Talk:Virus

"Virus'" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Virus' has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 December 1 § Virus' until a consensus is reached. Plantdrew (talk) 01:53, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Inconsistency between this page and Marine Virus page

The section on marine viruses on this page states “There are about ten million of them in a teaspoon of seawater.”

But the marine viruses page states “A teaspoon of seawater typically contains about fifty million viruses.”

Not sure if these are conflicting numbers or whether “typically” indicates seawater close to the surface/shore. Thought it may need changing/clarifying. 208.38.228.57 (talk) 09:10, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

The source used here says "10⁷ viruses per milliliter", a teaspoon on average (and there is a lot of variation) holds around 5mL, so between 10 and fifty million is close enough. The marine viruses page was, in part, copied from this article, but Wikipedia articles are written, more often than not, by different editors, so you should go by the sources given in the articles and not judge one article against another: there will often be inconsistencies, just like you get with other publications. Graham Beards (talk) 11:21, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

non-standard views of viruses

(i cant do it because my wikipedia account is new)please add a "non-standard views of viruses" tab then write a summary of the book Medical Medium by Anthony William in there Iwantbooks9999 (talk) 22:06, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

• You're going to have to be more specific than that about what you want, but if you're talking about this, "Anthony was born with the unique ability to converse with the Spirit of Compassion, who provides him with extraordinarily advanced healing medical information that’s far ahead of its time", I think the answer is going to be no. Drmies (talk) 22:08, 20 February 2025 (UTC)

"Unranked" or "Informal Group"?

The taxobox says that the taxon "Virus" is unranked but it's an informal, polyphyletic group. So it should be ranked as "informal group". Jako96 (talk) 17:35, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

That's the transcluded template which can be edited here Template:Taxonomy/Virus. Graham Beards (talk) 18:06, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

I know. I posted it on here to gain more attention. So do you agree on the change? Jako96 (talk) 18:23, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

My apologies, because you didn't post this notice on the template talk page, I assumed you didn't know. First, you need to cite a source for this change, and then suggest the change at the appropriate venue(s). I can only agree to the change when I see the evidence for it in a reliable source, which I presume is the ICTV. Graham Beards (talk) 21:26, 7 March 2025 (UTC)

No problem. And I don't really need a source for this change because this is a taxon that Wikipedia made up. Wikipedia added that to make it simple, so it should be considered an informal group. Because no one uses a taxon called "Virus". And ICTV doesn't use that too, see Current ICTV Taxonomy Release | ICTV. Jako96 (talk) 08:01, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

@Jako96 Actually 🤓 there is a source that you can use. Page 17 of Phylonyms: A Companion to the PhyloCode states: «"Virus" is a functional term for a disparate array of DNA- or RNA-based replicators that are, with few exceptions [...], enclosed in a proteinaceous sheath called a capsid; the term does not refer to a taxon as such.» This article goes in more detail later on about why it's not considered a taxon and why it's probably polyphyletic. — Snoteleks (talk) 19:21, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Wow! You've surprised me. But we still have to rank it as an informal group. Because first; it's informal, and second; unranked taxa MUST BE monophyletic. Jako96 (talk) 19:35, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jako96 Correct! — Snoteleks (talk) 19:57, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

I changed the rank from unranked to informal group. I also did that for these pages:

Template:Taxonomy/Viroid

Template:Taxonomy/Subviral agents

Template:Taxonomy/Circular satellite RNAs

Template:Taxonomy/Satellite nucleic acids

Template:Taxonomy/Satellites Jako96 (talk) 17:56, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Much appreciated — Snoteleks (talk) 18:02, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! But there are now-new 2 problems:

1. These pages' titles are showing as italicized:

Virus

Viroid

2. Now all the taxa that I edited are apperaring as italicized. I think the first problem will be automatically fixed when we fix the second problem. Jako96 (talk) 18:25, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jako96 I think you fixed it already, but it's weird that it happened. That usually only happens to genera — Snoteleks (talk) 18:39, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

It happened because the virusbox template always italicizes taxa that it can identify. So it also italicized the page's title. Before my edits these page titles were not italicized because the "(unranked)" rank can't be identified by the template. Jako96 (talk) 18:57, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Idk how to fix that. Jako96 (talk) 19:16, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jako96 On another note, what do you think should be done for Protist? It's formally a taxon (Kingdom Protista) but it's also obsolete and paraphyletic. Does that count as an informal group? — Snoteleks (talk) 18:21, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Protista is not formal because it's not recognized by taxonomists anymore. I think that counts as an informal group too, yeah. Jako96 (talk) 18:36, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

The italicized title needs to be fixed: it looks stupid. It should be as Bacteria is. What are you guys doing apart from messing with a FA? Graham Beards (talk) 19:16, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Idk how to fix that except ranking the "Virus" taxon as unranked. We are trying to rank it as an informal group while keeping the title non-italicized. Jako96 (talk) 19:26, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

