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've been flipping through Flickr and found this image. The only thing that I can think of, from the fact its Botswanan and by looking at my field guide, is that its a Holub's Golden-weaver. However, the drawing doesn't appear as vibrant a yellow. Does anyone want to confirm or dispute me before uploading? Thanks. Rufous-crowned Sparrow ( talk) 03:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
OK, Cattle Egret is sitting at WP:GAN...I have a monograph-type book of all the penguins :)...quite a bit of work was done on Huia and it hasn't been nommed at GA which may be a good staging point. I'll leave a note on the talk page. Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 08:52, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
English ornithologist and researcher of Australian animals John Gould has been chosen as Wikisource:Collaboration of the Week. Please contribute. — Pengo 04:03, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I've spent some time tonight messing around with a potential welcome banner which could be sent to new members as and when they sign up, as it seems to me it might be a good idea to make more of an effort to welcome them. After all, we get so few! :P See the first effort here—any thoughts appreciated! Is there anything else we want to mention, for example, or other pages which might be useful for project newcomers? MeegsC | Talk 21:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Although the attempt to de-feature List of birds of the New World ex-colonies or whatever it is now called seems to have failed, there are several currently featured lists that I think are much more vulnerable. Several have incorrectly formatted headings throughout eg "Bitterns, Herons and Egrets" should not have caps except for the leading one, since herons and egrets are groups, not species. At least one list has no in-line citations at all, although all those I looked at did appear to have a reference section. IMHO, these would be difficult to defend against delisting, and could do bringing into line with MoS. I've done Thailand, because that's my baby, but others need much more improvement to maintain standard Jimfbleak ( talk) 09:02, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.10.004
Takahashi, M. Arita, H., Hiraiwa-Hasegawa, M., Hasegawa, T. (2008) Peahens do not prefer peacocks with more elaborate trains. Animal Behaviour. 75(4):1209-1219
Seems like a paper that is going to ruffle lots of feathers this season. Shyamal ( talk) 14:37, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Recently I've been running through the list of "bird articles with missing images" and noticed that I had old analogue video-clips of quite a few. I spent most of the weekend looking for open-source software that I could use to convert the clips to the correct format (I've gone for the GPL'd Theora, Ogg) I've created eight and posted them to Commons and added them to their respected articles.[ [1]] (they are all my work so no need for 'watermarks, copyrights etc) but am wondering about the varying quality. I've made the frame-size on the 'article' 250 pixels, although the original (on Commons) will probably be somewhat larger (300-350 pixels). I would really appreciate if I could get some experienced bird-wikipedians to look over and let me know your feelings,.... Aviceda talk 02:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I’m try to work up this article to at least GA. Since biography is a new departure for me, I’d welcome any comments for improvement on its talk page Jimfbleak ( talk) 08:27, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I just discovered that old issues of Malimbus, the Journal of the West African Ornithological Society, are available free online. Nice stuff since African ornithology is generally hard to cite. Sabine's Sunbird talk 03:48, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Darwin's finches 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
I could upload them when I am sure what they are. I find the names on the flickr uploads confusing. Snowman ( talk) 18:53, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
The 2008 Red List, which is the four-yearly serious update of conservation status. Due to hit on May 19th, and no doubt quite depressing, as well as a bit of work updating changes. Any chance a bot can do it, plus create list of changed articles that would need checking to make sure the text matches? Sabine's Sunbird talk 03:24, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
We finally had someone ( Orlady) willing to take the time to list those statements most in need of citations (at least in his/her opinion) in the List of birds in Canada and the United States. I've done a bunch of them, but don't have access to the AOU checklist information—except for what I can find on the net, which doesn't include the area changes. Can anyone source those sentences? The list of things still needing references is here. MeegsC | Talk 17:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I have outcommented a lot on the Paleognath page. What is the use of a cladogram if it is not sourced - and cannot be sourced, because no consensus exists, and moreover a lot of taxa contained are not paleognaths?
It was really really weird. Gansus yumenensis a paleognath? Dinornis gazelle (sic) a valid species? And it totally disagreed with Ratite.
