This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I found this article which discusses aquatic locomotion and mating in saurpods including Brachiosaurus. Perhaps a little more could be added to the article. LittleJerry ( talk) 22:12, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
Meinhard Michael Moser by
J Milburn |
King brown snake by
Casliber |
News at a Glance
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Alphabet Soup: Explaining DYK, GA, FA, and More
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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: Did You Know (DYK)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. Good Article (GA)What it is: A peer review process to determine that an article meets a set of criteria. This adds a symbol to the top of the article. About 1 in 200 articles on Wikipedia is a GA. 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. Featured Article (FA)What it is: An exhaustive peer review to determine that an articles meets the criteria. This adds a to the top of the article. About 1 in 1,000 articles on Wikipedia is a FA. 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. Good and Featured Topics (GT and FT)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. |
October DYKs
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Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 03:34, 3 November 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 ( talk)
Hypocrite. You always reject the obvious consensus from the other editors and demand that your POV remains untouched. You have been deleting info from the cloning section since it was created, "summarizing"it you claim, but when a summary is done and reditected to the parent article you flip-flop like a fish and post the long version again, forgetting all about having your panties in a bunch about the need to summarize it. Please stop your infantile trolling. Thank you. Rowan Forest ( talk) 02:06, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Segnosaurus, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Enamel ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 08:20, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
This is to let you know that Spinophorosaurus has been scheduled as WP:TFA for 24 November 2019. Please check that the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 24, 2019. Thanks! Ealdgyth - Talk 15:38, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
... with thanks from QAI |
My partner on the wolf project withdraw. I would like another opinion on the new comments the PR. See the links below.
This is to let you know that the Rodrigues parrot article has been scheduled as today's featured article for January 10, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 10, 2020, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.
For Featured Articles promoted on or after October 1, 2018, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.
We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:44, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
Time To Spread A Little
HappyHolidayCheer!! |
I decorated a special kind of Christmas tree
in the spirit of the season. What's especially nice about this digitized version: *it doesn't need water *won't catch fire *and batteries aren't required. |
Have a very Merry Christmas - Happy Hanukkah‼️
and a prosperous New Year!! 🍸🎁 🎉 |
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Segnosaurus, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Cervical ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 08:23, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
Hi FunkMonk, I reverted your edit to S Curve, not because there was anything wrong with your edit, but because of the edits before and after yours. I have replaced Sigmoid curve. Leschnei ( talk) 17:06, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Segnosaurus you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack ( talk) 09:40, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
2020!!
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Hello, FunkMonk. This is a courtesy notice that the copy edit you requested for Segnosaurus at the Guild of Copy Editors requests page is now complete. All feedback welcome! Cheers, Baffle☿gab 03:02, 5 January 2020 (UTC) |
Seven years! |
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-- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 08:35, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
I just sent you an email. Atsme Talk 📧 20:06, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
The article Segnosaurus you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Segnosaurus for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack ( talk) 16:41, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
This is to let you know that Kosmoceratops has been scheduled as WP:TFA for 19 February 2020. Please check that the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 19, 2020. Thanks! Ealdgyth - Talk 22:20, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
Hi, FM - do you remember the Burma-Shave signs along the highway? I attempted to maintain (z axis) perspective and still keep the signage readable but as you can see in the 2 images, the perspective of distance between objects is sacrificed. This is one of the areas where I struggle, and if a mathematical computation is required in a pre-drawn frame, well...nope - not happening. Any tips you can provide will be greatly appreciated. FYI - the discussion that inspired the signage begins here. Atsme Talk 📧 12:32, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
@ FunkMonk:
Per Bold, Revert, Discuss, I have reverted your good-faith, but malformed, merger proposal of Ostrich egg to Ostrich for two reasons:
Feel free to re-propose the merger, with a talkpage discussion if you wish, but do note that Ostrich may not be the best target.
