Wikipedia talk:Notability (species)

Prior discussion

Please add links to prior discussions and pages you've notified here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

• Notability guideline – original draft [1], advance notice [2], discussion leading to the draft [3]
• WikiProject Tree of Life – advance notice [4]
• WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES – advance notice [5]
• WikiProject Palaeontology – advance notice [6]
• Village pumps – June 2024 discussion
• Wikiproject Paleontology - (fossil species guideline) [7]
  • Wikiproject Paleontology Discord server (offsite but public, join link can be found on the project page)
• Wikiproject Dinosaurs - (fossil species guideline) [8]

FAQ

Isn't this just spelling out what WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES has said for years?

That's the goal.

Does this change the number of notable species, compared to the existing rules?

It's not intended to. It might make it easier for non-specialist editors to recognize which should be presumed notable and which are non-notable, though.

What if there are no sources or only sources I don't think are reliable?

It is literally impossible to have a species accepted by taxonomists unless there are academic publications about the species. In some cases there are additional documentation requirements beyond published reliable sources. Information about the relevant academic sources are included in each entry in all reputable species databases. If you need help finding the academic sources, ask for help at the relevant WikiProject.

How many species qualify under this?

Maybe around two million, half of which are insects. That's the same as the current system. We already have articles on about about one out of six of these species, including most of the accepted vertebrates (i.e., birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals).

Aren't there nonillions of bacteria and viruses in the world?

That's individual organisms. Your body probably has more than 30 trillion microbes, but there are probably less than 1,000 different species in your body. At the moment, there are only about 15,000 recognized viruses and 25,000 recognized prokaryotes.[9][10] Estimates of how many non-recognized species there are in the world vary significantly, but non-recognized species are not presumed notable under either the current or the proposed system.

Could a non-recognized species be notable?

Yes, that happens rarely. For example, the virus that causes COVID-19 was temporarily notable according to the WP:GNG before it was officially recognized by taxonomists.

Does this apply to fossil species?

No. The discussion about fossil species concluded with a decision to address fossil species separately, at a later date. If you are interested in joining a future discussion about fossils, please put this page on your watchlist, or sign up for notifications at Wikipedia:Feedback request service#Wikipedia policies and guidelines.

Does this exempt species from the usual rules about mass creation or change the rules about mass creation?

No.

Won't people just spam in millions of WP:UGLY little articles?

They haven't during the last 20+ years, and this draft has the same rules that we've been using for the last 20+ years, so it seems unlikely to change the rate of article creation.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:27, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Background and interpretation section

Any objection to removing the "Background and interpretation" section? I would be in favor of removing it because it doesn't really say much of substance. The guideline doesn't change whether it's included or not included, which suggests to me that the section is not needed. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:38, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah it seems out of place, like something that should be attached to an RfC rather than the guideline itself. – Joe (talk) 18:48, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

I put it in and think it's a good idea but it was a Bold edit and if someone objects please remove it per "R" in BRD. ; I have no objection and would not be even slightly miffed. North8000 (talk) 20:44, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

My rationale was/is:

1. As Joe mentioned, another possibility is to include it in the RFC. There is debate above about whether or not this would make the RFC wording biased. This would resolve that.
2. "Notability" decisions incorporate other factors than just notability guidline criteria. (Wikipedia:How Wikipedia notability works) Even though prima facie this is not a notability criteria, it does provide a relevant consideration in "notability" decisions when utilizing this SNG, and one which aligns with what I think is the intent of the majority of the folks working on this. We don't want this to trigger big changes, including new mass or "assembly line" creation.
3. There IS a danger that this guideline could unintentionally change the status quo rather than codify it. The status quo is that most new species articles violate (or are edge cases) regarding the current wp:notability guidelines. So being in this "twilight zone" probably makes creators more cautious......maybe adding more sources and material to fall less-short of GNG. And avoiding mass or production line or completionist type creation. This provides a bit more safety on that. And maybe a bit of extra assurance for folks who might otherwise oppose this SNG due to the above concerns.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:02, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

@Kevmin reverted the revert, so some talk page discussion is needed I think. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:54, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

