Archives for WT:TOL | ||
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1 | 2002-07 – 2003-12 | Article names |
2 | 2003-11 – 2004-02 | Taxoboxes |
3 | 2004-02 | Taxoboxes |
4 | 2004-02 – 2004-08 | Bold taxa; taxonomy |
5 | 2004-03 – 2004-04 | Taxonomy; photos; range maps |
6 | 2005-04 – 2004-06 | Capitalization; authorities; mammals |
7 | 2004-06 – 2004-08 | Creationism; parens; common names |
8 | 2004-05 – 2004-08 | Templates; †extinct; common names |
9 | 2004-05 – 2004-08 | Categories; taxoboxes |
10 | 2004-08 – 2004-12 | Categories; authorities; domains; Wikispecies; ranks; G. species; capitalization; Common Names |
11 | 2004-11 – 2005-05 | Capitalization; common names; categories; L.; authorities; algae; cultivars |
12 | 2005-03 – 2005-05 | Ranks; common names |
13 | 2005-05 – 2005-06 | Hybrids; taxobox format; cultivars |
14 | 2005-06 – 2005-07 | Categories; food plants; identification; Capitalization |
15 | 2005-07 – 2005-09 | Synonyms; types; authorities; status; identification |
16 | 2005-09 – 2005-12 | Paleontological ranges; Rosopsida; Taxobox redesign; identification |
17 | 2005-12 – 2006-04 | Taxobox redesign; identification; APG; common names; capitalization |
18 | 2006-04 – 2006-10 | Categorization; include in references; snakes; range maps; seasonality graph; common names; bioregions; brya; |
19 | 2006-10 – 2007-03 | various |
20 | 2007-03 – 2007-06 | various |
21 | 2007-06 (Next 64 Kb) | various |
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Did i once see a way to write in a bit of code and wikipedia would do some wizzy work and produce a taxonomy tree? Something similar to the <math> function. Did i see this, or was it just an experimental thing? chris_huh 18:38, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
All US "fauna by state" categories have been nominated for deletion. I think this would be of interest.
I am trying to get a discussion going on the Flora of <region>/Forna of <region>/Biora of <region> caregories.
Please comment on the move and reversion jimfbleak 05:49, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
What should one do with taxoboxes for groups where their classification is still not well agreed upon, such as whether or not Rhodophyta (and Glaucophyta) should be separated from the other protists and put with the plants? It's not exactly a new concept for the Rhodophyta, but the taxoboxes leave no allowance for it, and it is one of the issues people take strong stands on, whether the Rhodophyta are protists or plants. What can be done so that the taxobox reflects the level of ambiguity in the taxonomic placement? Can the boxes have a color slash, khaki above, green below? Should they reflect Wikipedia's current classification system--although I think the one article listed on the protist page does classify Rhodophyta with the plants, not with the protists? Should it be majority rules as primary and the secondary classification within the article? Can the boxes be stacked so both are represented by taxoboxes?
This issue should also be addressed with Angiosperm taxonomy--as has been brought up before. If Wikipedia is chosing APG II as the primary classification, certain groups should not be used in the taxoboxes.
Were these issues discussed and decided before?
KP Botany 00:20, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
For most of the protists and algae, the taxonomy is really variable. The problem with saying "| regnum = Plantae / Protista" is that it implies the rest of the classification is less controversial, but although a general outline has taken shape, a lot of aspects vary from author to author. Thus the taxoboxes should really be considered representative systems, since they don't have room to explain the others. In fact, in most cases the different possibilities aren't even discussed in the articles. They should be, but it's really hard to find good information on them, as most people just pick one system and stick with it.
The question of whether red and green algae should be considered plants has come up before. Really, it depends on what the currently favored classification is, which is difficult to tell. Reading journal articles about protists, I think it's better to call them plants; but few of these worry about what counts as a kingdom, except Cavalier-Smith, and his breakdown is not entirely standard (e.g. he argues in favor of paraphyletic groups, and for that matter does not use Protista at all). Josh 05:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
The color of the Kingdom It seems to me that if we are forced to change information, ie include information that is not accurate enough or too much in conflict, to meet the limited confines of the taxobox, it's the taxobox that must change, not what is included in the article--if we conform the information to the taxobox we are doing OR or inserting our POV. How about no color and a note when the kingdom is in dispute? I had not thought of this, but once TeunSpaans said it, although it irks me as an obsessive classifier, it seems the method least likely to misinform or confuse the user, or demand contortions of the editor, while indicating to both the need to look further in the article for more information as to why this is not classified at the kingdom level, namely scientists differ in how they define the kingdoms. We could also just make the color for the questionable placements protist/plantae be orange or something.
