First, an important note for everyone to remember:
These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you don't know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!
Title: WikiProject Tree of Life
Scope: This WikiProject aims to present the taxonomy of all living species (and maybe some extinct ones as well) in a tree structure. This is a particularly ambitious WikiProject, as there are millions of them.
Parentage: The parent of this WikiProject is WikiProject Biology; the grandparent is WikiProject Science.
Descendant Wikiprojects:
- No descendant WikiProjects defined
Formatting for taxa:
There is an article called Tree of life, but since that is a disambiguation page, the real root of the Tree of Life is evolutionary tree. There shall be articles for all taxa of ranks domain, kingdom, phylum or division, class, order, family, and genus. There may be articles for intermediate taxa. Articles for species are generally not needed, but may be put for salient species such as Amorphophallus titanum.
Each taxon of a rank from genus to phylum/division, inclusive, shall have the following sections:
- Placement: This is a list of the taxa of which this is a subtaxon.
- Synonyms and common names: If this taxon is also known by another name, such as Gramineae for Poaceae, that is noted here. Also the common name, if any (grasses, in this case).
- References: This is a list of references used in compiling the article, primarily those used for the children. If the reference is hardcopy, the date of publication shall be listed; if online, the date it was checked.
- Text: Description of the taxon including distinguishing characters, how members of the taxon are used, ecology, etc. If the scientific name is also the common name of the same organism, the entire common-name article goes here. Anything about the taxon not covered by the other sections is fair game, including pictures (see Testudines).
- Children: These are subtaxa of the taxon. If the children are anything genus or above, they are links.
- Problems: I'm not quite sure what this is for.
If a taxon has a single child, they may be on the same page with a redirect from the other. For instance, since Ginkgo is the only genus in Ginkgophyta, Ginkgophyta, Ginkgoales, and Ginkgoaceae may all redirect to Ginkgo. Similarly Cuscuta is the only genus in Cuscutaceae (and the common name dodder redirects there too).
If a taxon is a homonym of a word that is not the name of an organism, it or the non-organism shall be distinguished. For instance, Rubiaceae has links to the genera Alberta (plant) and Augusta (plant) to avoid confusion with the places Alberta and Augusta.
If a taxon is a homonym of the common name of a different organism, they may be placed on the same page with a horizontal rule between them. See nasturtium for an example.
Directory of Participants
See talk:Solanales for the original expression of this idea.