I have since long collected some refs for ratite phylogeny and could give it a shot, see what can be done in the absence of a consensus. But what I need to know is this - should we unite the ratites in Struthioniformes (perhaps using superfamilies if that can be sourced) or should we give each lineage of paleognaths its own order? Basically - which one of the two systems in the Paleognath taxobox is preferred by the Project? Both are feasible, as long as the opinion on ratite monophyly is so uneven (Ratite flightlessness was almost certainly not monophyletic - see Palaeotis, but see also figure 12.4 here though this changes things relatively, not absolutely).
The one consensus exists that it's (tinamous(lithornithids+ratites))all other living birds. But how distinct the different ratite lineages are from lithornithids and each other is the crux. This is somewhat scathing in its opinion, but about sums it up nicely. Dysmorodrepanis ( talk) 14:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
There have been two editors making mass changes to species pages today. I am not sure if they are running bots or not. I wonder if anyone might like to contribute to the discussion with has started on the users talk pages, or perhaps the discussion can be continued here.
[splitting this to enable separately threaded discussions]
DEFAULTSORT is only a default sort - it can be over-ruled for individual categories, such as genus categories. For example:
{{DEFAULTSORT:Acacia saligna}} [[Category:Acacia|Saligna]] [[Category:Fabales of Australia]] [[Category:Flora of Western Australia]]
Hesperian 00:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I have been working through Category:Taxoboxes needing a status system parameter. In the case of birds, nearly all my edits will be adding "status_system=IUCN3.1" to the taxobox. Adding a status system causes the article to be removed from the maintenance category.
While passing through these articles, I have also routinely removed the "image_width" parameter. It is, in general, good manners to honour users' default thumb size settings, rather than over-ruling them. People have various reasons for setting their default thumb sizes, such as bandwidth issues mandating smaller images, or eyesight problems mandating larger images. Presumably there are also good reasons behind the setting of the default default. I have no objection to the default thumb size being occasionally over-ruled, on a case-by-case basis, given some thought has gone into the matter. However the vast majority of the time no thought whatsoever has gone into it. And there is also the problem of users (e.g. Snowmanradio) who insist on tailoring the image size of virtually every image they come across.
That's all I have to say on the matter. This is a trivial matter, and already too much drama has been generated over it.
Hesperian 00:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I've been flagging a few articles of birds that live around Auckland with audio requests. Not surprisingly, most of them have no audio. You may have noticed the |needs-audio=yes parameter added to the birds template (and other animals projects). I'm guessing all birds make some sort of sound, and the most excellent encyclopedia imaginable (which we all want Wikipedia to be, right?) would surely have audio for each species displayed somewhere in their article, so I can't see any reason why we would not want to add audio requests to the species articles without any audio. Non-species articles may not need any audio files, in fact probably won't except for a few like birdsong.
With this in mind, I propose we get a bot to add audio requests to the birds banner of all bird species articles without audio files. It might be a little tricky but I'm sure it's doable (and much easier than doing it manually). Do people agree that this is desirable? Richard001 ( talk) 01:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
The nice people over at the taxobox have played around with the code. So now instead of pretty graphics we get just text. Apparently we only have to add another parameter to get it back. Oh, an apparently we can't use a bot. But don't worry, they confidently predict it will only take six months or so to do. So get cracking! Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:34, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Pamela C. Rasmussen. I've done all I can think of on this, including sound and video. I'm away until Tuesday, and my intention is to send it to GA then, so any comments or amendments, speak now please Jimfbleak ( talk) 14:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
In terms of poultry articles that this project shares with Wikiproject Agriculture, what is your position on naming for chickens and such? Van Tucky 05:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Anyones have a book of Neotropical forest hawks? I found this image of a Brazilian Accipiter which isn't ID'd. Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
In the trivia section of the Wild Turkey page, it says that female turkeys can reproduce asexually without a tom. The source is cited ligitimately and now loads for me, but it is a bit dense for me to understand. It doesn't seem right to me, but before I remove it, can anyone confirm that turkeys can be asexual? Rufous-crowned Sparrow ( talk) 01:30, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
I have requested a move of Cockscomb to either Comb (anatomy) or Bird comb here. Please feel free to chime in, Van Tucky 00:37, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Our lackadaisical approach to taxonomy has left us with something approaching a cluster***k with regards to the drongos, fantails, Magpie-lark and monarch flycatchers. At present our higher order articles have them arranged as subfamilies of the Dicruridae, but the majority of articles for genera and species, which were created by Polbot, assign them to three families, not one. I asked Dysmorodrepanis about splitting per most authorities but as far as I can tell from his reply the issue is rather clouded. Obviously the issue isn't settled, but I still think we should settle on one solution, for the interim, so that the family and species articles at least agree with each other. We can go three ways...
