Template talk:Mammals

Discussion

I've removed Category:Mammals from this template because it was making proper subcategorization impossible. As a general rule, it's a bad idea to include categories in templates because that automatically applies the category to any article to which the template is applied, without any possibility of editing it off an individual article without removing the template. Animals that have been categorized as members of a subgroup of mammals (such as Category:Marsupials) should not be redundantly grouped in the parent category as well (unless it is the article that defines the subgroup, such as marsupial). Postdlf 23:04, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The older discussion from MediaWiki talk:Mammals, which I deleted, can be found here. --Ixfd64 19:21, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Should extinct orders be added to the table? GCarty 09:55, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Subclass challenge

Can anyone cite any legitimate reference anywhere that uses "Subclass Marsupialia" or "Subclass Placentalia"? --Aranae 03:24, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

prototheria and australosphenida? competing subclasses or alternate names for the same subclass

Please see my comment at Talk:Prototheria. --Mathew5000 21:40, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Template revision

How come the template has reverted back from Australosphenida to Prototheria? Monotremes currently have no generally agreed subclass assignation. Australosphenida may still be controversial, but Prototheria is multiply ambiguous and obsolete. That is, it has had so many now-falsified uses that for practical purposes it can be considered defunct unless and until somebody can come up with a justification for its existence.

Admittedly, grouping by infraclasses wasn't perfect either: Australosphenida is often simply unranked, and the recent classifications like McKenna/Bell insert so many new nodes that they downgrade Theria, Metatheria and Eutheria to well below subclass or infraclass status. I don't know what the solution is, but Wikipedia generally follows Michael J. Benton's Vertebrate Palaeontology for the higher-level classification of vertebrates, and he shovels nearly everything mammalian into Subclass Mammaliformes—Infraclass Holotheria, but further down he has Superdivision Australosphenida—Division Monotremata, contrasting with Superdivision Theriimorpha—Division Theriiformes, the last of which includes Theria (as an infralegion), comprising Cohorts Marsupialia and Placentalia. Why not go with divisions and cohorts instead of subclasses and infraclasses? And leave Prototheria aside. Gnostrat (talk) 14:35, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I have been going through the templates and making them consistent with the articles on WP, which, in theory, should correspond to MSW3. However, MSW3 does not discuss ranks above Order. Therefore, in order to keep the template consistent with the WP articles, infraclass groupings are misleading (considering the Mammal article does not even reference the same grouping that was previously used on this template), while at least the subclass grouping is consistent with the article(s). The template should be reflective of the articles. Ultimately, I removed Australosphenida because its article refers to it as a clade, and taxonomy on WP generally uses the ranks. IMO, going with divisions/phlya is too broad, and is inconsistent with the formatting of these templates. Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 15:36, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

My point is that the template actually doesn't reflect what is in the articles. Both Prototheria and Australosphenida state that Prototheria is an abandoned grouping (or a redundant one, if it's just confined to monotremes) and no longer in general use. I do take your point about the formatting. I suppose you could simply insert monotremes, marsupials and placentals as "unranked", which would be NPOV since there is no longer any consensus about the category levels for any of them. Sure, Mammal classification provides a scheme for use on articles which puts all three as subclasses. I should probably take this up on the talk page there, because nobody uses that system any longer. But even that article has Monotremata as the recommended subclass name, not Prototheria. Gnostrat (talk) 00:49, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

I honestly do not have a preference one way or the other, I am just looking for a manner to present the information in the templates in the least confusing and most consistent method possible. Unfortunately, the groupings are subjective, ever changing, and semi-disputed. So I really have no problem with changing it, as long as it makes sense. :) You might get a better audience if you bring it up at WT:MAMMAL, I wasn't aware of the Mammal classification article. Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 11:12, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. What I've done is to replace "subclass" with "clade" and "Prototheria" with "basal mammals", which I think would be appropriately neutral, and preferable to getting into the Prototheria/Australosphenida argument. It's tentative, so I hope that's agreeable with you and that nobody else objects. I'll post on WT:MAMMAL shortly with a proposal to revisit the overall scheme on Mammal classification. Gnostrat (talk) 22:00, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not completely satisfied with the generality of "Basal mammals" -- that seems to be more confusing to a drive-by reader than before, which is counterproductive to the point of clarifying the template. I also am not sure about the usage of clades in the templates, for no reason other than the article itself is not laid out using clades (and none of the other templates utilize cladistics either). For now, I am going to revert all the way back to how it was with "Australosphenida", which, while not referenced in this article, is at least referenced in the corresponding articles. That then could be considered the least confusing of the present options. We can revisit this after your proposal to revamp the overall scheme on Mammal classification. --Tombstone (talk) 09:42, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

If we're looking for a temporary fix, I think it should be to have the title by "by subclass" instead of "by infraclass", include the double-tiered break of Theria vs. Metatheria and Euthera, and perhaps use Prototheria. It's out of date, but at least by some (older) references, it is valid. The current approach involves making things up. I know of no reference that gives Australosphenida the rank of infraclass. --Aranae (talk) 16:53, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

I wanted to add extinct orders

When you go with the template for rodents, extinct families will be shown. I think that everyone should help putting in the extinct mammalian orders if they want to, I already put a few.545lljkr (talk) 02:40, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Extinct mammals should go on a separate template to avoid template creep. The rodent template was done separately from the other templates, and I have on my to-do list to break off the extinct species. See the documentation on the other mammal templates, for example {{Cetacea}}. Rgrds. --Tombstone (talk) 11:30, 22 October 2008 (UTC)