wp:hatting and wp:close are not the same thing. Slatersteven ( talk) 17:43, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
Please read wp:n. Slatersteven ( talk) 09:01, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I suggest reading wp:consensus, its also a policy, not an essay. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:37, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
trust all is well
fyi - done - Max Kay - please feel free to edit or improve JarrahTree 05:14, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Let's discuss this. Jehochman Talk 18:21, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
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Project name | Relative WikiWork |
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Cats | 4.79
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Fisheries and fishing | 4.9
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Dogs | 4.91
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Viruses | 4.91
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ToL | 4.94
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Cetaceans | 4.97
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Primates | 4.98
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Sharks | 5.04
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All wikiprojects average | 5.05
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Dinosaurs | 5.12
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Equine | 5.15
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Bats | 5.25
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Mammals | 5.32
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Aquarium fishes | 5.35
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Hypericaceae | 5.38
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Turtles | 5.4
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Birds | 5.46
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Australian biota | 5.5
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Marine life | 5.54
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Animals | 5.56
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Paleontology | 5.57
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Rodents | 5.58
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Amphibians and Reptiles | 5.64
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Fungi | 5.65
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Bivalves | 5.66
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Plants | 5.67
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Algae | 5.68
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Arthropods | 5.69
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Hymenoptera | 5.72
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Microbiology | 5.72
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Cephalopods | 5.74
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Fishes | 5.76
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Ants | 5.79
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Gastropods | 5.8
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Spiders | 5.86
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Insects | 5.9
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Beetles | 5.98
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Lepidoptera | 5.98
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Within the Tree of Life and its many subprojects, there is an abundance of stubs. Welcome to Wikipedia, what's new, right? However, based on all wikiprojects listed (just over two thousand), the Tree of Life project is worse off in average article quality than most. Based on the concept of relative WikiWork (the average number of "steps" needed to have a project consisting of all featured articles (FAs), where stub status → FA consists of six steps), only seven projects within the ToL have an average rating of "start class" or better. Many projects, particularly those involving invertebrates, hover at an average article quality slightly better than a stub. With relative WikiWorks of 5.98 each, WikiProject Lepidoptera and WikiProject Beetles have the highest relative WikiWork of any project. Given that invertebrates are incredibly speciose, it may not surprise you that many articles about them are lower quality. WikiProject Beetles, for example, has over 20 times more articles than WikiProject Cats. Wikipedia will always be incomplete, so we should take our relatively low WikiWork as motivation to write more articles that are also better in quality.
We're joined for this month's Editor Spotlight by NessieVL, a long-time contributor who lists themselves as a member of WikiProject Fungus, WikiProject Algae, and WikiProject Cephalopods.
1) Enwebb: How did you come to edit articles about organisms and taxonomic groups?
2) Enwebb: Many editors in the ToL are highly specialized on a group of taxa. A look at your recently created articles includes much diversity, though, with viruses, bacteria, algae, and cnidarians all represented—are there any commonalities for the articles you work on? Would you say you're particularly interested in certain groups?
3) Enwebb: I noticed that many of your recent edits utilize the script Rater, which aids in quickly reassessing the quality and importance of an article. Why is it important to update talk page assessments of articles? I also noticed that the quality rating you assign often aligns with ORES, a script that uses machine-learning to predict article quality. Coincidence?
4) Enwebb: What, if anything, can ToL and its subprojects do to better support collaboration and coordination among editors? How can we improve?
5) Enwebb: What would surprise the ToL community to learn about your life off-Wikipedia?
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talk)
20:29, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
Re this. Please try to assume good faith when talking to others. Casliber and I have known each other for a good few many years now and I have his talk page on my watchlist. We have also assisted each other at FAC, when the occasion has called. Please learn some manners. Thanks. Cassianto Talk 14:29, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
I'd like to stay focused in the discussion I began. I am German and may have extra difficulties that don't belong there. I am afraid that the term "toxic behaviour" was derived from "incredibly toxic personalities", and - even if not - is too vague, too general, and meaning different things to different readers, so making me think that we should "ban" it. English is rich, and I am sure there are better words. -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 15:18, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Western Australia irritans
Thank you for quality articles about plants begun in 2007 with Alyogyne huegelii, moving to geckos such as Christinus alexanderi, people such as Albert Frederick Calvert, and Triodia irritans in 2019, for expanding the crescent nail-tail wallaby and others, for "Good news for the local ecology." - Westralian, you are an awesome Wikipedian!
You are recipient no. 2247 of Precious, a prize of QAI. -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 16:01, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
Per WP:TPO you cannot remove my edits at Noongar. You may raise an issue on my Talk page, or you may raise a discussion at WP:ANI concerning my behavior, but you may not alter my edits. Thanks, Mathglot ( talk) 06:44, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for trying to help me out with Cassianto. He is a disgusting editor who thinks he owns articles and makes life miserable for other editors Cls14 ( talk) 22:41, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
The two genera, alongside the Musky rat-kangaroo are currently considered part of Hypsiprymnodontidae, rather than the family Potoroidae. There are papers that can back it up, which are cited in the articles. I would do it myself, but I have no idea how to properly edit the automatic taxobox. Monsieur X ( talk) 12:13, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Hello Cygnis insignis,
I've done a bit of a clean up of the taxonomy section of E. gomphocephala but can't find a ref. for "type collection was made by Jean-Baptiste Leschenault at the Vasse River during 1802, while serving on the Baudin expedition". I'm sure it's correct but it would be good to add a ref. Can you help? Gderrin ( talk) 01:10, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Corymbia calophylla, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Western Mail ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 08:05, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Chaeropus, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages John Gilbert and Bernard Woodward ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 09:29, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
You didn't get a response to this question but maybe WP:VPT could help.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:18, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
you deem that art-work as non-problematic, I might gently suggest staying away from these areas. Also, it would have taken you a few seconds to discover that the IP has been already blocked for being a sock of a LTA. Regards, ∯WBG converse 17:44, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
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The WikiCup, an annual editing competition, is now in its fourth round. Casliber, consistent participant since 2010 and winner in 2016, is currently dominating Group A with 601 points. Largely responsible is the successful Featured Article nomination of Masked booby. The other remaining Tree of Life participant, Enwebb, is participating in her first ever WikiCup. In this round, she has a grand total of...5 points. But with the recent Featured Article nomination of Megabat, she stands to gain 600 points if successful. As it stands, though, it appears that at least one ToL editor is headed to the fifth and final round of 8 contestants, which begins September 1. Thus far, all participants in the WikiCup have generated 17 Featured Articles, 116 Good Articles, 16 Featured Lists, and 57 Featured Pictures. The Good Article Nominations backlog has been reduced as well, with 286 Good Article Reviews. |
For this month's editor spotlight we're joined by
Charlesjsharp, a longtime contributor to Wikimedia Commons with a plethora of featured pictures on English Wikipedia. 1) Starsandwhales: How long have you been editing Wikipedia, and how did you get interested? How did you begin your journey of photographing wildlife?
![]() 2) S&W: Over the years, you've taken photos of many different organisms from birds to insects to big cats; you have an
extensive list of favorite images. Which animals have been the most exciting for you to photograph?
3) S&W: Many articles under ToL have requests for people to add images that can go unanswered. What can the community do to improve the coverage of different organisms on Wikipedia, especially when it comes to images?
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4) S&W: What advice would you give to people new to photographing wildlife?
5) S&W: What would the Tree of Life community be surprised to learn about your life off-wiki?
* An example of cumbersome code: getting the layout of my responses to your questions. So dated, and no online spellchecker. |
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 18:59, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Palorchestes, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Rostrum ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 09:26, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
the territory name was in lower case, the actual location was hidden ... just reading it now there is an outside chance the random punter guesses where it is... JarrahTree 12:37, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
File:The Riddler.jpg | Nice to meet you |
~ please leave my friend alone ~ E Eng ~ I hope she/he does not mind, I forged the signature ~ ~mitch~ ( talk) 16:15, 15 August 2019 (UTC) |
I don't want to start an edit war, so I'm going to give you time to do some research and provide a reference to your assertion that the thylacine definitely was extinct in the Australian mainland by the time that Europeans arrived, but please note that the normal order of things is to locate a reliable source and *then* make the edit. I have no reason to doubt that what you say is correct, but when one edits an article in such a way one should have the reliable source handy. AuH2ORepublican ( talk) 15:08, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
I tend to think of oceanic shelves, you are referring to... ? JarrahTree 10:41, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
"Undid revision 911996954 by PC78 (talk) are you proposing to fix it?
" No, as my edit summary indicated my concern is that you have not correctly followed the
WP:GAR process; I offer no judgement on the quality of the article. I have now raised my concern at
Wikipedia:Good article help for further consideration. Regards.
PC78 (
talk)
16:07, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
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![]() ![]() Guest column by Thomas Shafee ( Evolution and evolvability), Editor in Chief of WikiJournal of Science
Firstly, WikiJSci can be a complementary system for FA review (getting external review, input, and validity). When an Wikipedia article is nominated (via WP:JAN), journal editors go out to non-Wikipedian academics and researchers who have published on the subject on the last five years and invite them to give feedback comments (e.g. Peripatric speciation and Baryonyx). The resulting changes can then be integrated back into the Wikipedia article.
Getting more editors involved in Wikipedia is always a high priority. WikiJSci can also be a way to encourage new people to contribute articles (especially on missing/stub/start topics). An example of an article that was written from scratch by a group of non-Wikipedians is Teladorsagia circumcincta. This not only resulted in a new Wikipedia page on an underdeveloped topic, but introduced the idea of Wikimedia contribution to a group of people who had previously never considered it.
The journal can be a way to get multimedia content reviewed or encourage contribution. The same approach could be easily adapted to sounds (e.g. frog mating calls) or videos (e.g. starfish feet motion). It also allows for tracking of those images in new articles via Altmetric ( this example has >200, which is bananas). There aren't any biology examples in WikiJSci yet, but the sister medical journal has published a few summary diagrams, photography, and image galleries. Examples include this gallery by Blausen Medical or the diagram of cell disassembly during apoptosis.
For those interested in other Wikimedia sister projects, there's also broad scope for interactions with the WikiJournals. Perhaps peer reviewed teaching resources could be useful to sit alongside sets of Wikipedia articles and be integrated into Wikiversity courses (like this or this)? Can sections of Wikidata & Wikispecies be peer reviewed? What are the potential avenues for integration with WikiCite, WikiFactMine, Scholia, etc.? Currently, WikiJSci is aiming to be very flexible and try out different formats so long as they can be externally peer reviewed. For more info, see the 2019-06-30 Signpost article and the current sister project proposal. |
1) Enwebb: You're very prolific with DYKs, with over 2,000 nominations credited (in fact, I'll highlight which DYK nominations this month were yours below). What made you become so involved in this part of Wikipedia? Why should Tree of Life editors nominate articles for DYK?
2) Enwebb: I noticed that your DYK nominations reflect a diverse array of flora and fauna, from trees, marine invertebrates, birds, fishes, and mammals. How do you decide what to work on?
3) Enwebb: Which of your Wikipedia accomplishments are you most proud of?
4) Enwebb: What motivates you to keep contributing? What's your 10,000 ft view (pardon the non-SI) of the community and Tree of Life?
6) Enwebb: How did you first become interested in natural history?