There isn't, as far as I can tell, a right taxanomic approach at present, but I still think we need to at least do one of the first tow things, if for no other reason than I have plans for fantail and would like a modicum of consistency. Sabine's Sunbird talk 23:35, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, I have nominated European Robin for GA as I figure it is looking pretty good, so feel free to improve, comment etc. I reckon getting the book on it would be necessary for FAC though. Still waiting for Ravedave to review Cattle Egret but looks like there's heaps to go on with currently...such as Cockatiel...Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 05:44, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to go to FA, but would welcome any comment/editing, thanks Jimfbleak ( talk) 06:01, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
The Project newsletter reminded me of my concern about our featured lists. The attempted delisting of birds of Canada and the US failed because they actually picked one of the best lists. Of the existing featured lists, most, imho, do not come close to FL grade. Only three or four have full in-line citations, including family summaries, and some lack any in-line references. Many have heavily capitalised headings, clearly against MoS guidelines. North Am/Gambia/Thailand are probably OK, what do we do about the others?
I realise that this is throwing the cat amongst the pigeons, but we need to at least think about this. Jimfbleak ( talk) 05:36, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I nommed it after someone rapidly expanded it and I have polished it up. And yes, I am getting a range map...Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 20:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
I would like to create a task force within WP:BIRDS to address articles related to domesticated pigeons. Is there a voting process for creating a task force? Is there somewhere I'm supposed to post up the suggestion and see who's interested? I don't see any other task forces for WP:BIRDS so I wasn't sure exactly where to put the subpage assuming I can simply create the task force without further need of input.
Any ideas, suggestions, comments etc. are most welcome.
I know a proposal exists right now to create a WP:PIGEONS project--I think that's probably more administrative overhead than we'll ever be able to support and I also think it's probably never going to get five people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by OnorioCatenacci ( talk • contribs) 09:31, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
In the May 2008 WikiProject Birds newsletter there was reference to an Aviculture task force. Is there a task force page for them somewhere?-- Onorio ( talk) 12:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
This page still uses the old-school multi-template taxobox, which was deprecated in 2005! Can someone in this project please update it or, if it no longer serves any purposes, delete it? Hesperian 23:50, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
As with Dicruridae, the question arises about Pardalotidae - whether to go with splitting off Dasyornithidae ( Bristlebird) and Acanthizidae (per Christidis & Boles 2008) or leaving them lumped. I would go for splitting, and am currently working on Bristlebird. Reducing Pardalotidae to just Pardalote would make it another stub to work on to bring it up to at least Start class. Any comments? Maias ( talk) 06:55, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
This domain originally got flagged as spam and blacklisted because the domain owner added them to multiple articles on multiple Wikipedias triggering our spam monitoring system:
I was the admin who reviewed the site-owner's request to have them reviewed and I was impressed by the quality of these photos. I also determined this was a good faith mistake on the site-owner's part. He's agreed not to add anymore himself.