I felt the addition appropriate, as the discussion has touched several times on the premise that any editor not directly involved in this part of the process may very well think this is fully novel and doesn't have the 2 decades(ish) of history and precedent behind it as a "cultural behavior of wikipedians".--Kevmin § 00:07, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Maybe, but I don't think that belongs in the proposal itself. The best course of action, in my opinion, is to go into detail about the history of the proposal in the Support section. C F A 💬 00:11, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I'm inclined to omit this. It is true, and it's what I expect to happen. (Actually, regardless of whether this proposal is adopted, rejected, adjusted, etc., I expect that the community will continue doing the same things as they have been – my goal here is to write down what the community is doing, for greater clarity and transparency, without trying to change what the community is doing.) However, it's not necessarily helpful in applying this proposed guideline, especially to someone unfamiliar with Wikipedia's history in this particular area. It's a bit like saying "Drive down the street until you get to where the yellow house used to be". If you don't know where the yellow house used to be, or if you have two editors with different beliefs about where the yellow house used to be, then those instructions aren't helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:19, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

As described above, I think that it's a good idea but will not be unhappy or upset if it is removed. Let's just weigh in and decide one way or the other and then move on:North8000 (talk) 13:43, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

• Suggest Keeping per above rationale North8000 (talk) 13:43, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

  No one seems to be interested in a straw poll, so here's what I'm going to do:

  • I'm going to move that section to the talk page.
  • I'm going to archive most of the talk page, keeping the list of prior discussions and notifications (please expand, and please notify pages that seem relevant to you), the FAQ I wrote, and the ==Background and interpretation== section.
  • I'm going to start the RFC with the simplest/shortest question above. I'm expecting a fairly large number of responses, so instead of the Most popular formatting option, I'll add ===Discussion=== and ===Survey=== subsections.

  WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

  @WhatamIdoing: Should this section be archived? voorts (talk/contributions) 00:44, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  I think so, but I wanted to give the people in this discussion at least a chance to see it beforehand. Anyone who feels like it's been long enough should feel free to archive it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:59, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Background and interpretation

Moved from Wikipedia:Notability (species)

The intention during the inception of this guideline is to align with existing practice and not cause any major changes regarding creation or deletion of articles. It should be interpreted in that context.

—moved here by WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:14, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to adopt this guideline

Shall Wikipedia:Notability (species) be adopted as a subject-specific notability guideline? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:25, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

My intention in drafting this has been to match the long-standing practice of the community as closely as possible. I would like to thank the other editors who have spent the last month helping me collect all of the information in one place and who have patiently explained things that I didn't know. The proposal is stronger for their involvement; any errors remain mine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:27, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

• Thank you all for your work on this. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:43, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
• Note: See #Prior discussion, #FAQ, and #Background and interpretation above. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:08, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

BilledMammal, I've put a place for discussion first per this discussion at WT:RFC. We need to find ways to encourage questions and discussions instead of pushing editors straight into voting. For example, this would be an appropriate place for you to link to User:BilledMammal/NSPECIES and explain why you think that merging up to the genera level could be better than the community's current practice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:03, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

The biggest issue with this proposal is that it violates both WP:PRIMARY and WP:NOTEVERYTHING. According to a subject-matter expert The situation of a species being described and thereafter having nothing published about it in secondary sources probably is true for at least 90% of all described species.
This means that for 90%+ of species no secondary sources will exist, and thus PRIMARY forbids us from having an article. Further, for most of those 90%+ of species there will be insufficient information for us to present merely a summary of the topic, rather than all knowledge on the topic, and thus NOTEVERYTHING forbids us from having an article.
As written, this guideline violates two of our most important policies, WP:OR and WP:NOT, and we cannot pass a guideline that is so contradictory to established consensus. BilledMammal (talk) 04:13, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• BilledMammal, this is a question for you: I think everyone was well aware you were going to oppose this proposal. But what do you want instead, if this fails? Should a section be added to WP:AADD, like after the WP:SCHOOLRFC (now WP:OUTCOMESBASED in AADD), stating that editors should not cite WP:NSPECIES (the section in WP:OUTCOMES) in deletion discussions? I think you can see the fallacy here. Citing NSPECIES (a common outcome), especially if the community rejects a proposal to formalize it, is a circular argument and unhelpful. But I am sure editors will continue to do it if this proposal fails. Do you think it should be removed altogether from WP:OUTCOMES? If so, should editors be able to take species articles to AfD and delete them if they fail GNG? If the proposal fails but nothing else happens, we are just going back to the default-to-keep status quo which is no different than if this passed. I hope you choose to clarify your oppose vote. C F A 💬 04:44, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  Perhaps if this were to fail, he'd like to propose a different approach. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:53, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  I would, and I will expand on that if this doesn’t pass in consultation with the relevant Wikiprojects.

