I was looking at taxonomy flags that I might be able to help with. I found this flag for adding a Parnassius subspecies.
The subspecies seems to be accepted by Butterflies of America, but Iām not sure of how to cite the source when adding the new taxa. There doesnāt seem to be a general citation for Butterflies of America, so do I just need to add a new source citing that specific species page?
Side question - Is there a way to sort flags by taxa?
Generally itās better not to make a new source for each species page. But there should be one for each external source (Iām surprised there isnāt one for Butterflies of America).
You have to sort by taxa before the box to specify which will appear.
you may need to try typing out different permutations of the name of the website or resource, until the source search box comes up with it. Iām fairly certain there is one for Butterflies of America; I seem to remember citing it myself.
in general, yes, itās best not to add too many new sources. I see plenty of sources added that point to single taxon pages on external sites, but itās just clutter ultimately if the taxon can be found by a simple search within that site/resource.
Just on the āsourceā, further to @sbrobeson, then exactly, sometimes it takes different permutations to find āa general linkā to the website. The input sources are often pure chaos about what someone else entered, for example BoA, BOA and other such permutations largely seems to go to entries made for various very specific links to particular taxa. Obviously those wont match your newly imput taxa, and i feel copying such is bad practice - very specific links often become inactive ālink rotā, plus add needless redundancy. Instead, if iām taking source from a particular website, prefer to just add a general link to the entire Website, i.e. āWarrenā does it for BoA, even though the details formatted there say ā2012ā and it would be better to cite the current version - where iām not even sure BoA does version numbers, the current page reads ā9-III-2024ā (on the 26 oct 2024).
The Curatorās Guide says: āSince itās a pain to add a new Source record for every single page, itās often easier to set the Source as the website and include a specific URL to the page on that website that describes the change on the description.ā
it is also common to see many, many duplicates of commonly cited sources. typing in āPOWOā brings up what seem to be dozens of near-exact duplications, for exampleā¦ obviously not as much an issue as the aforementioned redundant ālink rotā excessively specific links, since all of the plain āPOWOā sources are equally valid, but it can also functionally clog the limited drop-down space. I know of no way to remove sources.