Also, and by no means am I suggesting this is the case, but I have noticed page patrollers and pending changes editors being too quick to revert new targets for redirects, or redirects converted to articles. Just a suggestion, but personally, what I would prefer to do is to initiate a discussion with the user before doing the reversion. It's so much more in good-faith.
Anyway, happy editing! :-)
Cheers,
--
Doug Mehus
T·
C 20:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Left aligned images that are high up in the article make the text squeezed in a small space in the center. To me this sandwiched text looks awkward and doesn't serve readability. (I actually rarely think a left aligned image works well at the beginning of a section, but the sandwiched text is a standalone issue.) I don't think removing left alignment in these situations is an overzealous interpretation of the MOS. MOS:SANDWICH says "avoid sandwiching text between...an image and infobox". But I'm happy to hear more about your further thoughts on this if I'm not interpreting your edit summary correctly. — Hyperik ⌜ talk⌟ 16:51, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Acamptonectes, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Generic name ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 16:11, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
Thank you today for Kosmoceratops, "about a dinosaur which is said to have had the most ornamented skull of them all, therefore the cool name. Writing this article has also been motivated by a certain US president slashing the national monument which is the only place this dinosaur has been found in half, and hopefully getting this article to the front page one day could spread some awareness."! - hopefully today! -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 11:09, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Greetings,
since you did comment on this later withdrawn FAC I wanted to notify you that I've renominated it at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Coropuna/archive2. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk) 20:15, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited King Island emu, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page King Island ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 07:56, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
This is to let you know that the Rodrigues starling article has been scheduled as today's featured article for April 3, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 3, 2020, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.
For Featured Articles promoted in recent years, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.
We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:13, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
This is to let you know that the Segnosaurus article has been scheduled as today's featured article for April 12, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 12, 2020, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.
For Featured Articles promoted recently, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.
We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:29, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Okay, time to ask someone who (probably) knows. I'm gathering sources to create disambiguation pages for plant genera and species. Anything you can tell me about this process, for either animal or plant species, would be really helpful. For instance, for T. rex (disambiguation), did someone Google "T. rex"? Is there a working assumption that people will sometimes shorten binomial names to just the species name, so that a disambiguation page is assumed to be needed if there are two unrelated organisms with the same species name? - Dank ( push to talk) 04:12, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Please rely to the Wolf FAC. I really need another opinion. LittleJerry ( talk) 00:40, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
Hi, FM! Hope all is well on your end. Not sure how closely you keep up with dinosaur news, but I thought maybe this info might interest you. Atsme Talk 📧 14:48, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
We'd love to have your participation over at WikiProject Extinct Hawaiian Land Snails. Happy April Fools! Sdkb ( talk) 07:04, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Lythronax you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack ( talk) 05:41, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you today for Rodrigues starling, about an "extinct bird with an interesting history"! -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 07:20, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Lythronax, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Superfamily ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 12:17, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
The article Lythronax you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Lythronax for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack ( talk) 19:22, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you today for Segnosaurus, "a therizinosaur, one of the strangest dinosaur groups (and one of my favourites); they would have looked like huge, pot-bellied birds, with long claws on their forelimbs. This article is about one of the first known members of the group, and therefore also covers the long standing mystery about them, and how palaeontologists slowly realised what they were." - Loving-kindnesses for Easter! -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 07:30, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
King brown snake by
Casliber |
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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Apororhynchus by
Mattximus |
Cactus wren by
CaptainEek |
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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You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
Megarachne by
Ichthyovenator |
Wolf by
LittleJerry |
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:
· Abiogenesis · Death · Cell · Human evolution · Organism · Zoology · Cattle · Dog · Reptile · Flower · Nut · Seed · Algae · Eukaryote · Biodiversity · Extinction · Photosynthesis
· Sexual dimorphism · Feather · Fur · Hair · Gill · Plant anatomy · Plant morphology · Berry · Leaf · Root · Stoma · Shrub · Plant stem · Bark · Trunk · Epidermis · Ground tissue · Meristem · Vascular tissue · Vascular cambium · Hypha · Mycelium |
January DYKs |
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Segnosaurus by
FunkMonk |
Danuvius guggenmosi by
Dunkleosteus77 |
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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Argentinosaurus by
Slate Weasel and
Jens Lallensack |
Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations by
Britishfinance |
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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You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
Hello:
The copy edit you requested from the Guild of Copy Editors of the article Limusaurus has been completed.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
This sentence in the "Skull" section: "The skull was tall and short, roughly half the length of the femur (upper thigh bone)." is confusing. The skull can't be both "tall" and "short". I assume another descriptor was intended.