As one of Wikipedia's most notoriously fascistic, anti-spam admins, I never thought I would go promoting previously blacklisted links, but you may wish to take a look at some of these for individual penguin articles:
-- A. B. ( talk • contribs) 16:18, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
This is indeed complicated. I have modified the contact & sales section on the website so that under "Photos" it now explicitly states that wikipedia authors may make free use of the images for encyclopedia pages. The same is stated on my personal wikipedia page. The GFDL license does not seem acceptable as it appears to release the images for use by ANY website (or have i misunderstood something). Clearly i only want to make them available to wikipedia. Regarding the reverted link i actually think that my site is not yet complete enough for the "general" penguin page - guess that could be why it was removed. Maybe OK for specific species but there are already lots of links already (some of which are actually rather poor). RRvolcanica ( talk) 21:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Had a further read around and it seems wikipedia cannot accept anything which is not fully available to downstream commercial users. Bit surprised by that !!! Maybe way around that would be to keep size and image quality relatively low (i assume the license under GFDL only applies to the image in the size and quality provided ???) - that would be a shame though. If some specific images are required please tell me and I will consider what to do. May take a few weeks then though since I haven't got time right now for extra picture processing :-((... RRvolcanica ( talk) 21:33, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, I think that i could release all images on the website at 200x300 resolution under GFDL which should be more than enough for the wikipedia encyclopedia pages. If users click on the image info they could be informed at which exact url the larger image version is, with the note that the larger image is not licensed under GFDL. Does that seem useful for editors ? (please comment). Could put statement releasing images in small size on website and on my wikipedia page, which appears to satisfy all wikipedia formal requirements. RRvolcanica ( talk) 07:15, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
For me the tag is fine (removed small spelling error from references section). Cannot say if someone will have formal objections, yet if someone knows more than we do i am sure we can make minor modifications accordingly. A notice of the GFDL license arrangement has now been included on the website under URL: http://www.photovolcanica.com/Contact.html under the header "Photos". I am sorry i cannot release larger images but hope you understand that the problem is not wikipedia but the downstream potential use (/abuse). Maybe for specific images we can talk about this again when i have a little more time. Probably a full link to my webpage in an external link section could even be OK for the white-flippered penguin as there are no links so far with background info on the penguin, but i will stay out of that due to COI. Alternatively authors could summarize info i have provided. RRvolcanica ( talk) 18:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
In reply to RRvolcanica's surprise, I think Jimmy Wales has said that the licensing requirements were a mistake. (Sorry, I can't find the source.) Certainly there would be many better images on the 'pedia if we could use those with a free non-commercial license. But it's too late to change now. Wikipedia has gotten lots of donations and volunteer contributions from people on the understanding that everything would be available under the GFDL. — JerryFriedman (Talk) 23:36, 14 May 2008 (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've been flipping through Flickr and found this image. The only thing that I can think of, from the fact its Botswanan and by looking at my field guide, is that its a Holub's Golden-weaver. However, the drawing doesn't appear as vibrant a yellow. Does anyone want to confirm or dispute me before uploading? Thanks. Rufous-crowned Sparrow ( talk) 03:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
OK, Cattle Egret is sitting at WP:GAN...I have a monograph-type book of all the penguins :)...quite a bit of work was done on Huia and it hasn't been nommed at GA which may be a good staging point. I'll leave a note on the talk page. Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 08:52, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
English ornithologist and researcher of Australian animals John Gould has been chosen as Wikisource:Collaboration of the Week. Please contribute. — Pengo 04:03, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I've spent some time tonight messing around with a potential welcome banner which could be sent to new members as and when they sign up, as it seems to me it might be a good idea to make more of an effort to welcome them. After all, we get so few! :P See the first effort here—any thoughts appreciated! Is there anything else we want to mention, for example, or other pages which might be useful for project newcomers? MeegsC | Talk 21:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
Although the attempt to de-feature List of birds of the New World ex-colonies or whatever it is now called seems to have failed, there are several currently featured lists that I think are much more vulnerable. Several have incorrectly formatted headings throughout eg "Bitterns, Herons and Egrets" should not have caps except for the leading one, since herons and egrets are groups, not species. At least one list has no in-line citations at all, although all those I looked at did appear to have a reference section. IMHO, these would be difficult to defend against delisting, and could do bringing into line with MoS. I've done Thailand, because that's my baby, but others need much more improvement to maintain standard Jimfbleak ( talk) 09:02, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.10.004