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 15:43, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
We are now less than 3k - how can you help? when you create a new article - please try to complete the biota assessment, /info/en/?search=Category:Unknown-importance_Australian_biota_articles when you deal with an older article - it is well worth going to the talk page and tweaking for biota.. Thanks for your work in biota articles !! cheers JarrahTree 00:27, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
I can see by your TP discussions that you stay pretty busy, but I was hoping you could squeeze in a little time for WP:WikiProject Dogs and maybe even become a member. It appears to have been a free-for-all topic area for quite some time and just needs a little TLC from editors who understand the difference between a dog breed and a dog type. I’m soliciting, not canvassing. 😉 Atsme Talk 📧 04:39, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Actually, we’re making progress. We have some outstanding collaborators, and we’re getting right down to the root of several issues, beginning with RS. See User:Atsme/sandbox and its TP, and feel free to weigh-in on that discussion if you’ve a mind to. Atsme Talk 📧 05:32, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Hmmm although your motivation is clear and positive, having spent time watching the extensive OR and POV in dog articles, and the disappearance of the earlier set of eds on veterinary things, I have steered clear so far - thanks for the invite nevertheless... JarrahTree 05:40, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
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Tree of Life subprojects and task forces by start year and whether currently considered active or not This month saw a vanishingly rare occurrence for the Tree of Life: a new WikiProject joined the fold. WikiProject Diptera, however, is also unusual in being a classroom project. Whether or not this project will stay active once the semester ends remains to be seen. It does not bode well, however, that WP:WikiProject Vespidae—a creation from the same instructor at St. Louis University—faded to obscurity shortly after the fall semester concluded in 2014. WikiProject Vespidae is defunct and now redirects to the Hymenoptera task force of WikiProject Insects. Since 2014, the Tree of Life has seen a string of years where one or zero projects or task forces were created. The only projects and task forces created since then are WikiProject Animal anatomy (2014), Hymenoptera task force (2016), Bats task force (2017), WikiProject Hypericaceae (2018), and now WikiProject Diptera (2019). The year 2006 saw the greatest creation of WikiProjects and task forces, with fourteen still active and the remaining six as "semiactive", "inactive", or "defunct". |
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 22:26, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
I noticed you have made considerable edits to this page - where do you get the energy - but thanks for tidying up after me...I do have one question - is there a reason why the page is labelled Setirostris - rather than Setirostris elleryi? Thanks P Barden ( talk) 02:35, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
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By request from another editor, this month I wrote an overview of ways that content is featured on Wikipedia. Below I have outlined some of the processes for getting content featured: What is it: A way for articles to appear on the main page of Wikipedia. A short hook in the format of "Did you know...that ___" presents unusual and interesting facts to the reader, hopefully making the reader want to click through to the article How it works: The DYK process has fairly low barriers for participation. The eligibility criteria are few and relatively easy to meet. Some important guidelines:
The process for creating the nomination is somewhat tedious. Instructions can be found here (official instructions) and here ("quick and nice" guide to DYK). Experience is the best teacher here, so don't be afraid to try and fail a few times. The last few DYK nominations I've done, however, have been with the help of SD0001's DYK-helper script, which makes the process a bit more streamlined (you create the template from a popup box on the article; created template is automatically transcluded to nominations page and article talk page) Once your nomination is created and transcluded, it will need to be reviewed. The reviewer will check that the article meets the eligibility criteria, that the hook is short enough, cited, and interesting, and that other requirements are met, such as for images. If you've been credited with more than 5 DYKs, the reviewer will also check that you've reviewed someone else's nomination for each article that you nominate. This is called QPQ (quid pro quo). You can check how many credited DYKs you've had here to see if QPQ is required for you to nominate an article for DYK. What it is: A peer review process to determine that an article meets
a set of criteria. This adds a How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Anyone can nominate an article—you don't have to be a major contributor, though it is considered polite to inform the major contributors that you are nominating the article. The article is added to a queue to await a review. In the ToL, it seems that reviews happen pretty quickly, thanks to our dedicated members. Once the review begins, the reviewer will offer suggestions to help the article meet the 6 GA criteria. Upon addressing all concerns, the reviewer will pass the article, and voilà! Good Article! Advice to a first-time nominator: Look at other Good Articles in related areas before nominating. If you're unsure about nominating, consider posting to the talk page of your project to see what other editors think. You can also have a more experienced editor co-nominate the article with you. What it is: An exhaustive peer review to determine that an articles meets the
criteria. This adds a
How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Nominated articles are usually GAs already. Uninvolved editors can nominate, though the article's regular editors should be consulted first. Several editors will come by offering feedback, eventually supporting or opposing promotion to FA. A coordinator will determine if there is consensus to promote the article to FA. For an editor's first FA, spot checks to verify that the sources support the text are conducted. Advice to a first-time nominator: The Featured Article Candidate (FAC) process is a bit intimidating, but several steps can make your first one easier (speaking as someone who has exactly one). If you also did the GA nomination of the article, you can ask the reviewer for "extra" feedback beyond the GA criteria. You can also formally request a peer review and/or a copy edit from the Guild of Copy Editors to check for content and mechanics. First-time nominators are encouraged to seek the help of a mentor for a higher likelihood of passing their first FAC. What it is: It took me a while to realize we even had GT and FT on Wikipedia, as they are not very common relative to GA and FA. Both GT and FT are collections of related articles of high quality (all articles at GA or FA, all lists at Featured List). GT/FT have to be at least 3 articles with no obvious gaps in coverage of the topic, along with other criteria. For GT, all articles have to be GA quality and all lists must be FL. For FT, at least half the articles must be FA or FL, with the remaining articles at GA. How it works: Follow the nomination procedures for creating a new topic or adding an article to an existing topic. Other editors weigh in to support or oppose the proposal. Coordinators determine if there is consensus to promote to GT/FT. Advice to a first-time nominator: There are very few GT/FT in Tree of Life ( 5 GT and 11 FT). Most of the legwork appears to be improving a cohesive set of articles to GA/FA. |
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Hello!
The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking to improve the community consultation outreach process for Foundation policies, and we are interested in why you didn't participate in a recent consultation that followed a community discussion you’ve been part of.
Please fill out this short survey to help us improve our community consultation process for the future. It should only take about three minutes.
The privacy policy for this survey is here. This survey is a one-off request from us related to this unique topic.
Thank you for your participation, Kbrown (WMF) 10:44, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
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News at a Glance |
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Class is in Session in the Tree of Life |
In an interesting turn of events, this month's guest column is by my alter-ego, Elysia (Wiki Ed): *Puts on Wiki Education hat* Hi everyone, I'm Elysia and I work for Wiki Education. You may know me as Enwebb. I got a request last month to let you know how Wiki Education is intersecting with the Tree of Life subprojects. As one of Wiki Education's major goals is to improve topics related to the sciences, leading to our Communicating Science initiative, we end up supporting quite a few in the biological sciences. Here are the TOL-related courses active this term: What is the impact of student editors in Tree of Life? ![]() Altogether, these 16 courses have 347 student participants. As the end of the semester hasn't come yet, these numbers are still growing, but these students have:
Some of our best student work this semester (of any kind, not just biodiversity) has come from Agelaia's Behavioural Ecology course—you may remember this as the course that created WikiProject Diptera. The students have several Good Article nominations, including Dryomyza anilis, Anastrepha ludens, Aedes taeniorhynchus, Drosophila silvestris, Drosophila subobscura, and Ceratitis capitata. And while long-term participation from students is low, there's always the chance that we'll discover a Wikipedian. I had never edited before my Wikipedia assignment in 2017 and I'm still here nearly 20,000 edits later! After I poked around in the beginning of the semester, I had the realization that not many people write Wikipedia, and very few of those have a special interest in bats. If I didn't stick around to write the content, there was no guarantee that it would ever get done. Why are species articles suitable for students? Writing about taxonomic groups is a great fit for students, as it keeps them away from areas where new editors traditionally struggle. The notability policy is generous towards taxa, and there is little danger of a student's work getting removed for lack of notability; this is to be expected when students write biographies. Students may struggle with encyclopedic tone for biographies and stray towards promotional writing, but this is much less common when writing about a shrew or algae! Additionally, we're never going to run out of species to write about. Students have a bounty of stubs and redlinks to pick from. Creating a new article or expanding an existing one also takes a fairly predictable structure, with plenty of articles that students can model after. Don't students just create messes for volunteers to clean up? Our sincere hope is that, no, they don't, and we take several steps to try to minimize the burden on volunteer labor. With automatic plagiarism detection, alerts when students edit a Good or Featured Article, and notifications when students edit an article subject to discretionary sanctions, we try to stay ahead of problems as much as possible. We also review all student work at the end of each term. Ian, Shalor, and I are always happy to receive pings alerting us to student issues that need to be addressed. |
November DYKs |
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News at a Glance |
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Editor Spotlight: Plantdrew |
We're joined this month by long-time editor Plantdrew, who's currently engaged in streamlining the taxonomic structure of Wikipedia articles via the automated taxobox system. How did you become a Wikipedian? What are your particular interests (besides the obvious of "plants")?
What projects are keeping you busy around the 'pedia at present?
What's your favorite plant?
What's your background like? How did you come to have a special interest in biology?
What's something that would surprised TOL editors about your life off-wiki?
Anything else you'd like us to know?
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December DYKs |
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News at a Glance |
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Vital Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The vital articles project on English Wikipedia began in 2004 when an editor transferred a list from Meta-Wiki: List of articles every Wikipedia should have. The first incarnation of the list became what is now level 3. As of 2019, there are 5 levels of vital articles:
Each level is inclusive of all previous levels, meaning that the 1,000 Level 3 articles include those listed on Levels 2 and 1. Below is an overview of the distribution of vital articles, and the quality of the articles. While the ultimate goal of the vital articles project is to have Featured-class articles, I also considered Good Articles to be "complete" for the purposes of this list. Animals (1,148 designated out of projected 2,400)
Plants, fungi, and other organisms (510 designated out of projected 1,200)
Many articles have yet to be designated for Tree of Life taxonomic groups, with 1,942 outstanding articles to be added. Anyone can add vital articles to the list! Restructuring may be necessary, as the only viruses included as of yet are under the category "Health". The majority of vital articles needing improvement are level 5, but here are some outstanding articles from the other levels:
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Abiogenesis
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Sexual dimorphism
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January DYKs |
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Has got to a new stage of its progress in this confusing and chaotic world... /info/en/?search=Category:Unknown-importance_Australian_biota_articles = 0. Please help by when creating new biota articles for australia, to make sure the unassessed page stays the way it is adequately tagged, or please ask for help in doing so... More on the next stages of the Australian biota project soon... and thanks for whatever you have done for the project in any way since 2006 - JarrahTree 05:49, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
List of asteroid close approaches to Earth
@ JarrahTree: Ho! Dropped to this beach when nervous about celestial forebodings, and here you where … joy! Tell me that all is shipshape, and i will makeport to create more co-numdrums [rlvnt emtcn] ~ cygnis insignis 14:15, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
g'day 99 - how auspicious - Line 999 - whatsmore !!! JarrahTree 14:20, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
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News at a Glance |
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The spread of coronavirus across Wikipedia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
With the outbreak of a novel coronavirus dominating news coverage, Wikipedia content related to the virus has seen much higher interest. Tree of Life content of particular interest to readers has included viruses, bats, pangolins, and masked palm civets. Viruses saw the most dramatic growth in readership: Coronavirus, which was the 105th most popular virus article in December 2019 with about 400 views per day, averaged over a quarter million views each day of January 2020. Total monthly viewership of the top-10 virus articles ballooned from about 1.5 million to nearly 20 million.
