[edit] Template name The template name is not descriptive. It does not link to article about life (how it functions, ideas about its origin and change, or its properties). Rather, the template links the five kingdoms of Margulis, with modification to reflect the discovery of the Archaea and the breakup of the Protista. That it, it links major groups of living things, rather than articles about life itself. --EncycloPetey (talk) 04:44, 25 February 2009 (UTC) - Is there a better name to describe the level above the three domains? We also have an article called Life which isn't just about taxonomy but which to a certain extent is. Maybe "living organisms"? Kingdon (talk) 17:35, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- I do not know if there is a name to describe what the three domains are. I chose "life" because that is what the domains categorize. I originally thought about also including Non-cellular life, making the first division cellular vs. non-cellular, but I do not think non-cellular life is widely accepted. So maybe this could be titled "cellular life"? EncycloPetey, you have accurately summarized what this template contains. Do you have any suggestions for better names? --Scott Alter 20:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- Not really. If I had, I would have suggested them. --EncycloPetey (talk) 03:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Classification I have serious doubts about the classification in this template. The omission of smaller groups (Mesomycetozoea and Nucleariid spring to mind but there are others) is understandable and perhaps even desirable, but more serious problems are: (1) omission of red algae, (2) inclusion of the rather dubious taxon Chromalveolata, (3) last I heard Excavata was pretty controversial too. The simplest fix is just to delete the template; I'm not sure we need yet another navigational tool when we already have taxoboxes and various links within the bodies of articles. But if we want the template, I think it is a mistake to base it on a classification which is contradicted by evidence (there are some cites at Eukaryote or I can go into more details). Kingdon (talk) 18:35, 25 February 2009 (UTC) - The reason why I made this template is to expand on the taxonomy navboxes. This navbox project started with {{Mammals}} and Category:Mammal families navigational boxes. These navboxes link all extanct species of mammals to each other (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals/Article templates/doc). I have been slowly expanding the schema upwards with {{Chordata}}, {{Animalia}}, and {{Life}}.
- My goal is to have a navbox containing the domains and kingdoms, linking the highest level of taxa together in their own template. I don't really care what this template is called, or which classification scheme is used. I did not intentionally include or exclude any groups, and I did not mean to create controversy. I did not use any evidence to create this template, rather I briefly went through Biological classification, Life, Three-domain system, and Kingdom (biology) to get ideas. None of these articles make it absolutely clear as to the currently accepted model, so I just threw this template together. Ultimately, my goal would be to link all species of life through taxoboxes, and this navbox is needed to create the link at the highest level. --Scott Alter 20:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
- There is no currently accepted model. At least, not a fully fleshed out one. Kingdon (talk) 13:44, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
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- A tool that helps / encourages the user to explore the family tree of life seems a reasonable idea. And a template is a useful tool if some aspects are controversial and / or subject to rapid change, because updates are visible wherever it's used. However I think this template's approach has some drawbacks:
- It tries to squeeze a quart into a pint pot. In adddition to omitting red algae, it omits plants, although it includes animals and fungi. Although I'm no expert on single-celled eucaryotes, AFAIK there are a lot of such clades, and squeezing all these into "other opisthokonts" seems "rather anthropocentric" (this article is a fun read: Bonner, J. T. (January 1999). "The Origins of Multicellularity". Integrative Biology 1 (1): 27–36. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1520-6602(1998)1:1<27::AID-INBI4>3.0.CO;2-6. http://doi.wiley.com/10.1002/(SICI)1520-6602(1998)1:1%3C27::AID-INBI4%3E3.0.CO;2-6. Retrieved 2008-09-03. ).
- After all the hard work its creation and maintenance require, most readers won't look at it, as it appears at the bottoms of articles that are sometimes long and complex (e.g. about a whole animal phylum).
- A good article about a fairly high-level taxon, e.g. a phylum, should include in the main text a discussion of the family tree a few levels up and down, with cladogram(s).
- I'd suggest trying a few Wikiprojects, except that in my experience their members concentrate on their favourite genera and families, and have little interest in higher-level taxa, possibly because these require more research per 100 words.
- I'm sorry that I can't make any more positive suggestions about possible approaches. At present I'm improving my knowledge of high-level animal taxa (mainly phyla) by working on the relevant articles, and the whole tree of life is way beyond my knowledge at present. --Philcha (talk)
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- My original intent of this template was to keep it to the kingdom level of classification and higher, and have separate templates for each kingdom. There are currently templates for {{Animalia}}, {{Fungi classification}}, {{Archaea classification}}, and {{Bacteria classification}} for the phyla and lower-level classifications. We could simply this template by moving everything phylum and lower to kingdom templates. Then, the templates could be "managed" by people interested in each specific kingdom. With this simplification, maybe we could put links to Archaea and Bacteria back in to this template. Currently, there are no links via navboxes between Archaea, Bacteria, and the Eukaryotes. And by the way, plants is linked in this template, as "Plantae/Archaeplastida" in the first row. --Scott Alter 23:46, 18 March 2009 (UTC)
I have the doubt. Template contains of the dubious clade Neomura. --Krclathrate (talk) 15:24, 22 March 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Archaeplastida monophyly I thought the monophyly of Archaeplastida is contested. Shouldn't we separate Viridiplantae from Rhodophyta? --kupirijo (talk) 15:22, 1 August 2009 (UTC) - Well, if you do that you need to separate Glaucocystophyceae because it is less studied (and more central to many of the doubts, as I recall the situation). I'd probably leave the template as it is: although Archaeplastida may not be proven, if any alternate hypothesis (or refinement of Archaeplastida) has the potential to replace it, it isn't a hypothesis which has gathered much study/evidence to date. Kingdon (talk) 01:18, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
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