Takahashi, M. Arita, H., Hiraiwa-Hasegawa, M., Hasegawa, T. (2008) Peahens do not prefer peacocks with more elaborate trains. Animal Behaviour. 75(4):1209-1219
Seems like a paper that is going to ruffle lots of feathers this season. Shyamal ( talk) 14:37, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Recently I've been running through the list of "bird articles with missing images" and noticed that I had old analogue video-clips of quite a few. I spent most of the weekend looking for open-source software that I could use to convert the clips to the correct format (I've gone for the GPL'd Theora, Ogg) I've created eight and posted them to Commons and added them to their respected articles.[ [1]] (they are all my work so no need for 'watermarks, copyrights etc) but am wondering about the varying quality. I've made the frame-size on the 'article' 250 pixels, although the original (on Commons) will probably be somewhat larger (300-350 pixels). I would really appreciate if I could get some experienced bird-wikipedians to look over and let me know your feelings,.... Aviceda talk 02:25, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
I’m try to work up this article to at least GA. Since biography is a new departure for me, I’d welcome any comments for improvement on its talk page Jimfbleak ( talk) 08:27, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I just discovered that old issues of Malimbus, the Journal of the West African Ornithological Society, are available free online. Nice stuff since African ornithology is generally hard to cite. Sabine's Sunbird talk 03:48, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Darwin's finches 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
I could upload them when I am sure what they are. I find the names on the flickr uploads confusing. Snowman ( talk) 18:53, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
The 2008 Red List, which is the four-yearly serious update of conservation status. Due to hit on May 19th, and no doubt quite depressing, as well as a bit of work updating changes. Any chance a bot can do it, plus create list of changed articles that would need checking to make sure the text matches? Sabine's Sunbird talk 03:24, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
We finally had someone ( Orlady) willing to take the time to list those statements most in need of citations (at least in his/her opinion) in the List of birds in Canada and the United States. I've done a bunch of them, but don't have access to the AOU checklist information—except for what I can find on the net, which doesn't include the area changes. Can anyone source those sentences? The list of things still needing references is here. MeegsC | Talk 17:23, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I have outcommented a lot on the Paleognath page. What is the use of a cladogram if it is not sourced - and cannot be sourced, because no consensus exists, and moreover a lot of taxa contained are not paleognaths?
It was really really weird. Gansus yumenensis a paleognath? Dinornis gazelle (sic) a valid species? And it totally disagreed with Ratite.
I have since long collected some refs for ratite phylogeny and could give it a shot, see what can be done in the absence of a consensus. But what I need to know is this - should we unite the ratites in Struthioniformes (perhaps using superfamilies if that can be sourced) or should we give each lineage of paleognaths its own order? Basically - which one of the two systems in the Paleognath taxobox is preferred by the Project? Both are feasible, as long as the opinion on ratite monophyly is so uneven (Ratite flightlessness was almost certainly not monophyletic - see Palaeotis, but see also figure 12.4 here though this changes things relatively, not absolutely).
The one consensus exists that it's (tinamous(lithornithids+ratites))all other living birds. But how distinct the different ratite lineages are from lithornithids and each other is the crux. This is somewhat scathing in its opinion, but about sums it up nicely. Dysmorodrepanis ( talk) 14:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
There have been two editors making mass changes to species pages today. I am not sure if they are running bots or not. I wonder if anyone might like to contribute to the discussion with has started on the users talk pages, or perhaps the discussion can be continued here.
[splitting this to enable separately threaded discussions]
DEFAULTSORT is only a default sort - it can be over-ruled for individual categories, such as genus categories. For example:
{{DEFAULTSORT:Acacia saligna}} [[Category:Acacia|Saligna]] [[Category:Fabales of Australia]] [[Category:Flora of Western Australia]]
Hesperian 00:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I have been working through Category:Taxoboxes needing a status system parameter. In the case of birds, nearly all my edits will be adding "status_system=IUCN3.1" to the taxobox. Adding a status system causes the article to be removed from the maintenance category.
While passing through these articles, I have also routinely removed the "image_width" parameter. It is, in general, good manners to honour users' default thumb size settings, rather than over-ruling them. People have various reasons for setting their default thumb sizes, such as bandwidth issues mandating smaller images, or eyesight problems mandating larger images. Presumably there are also good reasons behind the setting of the default default. I have no objection to the default thumb size being occasionally over-ruled, on a case-by-case basis, given some thought has gone into the matter. However the vast majority of the time no thought whatsoever has gone into it. And there is also the problem of users (e.g. Snowmanradio) who insist on tailoring the image size of virtually every image they come across.
