example this is now considered a junior synonym of this.

I know there is P1420 (taxon synonym), but the way I read that text is I would apply that one to the valid name and indicate any synonym.

But is there a reverse one that is entered on the deprecated name to show what it is properly known as ?

@cmcheatle Sorry for the late answer. I am not aware of a designated property for junior synonym. But why not use a qualifier, as I have done in this example

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I’d like to propose a wiki for users to link to Wikipedia taxon pages with errors. Forum members who also edit Wikipedia articles would get a list you could work from (at your leisure, of course!), and those who aren’t tech-savvy, or don’t wish to learn the editing process for just one or two articles, would have a way to communicate editing needs. These could include problems like images of the incorrect species (sometimes sourced from iNat observations for which the Community ID later changed), misspelled species names or species missing from taxon lists, species ranges now known to be larger or diminished, etc. After the article is edited, the editor could then remove it from the wiki. Wikipedia editors, is this a resource you think you’d use to find articles to edit? Would you foresee any potential issues with having such a wiki?

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By “wiki”, you mean on the message board here, right? I don’t see a problem with that; it might be helpful to tip off some of the relevant WikiProjects on en.wikipedia to encourage editors there to check it regularly.

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The idea seems interesting enough. Does iNat use other languages’ Wikipedia entries if the site used with a translation? If so, then maybe the post should not be English-only, as well :) (some stuff is very well described in English but maybe not in Spanish or Russian or whatnot).

Personally I’d rather see that effort based on Wikipedia under their projects system.

iNat does link to Wikipedia pages taxon pages in other languages but it’s not perfect: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/use-wikidata-to-link-to-appropriate-wikipedia-articles-in-all-languages/5538

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If I understand your question correctly, then yes, the Wikipedia article that shows on a taxa page is specific to the language you run the site in. So I see Danish Wikipedia articles as an example. 2 notes though:

  • the article has to have as its name the scientific name, if the article for instance a common name it does not work
  • there is a question of what to do if the article does not exist in your language. Right now the behaviour is to then go to EOL content in English, to me the intermediate step should be English Wikipedia.
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I am happy to help out too, especially insect taxa, - en:User:Shyamal

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Having edited Wikipedia for a few years now, I can help out any new users from iNaturalist that wish to edit on Wikipedia. You can leave a message at my talk page on English Wikipedia.

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Based on what I’ve heard, the mods over at Wikipedia can make it a bit difficult when making pages for new species. From what I’ve seen on iNat so far, it seems like this isn’t a problem, is it?

They shouldn’t–by longstanding consensus, individual species are presumed to meet the general notability guileline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability#General_notability_guideline by virtue of their initial scientific description and subsequent secondary sources mentioning the species.

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The only issue for taxa should be that there should be some documentation of of statements. That also prevents, or helps prevent, issues where there were edit wars between taxonomists who wouldn’t cite their materials. Unless it’s an admin who doesn’t actually read their own guidelines, there shouldn’t be an issue with creating taxon pages that way.

That said, I’ve encountered a couple hiccups on getting blatantly misidentified photos moved on the related Wikmedia. Generally this has been fairly smooth as well, but there’s a long-standing appeal to have some debris-bearing larva no longer have file names indicating them to be Chrysoperla carnea. Those may just need to have new renaming requests entered or may just need a second voice…

Hi jonathan142, are those misidentified images still present on WikiMedia Commons? There are three larval images that I see, but they appear to be correctly labeled.