![]() From October 2019 – December 2019, the top ten most popular bat articles fluctuated among 16 different articles, with the December viewership of those 10 articles at 209,280. For January 2020, three articles broke into the top-10 that were not among the 16 articles of the prior three months: Bat as food, Horseshoe bat, and Bat-borne virus. Viewership of the top-10 bat articles spiked nearly 300% to 617,067 in January. While bats have been implicated as a possible natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, an intermediate host may be the bridge between bats and humans. Pangolins have been hypothesized as the intermediate host for the virus, causing a large spike in typical page views of 2-3k each day up to more than 60k in a day. Masked palm civets, the intermediate host of SARS, saw a modest yet noticeable spike in page views as well, from 100 to 300 views per day to as many as 5k views per day. With an increase in viewers came an increase in editors. In an interview, longtime virus editor Awkwafaba identified the influx of editors as the biggest challenge in editing content related to the coronavirus. They noted that these newcomers include "novices who make honest mistakes and get tossed about a bit in the mad activity" as well as "experienced editors who know nothing about viruses and are good researchers, yet aren't familiar with the policies of WP:ToL or WP:Viruses." Disruption also increased, with extended confirmed protection (also known as the 30/500 rule, which prevents editors with fewer than 30 days tenure and 500 edits from making edits and is typically used on a very small subset of Wikipedia articles) temporarily applied to Coronavirus and still active on Template:2019–20 coronavirus outbreak data. New editors apparently seeking to correct misinformation continuously edited the article Bat as food to remove content related to China: Videos of Chinese people eating bat soup were misrepresented to be current or filmed in China, when at least one such video was several years old and filmed in Palau. However, reliable sources confirm that bats are eaten in China, especially Southern China, so these well-meaning edits were mostly removed. Another level of complexity was added by the fluctuating terminology of the virus. Over a dozen moves and merges were requested within WikiProject Viruses. To give you an idea of the musical chairs happening with article titles, here are the move histories of two articles: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
Awkwafaba noted that "the main authorities, WHO and ICTV, don't really have a process for speedily naming a virus or disease." Additionally, they have different criteria for naming. They said, "I remember in a move discussion from the article then called Wuhan coronavirus that a virus name cannot have a geographical location in it, but this is a WHO disease naming guideline, and not an ICTV virus naming rule. ICTV may have renamed Four Corners virus to Sin Nombre orthohantavirus but there are still plenty of official virus species names that don't abide by WHO guidelines." |
February DYKs |
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News at a glance |
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A new WikiProject responding to the pandemic | ||
The newest Tree of Life WikiProject is about a taxon that is dominating the headlines, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, and its many effects. We interviewed Another Believer, the founder of WikiProject COVID-19. This interview has been edited for length. Find the full interview here.
Number of participants of WikiProject Covid-19
Thank you to Another Believer for your time, both in this interview and in this project. Interested readers can join WikiProject COVID-19. And please stay safe and healthy out there. -- Awkwafaba |
March DYKs |
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News at a glance |
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Tree of Life's growing featured content | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Inspired by a March 2020 post at WikiProject Medicine detailing the growth of Featured Articles over time, we decided to reproduce that table here, adding a second table showing the growth of Good Articles. Tree of Life articles are placed in the "Biology" category for FAs, which has seen a growth of 381% since 2008. Only two other subjects had a greater growth than Biology: Business, economics, and finance; and Warfare. Percentage Growth in FA Categories, 2008–2019, Legend: Considerably above average, Above average, Average Below average , Considerably below average, Poor
*subset of natural sciences Unsurprisingly, the number of GAs has increased more rapidly than the number of FAs. Organisms, which is a subcategory of Natural sciences, has seen a GA growth of 755% since 2008, besting the Natural sciences overall growth of 530%. While Warfare had far and away the most significant growth of GAs, it's a clear outlier relative to other categories. |
April DYKs |
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MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 02:40, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
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News at a glance |
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Interview with Jts1882 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This month we're joined by Jts1882, who is active in depicting evolutionary relationship of taxa via cladograms. Part of this includes responding to cladogram requests, where interested editors can have cladograms made without using the templates themselves. How did you come to be interested in systematics? Are you interested in systematics broadly, or is there a particular group you're most fond of? As long as I can remember I’ve been interested in nature, starting with the animals and plants in the garden, school grounds, and local wood, and then more general wildlife worldwide. An interest in how things are classified grew from this. I like things to be organised and understanding the relationships between things and systems (not just living things) is a big part of that. Biology was always my favourite subject in school and took up a disproportionate part of my time. My interest in systematics is broad as I’d like to comprehend the whole tree of life, but the cat family is my favourite group. What's the background behind cladogram requests? I see that it isn't a very old part of the Tree of Life Well I can’t take any credit for the cladogram requests page, although I help out there sometimes. It was created by IJReid and there are several people who have helped there more than me. I think the motivation is that creating cladograms requires a knowledge of the templates that is daunting for many editors. It was one way of helping people who want to focus on content creation. My main contribution to the cladograms is converting the {{ clade}} template to use a Lua module. The template code was extremely difficult to follow and had to be repetitive (I can only admire the efforts of those who got the thing to work in the first place). The conversion to Lua made it more efficient, allowed larger and deeper cladograms, plus facilitating the introduction of new features. The cladogram request page was recently the venue for discussion on making time calibrated cladograms, which is now possible, if not particularly user friendly. What advice do you have for an editor who wants to learn how to make cladograms? The same advice I would give to someone facing any computer problem, just try it out. Start by taking existing code for a cladogram and make changes yourself. The main advice would be to format it properly so indents match the brackets vertically. Of course, not everyone wants to learn and if someone prefers to focus on article content there is the cladogram request page. Examples of cladograms Jts1882 has created, showing different proposed clades for
Neoaves
Do you have any personal projects or goals you're working towards on Wikipedia? As I said I like organisation and systems. So I find efforts like the automated taxobox system and {{ taxonbar}} appealing. I would like to see more reuse of the major phylogenetic trees on Wikipedia with more use of consensus trees on the higher taxa. Too often they get edited based on one recent report and/or without proper citation. Animals and bilateria are examples where this is a problem. Towards this I have been working on a system of phylogeny templates that can be reused flexibly. The {{ Clade transclude}} template allows selective transclusion, so the phylogenetic trees on one page can be reused with modifications, i.e. can be pruned and grafted, used with or without images, with or without collapsible elements, etc. I have an example for the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification (see {{ Phylogeny/APG IV}}) and one for squamates that also includes collapsible elements (see {{ Phylogeny/Squamata}}). A second project is to have a modular reference system for taxonomic resources. I have made some progress along this lines with the {{ BioRef}} template. This started off simply as a way of hardlinking to Catalog of Fishes pages and I’ve gradually expanded it to cover other groups (e..g. FishBase, AmphibiaWeb and Amphibian Species of the World, Reptile Database, the Mammalian Diversity Database). The modular nature is still rudimentary and needs a rewrite before it is ready for wider use. What would surprise your fellow editors to learn about your life off-Wikipedia? I don’t think there is anything particularly surprising or interesting about my life. I’ve had an academic career as a research scientist but I don't think anyone could guess the area from my Wikipedia edits. I prefer to work on areas where I am learning at the same time. This why I spend more time with neglected topics (e.g. mosses at the moment). I start reading and then find that I’m not getting the information I want. Anything else you'd like us to know? My interest in the classification of things goes beyond biology. I am fascinated by mediaeval attempts to classify knowledge, such as Bacon in his The Advancement of Learning and Diderot and d’Alembert in their Encyclopédie. They were trying to come up with a universal scheme of knowledge just as the printing press was allowing greater dissemination of knowledge. With the internet we are seeing a new revolution in knowledge dissemination. Just look at how we could read research papers on the COVID virus within weeks of its discovery. With an open internet, everyone has access, not just those with the luxury of books at home or good libraries. Sites like the Biodiversity Heritage Library allow you to read old scientific works without having to visit dusty university library stack rooms, while the taxonomic and checklist databases provide instant information on millions of living species. In principle, the whole world can now find out about anything, even if Douglas Adams warned we might be disinclined to do so. This is why I like Wikipedia, with all its warts, it’s a means of organising the knowledge on the internet. In just two decades it’s become a first stop for knowledge and hopefully a gateway to more specialised sources. Perhaps developing this latter aspect, beyond providing good sources for what we say, is the next challenge for Wikipedia. |
May DYKs |
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Enwebb ( talk) 19:40, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
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One year! |
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-- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 08:51, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
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News at a glance |
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Categorizing life with DexDor |
DexDor is a WikiGnome with a particular interest in article categorization, including how organisms are categorized.
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June DYKs |
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July DYKs |
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Life reconstruction of Pterodactylus antiquus
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Delivered on behalf of Enwebb ( talk) 16:33, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
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Hoax taxon sniffed out after nearly fifteen years |
Cross posted from the Signpost ![]() On August 7, WikiProject Palaeontology member Rextron discovered a suspicious taxon article, Mustelodon, which was created in November 2005. The article lacked references and the subsequent discussion on WikiProject Palaeontology found that the alleged type locality (where the fossil was first discovered) of Lago Nandarajo "near the northern border of Panama" was nonexistent. In fact, Panama does not even really have a northern border, as it is bounded along the north by the Caribbean Sea. No other publications or databases mentioned Mustelodon, save a fleeting mention in a 2019 book that presumably followed Wikipedia, Felines of the World. The article also appeared in four other languages, Catalan, Spanish, Dutch, and Serbian. In Serbian Wikipedia, a note at the bottom of the page warned: "It is important to note here that there is no data on this genus in the official scientific literature, and all attached data on the genus Mustelodon on this page are taken from the English Wikipedia and are the only known data on this genus of mammals, so the validity of this genus is questionable." Editors took action to alert our counterparts on other projects, and these versions were removed also. As the editor who reached out to Spanish and Catalan Wikipedia, it was somewhat challenging to navigate these mostly foreign languages (I have a limited grasp of Spanish). I doubted that the article had very many watchers, so I knew I had to find some WikiProjects where I could post a machine translation advising of the hoax, and asking that users follow local protocols to remove the article. I was surprised to find, however, that Catalan Wikipedia does not tag articles for WikiProjects on talk pages, meaning I had to fumble around to find what I needed (turns out that WikiProjects are Viquiprojectes in Catalan!) Mustelodon remains on Wikidata, where its "instance of" property was swapped from "taxon" to "fictional taxon". How did this article have such a long lifespan? Early intervention is critical for removing hoaxes. A 2016 report found that a hoax article that survives its first day has an 18% chance of lasting a year. [1] Additionally, hoax articles tend to have longer lifespans if they are in inconspicuous parts of Wikipedia, where they do not receive many views. Mustelodon was only viewed a couple times a day, on average. Mustelodon survived a brush with death three years into its lifespan. The article was proposed for deletion in September 2008, with a deletion rationale of "No references given; cannot find any evidence in peer-reviewed journals that this alleged genus actually exists". Unfortunately, the proposed deletion was contested and the template removed, though the declining editor did not give a rationale. Upon its rediscovery in August 2020, Mustelodon was tagged for speedy deletion under CSD G3 as a "blatant hoax". This was challenged, and an Articles for Deletion discussion followed. On 12 August, the AfD was closed as a SNOW delete. WikiProject Palaeontology members ensured that any trace of it was scrubbed from legitimate articles. The fictional mammal was finally, truly extinct. At the ripe old age of 14 years, 9 months, this is the longest-lived documented hoax on Wikipedia, topping the previous documented record of 14 years, 5 months, set by The Gates of Saturn, a fictitious television show, which was incidentally also discovered in August 2020. How do we discover other hoax taxa? Could we use Wikidata to discover taxa are not linked to databases like ITIS, Fossilworks, and others?