Best of luck with the FAC.
Regards,
Twofingered Typist ( talk) 19:27, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
Hey, I'm just leaving this message to thank you for correcting me in several of my edits, including the one from Istiodactylus, when I put unnecessary parenthesis on the authors, I actually learnt something there! Also, some other edits of mine that you reverted were probably non-sense, like that one from Argentinosaurus, where I said the image appeared a bit large, that's possibly because I was using my phone to edit instead of my computer, although that doesn't really matter. Anyways, thanks again! JurassicClassic767 ( talk) 15:14, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
It's been a while talking to you :) I come to you with a doubt. Not sure if you've seen my work at Cheetah, but it's something I've been working on since a few years now and in a month or so I plan to take this to FAC. First I will go for a copyedit (it is listed at Requests) and a PR alongside just to see what people think. But recently there has been some discussion [4] about the length of the article as it was yesterday [5], and it has left me confused. This worries me because I have plans for the article and this is my first article on a really broad topic. I found excellent details for every section but I tried my best to add only what I felt was relevant and not covered in other articles. Anyway I had planned to trim it a bit but not to the extent it has been if you look at the article now. I wonder if I made any mistake and though I've tried to talk about this on the discussion page, I thought of asking you too (not there, too much there already) as you have been an awesome friend to me all these years, I could do with some good feedback here, and I think you have handled huge or near-huge articles at FAC before unlike me. Thanks and stay safe :) Sainsf ( knock knock · am I there?) 17:12, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
I raised size as a problem in regards to articles on specific species. Maya is an ancient civilization so that's different. Passenger pigeon is around 140,000 K which isn't too large. LittleJerry ( talk) 20:07, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
This is to let you know that Catopsbaatar has been scheduled as WP:TFA for 3 May 2020. Please check that the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 3, 2020. Thanks! Ealdgyth ( talk) 15:15, 29 April 2020 (UTC) (I think I managed to hold you down to one TFA article this month, at least?) -- Ealdgyth ( talk) 15:15, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Danuvius guggenmosi by
Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by
J Milburn |
Lythronax by
FunkMonk,
Lythronaxargestes and
IJReid |
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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. I'm afraid you will get nowhere in that discussion. He is impervious to anything that does not agree with him, and will never admit he is wrong, even when the evidence is clearly shown to him. I have no idea why there is such an inflexible and combative approach, but good luck otherwise! Cheers - SchroCat ( talk) 16:27, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Hi, I found you to be one of the intelligent person in Animals, do you think this prominent eagle's article is already ready for GA to be nominated? 124.123.30.165 ( talk) 05:20, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Hello. Would you be able to take a look at this? Read the second paragraph of "skull", Could you break that down in simpler language. I'd like to give a general description of the mountain zebra's head. Thanks. LittleJerry ( talk) 23:09, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
We had this discussion a while back: [7]
I think I understand how the copyright system works now. The copyright of any given article in Palaeontologia Electronica can be held by one of a few different organizations: SVP, PalSoc/PalAss, or Coquina Press. If the copyright is held by SVP or Coquina Press, it is CC BY. If it is held by PalSoc/PalAss, it is CC BY-NC-SA. Since the copyright of the Kenomagnathus paper is held by SVP, it is CC BY so the images can be uploaded to Commons.
