Template talk:Taxonomy/Mosasauridae

Move to Mosasauridae

I'd like to move this template to template:Taxonomy/Mosasauridae, so that subtaxa can just use the "official" family name as their parent. Does this seem reasonable? ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 07:08, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Go for it. This template ought to be at that title, anyway. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:09, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Sillly expressions

Child, as a taxonomic term is plain silly. I've come across its use in other taxonomic websites where it is just as silly. What it is in reference to has nothing to do with the true meaning of child or childen which is a biological offshpring within the same genus and species, generally considered to be immature and dependent. Likewise a parent, the term also misused taxonomically, is of the same genus and species as its children. Parent might sneak in as a term for an ancestral species and child for a derived species. Both terms are out of place in reference to taxonomic rank however and should be dropped in that reference. Like other weird expressions, they should be received with amusement and forgotten.

The expressions "Immediate step-children" and "Immediate children" in reference to Mosasauroidea, red-letter linked within categories at the bottom, are bizarre and totally misrepresentative of the real meaning of the terms. The links should be canceled. J.H.McDonnell (talk) 11:13, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

It turns out people quite often use these terms metaphorically in other contexts as well; as an example see child process and parent process. It's fine if this is amusing to you, but I wouldn't say it is "plain silly"; it does get the idea across quite compactly. In any case, "immediate" child means that in our little tree of taxa, Mosasaur is one edge away from Mosasauroidea. I do agree that the step child thing is silly; as far as I can tell it mostly has to do with an implementation detail of this taxonomy template system; you can probably ignore it for the most part. None of this should be visible on any regular Wikipedia pages, fortunately. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:33, 5 April 2011 (UTC)