  However, I have a question of my own for you and CFA; if this does pass, how do you propose we handle articles that pass this guideline but violate WP:PRIMARY, particularly considering that when a guideline and a policy conflict we are required to defer to the policy? BilledMammal (talk) 06:02, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  But what does this have to do with notability? Article content (including the exclusive use of primary sources) is independent of notability. Nothing in this guideline says that you can't upmerge a series of species articles to genus in the event that only primary sources can be found (though I would suggest you be exceedingly thorough in your search for sources both online and offline before attempting such a merge) - you may face community opposition independently of this guideline, but the goal of this guideline is to codify existing practice that species articles are not deleted, not to say that you cannot pursue reasonable alternatives to deletion when appropriate. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 06:20, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  If policy says that we can’t have articles on 90%+ of the topics that this guideline says is notable, then clearly there is an issue with the guideline. Worse, it is certain to result in the guideline being misused, with editors citing it in deletion discussions even when the issue is WP:PRIMARY rather than WP:N.

  Keeping in mind that WP:PRIMARY is about the content of the article, I would suggest a resolution to this conflict - add a line to this guideline saying that stand-alone species articles cannot be created unless a non-primary source is included.

  Would this be acceptable to you, CFA, and WhatamIdoing? BilledMammal (talk) 06:26, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  Is the creation of new stubs with only primary sources (or none at all) an issue at the moment? SNGs don't override core policies so this seems like a matter to be discussed with new page patrollers. I'm not familiar with their standard practice for dealing with such articles but I don't anticipate their response will change with the adoption of this guideline. Are SNGs required to delve into matters of article creation and quality standards? This guideline is just codifying the general consensus that all accepted species are notable and should not be deleted, not that they are required to have a standalone article or that new page patrollers/AfC reviewers must approve them regardless of their quality. I just don't think this is something that needs to be specified here.

  Continuing further off topic from notability: I must also note that @Dyanega's comment you quoted regarding 90% of all described species also says The expectation of secondary sources is nonsensical when viewed against the massive literature where species are described. If a species can't be "notable" until and unless there are facts about it that are discussed in non-primary sources, then practically the only species that will be notable are birds, honeybees, butterflies, sharks, flowers, trees, some mammals, and a few dinosaurs. Frankly, it should be entirely possible, and entirely acceptable, to compose a species article in Wikipedia using a single primary source and nothing else [...] deleting an article, or refusing to allow its creation, because all that exists is one paper in which its identity and everything else known about it has been established, does a serious disservice to both the scientific community AND the lay community - a sentiment I, and I imagine several others here, wholeheartedly agree with. Wikipedia policy (particularly WP:OR stating that articles should not be based solely on primary sources, despite the fact that primary sources are not necessarily worse than secondary sources) was not developed with topics like this in mind, and it needs to evolve to suit the needs of readers. It is out of step with the scientific community in this regard, to the detriment of our goal of building the encyclopedia. We know that excellent taxon articles can be written solely based on the paper that described the taxon, and readers are not benefitted by deleting such articles. Would an article with secondary sources be better? Most likely, but deleting articles based only on reliable primary sources before they have a chance to be improved is not in anyone's best interest. Just my two cents - probably best to move this discussion about primary sources and policy elsewhere. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 07:35, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  In a situation where an article passed an SNG but was all primary sources, an NPP would probably add a primary sources maintenance tag, then mark it as reviewed. NPPs mainly look for CSDs and check notability. When problems with other things are found, a maintenance tag can optionally be added to help signal others that it needs cleanup, but it is not NPP's core mission to fix problems with OR, NPOV, etc. if the article itself passes notability. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:41, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you for the explanation!

  So, we can establish that at the moment, barring significant issues, articles with only primary sources will be marked as reviewed and tagged in such a way that other users may address their issues. We know that taxon articles like this are already astronomically unlikely to be deleted regardless, so the best course of action currently is to either improve the article or upmerge per WP:PAGEDECIDE as a last resort. This current system would remain unchanged under this proposed guideline. @BilledMammal, am I correct in saying that you oppose this current system and want to see no articles of this nature created at all, regardless of potential for improvement/upmerging? Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 08:02, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Your interpretation of WP:OR with relation to primary sources may not be monolithic in the community; see Anomie's comment at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#we may need to fix wp:or. May be something worth having a wider discussion about. Curbon7 (talk) 05:01, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

As currently worded, WP:OR is very clear that we cannot base articles solely on primary sources; Do not base an entire article on primary sources.