It may be worth going over other images we have from that journal on Commons... Lythronaxargestes ( talk | contribs) 20:07, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
I agree that there should be a wider discussion of how to handle synonym lists in taxoboxes, including the issues of ordering and hiding.
Peter coxhead ( talk) 06:32, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
Hey! Hope I'm not disturbing ya! I've seen that merge proposal you initiated at Maaradactylus spielbergi, and only few papers use it's former name Coloborhychus spielbergi, so merging (or redirecting) it to Maaradactylus would be better? The fact that the article only has 4 paragraphs, which can be mentioned in at least 2 sentences (if merged), it's gonna be easier and probably better than keeping a separate article for a separate species, right? So, should we merge it any time soon? The discusion started months ago, and I think sufficient users have commented their thoughts (or maybe not...?). JurassicClassic767 ( talk | contribs) 18:03, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
I don't think Kampecaris is monotypic. Fossilworks lists a Kampecaris forfarensis. And Peach 1899 describes a new species of Kampecaris, not a new genus. Abductive ( reasoning) 01:13, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Gigantorhynchus by
Mattximus |
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)
This is to let you know that the Lythronax article has been scheduled as today's featured article for June 4, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 4, 2020.— Wehwalt ( talk) 14:28, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Hi. Would you be able to create a combined range map for the three zebra species? Thank you. LittleJerry ( talk) 00:11, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
Is it going okay? LittleJerry ( talk) 23:01, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
All seriousness aside, NHMU per se in that caption? Meanwhile ... -- Brogo13 ( talk) 18:40, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
I (hereby) suggest removing NHMU [ recte UMNH]. Etc. -- Brogo13 ( talk) 19:48, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I found this article which discusses aquatic locomotion and mating in saurpods including Brachiosaurus. Perhaps a little more could be added to the article. LittleJerry ( talk) 22:12, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
Meinhard Michael Moser by
J Milburn |
King brown snake by
Casliber |
News at a Glance
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Alphabet Soup: Explaining DYK, GA, FA, and More
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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: Did You Know (DYK)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. Good Article (GA)What it is: A peer review process to determine that an article meets a set of criteria. This adds a symbol to the top of the article. About 1 in 200 articles on Wikipedia is a GA. 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. Featured Article (FA)What it is: An exhaustive peer review to determine that an articles meets the criteria. This adds a to the top of the article. About 1 in 1,000 articles on Wikipedia is a FA. 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. Good and Featured Topics (GT and FT)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. |
October DYKs
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Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) at 03:34, 3 November 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 ( talk)
Hypocrite. You always reject the obvious consensus from the other editors and demand that your POV remains untouched. You have been deleting info from the cloning section since it was created, "summarizing"it you claim, but when a summary is done and reditected to the parent article you flip-flop like a fish and post the long version again, forgetting all about having your panties in a bunch about the need to summarize it. Please stop your infantile trolling. Thank you. Rowan Forest ( talk) 02:06, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Segnosaurus, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Enamel ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 08:20, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
This is to let you know that Spinophorosaurus has been scheduled as WP:TFA for 24 November 2019. Please check that the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/November 24, 2019. Thanks! Ealdgyth - Talk 15:38, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
... with thanks from QAI |
My partner on the wolf project withdraw. I would like another opinion on the new comments the PR. See the links below.
This is to let you know that the Rodrigues parrot article has been scheduled as today's featured article for January 10, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 10, 2020, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.
For Featured Articles promoted on or after October 1, 2018, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.