That's all I have to say on the matter. This is a trivial matter, and already too much drama has been generated over it.
Hesperian 00:41, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I've been flagging a few articles of birds that live around Auckland with audio requests. Not surprisingly, most of them have no audio. You may have noticed the |needs-audio=yes parameter added to the birds template (and other animals projects). I'm guessing all birds make some sort of sound, and the most excellent encyclopedia imaginable (which we all want Wikipedia to be, right?) would surely have audio for each species displayed somewhere in their article, so I can't see any reason why we would not want to add audio requests to the species articles without any audio. Non-species articles may not need any audio files, in fact probably won't except for a few like birdsong.
With this in mind, I propose we get a bot to add audio requests to the birds banner of all bird species articles without audio files. It might be a little tricky but I'm sure it's doable (and much easier than doing it manually). Do people agree that this is desirable? Richard001 ( talk) 01:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
The nice people over at the taxobox have played around with the code. So now instead of pretty graphics we get just text. Apparently we only have to add another parameter to get it back. Oh, an apparently we can't use a bot. But don't worry, they confidently predict it will only take six months or so to do. So get cracking! Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:34, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Pamela C. Rasmussen. I've done all I can think of on this, including sound and video. I'm away until Tuesday, and my intention is to send it to GA then, so any comments or amendments, speak now please Jimfbleak ( talk) 14:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
In terms of poultry articles that this project shares with Wikiproject Agriculture, what is your position on naming for chickens and such? Van Tucky 05:21, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
Anyones have a book of Neotropical forest hawks? I found this image of a Brazilian Accipiter which isn't ID'd. Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
In the trivia section of the Wild Turkey page, it says that female turkeys can reproduce asexually without a tom. The source is cited ligitimately and now loads for me, but it is a bit dense for me to understand. It doesn't seem right to me, but before I remove it, can anyone confirm that turkeys can be asexual? Rufous-crowned Sparrow ( talk) 01:30, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
I have requested a move of Cockscomb to either Comb (anatomy) or Bird comb here. Please feel free to chime in, Van Tucky 00:37, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Our lackadaisical approach to taxonomy has left us with something approaching a cluster***k with regards to the drongos, fantails, Magpie-lark and monarch flycatchers. At present our higher order articles have them arranged as subfamilies of the Dicruridae, but the majority of articles for genera and species, which were created by Polbot, assign them to three families, not one. I asked Dysmorodrepanis about splitting per most authorities but as far as I can tell from his reply the issue is rather clouded. Obviously the issue isn't settled, but I still think we should settle on one solution, for the interim, so that the family and species articles at least agree with each other. We can go three ways...
There isn't, as far as I can tell, a right taxanomic approach at present, but I still think we need to at least do one of the first tow things, if for no other reason than I have plans for fantail and would like a modicum of consistency. Sabine's Sunbird talk 23:35, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, I have nominated European Robin for GA as I figure it is looking pretty good, so feel free to improve, comment etc. I reckon getting the book on it would be necessary for FAC though. Still waiting for Ravedave to review Cattle Egret but looks like there's heaps to go on with currently...such as Cockatiel...Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 05:44, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I'd like to go to FA, but would welcome any comment/editing, thanks Jimfbleak ( talk) 06:01, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
The Project newsletter reminded me of my concern about our featured lists. The attempted delisting of birds of Canada and the US failed because they actually picked one of the best lists. Of the existing featured lists, most, imho, do not come close to FL grade. Only three or four have full in-line citations, including family summaries, and some lack any in-line references. Many have heavily capitalised headings, clearly against MoS guidelines. North Am/Gambia/Thailand are probably OK, what do we do about the others?
I realise that this is throwing the cat amongst the pigeons, but we need to at least think about this. Jimfbleak ( talk) 05:36, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
I nommed it after someone rapidly expanded it and I have polished it up. And yes, I am getting a range map...Cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 20:35, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
I would like to create a task force within WP:BIRDS to address articles related to domesticated pigeons. Is there a voting process for creating a task force? Is there somewhere I'm supposed to post up the suggestion and see who's interested? I don't see any other task forces for WP:BIRDS so I wasn't sure exactly where to put the subpage assuming I can simply create the task force without further need of input.
