User:MikeTheEditor104/Lepidoptera

Gonna divide this into two sections: general knowledge and advice useful for dealing with Lepidoptera articles and specific tasks/jobs that you could try doing & related advice. Questions, exercises should you want them, and further explanations go on the talk page, this one's just so you have an easy central page to refer to if you want to check some specific thing without having to read through hundreds of lines of conversation. I'll be adding to this page as I explain things or you ask things or such, but this'll be a start, at least. Feel free to add to it yourself as well. - AddWittyNameHere 21:37, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

General knowledge/advice[edit]

Terminology and abbreviations[edit]

You might run into these in Wikipedia articles, or in sources you want to use to expand or create moth articles:

Genera - plural of genus.
Sp. nov.; spec. nov. - abbreviation of species nova, "new species". Used upon first description of a new species.
sp. - species. If used as, say, "Pieris sp.", that means "a species in genus Pieris".
spp. - species pluralis, multiple species. "Pieris spp." = "multiple species in genus Pieris". Used often in the context of host plants, or when giving an overview of the taxa contained in a family.
ssp.; subsp. - subspecies.
taxa - plural of taxon
vernacular name - common name, non-scientific name. E.g. moth, butterfly, ladybird, oak leafroller.
binomial, binomial name - scientific name consisting of the genus and species name, e.g. Tortrix viridana
specific, generic - beyond the "common English" meanings, also mean "pertaining to a species" and "pertaining to a genus" respectively.

Formatting of scientific names of taxa[edit]

Note: this goes for scientific names. Sometimes the vernacular name is the same, or partially the same, as a scientific name; in those cases, it only goes if it's used as scientific name.

The names of genera, families and higher ranks always start with a capital. (Including subdivision ranks like subfamily, subgenus). (The words for those ranks, like "genus", do not)

Examples: Tortricidae, Tortricinae, Tortrix (but "tortrix moth" because that's a vernacular name)

The names of genera, species, and subdivision ranks (subgenus, subspecies) are always italicized. (The words for those ranks, like "genus", are not) Abbreviations like 'spp.' (or other pieces of text not actually part of the name itself) are not.

Examples: Tortrix; Tortrix spp.; Tortrix viridana (but "green oak tortrix" because that's a vernacular name)

Exception: If the normally-italicized name occurs within running italic text, it gets flipped out of italics instead.

The names of species and subspecies never start with a capital. Not even when derived from a proper noun. No exceptions.

Examples: Tortrix viridana, not Tortrix Viridana. Aethes razowskii, not Aethes Razowskii. (But Razowski's aethes moth, because that's a vernacular name)

Specific tasks[edit]

Basic clean-up work[edit]

"is a genus of moth"[edit]

Fixing the awkward phrasing "is a genus of moth" to either "is a genus of moths" or "is a moth genus", and linking moths (as [[moth]]s) if not yet done.

Exceptions:

If "genus of moth" occurs as part of a phrase like "genus of moth [family/subfamily/tribe] [...]", it's correct and should be left alone. "genus of moth [in/of] the family [...]" is fair game, though.)
There's a handful of articles in that search above that are not about moth genera, but about moth fly genera. If the phrase is "is a genus of moth flies" (or "is a genus of moth and sand flies", or similar), that's also correct and should be left alone. (But if it says "is a genus of moth fly", please feel free to correct that to "moth flies")

Infrastructural and maintenance work[edit]

Categorization, redirects, short descriptions, stub-tags, taxoboxes, taxonbars and similar, plus the maintenance of these.

Short descriptions[edit]

See also WP:Short description.

This can be done manually or by gadget. The gadget is mostly self-explanatory. Manually you just add {{Short description|Description here}} at the top of an article, with 'Description here' replaced with the actual description.

Let me know once you've read WP:Short description and whether you've got questions about the information contained there. I'll help you with the actual content of the descriptions after that.

Referencing and content work[edit]

AfroMoths (www.afromoths.net)[edit]

Site has a lot of basic taxonomic info, including taxon authorities, but is not used on many of the articles in Category:Moths of Africa. Some things that you could do include:

Verify taxon author and year (things like parentheses and square brackets matter!) & add reference if unreferenced. (Or add taxon author & year if not yet present in our article. With reference, of course)
Verify if we have all countries they list for distribution in our article (or, in case of a significant number of them, a larger area that encompasses them), if not then add them, and reference.

Here's the format I personally use for those references:

<ref name="AfroMoths">{{cite web |last1=De Prins |first1=J. |last2=De Prins |first2=W. |title= |url= |website=Afromoths, online database of Afrotropical moth species (Lepidoptera) World Wide Web electronic publication (www.afromoths.net) |accessdate= |date=2019}}</ref>

You'd just have to fill in the relevant title=, url= and accessdate= fields. An example of a fully filled-in AfroMoths reference:

<ref name="AfroMoths">{{cite web |last1=De Prins |first1=J. |last2=De Prins |first2=W. |title=''Abachausia'' Balinsky, 1994 |url=http://www.afromoths.net/genus/show/496010 |website=Afromoths, online database of Afrotropical moth species (Lepidoptera) World Wide Web electronic publication (www.afromoths.net) |accessdate=29 November 2019 |date=2019}}</ref>

Note: For genus pages, you can simply use the url in your urlbar. For species pages, copy the "Permalink" in the top right area just above the first table.

Other[edit]

Things not worth specifically looking for, but that you may as well fix if you come across them while doing some other task above:

Vernacular names should not be capitalized. E.g. "green tortrix moth", not "Green Tortrix Moth". The great majority of these have been fixed, but there's some stray ones left here and there. The relevant guideline is MOS:LIFE.

Exceptions: If occurring at the start of the sentence, the first word should of course be capitalized. If a word that is part of the vernacular name is a proper noun (e.g. the name of a person or city), it should also be capitalized.