Talk:Otospermophilus beecheyi

I removed the link to californiaGroundSquirrelGoldenGatePark.jpg (my own image) because I think I was wrong about the identification. The squirrel is probably a western gray squirrel.

Proxima Centauri's recent edits

Proxima Centauri has recently placed Spermophilus beecheyi in the Sciurus category and in the squirrel category. There are issues with both of these changes:

1. As Wsiegmund pointed out there is a standard wikicommons policy to place an object in only the category that is most specific. The surrounding structure should take care of the rest. For instance, the category Spermophilus beecheyi is a subcategory of Spermophilus which is a subcategory of Sciuridae and so on. It is not necessary or desirable to place every item in all the possible categories it might be placed in when the surrounding category structure essentially accomplishes that in a cleaner way.

2. Spermophilus beecheyi should not have been put in the genus subcategory Sciurus because it is not actually in the genus Sciurus. It is in the genus Spermophilus.

3. The Wikimedia commons standard is to use scientific names for organism categories. It is aimed at an international audience and the use of English or any other language common names would have been contrary to that goal. In addition, of course, the use of often ambiguous common names leads to miscellaneous problems and confusion as it often does in Wikipedia where the use of common names for organism is the norm. Therefore the use of squirrel is not an appropriate category for Spermophilus beecheyi in Wikimedia commons both because it is the common name and because it is a higher level taxon than the group in question.--Davefoc (talk) 06:37, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

It might be helpful if we could understand what the goal of your edits was Proxima Centauri. Were you aware of the Sciuridae category and the Sciuridae gallery? How would the squirrel category be different from the Sciuridae category? Would the squirrel category include marmots and chimpmunks? Would it include gophers that are called ground squirrels in some places? Would it include other rodents that are called squirrels that are not in the Sciuridae family? --Davefoc (talk) 07:54, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Yesterday I put it into Sciurus because I thought it belonged to that genus. I found out that it didn't belong there so I tried to find a more suitable category. Aparently you don't agree with me. Proxima Centauri (talk) 14:01, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for joining the discussion here. A discussion of using common names for category titles may be found at Commons_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life#Oaks_v._Quercus. I found the comments of Tony Wills helpful. He pointed out, "There is no reason that there can not be separate structures, in parallel, with the taxonomic categories, that include categories of living things. An obvious example is category:Dogs which is in no way synonymous with category:Canis lupus and has lots of other aspects of dogs that biology has no interest in (eg category:Famous dogs)." So, there are cases where it may make sense to have separate structures. But, Spermophilus beecheyi may not be notable enough, or have enough pictures, to merit such a structure. Category:Squirrels in art, Category:Squirrels in crest and Category:Squirrels in heraldry exist. Associating these with a specific taxon is not useful, even if it were possible, in my opinion. Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:22, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

FWIW Proxima Centauri I agree with you that organism galleries should be in at least two categories, the category of the taxon they represent and the category of the taxon above it. So in my opinion the Spermophilus beecheyi gallery should be in two categories, Spermophilus beecheyi and Spermophilus. I argued for this view on the tree of life page and got zero support for it. Based on what seemed like the consensus view I now put organism galleries only in the taxon that they represent. I would also add that I think that Walter Siegmund's comments with regard to the creation of a squirrel category were exactly correct. --Davefoc (talk) 16:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

How about putting squirrel in the category so English speakers without education in classical Latin or science can understand things? Proxima Centauri (talk) 18:29, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

I made this edit,is it OK? Proxima Centauri (talk) 18:33, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Your edit is redundant with the following (see below), if I'm not mistaken. A search for "ground squirrel" with gallery checked finds Spermophilus. Creating a redirect for Ground squirrel is a good idea.[1] With that, "ground squirrel" in the search box finds the redirect to the gallery.

{{Translation table|inline=o|hidetitle=o|width=100% |de=Ziesel |en=Ground squirrels |hu=Ürge |ru=Суслики |uk=Ховрах |sv=Sislar |zh=美洲黃鼠屬 |nl=echte grondeekhoorn }}

Commons is multilingual. Currently, the category and gallery titles are in English for the most part (titles of biota categories and galleries are an exception). It is the hope of many that it will be feasible to localize these before too long. In the meantime, it may be possible to automatically display the translation of your preferred language in boldface. That may be in preferences/gadgets/MyLangNotify but it doesn't seem to do anything for me.

One more point: genus and species are always in italics. You need five apostrophies, not three.[2] Walter Siegmund (talk) 20:56, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

It seems that preferences/gadgets/MyLangNotify emphasizes the text inside language tags (en, de, fr, etc.) on file pages. Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:56, 16 October 2009 (UTC)