Forum:Converting taxa

As you might have noticed, taxon pages currently exist in two different variants. Some use the classification template and have a blue box around the content. Others look like they always have, with the information as raw text.

The idea is that every taxon page should use classification. If they do, there are several benefits
 * 1) The layout of every taxon page can be changed with one edit to the template.
 * 2) The template gives every page semantic data that can be used in queries.
 * The template then uses this information on other taxon pages, so that we don't have to write the same things multiple places.
 * 1) The pages can easily be edited using the "edit with form" option.

The problem is that "converting" the old taxon pages to the new form is a long, tedious manual job. So far only I and morgoth have been doing it, but unfortunately, we both seem to have stopped. This is where everybody else comes in.

If everyone could help converting a little bit each, we could be done pretty quick. This could also encourage me and morgoth to resume our converting.

How do I do this?
Each conversion is quite simple once you get the hang of it. Every taxon page should 'only contain the following template (with parameters filled). Notice that spaces before and after the equals signs is a no-no, for technical reasons:
 * The "classified by" field should only contain a name (so "Ose", not " ")
 * The "parent" field tells the template where to look for the parent taxon, and in turn the grandparent and so on. Only the name of the immediately above taxon goes here.
 * The "rank" field tells the template whether the page is a kingdom, phylum, class, order or family. Very important for how the template will look and act.
 * "or" is an optional field for the alternate name (i.e. "mammalia or mammals").
 * The "description" field in only for the first descriptive sentence. No punctuation!
 * Any information that comes after the first descriptive sentence goes in "additional information" (optional). Can contain multiple sentences, but don't add a full stop/period to the end.
 * The "image" field should only contain the name of an image of a creature part of the taxon in question.
 * The "image description" field should only contain a simple descriptive sentence and a link to the creature pictured.

The same way, every classified creature page must use infobox creature, as this is the template that gives each creature page semantic data.
 * These above fields are the only required ones, but there are many more, and the more filled the better.
 * If the "family" field is the name of a page that doesn't exist or hasn't been converted, the template will break.
 * Because of this, you might want to bring up as many taxon/creature pages as you need to to convert one "line", change them all without saving then save them all at once.

Even if you do everything correctly, you might not see the desired result immediately, depending on which rder you've saved the pages. You might need to  the page. A simple way to do this is to go to Special:MyPage/monaco.js and add  to it. This adds a simple button to the page bar that purges the cache and completely reloads the current page when clicked.

Finally, note that if you update a "parent" without updating all the children (taxa or creatures), the links to the children will be "lost" and it will be harder make make sure every page has been converted.

Once a page has been converted, it will be far easier to edit, using the "edit with form" option.

Discussion
Any questions go here. 22:09, November 15, 2009 (UTC)