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Spotlight with Mattximus |
![]() This month's spotlight is with Mattximus, author of two Featured Articles and 29 Featured Lists at current count.
I think I have a compulsion to make lists, it doesn't show up in my real life, but online I secretly get a lot of satisfaction making orderly lists and tables. It's a bit of a secret of mine, because it doesn't manifest in any other part of my life. My background is in biology, so this was a natural (haha) fit.
This experiment was just to see if I could get any random article to FA status, so I picked the very first alphabetical animal species according to the taxonomy and made that attempt. Technically, there isn't enough information for a species page so I just merged the species into a genus and went from there. It was a fun exercise, but doing it alone is not the most fun so it's probably on pause for the foreseeable future. Note: Aporhynchus is the first alphabetical taxon as follows: Animalia, Acanthocephala, Archiacanthocephala, Apororhynchida, Apororhynchidae, Apororhynchus
I would recommend getting a good article nominated, then a featured list up before tackling the FA. Lists are a bit more forgiving but give you a taste of what standards to expect from FA. The most time consuming thing is proper citations so make sure that is in order before starting either.
My personality in real life does not match my wikipedia persona. I'm not a very organized, or orderly in real life, but the wikipedia pages I brought to FL or FA are all very organized. Maybe it's my outlet for a more free-flowing life as a scientist/teacher.
The fact that wikipedia exists free of profit motive and free for everyone really is something special and I encourage everyone to donate a few dollars to the cause. |
August DYKs |
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Delivered on behalf of
Enwebb (
talk)
17:10, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
Hi, in this rev, you changed a use of template:ill to a bare redlink with the edit summary 'convert WD link Glenn Shea to redlink here, notable researcher and author'. However, the ill template presents the redlink as-is to users for so long as it *is* a redlink on enwiki; it automatically falls back to a normal blue wikilink as soon as the article's created, and adds value in the meantime by allowing users to see Wikidata information and links to other projects. I think your edit leaves the article strictly worse, but I won't revert it because I don't understand why it was made as the stated justification makes no sense to me; at least one of us is clearly confused, very possibly myself, and that calls for more caution in editing. Instead, would you consider a self-revert? 80.7.186.76 ( talk) — Preceding undated comment added 15:17, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of
Template:Did you know nominations/Frederick Strange at the
Did You Know nominations page is not complete; if you would like to continue, please link the nomination to the nominations page as described in
step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{
db-g7}}, or ask a
DYK admin. Thank you.
DYKHousekeepingBot (
talk)
20:12, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
An RfC at Talk:Race and intelligence revisits the question, considered last year at WP:FTN, of whether or not the theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is a fringe theory. This RfC supercedes the recent RfC on this topic at WP:RSN that was closed as improperly formulated.
Your participation is welcome. Thank you. NightHeron ( talk) 22:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
{{
Species list}}
makes the authorities small, so if you use small tags as well, as originally at
Tomoxena, they become too small. You can generate wikilinks automatically by using {{
Linked species list}}
(see the documentation), but it doesn't abbreviate the genus name, so if you want to use the abbreviated genus + a wikilink, it's better, I think, just to use a normal list. (I could, I guess, modify
Module:TaxonList to include the option to abbreviate in a species list, but I'm not sure if it would get much use.)
Peter coxhead (
talk)
18:41, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
| subdivision = [[#Species|See text]]
in the taxobox. {{
Species list}}
is useful for a list of synonyms in a Speciesbox, which of course shouldn't be linked.
Peter coxhead (
talk)
05:35, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of
Frederick Strange at the
Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at
your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know!
BlueMoonset (
talk)
20:07, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Nina H. Kennard, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page John Ingram.
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 05:55, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
The photograph you just added to the Robert Louis Stevenson site and its caption are absolutely superb! Thank you so much for that. The Final Edict ( talk) 10:43, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
Hi. Sorry for an odd question. Will it be ok to capitalize some letters for better clarity in your post? You see, I accidentally did that assuming that it you will see it and probably appreciate it, but the other admins started reverting me as if like I am a vandal of some sort. Any feed back will be appreciated. I ask the same approval from @ Enterprisey:.-- Filmomusico ( talk) 07:15, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
Did you ever add this page to the AfD log? (See WP:AFDHOWTO, step III.) I can't find it on the log for any of the days from Nov. 22 through Nov. 25. Please add it to the current day's log since the AfD community was never informed of this AfD. Also please note that the "View log" link in the AfD goes to the nomination of this article from 2010, not the current one. Please fix that; I don't want to fix it myself because the AfD is so large that editing it slows down my computer. -- Metropolitan90 (talk) 07:34, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
I voted to Keep that article. But, I wouldn't be totally shocked if it ended up being deleted. One thing is for certain, the article's notability (via the AfD) has grown. GoodDay ( talk) 09:09, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
I am utterly disgusted at your Orwellian attempt to delete the above article.
I an deeply concerned going through your edit history that you are introducing bias into Wikipedia.
I am now going to watch your edits and revert those that introduce a Leftist slant.
Ashley Payne (
talk)
09:28, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
Honestly, just plain racist. Millions of Asians have been killed at the hands of communist and now some basement dwelling colonizer wants to try and cover it all up? Why? 2601:248:8102:DDE0:24C1:730C:9795:D603 ( talk) 00:29, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
.
For risking a lot of alt-right harassment just to start a discussion about the potential deletion of an article. The right-wing media attention towards the Mass killings under communist regimes AFD was unwarranted and scare-mongering, and you were able to get your point across very well without worrying if some cuckservative snowflakes would misinterpret it cause they are not the free critical thinkers they think they are. As a libertarian (but not that fascist-disguised-as-libertarian people I've see too often online recently) that voted Keep, I appreciate the bravery. We really need more of that. 👨x🐱 ( Nina CortexxCoco Bandicoot) 22:19, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
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Like I said, I think anyone who got through that entire deletion discussion ought to get a free T-shirt, and you ought to be at the front of the line. I was myself entangled in a rather protracted series of AfDs a couple months ago, and the experience was distracting to say the least: your situation seems unenviable. Apologies for contributing to the mess, and here's to the shit calming down sometime soon. jp× g 03:21, 3 December 2021 (UTC) |
You can check out the page history as well as anybody, I'm sure. See [3]. The story back then is very similar to the story as published, but here is the version back then after formatting. You'll notice my byline at the top of the article and my linked initial at the bottom of the section, so there shouldn't be any question as to who wrote this.
Wikipedia may delete entry on 'mass killings' under Communism due to claims of bias in The Telegraph reviews this AfD entry. The Telegraph quotes University of Cambridge historian Professor Robert Tombs saying
(Deletion) is morally indefensible, at least as bad as Holocaust denial, because 'linking ideology and killing' is the very core of why these things are important.
I have read the Wikipedia page, and it seems to me careful and balanced. Therefore attempts to remove it can only be ideologically motivated – to whitewash Communism.
A Wikipedia editor soon dismissed the professor's concerns saying " I fail to see why his view is important on this subject, being a historian in one subject does not automatically make you an authority on all historical subjects."
The length of the AfD will soon surpass twice the length of the previous record holder. (See this month's Deletion report) !Votes are strongly in favor of keeping the article, and a snow close has been proposed.
Disclosure – the author of this section voted Strong keep at the AfD and has previously edited the article extensively. –S
I'm reporting on an opinion, from a highly qualified scholar, as published in a reliable source. My report was completely accurate: that is what Professor Tombs said as published in the Telegraph with a direct link. If I could have found somebody on the other side giving a contrary opinion in a reliable source, I would have. But there was no such opinion in an RS. So I quoted somebody from the AfD talk page. That should end it right there. The Signpost story was completely factual and accurate. It was as balanced as I could get it, given that nobody in an RS could be found espousing the other side. Do you have a complaint about this? If so, please state it clearly and simply now. It's all facts reported. If you wrote the story you might have chosen a different set of facts - but so what? Smallbones( smalltalk) 15:34, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.
You have shown interest in Eastern Europe or the Balkans. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.
For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Nug ( talk • contribs) 07:09, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
What did you support exactly
here and what you mean
here? I do have a difficulty on understanding you at
Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes, e.g.
"Stalingrad" and
"Victims of denazification". Some examples that I think I get what you are saying but I am not so sure: "Oh yes, I totally agree, I think, the distinction is often seen as a matter of consent, perhaps va political / geographical obligation, when totalling the victims of mass killings. ... apologies, I’m trying to fathom the depths to which an article’s scope loses meaningful resolution."
Did you mean to say that totalling the victims of mass killings is political, and that there is also a geographic bias? I am more confused about the latter, and it is a shame because I found what you said interesting and I am definitely interested to such depths but I wish I could understand you better.
Another example: "Is this mentioned by Courtois or a totallynotnazi thunk tank as a peacetime mass killing?"
Fascists and other far-right reactionaries and extremists have indeed been considered "victims of communism" on par with ordinary citizens, and Courtois may have indeed done that too, is that what you were trying to saying? I have actually read other comments of yours and did not find any issue, I only find issues in properly understanding at MKuCR, which is a shame because if I at least partially understood you right, you raised interesting points that I wish you could, if you want, explain me them more clearly and deeply.
Davide King (
talk)
16:21, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
You just made a 1RR violation on the page [4], [5]. In the edit summary to first edit you said: "restore backdated ...". Hence, that was a revert, and you knew it. Please be more careful in a future. Please also do not remove comments by others, such as [6]. Thanks, My very best wishes ( talk) 17:26, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
The following sanction now applies to you:
Blocked from editing for 96 hours.
You have been sanctioned 1RR violation and incivility, https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement&diff=1066743626&oldid=1066743474 decision = b
This sanction is imposed in my capacity as an uninvolved administrator under the authority of the Arbitration Committee's decision at [[{{{decision}}}#Final decision]] and, if applicable, the procedure described at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions. This sanction has been recorded in the log of sanctions. If the sanction includes a ban, please read the banning policy to ensure you understand what this means. If you do not comply with this sanction, you may be blocked for an extended period, by way of enforcement of this sanction—and you may also be made subject to further sanctions.