We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:44, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
Time To Spread A Little
HappyHolidayCheer!! |
I decorated a special kind of Christmas tree
in the spirit of the season. What's especially nice about this digitized version: *it doesn't need water *won't catch fire *and batteries aren't required. |
Have a very Merry Christmas - Happy Hanukkah‼️
and a prosperous New Year!! 🍸🎁 🎉 |
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Segnosaurus, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Cervical ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 08:23, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
Hi FunkMonk, I reverted your edit to S Curve, not because there was anything wrong with your edit, but because of the edits before and after yours. I have replaced Sigmoid curve. Leschnei ( talk) 17:06, 25 December 2019 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Segnosaurus you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack ( talk) 09:40, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
2020!!
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Hello, FunkMonk. This is a courtesy notice that the copy edit you requested for Segnosaurus at the Guild of Copy Editors requests page is now complete. All feedback welcome! Cheers, Baffle☿gab 03:02, 5 January 2020 (UTC) |
Seven years! |
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-- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 08:35, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
I just sent you an email. Atsme Talk 📧 20:06, 10 January 2020 (UTC)
The article Segnosaurus you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Segnosaurus for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack ( talk) 16:41, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
This is to let you know that Kosmoceratops has been scheduled as WP:TFA for 19 February 2020. Please check that the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/February 19, 2020. Thanks! Ealdgyth - Talk 22:20, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
Hi, FM - do you remember the Burma-Shave signs along the highway? I attempted to maintain (z axis) perspective and still keep the signage readable but as you can see in the 2 images, the perspective of distance between objects is sacrificed. This is one of the areas where I struggle, and if a mathematical computation is required in a pre-drawn frame, well...nope - not happening. Any tips you can provide will be greatly appreciated. FYI - the discussion that inspired the signage begins here. Atsme Talk 📧 12:32, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
@ FunkMonk:
Per Bold, Revert, Discuss, I have reverted your good-faith, but malformed, merger proposal of Ostrich egg to Ostrich for two reasons:
Feel free to re-propose the merger, with a talkpage discussion if you wish, but do note that Ostrich may not be the best target.
Also, and by no means am I suggesting this is the case, but I have noticed page patrollers and pending changes editors being too quick to revert new targets for redirects, or redirects converted to articles. Just a suggestion, but personally, what I would prefer to do is to initiate a discussion with the user before doing the reversion. It's so much more in good-faith.
Anyway, happy editing! :-)
Cheers,
--
Doug Mehus
T·
C 20:15, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
Left aligned images that are high up in the article make the text squeezed in a small space in the center. To me this sandwiched text looks awkward and doesn't serve readability. (I actually rarely think a left aligned image works well at the beginning of a section, but the sandwiched text is a standalone issue.) I don't think removing left alignment in these situations is an overzealous interpretation of the MOS. MOS:SANDWICH says "avoid sandwiching text between...an image and infobox". But I'm happy to hear more about your further thoughts on this if I'm not interpreting your edit summary correctly. — Hyperik ⌜ talk⌟ 16:51, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Acamptonectes, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Generic name ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 16:11, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
Thank you today for Kosmoceratops, "about a dinosaur which is said to have had the most ornamented skull of them all, therefore the cool name. Writing this article has also been motivated by a certain US president slashing the national monument which is the only place this dinosaur has been found in half, and hopefully getting this article to the front page one day could spread some awareness."! - hopefully today! -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 11:09, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Greetings,
since you did comment on this later withdrawn FAC I wanted to notify you that I've renominated it at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Coropuna/archive2. Jo-Jo Eumerus ( talk) 20:15, 26 February 2020 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited King Island emu, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page King Island ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 07:56, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
This is to let you know that the Rodrigues starling article has been scheduled as today's featured article for April 3, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 3, 2020, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.
For Featured Articles promoted in recent years, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.
We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:13, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
This is to let you know that the Segnosaurus article has been scheduled as today's featured article for April 12, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 12, 2020, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.
For Featured Articles promoted recently, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.
