Wikipedia talk:Automated taxobox system

This talk page can be used to discuss issues with the automated taxobox system that are common to the entire system, not just one of its templates. Discussions of this nature prior to 2017 can be found at Template talk:Automatic taxobox

Those familiar with the system prior to mid-2016 are advised to read Notes for "old hands".

30 June 2026 use stats update

30 June 2026

30 June 2026 update

Project	Auto	Manual	Total taxa	Percent auto	# auto added since 3 January 2026	# manual subtracted
Algae	2527	44	2571	98.3	60	20
Amphibians and Reptiles	23603	35	23638	99.9	233	15
Animals	13067	166	13233	98.7	619	447
Arthropods	15113	68	15181	99.6	687	400
Beetles	62832	39	62871	99.9	5901	776
Birds	14764	6	14770	99.96	9	-1
Bivalves	1837	1	1838	99.9	43	2
Cephalopods	2613	56	2669	97.9	472	463
Dinosaurs	1702	0	1702	100	23	0
Diptera	16961	20	16981	99.9	333	263
Extinction	863	0	863	100	9	0
Fishes	27354	62	27416	99.8	192	67
Fungi	17800	167	17967	99.1	1333	945
Gastropods	37056	63	37119	99.8	917	580
Insects	94450	97	94547	99.9	8090	1822
Lepidoptera	98951	96	99047	99.9	888	590
Mammals	9246	25	9271	99.7	208	29
Marine life	10163	92	10255	99.1	323	223
Microbiology	13181	297	13478	97.8	637	600
Palaeontology	20748	426	21174	98.0	1834	1247
Plants	87380*	59	87439	99.9		30
Primates	1018	0	1018	100	7	0
Protista	2368	150	2518	94.0	255	220
Rodents	3314	2	3316	99.9	17	-1
Sharks	938	3	941	99.7	11	1
Spiders	13373	0	13373	100	200	0
Tree of Life		2				-1
Turtles	827	0	827	100	9	0
Viruses	1782	35	1817	98.1	12	-2
Total (Petscan)	495601	1221	496822	99.8	16755	6015
Total (Transclusion count)	498200	3666	501866	99.3	16904	6050

Mammal subprojects with articles tagged for both mammals and subproject:

Project	Auto	Manual	Total taxa	Percentage auto
Cats	184	0	184	100
Cetaceans		0
Dogs	248	0	248	100
Equine	116	0	116	100

Methods and caveats (mostly copy-pasted from previous updates)

Method: For the most part I use Petscan to search for articles with a talk page banner for a particular Wikiproject and either {{Taxobox}}, or any of {{Automatic taxobox}}+{{Speciesbox}}+({{Infraspeciesbox}} and/or {{Subspeciesbox}} (depending on whether botanical/zoological code is relevant)), and record the results. Example search for algae with automatic taxoboxes (search terms are in the Templates&Links tab in Petscan). For viruses, I search for {{Virusbox}} rather than the other automatic taxobox templates. For plants, I sum the results for the Plants, Banksia, Carnivorous plants and Hypericaceae projects (I was unable to run the queries for Banksia, Carnivorous plants and Hypericaceae in June 2026). "Total" is derived from the Template Transclusion Count tool (https://templatecount.toolforge.org/index.php?lang=en&namespace=10&name=Speciesbox#bottom e.g. results for Speciesbox), and is not actually the sum of the results for individual projects (some articles have talk page banners for multiple Wikiprojects, and would be counted twice if rows were summed). I started compiling these stats in April 2017, and have been updating roughly every six months since December 2017. I've kept my method consistent; perhaps I should have included all of the automatic taxobox templates (Hybridbox, Ichnobox, etc.), but I didn't do so at the beginning, and the other templates aren't used in very many articles.

Caveat: The remaining manual taxoboxes in projects with less than 200 manual taxoboxes mostly have some kind of "problem". I have reviewed essentially all of the remaining manual taxobox articles, and chose not to convert them to automatic taxoboxes at that time.

"Problems" may include:

• Fossil taxa; fossil classifications may be derived from multiple sources and present classification on Wikipedia may include mutually incompatible hypotheses. Fossil taxa are often not linked from articles on their extant parent taxa.
• Synonymy; there is some obvious synonymy issue; e.g., a species is in a genus which redirects (as a synonym) to another genus; maybe the species article needs to be moved or maybe the genus should be reinstated
• False monotypy; Wikipedia asserts a genus is monotypic but additional species are now accepted; a new article should be written for either the genus or the species (there is a quite a mix whether the existing article is at a genus or species title

I was unable to get the queries for automatic taxoboxes for Tree of Life, Cetaceans and the Plant subprojects (Banksia, Carnivorous plants, Hypericaceae) to run yesterday. I was able to run other queries after those queries timed out, so I'm not sure what the problem is (I had a similar issue with the previous update, where the query for Hypericaceae just wouldn't work). Today I haven't been able to get ANY queries for WikiProject banners on talk pages to run. I'll try some more over the next few days, but I figured I'd post what I had so far.

I expect this will be my last update to these statistics. There are very few manual taxoboxes left, and little difference between the various WikiProjects in terms of both number of manual taxoboxes and percentage. I also don't anticipate working much on converting the remaining manual taxoboxes myself going forward. That has been the primary focus of my Wikipedia editing over the last 9 years, but I've looked at every article with a manual taxobox in the last year and half or so and chose to leave the manual taxoboxees in place. There are issues with uncertain placement of fossil taxa, unclear synonymy, false (outdated?) claims of monotypy that necessitate a new article, and other stuff that would take more time to do right than I wanted to bother with. There are probably a few things out there I should revisit (I didn't have page mover rights until relatively recently, and wasn't comfortable working with incertae sedis templates), so I will probably continue to slowly chip away at some of the remaining taxoboxes, but I'm going to largely refocus my Wikipedia editing efforts (and I'm definitely not done working on taxonomy templates in general; I have my eye on nematodes where existing taxonomy templates are a mix of old and recent classifications). Plantdrew (talk) 01:06, 2 July 2026 (UTC)

The number of manual taxoboxes in article space is now under 1000. Plantdrew (talk) 15:47, 24 August 2026 (UTC)

The progress on this has been quite impressive. I suspect your updates have provided encouragement. Compare with three years ago: 30_June_2023_use_stats_update]

So now only three categories are under 98%, with Cephalopods (97.9) and Microbiology (97.8) almost there. Protista at 94% is the one remain project needing a boost and that project is making ground (85.1% in January 2026). The project includes more than 10 times the articles it did a few years ago, so inclusion of more articles on obscure taxa may mask the progress.  —  Jts1882 | talk  15:06, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

Protista is the most recently established project, so most of the increase in articles is pre-existing articles being tagged, not newly written articles. But classification of protists at family and higher levels is really messy, and relevant databases often lack records for protist genera and species. Plantdrew (talk) 15:49, 25 August 2026 (UTC)

I was thinking the Protista project is new, but it's now almost four years old!

Protista is now down to 124 manual taxoboxes (nothing to do with me). Over half the are also tagged Microbiology so fixing those improves the two projects with lowest automated taxobox.  —  Jts1882 | talk  11:54, 26 August 2026 (UTC).