Also, please note, it is not necessarily in conflict on most classifications to say that something is both a plant and a protist, because the former is a monophyletic clade, but the latter is simply a grouping on convenience, usually, but not always, everything that isn't in one of the other groups.
I would still like to suggest that the question marks in taxoboxes be done away with as a link to more information about the taxobox. They have a meaning, as far as I know, in the nomenclatural codes for organisms, namely a level of uncertainty as to the correct placement, depending upon their location in the organism's name. Taxoboxes now simply indicate that all kingdom level classifications are in question. It could be an asterisk or a little 'i' like someone earlier suggested, but in this instance it really can't be a question mark. However, a non-colored box with a question mark in it, indicating uncertainty as to kingdom and linking to a discussion within the article of this uncertainty would be useful.
I think the taxoboxes are useful in giving information at a glance. However, I don't think they should be allowed to misinform at a glance, and others may be right that multiple taxoboxes decreases their usability. Not including misinformation, by removing the color, and tying the issue to a discussion in the text, would erase this issue, without interfering with the usefulness of taxoboxes. KP Botany 18:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
|regnum=[[Rhodophyta#Taxonomy|Disputed]]
This option could be implemented without a taxobox change, only the colour would be suggestive of a kingdom, but adapting the taxobox would be neater.
TeunSpaans
19:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Except the kingdom is not especially disputable. For instance, look at the two classifications listed on red algae; they're similar, but one has added new classes and changed some of the ranks. What phylum Cyanidiophyceae gets is as disputed as its kingdom. And yet the relationships are the same, and I'd hesitate to leave its entire position as uncertain, when only the ranks of the groups are. (Incidentally, if most specialists working in red algae consider them plants, maybe we should follow them without worrying how more encompassing systems treat them).
Also, an explanation about the kingdoms should be given on green algae, but if we footnote each variation in classifiction in each page about each genus, we're going to have a very difficult time adjusting and maintaining it. Maybe a better idea would be to change the link from "scientific classification" to something like "typical classification", to emphasize that some authors deviate from it. It would be easy enough to add a flag to do that, like we do for viruses. The question would then be at what point we stop using it - for instead, is APG solid enough that we can treat it as authoritative, and what about the minor variations for mammal orders? Josh 19:37, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international organisation that is working to make the world's biodiversity data accessible anywhere in the world.
03:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I cited AlgaeBase, GBIF, and ITIS. I searched all three databases on Ulva lactuca, Chondrus crispus, and Pylaiella. In the case of AlgaeBase, I clicked on "taxonomy" for each alga that I looked up in order to find the Kingdom classification. I brought this matter up again specifically because in most cases it is easy to find sources that disagree on taxonomies. I suggest that for classification purposes only we rely primarily upon a limited set of very widely recognized databases rather than citing individual journal articles or textbooks. I very specifically want to avoid arguments of citing those kinds of sources back and forth because I see our role here as being that of encyclopedists trying to condense and explain large expanses of information - not as research scientists trying to explain particular findings to answer particular questions.
You have persuaded me that GBIF may be even more widely recognized an authority than ITIS is. Please note that Kingdom Chromista is not synonymous with Kingdom Protista. And AlgaeBase and GBIF put Chlorophyta and Rhodophyta within Kingdom Plantae.
Therefore, whom I am asking everyone to agree with in placing all of the algae in either Plantae or Chromista (in the case of Phaeophyta) is GBIF. As you point out, in the case of algae, GBIF relies upon AlgaeBase. I don't see anything wrong with AlgaeBase as an ultimate source for algae classification. Furthermore, I suggest that reliance upon GBIF as the main source for taxonomic classifications would work very well for all lifeforms on Wikipedia (not just algae). Other sources with conflicting conclusions may well be worth presenting in some cases in addition to the GBIF classifications, which I suggest should determine all of the taxoboxes. Peter 05:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Should we be in the business of picking one classification scheme as authoritative? That seems to me to be OR. Taxoboxes can be a problem for taxa whose classification remains unsettled, but we can only reflect the state of knowledge and opinion in a field, not impose our interpretation of what is correct. My impression is that Protista is a shifting grabbag of the leftovers of Eukaria, subject to redefinition everytime someone proposes a new monophyletic clade. [1] -- Donald Albury 11:49, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
This talk page has been archived. Feel free to reintroduce any topic that needs more discussion. Also, someone else needs to list the topics of that archive in the archive TOC. pschemp | talk 14:42, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Citing temtbooks at each other seems, shall we say, a little medieval? Majority vote has nothing to do with it, either of people or of textbooks. The best evidence for the scientific consensus is recent review articles in peer-reviewed journals, or recent articles themselves if they give a good background.