You may appeal this sanction using the process described here. I recommend that you use the arbitration enforcement appeals template if you wish to submit an appeal to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard. You may also appeal directly to me (on my talk page), before or instead of appealing to the noticeboard. Even if you appeal this sanction, you remain bound by it until you are notified by an uninvolved administrator that the appeal has been successful. You are also free to contact me on my talk page if anything of the above is unclear to you. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:53, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Why was my edit reverted? Augustios Paleo ( talk) 13:30, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
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The Barnstar of Good Humor |
The asterism comment was really funny. Thanks for starting my Sunday right! A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 13:55, 30 January 2022 (UTC) |
Would you be able to add information on native representations of gorillas to the culture section using this? Thanks. LittleJerry ( talk) 18:41, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
I have a horrible thought that I had meant to get back to you, and got distracted by real life - trust all is ok JarrahTree 12:55, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
wp:hatting and wp:close are not the same thing. Slatersteven ( talk) 17:43, 21 June 2019 (UTC)
Please read wp:n. Slatersteven ( talk) 09:01, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
I suggest reading wp:consensus, its also a policy, not an essay. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:37, 22 June 2019 (UTC)
trust all is well
fyi - done - Max Kay - please feel free to edit or improve JarrahTree 05:14, 23 June 2019 (UTC)
Let's discuss this. Jehochman Talk 18:21, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
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Project name | Relative WikiWork |
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Cats | 4.79
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Fisheries and fishing | 4.9
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Dogs | 4.91
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Viruses | 4.91
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ToL | 4.94
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Cetaceans | 4.97
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Primates | 4.98
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Sharks | 5.04
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All wikiprojects average | 5.05
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Dinosaurs | 5.12
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Equine | 5.15
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Bats | 5.25
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Mammals | 5.32
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Aquarium fishes | 5.35
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Hypericaceae | 5.38
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Turtles | 5.4
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Birds | 5.46
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Australian biota | 5.5
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Marine life | 5.54
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Animals | 5.56
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Paleontology | 5.57
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Rodents | 5.58
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Amphibians and Reptiles | 5.64
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Fungi | 5.65
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Bivalves | 5.66
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Plants | 5.67
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Algae | 5.68
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Arthropods | 5.69
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Hymenoptera | 5.72
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Microbiology | 5.72
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Cephalopods | 5.74
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Fishes | 5.76
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Ants | 5.79
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Gastropods | 5.8
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Spiders | 5.86
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Insects | 5.9
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Beetles | 5.98
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Lepidoptera | 5.98
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Within the Tree of Life and its many subprojects, there is an abundance of stubs. Welcome to Wikipedia, what's new, right? However, based on all wikiprojects listed (just over two thousand), the Tree of Life project is worse off in average article quality than most. Based on the concept of relative WikiWork (the average number of "steps" needed to have a project consisting of all featured articles (FAs), where stub status → FA consists of six steps), only seven projects within the ToL have an average rating of "start class" or better. Many projects, particularly those involving invertebrates, hover at an average article quality slightly better than a stub. With relative WikiWorks of 5.98 each, WikiProject Lepidoptera and WikiProject Beetles have the highest relative WikiWork of any project. Given that invertebrates are incredibly speciose, it may not surprise you that many articles about them are lower quality. WikiProject Beetles, for example, has over 20 times more articles than WikiProject Cats. Wikipedia will always be incomplete, so we should take our relatively low WikiWork as motivation to write more articles that are also better in quality.
We're joined for this month's Editor Spotlight by NessieVL, a long-time contributor who lists themselves as a member of WikiProject Fungus, WikiProject Algae, and WikiProject Cephalopods.
1) Enwebb: How did you come to edit articles about organisms and taxonomic groups?
2) Enwebb: Many editors in the ToL are highly specialized on a group of taxa. A look at your recently created articles includes much diversity, though, with viruses, bacteria, algae, and cnidarians all represented—are there any commonalities for the articles you work on? Would you say you're particularly interested in certain groups?
3) Enwebb: I noticed that many of your recent edits utilize the script Rater, which aids in quickly reassessing the quality and importance of an article. Why is it important to update talk page assessments of articles? I also noticed that the quality rating you assign often aligns with ORES, a script that uses machine-learning to predict article quality. Coincidence?
4) Enwebb: What, if anything, can ToL and its subprojects do to better support collaboration and coordination among editors? How can we improve?
5) Enwebb: What would surprise the ToL community to learn about your life off-Wikipedia?
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talk)
20:29, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
Re this. Please try to assume good faith when talking to others. Casliber and I have known each other for a good few many years now and I have his talk page on my watchlist. We have also assisted each other at FAC, when the occasion has called. Please learn some manners. Thanks. Cassianto Talk 14:29, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
I'd like to stay focused in the discussion I began. I am German and may have extra difficulties that don't belong there. I am afraid that the term "toxic behaviour" was derived from "incredibly toxic personalities", and - even if not - is too vague, too general, and meaning different things to different readers, so making me think that we should "ban" it. English is rich, and I am sure there are better words. -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 15:18, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
Western Australia irritans
Thank you for quality articles about plants begun in 2007 with Alyogyne huegelii, moving to geckos such as Christinus alexanderi, people such as Albert Frederick Calvert, and Triodia irritans in 2019, for expanding the crescent nail-tail wallaby and others, for "Good news for the local ecology." - Westralian, you are an awesome Wikipedian!
You are recipient no. 2247 of Precious, a prize of QAI. -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 16:01, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
Per WP:TPO you cannot remove my edits at Noongar. You may raise an issue on my Talk page, or you may raise a discussion at WP:ANI concerning my behavior, but you may not alter my edits. Thanks, Mathglot ( talk) 06:44, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for trying to help me out with Cassianto. He is a disgusting editor who thinks he owns articles and makes life miserable for other editors Cls14 ( talk) 22:41, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
The two genera, alongside the Musky rat-kangaroo are currently considered part of Hypsiprymnodontidae, rather than the family Potoroidae. There are papers that can back it up, which are cited in the articles. I would do it myself, but I have no idea how to properly edit the automatic taxobox. Monsieur X ( talk) 12:13, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Hello Cygnis insignis,
I've done a bit of a clean up of the taxonomy section of E. gomphocephala but can't find a ref. for "type collection was made by Jean-Baptiste Leschenault at the Vasse River during 1802, while serving on the Baudin expedition". I'm sure it's correct but it would be good to add a ref. Can you help? Gderrin ( talk) 01:10, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Corymbia calophylla, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Western Mail ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 08:05, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Chaeropus, you added links pointing to the disambiguation pages John Gilbert and Bernard Woodward ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 09:29, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
You didn't get a response to this question but maybe WP:VPT could help.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:18, 29 July 2019 (UTC)
you deem that art-work as non-problematic, I might gently suggest staying away from these areas. Also, it would have taken you a few seconds to discover that the IP has been already blocked for being a sock of a LTA. Regards, ∯WBG converse 17:44, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
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The WikiCup, an annual editing competition, is now in its fourth round. Casliber, consistent participant since 2010 and winner in 2016, is currently dominating Group A with 601 points. Largely responsible is the successful Featured Article nomination of Masked booby. The other remaining Tree of Life participant, Enwebb, is participating in her first ever WikiCup. In this round, she has a grand total of...5 points. But with the recent Featured Article nomination of Megabat, she stands to gain 600 points if successful. As it stands, though, it appears that at least one ToL editor is headed to the fifth and final round of 8 contestants, which begins September 1. Thus far, all participants in the WikiCup have generated 17 Featured Articles, 116 Good Articles, 16 Featured Lists, and 57 Featured Pictures. The Good Article Nominations backlog has been reduced as well, with 286 Good Article Reviews. |
For this month's editor spotlight we're joined by
Charlesjsharp, a longtime contributor to Wikimedia Commons with a plethora of featured pictures on English Wikipedia. 1) Starsandwhales: How long have you been editing Wikipedia, and how did you get interested? How did you begin your journey of photographing wildlife?
![]() 2) S&W: Over the years, you've taken photos of many different organisms from birds to insects to big cats; you have an
extensive list of favorite images. Which animals have been the most exciting for you to photograph?
3) S&W: Many articles under ToL have requests for people to add images that can go unanswered. What can the community do to improve the coverage of different organisms on Wikipedia, especially when it comes to images?
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4) S&W: What advice would you give to people new to photographing wildlife?
5) S&W: What would the Tree of Life community be surprised to learn about your life off-wiki?
* An example of cumbersome code: getting the layout of my responses to your questions. So dated, and no online spellchecker. |
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 18:59, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Palorchestes, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Rostrum ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 09:26, 4 August 2019 (UTC)
the territory name was in lower case, the actual location was hidden ... just reading it now there is an outside chance the random punter guesses where it is... JarrahTree 12:37, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
File:The Riddler.jpg | Nice to meet you |
~ please leave my friend alone ~ E Eng ~ I hope she/he does not mind, I forged the signature ~ ~mitch~ ( talk) 16:15, 15 August 2019 (UTC) |
I don't want to start an edit war, so I'm going to give you time to do some research and provide a reference to your assertion that the thylacine definitely was extinct in the Australian mainland by the time that Europeans arrived, but please note that the normal order of things is to locate a reliable source and *then* make the edit. I have no reason to doubt that what you say is correct, but when one edits an article in such a way one should have the reliable source handy. AuH2ORepublican ( talk) 15:08, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
I tend to think of oceanic shelves, you are referring to... ? JarrahTree 10:41, 20 August 2019 (UTC)
"Undid revision 911996954 by PC78 (talk) are you proposing to fix it?
" No, as my edit summary indicated my concern is that you have not correctly followed the
WP:GAR process; I offer no judgement on the quality of the article. I have now raised my concern at
Wikipedia:Good article help for further consideration. Regards.
PC78 (
talk)
16:07, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
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![]() ![]() Guest column by Thomas Shafee ( Evolution and evolvability), Editor in Chief of WikiJournal of Science
Firstly, WikiJSci can be a complementary system for FA review (getting external review, input, and validity). When an Wikipedia article is nominated (via WP:JAN), journal editors go out to non-Wikipedian academics and researchers who have published on the subject on the last five years and invite them to give feedback comments (e.g. Peripatric speciation and Baryonyx). The resulting changes can then be integrated back into the Wikipedia article.
Getting more editors involved in Wikipedia is always a high priority. WikiJSci can also be a way to encourage new people to contribute articles (especially on missing/stub/start topics). An example of an article that was written from scratch by a group of non-Wikipedians is Teladorsagia circumcincta. This not only resulted in a new Wikipedia page on an underdeveloped topic, but introduced the idea of Wikimedia contribution to a group of people who had previously never considered it.
The journal can be a way to get multimedia content reviewed or encourage contribution. The same approach could be easily adapted to sounds (e.g. frog mating calls) or videos (e.g. starfish feet motion). It also allows for tracking of those images in new articles via Altmetric ( this example has >200, which is bananas). There aren't any biology examples in WikiJSci yet, but the sister medical journal has published a few summary diagrams, photography, and image galleries. Examples include this gallery by Blausen Medical or the diagram of cell disassembly during apoptosis.
For those interested in other Wikimedia sister projects, there's also broad scope for interactions with the WikiJournals. Perhaps peer reviewed teaching resources could be useful to sit alongside sets of Wikipedia articles and be integrated into Wikiversity courses (like this or this)? Can sections of Wikidata & Wikispecies be peer reviewed? What are the potential avenues for integration with WikiCite, WikiFactMine, Scholia, etc.? Currently, WikiJSci is aiming to be very flexible and try out different formats so long as they can be externally peer reviewed. For more info, see the 2019-06-30 Signpost article and the current sister project proposal. |
1) Enwebb: You're very prolific with DYKs, with over 2,000 nominations credited (in fact, I'll highlight which DYK nominations this month were yours below). What made you become so involved in this part of Wikipedia? Why should Tree of Life editors nominate articles for DYK?
2) Enwebb: I noticed that your DYK nominations reflect a diverse array of flora and fauna, from trees, marine invertebrates, birds, fishes, and mammals. How do you decide what to work on?
3) Enwebb: Which of your Wikipedia accomplishments are you most proud of?
4) Enwebb: What motivates you to keep contributing? What's your 10,000 ft view (pardon the non-SI) of the community and Tree of Life?
6) Enwebb: How did you first become interested in natural history?
