Talk:List of Euphorbia species

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	List of Euphorbia species is within the scope of WikiProject Plants, an attempt to better organize information in articles related to plants and botany. For more information, visit the project page.
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[edit] Pau?

There are three links to Pau. Unfortunately, there is no botanist by that name at List of botanists by author abbreviation. It might be a typo for Pav./José Antonio Pavón, but there is no article on Pavón, and I have no source material. BTW, there are 51 main space links to this nonexistent article on Pavón.— Randall Bart ^(talk) 21:25, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Copyediting

Re the above: the entire article list seems to have been bot- or script-parsed. It must to be considered unreliable. Altogether, there are a few things that need to be done. I have started with "H" so you can take a look at it to see at a glance.

• unlink the below-species taxa (ssp., var. f.). It seems SOP to only give them articles when the main taxon has one, or else create that article first.
• Also, the rank denominator ("ssp." etc) is not italicized.
• There seems no firm SOP regarding describer names in such lists. It is certainly more warranted in botany than in zooology, but it is confusing to non-experts (On the Web, treating the describer name as if it were part of hte species name is almost as common a mistake as capitalizing the species name). So it seems perhaps better to remove describer names to the species pages as soon as these exist. There is also place to discuss them in detail if needed.
• When adding describer names/links to species pages lacking these, check if the link is proper as per the section on "Pau" above. It is not a bad idea to add a {{check}} after the name (before the date annotation, see next point) because I have seen some that are probably wrong.
• Also, it is not usual in botanical nomenclature to cite the year the taxon was erected (the synonymy protocols differ vastly in botanical and zoological nomenclature). But it is important information because the species articles etc. would certainly all need the taxonomic reference as a formal citation, eventually. So it is probably best to move the year of description to the species pages also and make it <!-- an annotation --> that does not show in the displayed text until a proper citation is given.
• The "(s)" for succulent species is best put behind everything (synonyms, common names etc)
• It is unnecessary to add the "(s)" for ssp., var. etc if the species already has it. Only if some taxa inside one species are succulent and others are not (does this occur?) it would be necessary.
• It is probably a good idea to add synonyms for the "satellite genera" as mentioned in the intro. Eventually we will have the subgenus pages, and the synonyms here can be a source for discussing the taxonomic content of these.
• I don't know if it is better to link the scientific name or a common name. I have chosen the latter because in long lists like these, it tends to be a bit more easy to browse, and well-known species that have many common names tend to stand out more. Basically, if you're looking for a common and well-known spurge, you can simply ignore the long red horizontal line to the page's left
• I have also used "Commonwealth" naming style: "... Spurge" rather than "... spurge", "...-leafed" instaed of "...leaf" etc. For one thing, it is used in most of the species articles (but see below). For another thing, the only major group that has standardized common names (birds) adopted it very successfully; it appears to be less ambiguous in many cases than "American" style.
• Regardless, new pages should be created with the scientific name as title, because this avoids the myriad different and equally valid orthographies of the common names. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:01, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• I think it is really good to outcomment the dates. They are very confusing - if you don't know much about botany and/or taxonomy, Euphorbia schaijesii would seem to have been described only in 2006. But it wasn't. It was only moved to Euphorbia from Monadenium then. Similaryl, Oudejans revised, but not described, a whole load of taxa in 1992.

The dates must not be deleted however - they are useful for the species pages, to discuss the taxonomic history. As I noted, it is not usual in botany to cite the description dates; this may seem counterintuitive (and as a zoologist I sometimes really miss it), but the issue in botany is mainly genus revision; the year in which a basionym was established is less important than the year in which an animal's senior synonym was established I guess...

• I have also put the taxobox and images back in. These are not standard in such lists, but there is really no reason why that should remain so. Most "plain" lists were created/parsed when Wikipedia was more concerned about getting as much content as it could and less about presenting it in a nice manner. A "plain" list would be the format to choose for a botanical monograph or textbook, but it is inappropriate for an general-use encyclopedia I think. For one thing, it's a simple question of aesthetics. For another, it is very helpful to non-specialist readers. For any Euphorbia for which a photo exists on Commons is liable to be so well-known that non-specialist users won't have to waste time browsing through all those names. BUT: the images need some copyediting, namely the links. I have also started removing the fixed-width; the SOP is that if there is no important reason to do otherwise (e.g. in a leading image, taxobox image, or because it would look ugly otherwise) thumbnailed images should not get a fixed width because it might cause display problems. The photos would also benefit like

The taxobox - especially the subgenera/synonyms sections - is also rather important except when your job is being an Euphorbiaceae specialist. Not having to look it up but having it open already in this list has saved me from the occasional misedit, because when I do taxon-checking on spurges linked in articles I don't use the Euphorbia general article, and I can't imagine a reason why ayone would use it for that purpose.

• I found it also helpful to use – instead of the normal dash as separator between scientific and common names. Makes it a bit easier to read.
• I have (if I have not overlooked anything) finished cleaning up the letter "S". You can check out the code and use it as a pattern. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:23, 6 April 2008 (UTC)