The deepest divergences in land plants inferred from phylogenomic evidence PNAS 2006 103: 15511-15516; published online before print October 9 2006, 10.1073/pnas.0603335103 [not open access, unfortunately, except for the abstract, but will be in 6 months. Perhaps we should add others to this page as they appear. I will, but I'm not going to do it retrospectively. DGG 02:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 23:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I took this ptoto in Turkey this year, tr:Image:Resim14.jpg, but don't know their species name. Can anyone help on this? Thanks -- Ugur Basak 11:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Taxoboxes are a nice navigation interface, but they are still purely textual and lack a "graphical" component for orientation ; it would be nice to have something maybe in the form of a tree, showing where a given group is located relative to the global tree (maybe showing the sister nodes at each parent node) or at least w.r.t. to the parent and child nodes, e.g.
Genus Balaenoptera Genus Megaptera \ / \ / \/ Family Balaenopteridae Family2 Family3 ... \ | / \ | / \ | / \|/ Mysticeti Suborder2 ... \ / \ / \/
— MFH: Talk 17:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
While not a much more pratical than generating images of varation of the family tree templates could be made to do this. THey currently woudl make the articles look a bit messey unless they were done as templates, and they take a bi of time to do by hand. However since what we need here can be a lot less flexable than the family tree templates It is possible that we could do away with the internal formatting and just provide the names. We could with relative ease create a template that simply took 14 inputs and formatted them into a tree, with one of them bolded or some such. The tree in the pimage above would look something like this:
Hominoidea | Superfamily | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hominidae | Hylobatidae | Family | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Homininae | Ponginae | Subfamily | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hominini | Gorillini | Tribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Homo | Pan | Gorilla | Pongo | Hylobates | Genus | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
It is also worth noting that it woudl not have to be this big. We could drop the borders and move all of the cells twards eachother, and if we built some slightly diffrent images we could compress it vertically as well, and get it to close to the same size as the image above. Dalf | Talk 23:38, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think taxoboxes really have enough room for legible cladograms, but they'd be great additions to the article texts. If the developers are OK with nesting template arguments, that might be a simpler and more flexible way to write them. Here's a quick example based on the drawing code from the family tree templates; it would still need some polishing, but is it a step in the right direction? Josh
Euglenids |
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The problem with the above two examples is that the data used is too clean. It's all nice and binary; each node has 0 or 2 children. This is not always the case. Simple binary trees are often easily understood through less graphical means, but the cases where the phylogeny is not so well defined (and the resulting trees have more than 2 branches from a node) are the ones that really need to be described graphically. For examples, take a look at the first and last images on Hominoidea#History_of_hominoid_taxonomy, or just the Strepsirrhini taxonomy, where we don't know which of the three infraorders is sister to the other two. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Compare and contrast:
Euarchontoglires ├─ Glires │ ├─rodents ( Rodentia) │ └─rabbits, hares, pikas ( Lagomorpha) └─ Euarchonta ├─treeshrews ( Scandentia) └─N.N. ├─flying lemurs ( Dermoptera) └─N.N. ├─† Plesiadapiformes └─primates (Primates)
Euarchontoglires | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Glires | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Rodentia (rodents) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Lagomorpha (rabbits, hares, pikas) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Euarchonta | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Scandentia (treeshrews) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Dermoptera (flying lemurs) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
† Plesiadapiformes | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Primates | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Euarchontoglires |
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- UtherSRG (talk) 18:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Two answers. KP, the diagram on the French page is expandable because it's an image, and I'm not sure you can do the same thing with templates. We could just use images, but the downside is we'd need a separate file for each article and they wouldn't be directly editable. Uther, it's not too difficult to make templates allow ternary or more complex nodes, as below. Josh
Arthropoda |
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I continue adapting the Euarchontoglires trees above, to get a feel for things. Josh, is there a way to pass in a style argument the way the familytree accetps one? I'm really starting to like your implementation, but I want some control over sizing. Sometimes we'll want the larger text (such as for smaller trees), while other times it would be most handy to have the smaller font. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I'd also suggest that if there's any way that terminal taxa could line up, that would be preferred. As it is, these trees look like they are attempting to be phylograms or even chronograms with certain taxa implied to be extinct fossil taxa. -- Aranae 22:06, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
How about doing them as .png diagrams like this one (right)? A bit more robust with respect to editing (and even more, vandalism), too, as the above examples would be very difficult for a casual editor to understand on the edit page - MPF 21:01, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
I added a cladogram to the Amborellaceae article, just an image, but I will try to use this code to make it a set of clickable links. Anyone want to jump ahead and do it for me, would be fine by me. It needs a branch for angiosperms as a whole, though. KP Botany 01:21, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