Any ideas, suggestions, comments etc. are most welcome.
I know a proposal exists right now to create a WP:PIGEONS project--I think that's probably more administrative overhead than we'll ever be able to support and I also think it's probably never going to get five people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by OnorioCatenacci ( talk • contribs) 09:31, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
In the May 2008 WikiProject Birds newsletter there was reference to an Aviculture task force. Is there a task force page for them somewhere?-- Onorio ( talk) 12:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
This page still uses the old-school multi-template taxobox, which was deprecated in 2005! Can someone in this project please update it or, if it no longer serves any purposes, delete it? Hesperian 23:50, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
As with Dicruridae, the question arises about Pardalotidae - whether to go with splitting off Dasyornithidae ( Bristlebird) and Acanthizidae (per Christidis & Boles 2008) or leaving them lumped. I would go for splitting, and am currently working on Bristlebird. Reducing Pardalotidae to just Pardalote would make it another stub to work on to bring it up to at least Start class. Any comments? Maias ( talk) 06:55, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
This domain originally got flagged as spam and blacklisted because the domain owner added them to multiple articles on multiple Wikipedias triggering our spam monitoring system:
I was the admin who reviewed the site-owner's request to have them reviewed and I was impressed by the quality of these photos. I also determined this was a good faith mistake on the site-owner's part. He's agreed not to add anymore himself.
As one of Wikipedia's most notoriously fascistic, anti-spam admins, I never thought I would go promoting previously blacklisted links, but you may wish to take a look at some of these for individual penguin articles:
-- A. B. ( talk • contribs) 16:18, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
This is indeed complicated. I have modified the contact & sales section on the website so that under "Photos" it now explicitly states that wikipedia authors may make free use of the images for encyclopedia pages. The same is stated on my personal wikipedia page. The GFDL license does not seem acceptable as it appears to release the images for use by ANY website (or have i misunderstood something). Clearly i only want to make them available to wikipedia. Regarding the reverted link i actually think that my site is not yet complete enough for the "general" penguin page - guess that could be why it was removed. Maybe OK for specific species but there are already lots of links already (some of which are actually rather poor). RRvolcanica ( talk) 21:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
Had a further read around and it seems wikipedia cannot accept anything which is not fully available to downstream commercial users. Bit surprised by that !!! Maybe way around that would be to keep size and image quality relatively low (i assume the license under GFDL only applies to the image in the size and quality provided ???) - that would be a shame though. If some specific images are required please tell me and I will consider what to do. May take a few weeks then though since I haven't got time right now for extra picture processing :-((... RRvolcanica ( talk) 21:33, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
OK, I think that i could release all images on the website at 200x300 resolution under GFDL which should be more than enough for the wikipedia encyclopedia pages. If users click on the image info they could be informed at which exact url the larger image version is, with the note that the larger image is not licensed under GFDL. Does that seem useful for editors ? (please comment). Could put statement releasing images in small size on website and on my wikipedia page, which appears to satisfy all wikipedia formal requirements. RRvolcanica ( talk) 07:15, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
For me the tag is fine (removed small spelling error from references section). Cannot say if someone will have formal objections, yet if someone knows more than we do i am sure we can make minor modifications accordingly. A notice of the GFDL license arrangement has now been included on the website under URL: http://www.photovolcanica.com/Contact.html under the header "Photos". I am sorry i cannot release larger images but hope you understand that the problem is not wikipedia but the downstream potential use (/abuse). Maybe for specific images we can talk about this again when i have a little more time. Probably a full link to my webpage in an external link section could even be OK for the white-flippered penguin as there are no links so far with background info on the penguin, but i will stay out of that due to COI. Alternatively authors could summarize info i have provided. RRvolcanica ( talk) 18:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
In reply to RRvolcanica's surprise, I think Jimmy Wales has said that the licensing requirements were a mistake. (Sorry, I can't find the source.) Certainly there would be many better images on the 'pedia if we could use those with a free non-commercial license. But it's too late to change now. Wikipedia has gotten lots of donations and volunteer contributions from people on the understanding that everything would be available under the GFDL. — JerryFriedman (Talk) 23:36, 14 May 2008 (UTC)