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Wikidata:Requests for comment/P171

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THIS RFC IS CLOSED. Please do NOT vote nor add comments.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
P171 has only to be used for closest parent taxon of the taxon in question but exception might be made if the closest parent taxon is not known or multiple reliable sources claim different things. --Pasleim (talk) 17:09, 29 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seeking re-affirmation of the correct use of property parent taxon (P171)ː "closest parent taxon of the taxon in question". Although multiple taxa may be considered the closest parent, one editor feels this property should be used to list any and all parent taxa, no matter how close or not they are. Every language is in agreement that this is not the proper use, but apparently we need another consensus that that is the case. --Swpb (talk) 19:41, 10 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Taxonomy has more than 50 participants and couldn't be pinged. Please post on the WikiProject's talk page instead. --Succu (talk) 19:45, 10 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking from the point of view of a taxonomist, to me the parent taxon is the most immediate formally named taxon in the hierarchy of the species. For example a species parent taxon will usually be the genus, however in some cases it may be a subgenus if one has been formally declared. In the later example the parent of the subgenus would be the genus, the parent of the genus the family or subfamily, etc. Including higher orders as parent taxa is inaccurate and is more defining the clades in which these various taxa belong. Happy to provide real examples if people need. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 20:10, 10 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Does this preclude linking to items about cladistic taxa that lack scientific names (although they may be associated with vernacular name in various languages)? - Soulkeeper (talk) 21:43, 10 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Adding according to a certain taxonomic opinion at the end should clarify the usage. BTW: Cause of this "RfC" was this removal done by Swpb and the following edits at mammal (Q7377). Of course this property is not intended „to list any and all parent taxa“. -Succu (talk) 21:07, 10 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I am not sure what the problem is. Like with any property, any claim is supposed to be referenced, and since this deals with taxonomy, the reference should be a taxonomic book or paper. If there is no reference, only a (hopefully) generally known, broad indication (placement in the genus, a family, an order) can be "pencilled in". - Brya (talk) 05:17, 11 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Brya, Faendalimas: The problem is the complete disregard of the stated role of the property. The property, according to both its proposal and nearly every language which had a label for it, is for listing the closest parent taxon. While there may be some dispute over which taxon this is depending on system, the property is clearly not intended for listing taxa that are agreed to be several levels removed from the subject. I want it reaffirmed that this is the case, that such misuses should be removed, and that any plan to change the property to allow such usage (and it would be a change, not a "clarification") would require a consensus to change its label in a dozen plus languages. Swpb (talk) 06:26, 11 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
parent taxon (P171) replaced items on several seperate ranks, like seperate items on kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, etc. In my opinion the intention was to let parent taxon (P171) be one rank, although sometimes there may be reasons to have more than one. But indeed never a rank of higher level than the first main rank above it - exept for exceptional cases in which this main rank is not known. So a species item should not have parent taxon (P171) appointed to an item higher than a genus, subfamily not higher than family, etc. This way parent taxon (P171) can be used to follow the taxonomic tree, which is impossible if many values are given for parent taxon (P171) and especially of several different higher ranks. Lymantria (talk) 14:28, 11 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
So do you have an opinion about this, Swpb? --Succu (talk) 22:23, 12 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@Brya, Faendalimas, Lymantria: You'd better believe I do. The "correct" parent taxon is the one from the most complete taxonomic picture known to date. If there's real scientific disagreement about what taxon that is, that's one thing, but that's categorically not the case here. The databases listing Vertebrata and Tetrapoda as the parent of Mammalia do not make any claim of completeness, or even completeness with respect to the current state of knowledge--several purposely exclude known clades with only one surviving sub-clade, because their focus is on extant species only. They do not challenge the existence of the dozen or more firmly-established intervening clades, including Synapsida, Therapsida, and Cynodontia; no literature does. They do not support claims of Vertebrata or Amniota being the closest parent taxon to Mammalia. Of the above taxa, only Mammaliformes is considered the closest parent by literature that does claim to reflect the complete state of present knowledge. No taxonomist disputes the existence of reliably, formally, and consistently identified speciation events between vertebrate and mammal. Not listing every clade doesn't make a database wrong, just incomplete; explicitly claiming vertebrata or amniota as the closest known parent taxon of mammalia, as you want to do, is wrong, wrong, wrong. @Brya, Faendalimas, Lymantria: you can surely confirm that. --Swpb (talk) 15:35, 13 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, under the current rules of nomeclature only the major categories have to be used, for one thing, ie species, genus, family, order, class, etc... Which means listing class mammalia under phylum chordata is perfectly reasonable, most of us use the subphylum however which is vertebrata. A second and important point is that the vertebrate paleos (ie fossilworks) largely use phylocode as their classification system rather than the ICZN and while working within paleontological specimens only you can probably get away with this, however, despite what many paleontologists like to think, and I work as both a taxonomist and a paleontologist, phylocode is not an accepted set of nomenclatural rules and hence cannot be used for living taxa. Hence phylocode which names all clades is not the most correct nomenclature for groups when discussing all mammals for instance. You also need to separate nomenclature from taxonomy. If taxonomy has named several of the intervening clades between vertebrata and mammalia, good for it, those names have no meaning in nomenclature and do not have to be used. So there is no wrong or right about it. The only correct answer is that mammals belong to chordata, everything else in between is optional and has no nomenclatural support. Like I said generally it is accepted to use vertebrata, the sub-phylum, and it would be considered strange not to do so, but the name Mammaliformes is phylocode, and from a nomenclatural point of view only is invalid. Use it if you wish but it cannot be enforced under the rules of nomenclature. Despite what the literature says which on that name is mostly paleontological. Sorry but you will not get the answer you want because when it comes to names the taxonomy effects how names are used, only nomenclature rules if a name can or must be used. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 16:16, 13 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Your "The "correct" parent taxon is the one from the most complete taxonomic picture known to date." seems to show where the problem is. In Wikidata there is no such thing as the correct parent taxon; we just record what is in the literature, and reference this by that literature. Hopefully the users who enter data will select representative literature. - Brya (talk) 17:40, 13 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Just to show, currently there are no contradictions at least in parent taxon graph for mammals. So just for this case all those alternatives might act more like shortcuts, than a problem.
--Lockal (talk) 17:48, 20 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hopefully everyone agrees that parent taxon (P171) isn't for listing every parent taxon at every level. I think where there is room for debate is when it's ok to list multiple parent taxa. On this issue, I agree with Brya: we should list all immediate parent taxa used in relevant academic sources. Some sources may skip obscure clades or disagree with most other sources, but that's OK, we can still list them (with references) and use ranks to show which ones are highly supported and which ones are dubious or have fallen into disuse. Kaldari (talk) 23:25, 21 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Just to add something to this discussion : Wikidata has Ranks by itself that helps with Evolving knowledge. Maybe a rule such as « the most detailed taxonomies’ claim have to be ranked preferred », that is the taxonomy with the most detailed taxon, for example. Or the opposite rule, only the broader organisms classes (those with traditional taxonomic ranks) have to be ranked « preferred ». Knowing that the intended use of Wikibase ranks is to highlight the most up to date knowledge. author  TomT0m / talk page 09:43, 22 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@TomT0m, Kaldari, Lockal, Brya, Faendalimas, Swpb: No contributions since one year. I propose to close this RfC. Snipre (talk) 19:33, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Fine. Swpb (talk) 19:38, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
OK with me. Kaldari (talk) 20:22, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
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