It’s possible that this will change, but until it does we can’t create guidelines that violate it - and I think the discussion you linked is about a related but different issue and won’t result in changes to the quoted aspect. BilledMammal (talk) 05:59, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Survey

• Support this formalization of WP:NSPECIES. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:27, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
• Support: this has been the de facto consensus for years. Species with a valid/correct name are never deleted at AfD (usually citing WP:NSPECIES), so this is the next logical step to avoid circular arguments. For a species to have a valid/correct name, there has to have been at least a significant description in a reputable, peer-reviewed academic publication. Makes sense to me. C F A 💬 23:54, 9 August 2024 (UTC)
• Support with the understanding that this codifies NSPECIES and that "presumed notable" in the context of this guideline implies an irrebuttable presumption, in contrast to the GNG's rebuttable presumption. The better way to achieve this would be to change all instances of "presumed notable" to "are notable". voorts (talk/contributions) 00:16, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  I also think that adding an example of a notable species would be helpful for editors who don't know much about taxonomy. My understanding is that in a species article, a link to particular database showing the species's name status is sufficient to meet (the current version of) NSPECIES. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:13, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  Glancing through the prior discussions in the archive for this talk page, I see these species listed as examples: Ginkgo biloba (plant), Persoonia terminalis (plant), and SARS-CoV-2 (virus). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:49, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• Support As others have mentioned, this is already defacto practice pulling from WP:OUTCOMES, As of 2022, no officially named species listed in Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Organisms has been deleted since at least mid-2016.. The guideline could be fleshed out in the future to explain more to less technical audiences about the reasoning behind this, but this is a solid threshold to start the guideline at. In short, having an entirely different walk of life is a big deal, and that's solidified in the real world when scientists confirm it has been formally described and given a full (and correct) species name. This would also help avoid WP:NOTBURO issues at AfD with nominations of existing species. KoA (talk) 01:48, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose. First, we already we have hundreds of thousands of species sub-stubs such as Phobaeticus hypharpax, Sorhagenia cracens, and Asteromyia euthamiae. Most can never be expanded, per a subject-matter expert who said The situation of a species being described and thereafter having nothing published about it in secondary sources probably is true for at least 90% of all described species.

Per the drafter, this guideline would endorse the creation of millions more, and editors supporting this should ask themselves if they really want a third of the articles on Wikipedia to be species sub-stubs. These species do warrant coverage on Wikipedia, but there is no reason they have to be covered in a standalone article, and our readers would be better served if they weren't.

Second, it would violate both WP:PRIMARY and WP:NOTEVERYTHING. The former tells us Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them, and 90%+ of the articles that would be created under this guideline would violate that. The latter tells us that an article should not be a complete presentation of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject, and for the 90%+ of described species which lack coverage in secondary sources it is not possible to present a summary of accepted knowledge, as there is insufficient accepted knowledge to do so.

Finally, any new SNG should be careful to discourage mass creation, to avoid the disruption caused by NSPORTS and similar guidelines, but this proposed guideline would encourage mass creation. Simply by existing it will lessen the requirements that must be met for mass creation to be permitted, and according the drafter it would be appropriate for individual editors to churn out between 24 and 49 boilerplate articles "per day" - in other words, between 8,760 and 17,885 articles per year. For context, this would exceed the rate Lugnuts created articles at. BilledMammal (talk) 02:38, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Addressing each point in order:

1. Why aren't editors served by having individual articles? Every species sub stub I've seen has an infobox that presents the info in a logical manner along with citations to one or two reliable sources. They're concise and tell the interested reader everything they need to know about the species. Presumably the alternative would be lots of list articles with even less information on each species or unwieldy and lengthy tables. As a reader, I prefer the page. There are worse things in the world than a third of WIkipedia being relatively complete and concise sub stubs.
2. I think you are misapplying NOTEVERYTHING. As the introduction to the list of NOTs, it's merely stating that we should not jam articles with cruft (i.e., the things listed in the following sub sections). It isn't saying that you can't have an article that summarizes what is stated about a topic in all available independent reliable sources. By that logic, nobody could create an article about a subject that only has five significant, reliable sources written about it, no matter how detailed those sources are.
3. 24-49 boilerplate articles per day (which is a range where someone might run afoul of the bot policy according to MASSCREATE) is only an issue if you have a problem with these articles. As noted, I don't think there's a problem with species sub stubs, so I don't see a problem with someone manually creating 24-49 species articles per day if that's how they would like to spend their time improving the encyclopedia.