We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:29, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
Okay, time to ask someone who (probably) knows. I'm gathering sources to create disambiguation pages for plant genera and species. Anything you can tell me about this process, for either animal or plant species, would be really helpful. For instance, for T. rex (disambiguation), did someone Google "T. rex"? Is there a working assumption that people will sometimes shorten binomial names to just the species name, so that a disambiguation page is assumed to be needed if there are two unrelated organisms with the same species name? - Dank ( push to talk) 04:12, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
Please rely to the Wolf FAC. I really need another opinion. LittleJerry ( talk) 00:40, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
Hi, FM! Hope all is well on your end. Not sure how closely you keep up with dinosaur news, but I thought maybe this info might interest you. Atsme Talk 📧 14:48, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
We'd love to have your participation over at WikiProject Extinct Hawaiian Land Snails. Happy April Fools! Sdkb ( talk) 07:04, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Lythronax you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack ( talk) 05:41, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you today for Rodrigues starling, about an "extinct bird with an interesting history"! -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 07:20, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Lythronax, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Superfamily ( check to confirm | fix with Dab solver).
( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 12:17, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
The article Lythronax you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Lythronax for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Jens Lallensack -- Jens Lallensack ( talk) 19:22, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you today for Segnosaurus, "a therizinosaur, one of the strangest dinosaur groups (and one of my favourites); they would have looked like huge, pot-bellied birds, with long claws on their forelimbs. This article is about one of the first known members of the group, and therefore also covers the long standing mystery about them, and how palaeontologists slowly realised what they were." - Loving-kindnesses for Easter! -- Gerda Arendt ( talk) 07:30, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
King brown snake by
Casliber |
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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Apororhynchus by
Mattximus |
Cactus wren by
CaptainEek |
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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Megarachne by
Ichthyovenator |
Wolf by
LittleJerry |
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:
· Abiogenesis · Death · Cell · Human evolution · Organism · Zoology · Cattle · Dog · Reptile · Flower · Nut · Seed · Algae · Eukaryote · Biodiversity · Extinction · Photosynthesis
· Sexual dimorphism · Feather · Fur · Hair · Gill · Plant anatomy · Plant morphology · Berry · Leaf · Root · Stoma · Shrub · Plant stem · Bark · Trunk · Epidermis · Ground tissue · Meristem · Vascular tissue · Vascular cambium · Hypha · Mycelium |
January DYKs |
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Segnosaurus by
FunkMonk |
Danuvius guggenmosi by
Dunkleosteus77 |
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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Argentinosaurus by
Slate Weasel and
Jens Lallensack |
Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations by
Britishfinance |
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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Hello:
The copy edit you requested from the Guild of Copy Editors of the article Limusaurus has been completed.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
This sentence in the "Skull" section: "The skull was tall and short, roughly half the length of the femur (upper thigh bone)." is confusing. The skull can't be both "tall" and "short". I assume another descriptor was intended.
Best of luck with the FAC.