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 15:43, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
We are now less than 3k - how can you help? when you create a new article - please try to complete the biota assessment, /info/en/?search=Category:Unknown-importance_Australian_biota_articles when you deal with an older article - it is well worth going to the talk page and tweaking for biota.. Thanks for your work in biota articles !! cheers JarrahTree 00:27, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
I can see by your TP discussions that you stay pretty busy, but I was hoping you could squeeze in a little time for WP:WikiProject Dogs and maybe even become a member. It appears to have been a free-for-all topic area for quite some time and just needs a little TLC from editors who understand the difference between a dog breed and a dog type. I’m soliciting, not canvassing. 😉 Atsme Talk 📧 04:39, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Actually, we’re making progress. We have some outstanding collaborators, and we’re getting right down to the root of several issues, beginning with RS. See User:Atsme/sandbox and its TP, and feel free to weigh-in on that discussion if you’ve a mind to. Atsme Talk 📧 05:32, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Hmmm although your motivation is clear and positive, having spent time watching the extensive OR and POV in dog articles, and the disappearance of the earlier set of eds on veterinary things, I have steered clear so far - thanks for the invite nevertheless... JarrahTree 05:40, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
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Tree of Life subprojects and task forces by start year and whether currently considered active or not This month saw a vanishingly rare occurrence for the Tree of Life: a new WikiProject joined the fold. WikiProject Diptera, however, is also unusual in being a classroom project. Whether or not this project will stay active once the semester ends remains to be seen. It does not bode well, however, that WP:WikiProject Vespidae—a creation from the same instructor at St. Louis University—faded to obscurity shortly after the fall semester concluded in 2014. WikiProject Vespidae is defunct and now redirects to the Hymenoptera task force of WikiProject Insects. Since 2014, the Tree of Life has seen a string of years where one or zero projects or task forces were created. The only projects and task forces created since then are WikiProject Animal anatomy (2014), Hymenoptera task force (2016), Bats task force (2017), WikiProject Hypericaceae (2018), and now WikiProject Diptera (2019). The year 2006 saw the greatest creation of WikiProjects and task forces, with fourteen still active and the remaining six as "semiactive", "inactive", or "defunct". |
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 22:26, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
I noticed you have made considerable edits to this page - where do you get the energy - but thanks for tidying up after me...I do have one question - is there a reason why the page is labelled Setirostris - rather than Setirostris elleryi? Thanks P Barden ( talk) 02:35, 22 October 2019 (UTC)
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By request from another editor, this month I wrote an overview of ways that content is featured on Wikipedia. Below I have outlined some of the processes for getting content featured: What is it: A way for articles to appear on the main page of Wikipedia. A short hook in the format of "Did you know...that ___" presents unusual and interesting facts to the reader, hopefully making the reader want to click through to the article How it works: The DYK process has fairly low barriers for participation. The eligibility criteria are few and relatively easy to meet. Some important guidelines:
The process for creating the nomination is somewhat tedious. Instructions can be found here (official instructions) and here ("quick and nice" guide to DYK). Experience is the best teacher here, so don't be afraid to try and fail a few times. The last few DYK nominations I've done, however, have been with the help of SD0001's DYK-helper script, which makes the process a bit more streamlined (you create the template from a popup box on the article; created template is automatically transcluded to nominations page and article talk page) Once your nomination is created and transcluded, it will need to be reviewed. The reviewer will check that the article meets the eligibility criteria, that the hook is short enough, cited, and interesting, and that other requirements are met, such as for images. If you've been credited with more than 5 DYKs, the reviewer will also check that you've reviewed someone else's nomination for each article that you nominate. This is called QPQ (quid pro quo). You can check how many credited DYKs you've had here to see if QPQ is required for you to nominate an article for DYK. What it is: A peer review process to determine that an article meets
a set of criteria. This adds a How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Anyone can nominate an article—you don't have to be a major contributor, though it is considered polite to inform the major contributors that you are nominating the article. The article is added to a queue to await a review. In the ToL, it seems that reviews happen pretty quickly, thanks to our dedicated members. Once the review begins, the reviewer will offer suggestions to help the article meet the 6 GA criteria. Upon addressing all concerns, the reviewer will pass the article, and voilà! Good Article! Advice to a first-time nominator: Look at other Good Articles in related areas before nominating. If you're unsure about nominating, consider posting to the talk page of your project to see what other editors think. You can also have a more experienced editor co-nominate the article with you. What it is: An exhaustive peer review to determine that an articles meets the
criteria. This adds a
How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Nominated articles are usually GAs already. Uninvolved editors can nominate, though the article's regular editors should be consulted first. Several editors will come by offering feedback, eventually supporting or opposing promotion to FA. A coordinator will determine if there is consensus to promote the article to FA. For an editor's first FA, spot checks to verify that the sources support the text are conducted. Advice to a first-time nominator: The Featured Article Candidate (FAC) process is a bit intimidating, but several steps can make your first one easier (speaking as someone who has exactly one). If you also did the GA nomination of the article, you can ask the reviewer for "extra" feedback beyond the GA criteria. You can also formally request a peer review and/or a copy edit from the Guild of Copy Editors to check for content and mechanics. First-time nominators are encouraged to seek the help of a mentor for a higher likelihood of passing their first FAC. What it is: It took me a while to realize we even had GT and FT on Wikipedia, as they are not very common relative to GA and FA. Both GT and FT are collections of related articles of high quality (all articles at GA or FA, all lists at Featured List). GT/FT have to be at least 3 articles with no obvious gaps in coverage of the topic, along with other criteria. For GT, all articles have to be GA quality and all lists must be FL. For FT, at least half the articles must be FA or FL, with the remaining articles at GA. How it works: Follow the nomination procedures for creating a new topic or adding an article to an existing topic. Other editors weigh in to support or oppose the proposal. Coordinators determine if there is consensus to promote to GT/FT. Advice to a first-time nominator: There are very few GT/FT in Tree of Life ( 5 GT and 11 FT). Most of the legwork appears to be improving a cohesive set of articles to GA/FA. |
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Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 03:34, 3 November 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 ( talk)
Hello!
The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking to improve the community consultation outreach process for Foundation policies, and we are interested in why you didn't participate in a recent consultation that followed a community discussion you’ve been part of.
Please fill out this short survey to help us improve our community consultation process for the future. It should only take about three minutes.
The privacy policy for this survey is here. This survey is a one-off request from us related to this unique topic.
Thank you for your participation, Kbrown (WMF) 10:44, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
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News at a Glance |
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Class is in Session in the Tree of Life |
In an interesting turn of events, this month's guest column is by my alter-ego, Elysia (Wiki Ed): *Puts on Wiki Education hat* Hi everyone, I'm Elysia and I work for Wiki Education. You may know me as Enwebb. I got a request last month to let you know how Wiki Education is intersecting with the Tree of Life subprojects. As one of Wiki Education's major goals is to improve topics related to the sciences, leading to our Communicating Science initiative, we end up supporting quite a few in the biological sciences. Here are the TOL-related courses active this term: What is the impact of student editors in Tree of Life? ![]() Altogether, these 16 courses have 347 student participants. As the end of the semester hasn't come yet, these numbers are still growing, but these students have:
Some of our best student work this semester (of any kind, not just biodiversity) has come from Agelaia's Behavioural Ecology course—you may remember this as the course that created WikiProject Diptera. The students have several Good Article nominations, including Dryomyza anilis, Anastrepha ludens, Aedes taeniorhynchus, Drosophila silvestris, Drosophila subobscura, and Ceratitis capitata. And while long-term participation from students is low, there's always the chance that we'll discover a Wikipedian. I had never edited before my Wikipedia assignment in 2017 and I'm still here nearly 20,000 edits later! After I poked around in the beginning of the semester, I had the realization that not many people write Wikipedia, and very few of those have a special interest in bats. If I didn't stick around to write the content, there was no guarantee that it would ever get done. Why are species articles suitable for students? Writing about taxonomic groups is a great fit for students, as it keeps them away from areas where new editors traditionally struggle. The notability policy is generous towards taxa, and there is little danger of a student's work getting removed for lack of notability; this is to be expected when students write biographies. Students may struggle with encyclopedic tone for biographies and stray towards promotional writing, but this is much less common when writing about a shrew or algae! Additionally, we're never going to run out of species to write about. Students have a bounty of stubs and redlinks to pick from. Creating a new article or expanding an existing one also takes a fairly predictable structure, with plenty of articles that students can model after. Don't students just create messes for volunteers to clean up? Our sincere hope is that, no, they don't, and we take several steps to try to minimize the burden on volunteer labor. With automatic plagiarism detection, alerts when students edit a Good or Featured Article, and notifications when students edit an article subject to discretionary sanctions, we try to stay ahead of problems as much as possible. We also review all student work at the end of each term. Ian, Shalor, and I are always happy to receive pings alerting us to student issues that need to be addressed. |
November DYKs |
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News at a Glance |
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Editor Spotlight: Plantdrew |
We're joined this month by long-time editor Plantdrew, who's currently engaged in streamlining the taxonomic structure of Wikipedia articles via the automated taxobox system. How did you become a Wikipedian? What are your particular interests (besides the obvious of "plants")?
What projects are keeping you busy around the 'pedia at present?
What's your favorite plant?
What's your background like? How did you come to have a special interest in biology?
What's something that would surprised TOL editors about your life off-wiki?
Anything else you'd like us to know?
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December DYKs |
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News at a Glance |
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Vital Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The vital articles project on English Wikipedia began in 2004 when an editor transferred a list from Meta-Wiki: List of articles every Wikipedia should have. The first incarnation of the list became what is now level 3. As of 2019, there are 5 levels of vital articles:
Each level is inclusive of all previous levels, meaning that the 1,000 Level 3 articles include those listed on Levels 2 and 1. Below is an overview of the distribution of vital articles, and the quality of the articles. While the ultimate goal of the vital articles project is to have Featured-class articles, I also considered Good Articles to be "complete" for the purposes of this list. Animals (1,148 designated out of projected 2,400)
Plants, fungi, and other organisms (510 designated out of projected 1,200)
Many articles have yet to be designated for Tree of Life taxonomic groups, with 1,942 outstanding articles to be added. Anyone can add vital articles to the list! Restructuring may be necessary, as the only viruses included as of yet are under the category "Health". The majority of vital articles needing improvement are level 5, but here are some outstanding articles from the other levels:
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Abiogenesis
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Sexual dimorphism
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January DYKs |
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Has got to a new stage of its progress in this confusing and chaotic world... /info/en/?search=Category:Unknown-importance_Australian_biota_articles = 0. Please help by when creating new biota articles for australia, to make sure the unassessed page stays the way it is adequately tagged, or please ask for help in doing so... More on the next stages of the Australian biota project soon... and thanks for whatever you have done for the project in any way since 2006 - JarrahTree 05:49, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
List of asteroid close approaches to Earth
@ JarrahTree: Ho! Dropped to this beach when nervous about celestial forebodings, and here you where … joy! Tell me that all is shipshape, and i will makeport to create more co-numdrums [rlvnt emtcn] ~ cygnis insignis 14:15, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
g'day 99 - how auspicious - Line 999 - whatsmore !!! JarrahTree 14:20, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
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News at a Glance |
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The spread of coronavirus across Wikipedia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
With the outbreak of a novel coronavirus dominating news coverage, Wikipedia content related to the virus has seen much higher interest. Tree of Life content of particular interest to readers has included viruses, bats, pangolins, and masked palm civets. Viruses saw the most dramatic growth in readership: Coronavirus, which was the 105th most popular virus article in December 2019 with about 400 views per day, averaged over a quarter million views each day of January 2020. Total monthly viewership of the top-10 virus articles ballooned from about 1.5 million to nearly 20 million.