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Wow that's big.... Some of hhe hugeness is because of it tries to keep boxes somewhat square, and so text wraps instead of getting pushed to the right. Even a non-breaking space is forced to break. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
In the light of discussion elsewhere regarding geographical categories for flora and fauna, I think that guidance along the following lines may be appropriate. [4] With consensus, this would be an addition to the Category subheading on the project page. [5]
Geographical categories help readers find species by location. Regional categories are preferred over a large numbers of smaller categories. For example, country/state/province categories are useful for narrow endemic species, but don't add a country/state/province category if the species occurs in more than 4 or 5 countries/states/provinces; in those cases use larger regional categories (so a widespread species like Red Fox would be in Category:Fauna of the United States and Category:Mammals of Europe, but not in Category:Fauna of West Virginia or Category:Fauna of Lombardy). In some cases, a ecoregion category such as Piney Woods forests may be more appropriate than a country/state/province. The presence of a regional category makes the its subcategories unnecessary. The latter should be removed to avoid page clutter. [6]
-- Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Sounds like a great idea, but keep specific cats for those items that are indeed extremely localized...though, in most cases, this is rare. Ecoregions for such places as the United States are generally well accepted as are those for many other larger counties. We need to be careful to not have a supercategory such as Category:Fauna of the United States become filled with ten thousand articles. I recommend we do either what Wsiegmund suggests by using ecoregions or figure out a better way to create categories so they are based on a regional structure...ie: Category:Fauna of the U.S. Pacific Northwest , etc.-- MONGO 07:04, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
The more I think about this, the more I think that categories may be the wrong way to handle it. Part of what we are trying to do is indicate range. Categories by political units doesn't work well for that most of the time, and categorizing by ecoregions isn't much better. (Another element in the current system is 'biota chauvinism', look at how many species our country/state/whatever has.) I have no clear idea of how to do this, but shouldn't we be looking at the possibility of developing range maps that provide two-way access; links to political units and ecoregions that the species range extends to, and links from political units and ecoregions to species with ranges falling in those areas. And yes, I understand that the development effort may be too much, and that maintenance of such a system might be too much, but can we kick the idea around a little bit? -- Donald Albury 13:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
I think this whole project is being approached rather idealisticly and will therefore produce very little in the way of substance. You need to be far more systematic. The problem is that many of the enthusiasts involved in this geography project have no idea of the numbers involved. We want categories to remain small, right? Well, then why do people keep adding category tags like "Reptiles of Africa" to the articles that I'm working on? These people have no clue just how big such a broad category is likely to become. In such cases, it would have been so much better to create a number of more specific subcategories first and only to have added those tags to the articles. However, that requires foresight and thus knowledge of the subject. I would therefore like to suggest that these people simply not bother unless they first do the necessary research. After all, recategorizing hundreds articles will be tough enough, but thousands? -- Jwinius 15:53, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Mixed-breed dog is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy ( Talk) 23:55, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
I know these are pine sawflies, but I don't know whether they're the European pine sawfly or the red-headed pine sawfly. Anyone know which? -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 12:46, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi, this seems to match the white form of Neodiprion lecontei on this page. Hope this helps Richard Barlow 15:21, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I think the taxabox is great! Just one thing though. The link leading to this page is in a form of a question mark (?) after the common name. I've had a couple of instances where first time readers of a Wikipedia article has asked me if the question mark indicates if the identity of the species pictured was in question. This seems to be especially confusing where the common name of a species is long and the question mark appears to be attached to the common name, as in this example. The taxabox info link is important, but I'd like to suggest either that it be moved to a different location in the taxabox and/or change the symbol. Instead of a ?, perhaps an i in a circle? Jnpet 05:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
Jnpet 06:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
ⓘExample | ||
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Scientific classification | ||
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Problem with plain 'i' It disappears on my new browser, I think it needs to be the circled one, maybe an asterisk? The original user friendly goals of the taxobox are met, imo, but some folks probably want more details. I didn't really think of that, that's it is fairly self-explanatory. KP Botany 23:08, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I've been finding a few minor copyvios in plant pathology articles (like Phytoplasma), involving word-for-word inclusion of materials from the Encyclopedia of Plant Pathology. It's usually just a sentence or two... should I just add the book as a source? I just don't see why someone would bother typing something in without adding the citation (citations only improve the articles, right?). Should I bother with using <ref> tage, or just add it to the bottom? -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 10:51, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I keep running across articles on plants and fungi that either use "corrective" common names for organisms, or couch regional common names in phrases such as "mistakenly called", "misleadingly called", etc.