voorts (talk/contributions) 03:54, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

1. When the articles are only sub-stubs, they aren't served because they are given very little information. They would be given more information by an article that covered both the species and the genus - and for such sub-stubs, its very possible to have a list or table article with just as much information as the sub-stub, and indeed the alternative proposal which encourages the creation of such list and table articles would have explicitly supporting creating species articles when there is too much information available to include in the table or list.
2. You misunderstand. The issue isn't using every source, it's using everything from a source - presenting the totality, rather than a summary. Further, because these are primary sources, as I mentioned this also violates WP:PRIMARY.
3. A huge part of the backlash to NSPORTS was the mass creation of such sub-stubs. Even if you don't see a problem with such articles, you should seek to avoid their mass creation to avoid the same backlash occurring here. BilledMammal (talk) 04:04, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

NB that I never said it was "appropriate" for an editor to "churn out" that many articles 365 days per year, nor do I say that any editor has actually done that for a year (or even for a few months). I have only said that the existing rules in the Wikipedia:Bot policy, which were implemented because an editor (who is still an admin) was occasionally dropping a couple hundred articles at once on the new article feed, do not apply to editors who create articles at a rate of one or two an hour. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:30, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

The issues that you raise here are not likely to change (for better or for worse) under this proposed guideline. Stubs will be made regardless, and even then, stubs are not harmful. Improving stubs is my main passion on Wikipedia - it is often very easy to transform a one sentence stub into a informative and relatively comprehensive article. Wikipedia is a work-in-progress, and the current state of an article being poor does not mean that the subject is not notable. An article being a stub right now is not especially helpful, but it is even less helpful to dismiss the subject of an article because of its current state. Simply having a speciesbox and taxon identifiers can be useful to readers! That said, for a taxon to be presumed notable under this guideline it must have "a significant description to be published in a reputable academic publication" and be "accepted by the relevant international body of taxonomists" - this is to say, a taxon presumed notable under this guideline will have at least enough information published about it to build a Start class article. The issue of taxon stubs on Wikipedia is not an issue of notability, but an issue of manpower to improve these stubs.

Furthermore, this guideline does not overrule WP:PAGEDECIDE - you may encounter opposition from users, but this policy does not prohibit merging, and I can think of several scenarios in which I would personally support upmerging (one that comes to mind is certain species complexes, the members of which are likely individually notable under this guideline, but are better presented in a single article due to their similarity). This guideline only states that (accepted) species are presumed notable, not that they must have individual articles or that they cannot be merged. That said, it is evident from previous discussion that there is community opposition to general upmerging, and this will be the case regardless of whether or not this proposal is accepted.

Ultimately, this guideline remains a reflection of existing practice, and its adoption seems unlikely to have any impact on the issues you've raised. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:11, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

In re you may encounter opposition from users: Looking at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1112#Undiscussed mass article merging and redirection by BilledMammal from 2022, it appears that he already did encounter opposition from other editors. After 200+ comments amounting to about 0.9 tomats of text, I think the main result is that he boldly made more than 500 merge-related edits to species articles over the space of about 36 hours that all got rolled back, and a few people suggested that it might be a good idea to have an RFC about whether to formalize WP:NSPECIES as an WP:SNG. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:51, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• Support. I just expanded two of the substubs mentioned by Billedmammal above, supposedly as examples of substubs that can never be expanded. I welcome the purportedly inevitable tide of millions of species articles predicted to swamp the encyclopaedia by formalising this guideline. Esculenta (talk) 03:31, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  One of them is still a sub-stub, and the other you expanded by closely paraphrasing a sole primary source, exacerbating the WP:NOTEVERYTHING and WP:PRIMARY issues and potentially introducing WP:COPYVIO issues. This is the issue with allowing the creation of standalone articles without any secondary coverage.

  Please also note that I said most, not all could never be expanded.

  Plus, if I hadn't mentioned them, would you have worked on them? They hadn't been expanded in six years, so I doubt it. BilledMammal (talk) 03:38, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  Neither is a sub-stub; if you can't use the accepted terminology correctly, the communication problem is on your end. The other article is properly paraphrased from the original source, as it should be; WP:NOTEVERYTHING doesn't really apply here, as one expects to find a description of a species in the Wikipedia article about the species. You gave these three examples of species articles, and then followed with the comment "Most can never be expanded...", so you can't flip flop and claim "I didn't say that", because we know what you implied. You whined about these articles, giving them as examples of unexpandable articles, and they were noticed by other editors and expanded. So Wikipedia works. You say most could never be expanded; I say you're just plain wrong. Esculenta (talk) 03:49, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) Please be civil. Saying an editor whined and similar does not contribute to a productive editing environment.