Regards,
Twofingered Typist ( talk) 19:27, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
Hey, I'm just leaving this message to thank you for correcting me in several of my edits, including the one from Istiodactylus, when I put unnecessary parenthesis on the authors, I actually learnt something there! Also, some other edits of mine that you reverted were probably non-sense, like that one from Argentinosaurus, where I said the image appeared a bit large, that's possibly because I was using my phone to edit instead of my computer, although that doesn't really matter. Anyways, thanks again! JurassicClassic767 ( talk) 15:14, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
It's been a while talking to you :) I come to you with a doubt. Not sure if you've seen my work at Cheetah, but it's something I've been working on since a few years now and in a month or so I plan to take this to FAC. First I will go for a copyedit (it is listed at Requests) and a PR alongside just to see what people think. But recently there has been some discussion [4] about the length of the article as it was yesterday [5], and it has left me confused. This worries me because I have plans for the article and this is my first article on a really broad topic. I found excellent details for every section but I tried my best to add only what I felt was relevant and not covered in other articles. Anyway I had planned to trim it a bit but not to the extent it has been if you look at the article now. I wonder if I made any mistake and though I've tried to talk about this on the discussion page, I thought of asking you too (not there, too much there already) as you have been an awesome friend to me all these years, I could do with some good feedback here, and I think you have handled huge or near-huge articles at FAC before unlike me. Thanks and stay safe :) Sainsf ( knock knock · am I there?) 17:12, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
I raised size as a problem in regards to articles on specific species. Maya is an ancient civilization so that's different. Passenger pigeon is around 140,000 K which isn't too large. LittleJerry ( talk) 20:07, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
This is to let you know that Catopsbaatar has been scheduled as WP:TFA for 3 May 2020. Please check that the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 3, 2020. Thanks! Ealdgyth ( talk) 15:15, 29 April 2020 (UTC) (I think I managed to hold you down to one TFA article this month, at least?) -- Ealdgyth ( talk) 15:15, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Danuvius guggenmosi by
Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by
J Milburn |
Lythronax by
FunkMonk,
Lythronaxargestes and
IJReid |
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)
{{
unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}
. I'm afraid you will get nowhere in that discussion. He is impervious to anything that does not agree with him, and will never admit he is wrong, even when the evidence is clearly shown to him. I have no idea why there is such an inflexible and combative approach, but good luck otherwise! Cheers - SchroCat ( talk) 16:27, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Hi, I found you to be one of the intelligent person in Animals, do you think this prominent eagle's article is already ready for GA to be nominated? 124.123.30.165 ( talk) 05:20, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
Hello. Would you be able to take a look at this? Read the second paragraph of "skull", Could you break that down in simpler language. I'd like to give a general description of the mountain zebra's head. Thanks. LittleJerry ( talk) 23:09, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
We had this discussion a while back: [7]
I think I understand how the copyright system works now. The copyright of any given article in Palaeontologia Electronica can be held by one of a few different organizations: SVP, PalSoc/PalAss, or Coquina Press. If the copyright is held by SVP or Coquina Press, it is CC BY. If it is held by PalSoc/PalAss, it is CC BY-NC-SA. Since the copyright of the Kenomagnathus paper is held by SVP, it is CC BY so the images can be uploaded to Commons.
It may be worth going over other images we have from that journal on Commons... Lythronaxargestes ( talk | contribs) 20:07, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
I agree that there should be a wider discussion of how to handle synonym lists in taxoboxes, including the issues of ordering and hiding.
Peter coxhead ( talk) 06:32, 20 May 2020 (UTC)
Hey! Hope I'm not disturbing ya! I've seen that merge proposal you initiated at Maaradactylus spielbergi, and only few papers use it's former name Coloborhychus spielbergi, so merging (or redirecting) it to Maaradactylus would be better? The fact that the article only has 4 paragraphs, which can be mentioned in at least 2 sentences (if merged), it's gonna be easier and probably better than keeping a separate article for a separate species, right? So, should we merge it any time soon? The discusion started months ago, and I think sufficient users have commented their thoughts (or maybe not...?). JurassicClassic767 ( talk | contribs) 18:03, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
I don't think Kampecaris is monotypic. Fossilworks lists a Kampecaris forfarensis. And Peach 1899 describes a new species of Kampecaris, not a new genus. Abductive ( reasoning) 01:13, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
Gigantorhynchus by
Mattximus |
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)
This is to let you know that the Lythronax article has been scheduled as today's featured article for June 4, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 4, 2020.— Wehwalt ( talk) 14:28, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Hi. Would you be able to create a combined range map for the three zebra species? Thank you. LittleJerry ( talk) 00:11, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
Is it going okay? LittleJerry ( talk) 23:01, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
All seriousness aside, NHMU per se in that caption? Meanwhile ... -- Brogo13 ( talk) 18:40, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
I (hereby) suggest removing NHMU [ recte UMNH]. Etc. -- Brogo13 ( talk) 19:48, 28 June 2020 (UTC)