![]() From October 2019 – December 2019, the top ten most popular bat articles fluctuated among 16 different articles, with the December viewership of those 10 articles at 209,280. For January 2020, three articles broke into the top-10 that were not among the 16 articles of the prior three months: Bat as food, Horseshoe bat, and Bat-borne virus. Viewership of the top-10 bat articles spiked nearly 300% to 617,067 in January. While bats have been implicated as a possible natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, an intermediate host may be the bridge between bats and humans. Pangolins have been hypothesized as the intermediate host for the virus, causing a large spike in typical page views of 2-3k each day up to more than 60k in a day. Masked palm civets, the intermediate host of SARS, saw a modest yet noticeable spike in page views as well, from 100 to 300 views per day to as many as 5k views per day. With an increase in viewers came an increase in editors. In an interview, longtime virus editor Awkwafaba identified the influx of editors as the biggest challenge in editing content related to the coronavirus. They noted that these newcomers include "novices who make honest mistakes and get tossed about a bit in the mad activity" as well as "experienced editors who know nothing about viruses and are good researchers, yet aren't familiar with the policies of WP:ToL or WP:Viruses." Disruption also increased, with extended confirmed protection (also known as the 30/500 rule, which prevents editors with fewer than 30 days tenure and 500 edits from making edits and is typically used on a very small subset of Wikipedia articles) temporarily applied to Coronavirus and still active on Template:2019–20 coronavirus outbreak data. New editors apparently seeking to correct misinformation continuously edited the article Bat as food to remove content related to China: Videos of Chinese people eating bat soup were misrepresented to be current or filmed in China, when at least one such video was several years old and filmed in Palau. However, reliable sources confirm that bats are eaten in China, especially Southern China, so these well-meaning edits were mostly removed. Another level of complexity was added by the fluctuating terminology of the virus. Over a dozen moves and merges were requested within WikiProject Viruses. To give you an idea of the musical chairs happening with article titles, here are the move histories of two articles: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
Awkwafaba noted that "the main authorities, WHO and ICTV, don't really have a process for speedily naming a virus or disease." Additionally, they have different criteria for naming. They said, "I remember in a move discussion from the article then called Wuhan coronavirus that a virus name cannot have a geographical location in it, but this is a WHO disease naming guideline, and not an ICTV virus naming rule. ICTV may have renamed Four Corners virus to Sin Nombre orthohantavirus but there are still plenty of official virus species names that don't abide by WHO guidelines." |
February DYKs |
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News at a glance |
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A new WikiProject responding to the pandemic | ||
The newest Tree of Life WikiProject is about a taxon that is dominating the headlines, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, and its many effects. We interviewed Another Believer, the founder of WikiProject COVID-19. This interview has been edited for length. Find the full interview here.
Number of participants of WikiProject Covid-19
Thank you to Another Believer for your time, both in this interview and in this project. Interested readers can join WikiProject COVID-19. And please stay safe and healthy out there. -- Awkwafaba |
March DYKs |
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News at a glance |
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Tree of Life's growing featured content | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Inspired by a March 2020 post at WikiProject Medicine detailing the growth of Featured Articles over time, we decided to reproduce that table here, adding a second table showing the growth of Good Articles. Tree of Life articles are placed in the "Biology" category for FAs, which has seen a growth of 381% since 2008. Only two other subjects had a greater growth than Biology: Business, economics, and finance; and Warfare. Percentage Growth in FA Categories, 2008–2019, Legend: Considerably above average, Above average, Average Below average , Considerably below average, Poor
*subset of natural sciences Unsurprisingly, the number of GAs has increased more rapidly than the number of FAs. Organisms, which is a subcategory of Natural sciences, has seen a GA growth of 755% since 2008, besting the Natural sciences overall growth of 530%. While Warfare had far and away the most significant growth of GAs, it's a clear outlier relative to other categories. |
April DYKs |
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MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 02:40, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
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News at a glance |
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Interview with Jts1882 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This month we're joined by Jts1882, who is active in depicting evolutionary relationship of taxa via cladograms. Part of this includes responding to cladogram requests, where interested editors can have cladograms made without using the templates themselves. How did you come to be interested in systematics? Are you interested in systematics broadly, or is there a particular group you're most fond of? As long as I can remember I’ve been interested in nature, starting with the animals and plants in the garden, school grounds, and local wood, and then more general wildlife worldwide. An interest in how things are classified grew from this. I like things to be organised and understanding the relationships between things and systems (not just living things) is a big part of that. Biology was always my favourite subject in school and took up a disproportionate part of my time. My interest in systematics is broad as I’d like to comprehend the whole tree of life, but the cat family is my favourite group. What's the background behind cladogram requests? I see that it isn't a very old part of the Tree of Life Well I can’t take any credit for the cladogram requests page, although I help out there sometimes. It was created by IJReid and there are several people who have helped there more than me. I think the motivation is that creating cladograms requires a knowledge of the templates that is daunting for many editors. It was one way of helping people who want to focus on content creation. My main contribution to the cladograms is converting the {{ clade}} template to use a Lua module. The template code was extremely difficult to follow and had to be repetitive (I can only admire the efforts of those who got the thing to work in the first place). The conversion to Lua made it more efficient, allowed larger and deeper cladograms, plus facilitating the introduction of new features. The cladogram request page was recently the venue for discussion on making time calibrated cladograms, which is now possible, if not particularly user friendly. What advice do you have for an editor who wants to learn how to make cladograms? The same advice I would give to someone facing any computer problem, just try it out. Start by taking existing code for a cladogram and make changes yourself. The main advice would be to format it properly so indents match the brackets vertically. Of course, not everyone wants to learn and if someone prefers to focus on article content there is the cladogram request page. Examples of cladograms Jts1882 has created, showing different proposed clades for
Neoaves
Do you have any personal projects or goals you're working towards on Wikipedia? As I said I like organisation and systems. So I find efforts like the automated taxobox system and {{ taxonbar}} appealing. I would like to see more reuse of the major phylogenetic trees on Wikipedia with more use of consensus trees on the higher taxa. Too often they get edited based on one recent report and/or without proper citation. Animals and bilateria are examples where this is a problem. Towards this I have been working on a system of phylogeny templates that can be reused flexibly. The {{ Clade transclude}} template allows selective transclusion, so the phylogenetic trees on one page can be reused with modifications, i.e. can be pruned and grafted, used with or without images, with or without collapsible elements, etc. I have an example for the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification (see {{ Phylogeny/APG IV}}) and one for squamates that also includes collapsible elements (see {{ Phylogeny/Squamata}}). A second project is to have a modular reference system for taxonomic resources. I have made some progress along this lines with the {{ BioRef}} template. This started off simply as a way of hardlinking to Catalog of Fishes pages and I’ve gradually expanded it to cover other groups (e..g. FishBase, AmphibiaWeb and Amphibian Species of the World, Reptile Database, the Mammalian Diversity Database). The modular nature is still rudimentary and needs a rewrite before it is ready for wider use. What would surprise your fellow editors to learn about your life off-Wikipedia? I don’t think there is anything particularly surprising or interesting about my life. I’ve had an academic career as a research scientist but I don't think anyone could guess the area from my Wikipedia edits. I prefer to work on areas where I am learning at the same time. This why I spend more time with neglected topics (e.g. mosses at the moment). I start reading and then find that I’m not getting the information I want. Anything else you'd like us to know? My interest in the classification of things goes beyond biology. I am fascinated by mediaeval attempts to classify knowledge, such as Bacon in his The Advancement of Learning and Diderot and d’Alembert in their Encyclopédie. They were trying to come up with a universal scheme of knowledge just as the printing press was allowing greater dissemination of knowledge. With the internet we are seeing a new revolution in knowledge dissemination. Just look at how we could read research papers on the COVID virus within weeks of its discovery. With an open internet, everyone has access, not just those with the luxury of books at home or good libraries. Sites like the Biodiversity Heritage Library allow you to read old scientific works without having to visit dusty university library stack rooms, while the taxonomic and checklist databases provide instant information on millions of living species. In principle, the whole world can now find out about anything, even if Douglas Adams warned we might be disinclined to do so. This is why I like Wikipedia, with all its warts, it’s a means of organising the knowledge on the internet. In just two decades it’s become a first stop for knowledge and hopefully a gateway to more specialised sources. Perhaps developing this latter aspect, beyond providing good sources for what we say, is the next challenge for Wikipedia. |
May DYKs |
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Enwebb ( talk) 19:40, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
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One year! |
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-- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 08:51, 12 July 2020 (UTC)
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News at a glance |
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Categorizing life with DexDor |
DexDor is a WikiGnome with a particular interest in article categorization, including how organisms are categorized.
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June DYKs |
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July DYKs |
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Life reconstruction of Pterodactylus antiquus
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Delivered on behalf of Enwebb ( talk) 16:33, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
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Hoax taxon sniffed out after nearly fifteen years |
Cross posted from the Signpost ![]() On August 7, WikiProject Palaeontology member Rextron discovered a suspicious taxon article, Mustelodon, which was created in November 2005. The article lacked references and the subsequent discussion on WikiProject Palaeontology found that the alleged type locality (where the fossil was first discovered) of Lago Nandarajo "near the northern border of Panama" was nonexistent. In fact, Panama does not even really have a northern border, as it is bounded along the north by the Caribbean Sea. No other publications or databases mentioned Mustelodon, save a fleeting mention in a 2019 book that presumably followed Wikipedia, Felines of the World. The article also appeared in four other languages, Catalan, Spanish, Dutch, and Serbian. In Serbian Wikipedia, a note at the bottom of the page warned: "It is important to note here that there is no data on this genus in the official scientific literature, and all attached data on the genus Mustelodon on this page are taken from the English Wikipedia and are the only known data on this genus of mammals, so the validity of this genus is questionable." Editors took action to alert our counterparts on other projects, and these versions were removed also. As the editor who reached out to Spanish and Catalan Wikipedia, it was somewhat challenging to navigate these mostly foreign languages (I have a limited grasp of Spanish). I doubted that the article had very many watchers, so I knew I had to find some WikiProjects where I could post a machine translation advising of the hoax, and asking that users follow local protocols to remove the article. I was surprised to find, however, that Catalan Wikipedia does not tag articles for WikiProjects on talk pages, meaning I had to fumble around to find what I needed (turns out that WikiProjects are Viquiprojectes in Catalan!) Mustelodon remains on Wikidata, where its "instance of" property was swapped from "taxon" to "fictional taxon". How did this article have such a long lifespan? Early intervention is critical for removing hoaxes. A 2016 report found that a hoax article that survives its first day has an 18% chance of lasting a year. [1] Additionally, hoax articles tend to have longer lifespans if they are in inconspicuous parts of Wikipedia, where they do not receive many views. Mustelodon was only viewed a couple times a day, on average. Mustelodon survived a brush with death three years into its lifespan. The article was proposed for deletion in September 2008, with a deletion rationale of "No references given; cannot find any evidence in peer-reviewed journals that this alleged genus actually exists". Unfortunately, the proposed deletion was contested and the template removed, though the declining editor did not give a rationale. Upon its rediscovery in August 2020, Mustelodon was tagged for speedy deletion under CSD G3 as a "blatant hoax". This was challenged, and an Articles for Deletion discussion followed. On 12 August, the AfD was closed as a SNOW delete. WikiProject Palaeontology members ensured that any trace of it was scrubbed from legitimate articles. The fictional mammal was finally, truly extinct. At the ripe old age of 14 years, 9 months, this is the longest-lived documented hoax on Wikipedia, topping the previous documented record of 14 years, 5 months, set by The Gates of Saturn, a fictitious television show, which was incidentally also discovered in August 2020. How do we discover other hoax taxa? Could we use Wikidata to discover taxa are not linked to databases like ITIS, Fossilworks, and others?
