Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fishes/Categories

message: Instead of creating a category "Fish of Central and South America", why not add an individual article to both "Fish of Central America" and "Fish of South America" categories?  Otherwise we'll end up with an unmanagable number of categories to wade through to find fish of South America, like "Fish of South America and the Carribean", "Fish of North and South America", etc.
The same goes with the individual countries.  If a fish is found in the entire Amazon basin, it could also be listed in the "Fauna of Peru", "Fauna of Brazil", and "Fauna of Colombia" categories, as appropriate, without affecting any of the other category lists.  And although it's outside the scope of my personal interests, I think that marine fish would need categories like "Fish of the Pacific Ocean", "Fish of the Indian Ocean", and/or perhaps something more specific, like "Fish of the Gulf of Thailand" . 
I've just thrown together an example on the page, with some additional comments buried in the wikitext on the page. Neil916 15:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: difficult subject - I've not done anything yet - still thinking about it - not in disagreement though.HappyVR 17:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Regional and national categories

message: I also rewrote the top section which clarifies how to add articles to the appropriate sections.   One point that is worth discussing is whether or not higher taxa articles should be included in the regional sections and fauna by nation sections.  I included it because many of the higher taxa articles have been created, and include such information as "this family contains only one genus and one species and it is found in Sri Lanka", but no species articles have been created.  It's kind of a grey area, because once someone else comes along and creates the genus and species articles, that nation category would be cluttered up by three articles for essentially the same fish.  
After thinking about it as I type it out, perhaps it would be appropriate to include higher taxa in geographic categories only if no articles exist for the lower taxa.  Once lower taxa articles are created, the higher taxa should be removed from the geographic category.  Sound good?   Neil916 16:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes that's right. (second paragraph) I think. We definately need some guidlines anyway - note siluriformes is a category in ray finned fish - I've change the instructions slightly - the basic jist of which is - article has taxonomic categories of the same or next higher rank - but no higher and not lower - like the branches of a tree.HappyVR 17:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I haven't tried adding any geography categories yet - but the instructions seem right.HappyVR 17:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Top section

message: Should this page be tagged as a work in progress in case a new WikiProject Fish user comes along and sees it in the current state and launches major revisions based upon our proposals listed here?  Only to find that it may dramatically change a week from now?  Neil916 16:23, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Work in progress

message: Re adding categories to above species articles - I assume that a genus of family siluriformes should be in the category siluriformes? and not in any higher categories.
But specifically the article siluriformes should be in the category ray finned fish (and of course category:siluriformes - though it should already be linked in the introductory sentence of that category page) - if this is right it must be the wording that is confusing me.HappyVR 20:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I think you misread it.  The article specifically says don't add it to ray-finned fishes.  An article, whether it's a species article or higer taxa, should only be in one taxonomic category; the most specific.  This is to avoid the situation that Wikipedia had a year or so ago (according to Kerripaul on my talk page) where there was one category "FISH" with 500 or so jumbled articles.  He's the guy who apparently created most of the fish taxonomy category structure as it is today.  Neil916 21:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: bit confused

message: I've added :Category:deep sea fish tentatively - don't want to start using this category until somebody can confirm that there is not a better term.
Also 'fish of the caribbean', 'fish of the south china sea' - should these cats. exist?HappyVR 19:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Category by region

message: :Category:Sturgeons and :Category:Acipenseridae are redundant and should be merged. Which fits convention and should survive, which doesn't and should go? One is the common English name for the family, one is the scientific name for the family. GRBerry 15:57, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Which redudant category should be merged to the other?