  And again, I did not say these were unexpandable. I had no idea if these specific examples were or weren't, and I fully expected that an editor like you would try to expand them. However, it is very relevant to note that you weren't able to do so without violating two or three Wikipedia policies, including core policies, and I consider that very strong evidence for why this proposal cannot pass. BilledMammal (talk) 03:54, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  This seems very pedantic and unproductive. Esculenta's point is very clear - it is possible for an editor to find sources and improve taxon stubs with relatively little effort, and your assertion that most can never be expanded is speculation, not fact. Esculenta is showing that they are willing to actually address substubs in a way that benefits Wikipedia - by putting in the effort and improving them, not dismissing them as non-notable or unfixable simply because of the current state of their article.

  Plus, if I hadn't mentioned them, would you have worked on them? Not sure what you're trying to say here. You provided examples of substubs, and someone proved that they could be improved with five minutes worth of effort. Taking this question in good faith: I personally find substubs to improve by through maintenance categories, or by searching manually for taxa I'm interested in working on and picking the most neglected articles. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:47, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  I just expanded two of the substubs mentioned by Billedmammal above. Diffs for convenience: 1, 2. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:58, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• Reluctant support. I have reservations about anything that amounts to "don't bother with sources or general notability, just make the article". But in terms of P&G following practice, this is more clear cut than most notability issues. Some of my concern would be alleviated if it were acknowledged in the text that this does not invalidate WP:PAGEDECIDE. That might actually be worth considering for all SNGs. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:18, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  I thought the idea that this guideline does not invalidate WP:PAGEDECIDE was self evident, but I agree that this could be made more explicit. I would definitely support adding it to the See also section alongside WP:MASSCREATE (and, outside the scope of this proposal, doing the same for other SNGs/making changes to PAGEDECIDE to explicitly address SNGs) Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 04:57, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

  I also think adding PAGEDECIDE as a reminder in "See also" is a good idea. Cremastra (talk) 13:17, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

• Support This is not a new SNG in practice, but a codification of the existing consensus. I do not think this would negate WP:NOPAGE, which is listed just a few sections below WP:SNG at Wikipedia:Notability. Curbon7 (talk) 04:54, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
• Support given that this guideline codifies existing practice and changes very little (bar providing explicit guidance on non-accepted taxa, hybrids, subspecies, etc). The issue of species notability has already largely been settled via community consensus (per WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES) and it's just a matter of putting it to paper. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 05:09, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
• Support, this formalises what I always hoped was true, that properly accepted species were notable, while doubtful names were not. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:40, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
• Support. We should bring our PAGs into alignment with actual practice whenever possible. I first added species to the "De facto but unwritten SNGs" section of my SNG notes back in 2021, and nothing has changed since then. Species are almost always kept at AFD. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:05, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
• Support. Policies and guidelines are meant to be descriptive of practice, and this proposal meets that standard. I have read and considered BilledMammal's comments in opposition but I am unconvinced by them. Thryduulf (talk) 10:23, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
• Support: I have my concerns about sub-stubs, and restrictions on them, but my first goal is getting some kind of reasonable actual guideline that represents existing de facto consensus. Cremastra (talk) 13:16, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
• Support per CFA. I find Voorts' rebuttal to the upmerging opposition rationale persuasive. Sdkb ^talk 13:41, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
• Support A guideline which is intended to codify existing practice. For many reasons it's bad when current practice violates the rules, and so this will solve that problem. I have a few concerns which will/would be assuaged by considering "intended to codify existing practice" to be a key element of this RFC. Current practice is that since these technically are breaking the rules, new articles tend to be cautions and include extra sourcing, content and images. We don't want to trigger a lot of assembly-line or completionist type article creations, nor some type of deletion-fest of established articles. I would encourage other respondents to say the same thing and if this passes perhaps that could be included in the close. North8000 (talk) 15:35, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
• Support as intended to codify existing practice, per Dyanega's statement, North8000's Background and interpretation, & #Background and interpretation section.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:39, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
• Support. Per WP:SPECIESOUTCOMES, this has already been a de facto SNG for at least 8 years. Charcoal feather (talk) 16:35, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Notifications

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• Added to T:CENT. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:16, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
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