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Spotlight with Mattximus |
![]() This month's spotlight is with Mattximus, author of two Featured Articles and 29 Featured Lists at current count.
I think I have a compulsion to make lists, it doesn't show up in my real life, but online I secretly get a lot of satisfaction making orderly lists and tables. It's a bit of a secret of mine, because it doesn't manifest in any other part of my life. My background is in biology, so this was a natural (haha) fit.
This experiment was just to see if I could get any random article to FA status, so I picked the very first alphabetical animal species according to the taxonomy and made that attempt. Technically, there isn't enough information for a species page so I just merged the species into a genus and went from there. It was a fun exercise, but doing it alone is not the most fun so it's probably on pause for the foreseeable future. Note: Aporhynchus is the first alphabetical taxon as follows: Animalia, Acanthocephala, Archiacanthocephala, Apororhynchida, Apororhynchidae, Apororhynchus
I would recommend getting a good article nominated, then a featured list up before tackling the FA. Lists are a bit more forgiving but give you a taste of what standards to expect from FA. The most time consuming thing is proper citations so make sure that is in order before starting either.
My personality in real life does not match my wikipedia persona. I'm not a very organized, or orderly in real life, but the wikipedia pages I brought to FL or FA are all very organized. Maybe it's my outlet for a more free-flowing life as a scientist/teacher.
The fact that wikipedia exists free of profit motive and free for everyone really is something special and I encourage everyone to donate a few dollars to the cause. |
August DYKs |
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Delivered on behalf of
Enwebb (
talk)
17:10, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
Hi, in this rev, you changed a use of template:ill to a bare redlink with the edit summary 'convert WD link Glenn Shea to redlink here, notable researcher and author'. However, the ill template presents the redlink as-is to users for so long as it *is* a redlink on enwiki; it automatically falls back to a normal blue wikilink as soon as the article's created, and adds value in the meantime by allowing users to see Wikidata information and links to other projects. I think your edit leaves the article strictly worse, but I won't revert it because I don't understand why it was made as the stated justification makes no sense to me; at least one of us is clearly confused, very possibly myself, and that calls for more caution in editing. Instead, would you consider a self-revert? 80.7.186.76 ( talk) — Preceding undated comment added 15:17, 18 March 2021 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of
Template:Did you know nominations/Frederick Strange at the
Did You Know nominations page is not complete; if you would like to continue, please link the nomination to the nominations page as described in
step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{
db-g7}}, or ask a
DYK admin. Thank you.
DYKHousekeepingBot (
talk)
20:12, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
An RfC at Talk:Race and intelligence revisits the question, considered last year at WP:FTN, of whether or not the theory that a genetic link exists between race and intelligence is a fringe theory. This RfC supercedes the recent RfC on this topic at WP:RSN that was closed as improperly formulated.
Your participation is welcome. Thank you. NightHeron ( talk) 22:24, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
{{
Species list}}
makes the authorities small, so if you use small tags as well, as originally at
Tomoxena, they become too small. You can generate wikilinks automatically by using {{
Linked species list}}
(see the documentation), but it doesn't abbreviate the genus name, so if you want to use the abbreviated genus + a wikilink, it's better, I think, just to use a normal list. (I could, I guess, modify
Module:TaxonList to include the option to abbreviate in a species list, but I'm not sure if it would get much use.)
Peter coxhead (
talk)
18:41, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
| subdivision = [[#Species|See text]]
in the taxobox. {{
Species list}}
is useful for a list of synonyms in a Speciesbox, which of course shouldn't be linked.
Peter coxhead (
talk)
05:35, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
Hello! Your submission of
Frederick Strange at the
Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) at
your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know!
BlueMoonset (
talk)
20:07, 31 May 2021 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Nina H. Kennard, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page John Ingram.
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 05:55, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
The photograph you just added to the Robert Louis Stevenson site and its caption are absolutely superb! Thank you so much for that. The Final Edict ( talk) 10:43, 1 November 2021 (UTC)
Hi. Sorry for an odd question. Will it be ok to capitalize some letters for better clarity in your post? You see, I accidentally did that assuming that it you will see it and probably appreciate it, but the other admins started reverting me as if like I am a vandal of some sort. Any feed back will be appreciated. I ask the same approval from @ Enterprisey:.-- Filmomusico ( talk) 07:15, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
Did you ever add this page to the AfD log? (See WP:AFDHOWTO, step III.) I can't find it on the log for any of the days from Nov. 22 through Nov. 25. Please add it to the current day's log since the AfD community was never informed of this AfD. Also please note that the "View log" link in the AfD goes to the nomination of this article from 2010, not the current one. Please fix that; I don't want to fix it myself because the AfD is so large that editing it slows down my computer. -- Metropolitan90 (talk) 07:34, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
I voted to Keep that article. But, I wouldn't be totally shocked if it ended up being deleted. One thing is for certain, the article's notability (via the AfD) has grown. GoodDay ( talk) 09:09, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
I am utterly disgusted at your Orwellian attempt to delete the above article.
I an deeply concerned going through your edit history that you are introducing bias into Wikipedia.
I am now going to watch your edits and revert those that introduce a Leftist slant.
Ashley Payne (
talk)
09:28, 25 November 2021 (UTC)
Honestly, just plain racist. Millions of Asians have been killed at the hands of communist and now some basement dwelling colonizer wants to try and cover it all up? Why? 2601:248:8102:DDE0:24C1:730C:9795:D603 ( talk) 00:29, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
.
For risking a lot of alt-right harassment just to start a discussion about the potential deletion of an article. The right-wing media attention towards the Mass killings under communist regimes AFD was unwarranted and scare-mongering, and you were able to get your point across very well without worrying if some cuckservative snowflakes would misinterpret it cause they are not the free critical thinkers they think they are. As a libertarian (but not that fascist-disguised-as-libertarian people I've see too often online recently) that voted Keep, I appreciate the bravery. We really need more of that. 👨x🐱 ( Nina CortexxCoco Bandicoot) 22:19, 30 November 2021 (UTC)
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Like I said, I think anyone who got through that entire deletion discussion ought to get a free T-shirt, and you ought to be at the front of the line. I was myself entangled in a rather protracted series of AfDs a couple months ago, and the experience was distracting to say the least: your situation seems unenviable. Apologies for contributing to the mess, and here's to the shit calming down sometime soon. jp× g 03:21, 3 December 2021 (UTC) |
You can check out the page history as well as anybody, I'm sure. See [3]. The story back then is very similar to the story as published, but here is the version back then after formatting. You'll notice my byline at the top of the article and my linked initial at the bottom of the section, so there shouldn't be any question as to who wrote this.
Wikipedia may delete entry on 'mass killings' under Communism due to claims of bias in The Telegraph reviews this AfD entry. The Telegraph quotes University of Cambridge historian Professor Robert Tombs saying
(Deletion) is morally indefensible, at least as bad as Holocaust denial, because 'linking ideology and killing' is the very core of why these things are important.
I have read the Wikipedia page, and it seems to me careful and balanced. Therefore attempts to remove it can only be ideologically motivated – to whitewash Communism.
A Wikipedia editor soon dismissed the professor's concerns saying " I fail to see why his view is important on this subject, being a historian in one subject does not automatically make you an authority on all historical subjects."
The length of the AfD will soon surpass twice the length of the previous record holder. (See this month's Deletion report) !Votes are strongly in favor of keeping the article, and a snow close has been proposed.
Disclosure – the author of this section voted Strong keep at the AfD and has previously edited the article extensively. –S
I'm reporting on an opinion, from a highly qualified scholar, as published in a reliable source. My report was completely accurate: that is what Professor Tombs said as published in the Telegraph with a direct link. If I could have found somebody on the other side giving a contrary opinion in a reliable source, I would have. But there was no such opinion in an RS. So I quoted somebody from the AfD talk page. That should end it right there. The Signpost story was completely factual and accurate. It was as balanced as I could get it, given that nobody in an RS could be found espousing the other side. Do you have a complaint about this? If so, please state it clearly and simply now. It's all facts reported. If you wrote the story you might have chosen a different set of facts - but so what? Smallbones( smalltalk) 15:34, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.
You have shown interest in Eastern Europe or the Balkans. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.
For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Nug ( talk • contribs) 07:09, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
What did you support exactly
here and what you mean
here? I do have a difficulty on understanding you at
Talk:Mass killings under communist regimes, e.g.
"Stalingrad" and
"Victims of denazification". Some examples that I think I get what you are saying but I am not so sure: "Oh yes, I totally agree, I think, the distinction is often seen as a matter of consent, perhaps va political / geographical obligation, when totalling the victims of mass killings. ... apologies, I’m trying to fathom the depths to which an article’s scope loses meaningful resolution."
Did you mean to say that totalling the victims of mass killings is political, and that there is also a geographic bias? I am more confused about the latter, and it is a shame because I found what you said interesting and I am definitely interested to such depths but I wish I could understand you better.
Another example: "Is this mentioned by Courtois or a totallynotnazi thunk tank as a peacetime mass killing?"
Fascists and other far-right reactionaries and extremists have indeed been considered "victims of communism" on par with ordinary citizens, and Courtois may have indeed done that too, is that what you were trying to saying? I have actually read other comments of yours and did not find any issue, I only find issues in properly understanding at MKuCR, which is a shame because if I at least partially understood you right, you raised interesting points that I wish you could, if you want, explain me them more clearly and deeply.
Davide King (
talk)
16:21, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
You just made a 1RR violation on the page [4], [5]. In the edit summary to first edit you said: "restore backdated ...". Hence, that was a revert, and you knew it. Please be more careful in a future. Please also do not remove comments by others, such as [6]. Thanks, My very best wishes ( talk) 17:26, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
The following sanction now applies to you:
Blocked from editing for 96 hours.
You have been sanctioned 1RR violation and incivility, https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement&diff=1066743626&oldid=1066743474 decision = b
This sanction is imposed in my capacity as an uninvolved administrator under the authority of the Arbitration Committee's decision at [[{{{decision}}}#Final decision]] and, if applicable, the procedure described at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions. This sanction has been recorded in the log of sanctions. If the sanction includes a ban, please read the banning policy to ensure you understand what this means. If you do not comply with this sanction, you may be blocked for an extended period, by way of enforcement of this sanction—and you may also be made subject to further sanctions.
You may appeal this sanction using the process described here. I recommend that you use the arbitration enforcement appeals template if you wish to submit an appeal to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard. You may also appeal directly to me (on my talk page), before or instead of appealing to the noticeboard. Even if you appeal this sanction, you remain bound by it until you are notified by an uninvolved administrator that the appeal has been successful. You are also free to contact me on my talk page if anything of the above is unclear to you. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:53, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
Why was my edit reverted? Augustios Paleo ( talk) 13:30, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
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The Barnstar of Good Humor |
The asterism comment was really funny. Thanks for starting my Sunday right! A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 13:55, 30 January 2022 (UTC) |
Would you be able to add information on native representations of gorillas to the culture section using this? Thanks. LittleJerry ( talk) 18:41, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
I have a horrible thought that I had meant to get back to you, and got distracted by real life - trust all is ok JarrahTree 12:55, 19 February 2022 (UTC)