All I can see is incompetence. Perhap you should learn how to do it without experimenting with a FA? Graham Beards (talk) 19:38, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. I'll fix that. Jako96 (talk) 19:42, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

There's no need for that language here. The mistake was not a matter of individual incompetence, it was a good-faith change that had an unforeseeable consequence due to unpredictable template shenanigans. The person that made the mistake was the first to notice it way before you commented, and was already on the search for a solution. You're welcome to help find a solution as well, and you'd also be justified in reverting the change until a solution is found — Snoteleks (talk) 23:21, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

It clearly says on the template edit page: "Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (edit | diff) and testcases (edit) pages." It was incompetent not to adhere to this instruction. Graham Beards (talk) 05:43, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I said you were right because I did the edit though I knew the taxon's name was gonna be italicized but not the title. My fault was only to wait before reverting. Also it says "editors can" not "editors must". Jako96 (talk) 13:59, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

In that case, I apologize. Graham Beards (talk) 14:07, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

No problem. Jako96 (talk) 14:28, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jts1882 and @Peter coxhead, take a look at this please. Jako96 (talk) 15:28, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I haven't been around for a while for personal reasons, so I'm not sure where this thread has got to. I certainly strongly dispute the statement unranked taxa MUST BE monophyletic. Taxa, whether ranked or not, do not have to be monophyletic. Nothing in the ICNafp, for example, requires a taxonomic group (=taxon) to be monophyletic. It's currently fashionable among most taxonomists to use only monophyletic groups as taxa, but not everyone agrees. What exactly is the issue right now? Peter coxhead (talk) 13:35, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! But there are now-new 2 problems:

1. These pages' titles are appearing as italicized when their taxa are ranked as informal groups:

Virus

Viroid

2. These taxa are appearing as italicized when they are ranked as informal groups:

Template:Taxonomy/Virus

Template:Taxonomy/Viroid

Template:Taxonomy/Subviral agents

Template:Taxonomy/Circular satellite RNAs

Template:Taxonomy/Satellite nucleic acids

Template:Taxonomy/Satellites

Jako96 (talk) 15:04, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

And according to the PhyloCode, unranked taxa must be monophyletic. Jako96 (talk) 15:09, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

If there's a consensus that Virus should be treated as "informal group" rather than "unranked" – it's been treated as some variant of "unranked" since 2018, so there needs to be a clear consensus to make a change – then to prevent italicization, "|informal_group|informal group" needs to be added before "|unranked_domain" in Template:Is italic taxon. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:55, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead I agree that it should be treated as an informal group, because it was never a taxon in the first place. — Snoteleks (talk) 15:41, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

Is there any source using informal group? And what is informal about it? The ICTV website has a whole section on virus taxonomy, which suggests it is considered a taxon, even if they don't share a common ancestor. All the virus subgroups have ranks and virus is the only grouping without one. Unranked seems the most suitable of the possibilities I've seen, although I'm open to a better suggestion.  —  Jts1882 | talk  07:00, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

ICTV taxonomy doesn't use the taxon "Virus". And according to the PhyloCode, unranked taxa MUST BE monophyletic. And this taxon is already informal. See: Page 17 of Phylonyms: A Companion to the PhyloCode. This article states that "Virus" is a functional term and does not refer to any formal taxon. Jako96 (talk) 08:53, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

You are trying to impose one definition of "taxon"; why is the PhyloCode's definition relevant here? Peter coxhead (talk) 09:03, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

There is no other code that regulates unranked taxa. Jako96 (talk) 09:09, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

I can't see that the PhyloCode is relevant to virus taxonomy. There are two issues here: (a) the status of "virus" in the ICTV code – it's clearly not a ranked group, but equally clearly to me it's not "informal" either, given that there's a clear definition in the code (b) the meaning of the term "taxon" – in general a taxon is a group that a taxonomist considers to form a taxonomic unit, although different nomenclature codes may or may not impose stricter limits. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:22, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

PhyloCode theoretically can be used for viruses. Because they mention ICVCN: http://phylonames.org/code/articles/6/#article-6.2 Jako96 (talk) 09:45, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

The PhyloCode can theoretically be used for any group, consistency with the nomenclature code for that group is what we have hitherto taken to be most important. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:17, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

ICTV doesn't use the taxon "Virus". And can you show me a source that says unranked taxa can be non-monophyletic? Only some taxonomic databases use taxa that are both unranked and non-monophyletic and these are not reliable sources for this. Jako96 (talk) 13:10, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Jts1882 that "unranked" seems the most suitable of the possibilities. As noted above, there's nothing "informal" about the use of the term "virus" by the ICTV. However, I have fixed {{Is italic taxon}} so that if there is consensus that "informal group" is better for a virus taxon, the taxon name will not be italicized, since it isn't a name at a rank accepted under the ICTV. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:22, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead Do you have a source that states Virus as a formal taxon? I haven't been able to find any. — Snoteleks (talk) 14:18, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

The way I see it:

• If it's a taxon, it can either be:
  • Ranked: any of the existing taxonomic tanks.
  • Unranked: it can either be:
    • Monophyletic: the rank should display as Clade.
    • Non-monophyletic: the rank should display as (unranked).
• If it's not a taxon, it has to be an informal group. Taxa are by definition formal.

— Snoteleks (talk) 17:07, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

@Snoteleks: Taxa are by definition formal – what does this mean? Who gives this definition? Is there a source for a "formal taxonomic unit" being a "taxon" and an "informal taxonomic unit" not being a "taxon"? There are groups that were formerly accepted as taxonomic units (e.g. monkeys) which are not now accepted by taxonomists. I guess such terms when used by laypeople can be called "informal taxonomic units", but this doesn't apply to viruses.

Viruses form an unranked non-monophyletic group, so are correctly shown by your decision tree above as "unranked". Peter coxhead (talk) 06:59, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure "informal group" was only included as a rank option for automatic taxoboxes to support the classification in Taxonomy of the Gastropoda (Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005), which used "informal group" as a label for a "rank" where monophyly was uncertain. That classification has been superseded by a 2017 publication by the same authors which is fully rank-based. I don't think Wikipedia should be labelling something as an "informal group" without a source that does so (and since the 2005 gastropod classification is now out-of-date, I'm not sure that there is anywhere on Wikipedia where an "informal group" label can be justified by a source).

Similarly, I think "unranked" was likely only included to support the major clades of flowering plants recovered by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group. Due to technical limitations, manual taxoboxes can't display clades when the position of a clade in a taxonomic hierarchy isn't specified. The work-around to that was to use parameters such as |unranked_classis= in manual taxoboxes (which would display the "unranked classis" with the label "(unranked)", and immediately above any taxon of class rank). The "unranked" parameters were only ever widely used in manual taxoboxes for flowering plants. There is nothing particularly sacred about the system of unranked parameters; it is an artifact of Wikipedia history. It could very well have been set up instead with parameters such as |classis_level_clade= and with "Clade" as the label for the rank instead of "(unranked)", and with automatic taxoboxes, the position of a clade in the hierarchy is determined by the taxonomy templates.

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the argument that viruses aren't a taxon. I think that is better handled by "unranked" than by "informal group", although I question whether we really need to display the label "(unranked)" in the taxobox at all, versus just not having any label for unranked things (removing the unranked label is something that would be better discussed on the talk page for the automatic taxobox system than here, and should entail checking all the taxonomy templates with unranked to determine if that is the best "rank" to use). Plantdrew (talk) 20:36, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Plantdrew Regarding that, I know for a fact that there's many taxonomy templates that should be displaying Clade instead of (unranked). I am down for checking those, but I don't really know of a way to search them according to rank. — Snoteleks (talk) 21:07, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Snoteleks:, I think this search should find them all. Plantdrew (talk) 21:24, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Plantdrew Wow, that was embarrassingly easier than I imagined. Thank you. — Snoteleks (talk) 21:26, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

@Snoteleks: I think that "clade" is a more positive label than "unranked", which merely asserts that no source has provided a rank. "Clade" to me says that the group has been found to be monophyletic in a phylogenetic study. Hence I think we should only be using "clade" when there's a reliable source that supports it. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:23, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead Yes exactly, that's my vision. — Snoteleks (talk) 09:07, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead Sorry for the late response. Frankly, I don't know. It's just something I learned intuitively with experience. And, after the response by Plantdrew, I'm pretty convinced that it doesn't make sense to have informal group as an option anymore, since it could just be unranked. — Snoteleks (talk) 21:04, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

Yeah. I now think it should stay as unranked too. Because I don't care about PhyloCode anymore. No one cares. Jako96 (talk) 21:15, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

We could get around the italic title issue by renaming the page Viruses. This would be consistent with Bacteria, Fungi and Introduction to viruses. Thoughts? Graham Beards (talk) 16:16, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't agree. And I guess Peter coxhead already found a solution. Jako96 (talk) 18:26, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

And you reason is? Graham Beards (talk) 19:38, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

@Graham Beards I think the plural form is less popular than the singular form, to start. — Snoteleks (talk) 21:31, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

I think the singular form should be used, just like Snotelek mentioned. And I guess Peter coxhead already found a solution. Jako96 (talk) 21:34, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

I also prefer the singular. Bacteria is plural since the singular bacterium is less common. I don't know about fungi. Also all the top-level virus articles are singular: Virus, Animal virus, Plant virus, Archaeal virus, Mycovirus, Bacteriophage, DNA virus, RNA virus, and so on. Velayinosu (talk) 00:16, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

"Virostatic" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Virostatic has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 April 3 § Virostatic until a consensus is reached. 1234qwer1234qwer4 11:34, 3 April 2025 (UTC)