The most recent example I've come across was in the Gymnosporangium article, where the common name "Cedar-apple rust" (and several other cedar-other rusts) were changed to "Juniper-apple rust". This was presumably done because the telial host of the fungus is in fact a species of Juniper, (as opposed to Cedrus), but the name of the rust is "Cedar-apple rust", and the common name of the most commonly implicated "cedar" ( Juniperus virginiana) is "Eastern Red Cedar" (only a botanist or horticulturist would understand what you mean by "Eastern Juniper"... the term is not used).
It's really frustrating to go in to work on an article, only to have to waste time undoing this sort of thing.
I have discussed this a few times with the user who routinely makes these changes, and he feels strongly that there are "proper" and "improper" common names for plants. I, on the other hand, feel strongly that common names are part of the English language, and can't be "proper" or "improper", but rather are just words used to describe things that are found in the environment. Just as "Lorry", "Truck", and "Semi" are all names for the same thing, each just as proper as the other when used in one region or another, so are the various names for plants, animals, fungi, etc. The English language is wonderfully diverse, and an english encyclopedia should describe (from a neutral point of view) how the language is used, and discuss the things that English words are used for. It's not meant to be used as a tool for codifying the language, but rather a description of what the language is, how it describes the world, and above all what the things in the world are, whatever they're called.-- SB_Johnny| talk| books 11:08, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Would there be much interest in seeing a large number of species articles being generated from the information on the IUCN red list. The generated articles would contain a taxobox with conservation status, a reference (to the red list), a stub notice, a category, and very little actual text. Example: Apron Ray.
I think populating the encyclopedia this way would give a good starting point for a great many entries, and make it easier for people looking to start articles on a species.
I'm quite time poor at the moment but am interested in doing this. The above example was hand made and not generated, but it would not be very difficult to generate such articles.
Thoughts? — Pengo talk · contribs 04:39, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Categories could be chosen by finding the next higher taxon that already has a category.. I guess a new category could be created if there's a bunch of species (4 or more?) with the same genus or family. Common names are listed in the database, so for animals the first one listed would be put into Title Case and used (admitadly they're not all unique names. I guess I'd have to check for that). Alternatively we could stick to generating articles with binomial names and let someone choosing a name simply move the article? I wouldn't create an article if the any of the common names or binomial synonyms already exist.
By the way, when I ran Beastie Bot in June there were 33827 binomial names found in the red list (including least concern) that weren't found as wikipedia articles. So a bit less than that number would be a ballpark figure for how many articles might get created. — Pengo talk · contribs 15:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
This is a new proposed deletion policy that should interest ToL contributors. Many articles, especially about species as diverse as Moray eel or Tongue Orchid, lack references or sources and will fall under this speedy deletion policy if it gets adopted. Consequences could be enormous. We should follow this discussion closely and participate in it to discuss the consequences. JoJan 13:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Is there any naming standard for breeds/varieties? I see that list of breeds of cattle has X (cattle), X cattle, and X Cattle. List of breeds of horses also has all three. List of breeds of dogs is mainly X Dog with a few X (dog). Is there any standard? Rmhermen 14:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Folk, the list of placental mammals is up for deletion. - UtherSRG (talk) 10:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
There is currently a barnstar proposal at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals#Wildlife Barnstar for a barnstar which would be available for use for this project. Please feel free to visit the page and make any comments you see fit. Badbilltucker 15:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Over the past few weeks I've transwikied some ToL pages that had contained how to sections, all are now on wikibooks and will be incorporated into other books (mostly b:Animal Care). The howto sections should probably be removed now, if anyone's interested in helping with the cleanup:
I'll mostly be doing the cleanup on the wikibooks side, if anyone wants to help dewikify the wikibooks versions, that would be great! -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 11:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Stemonitis and I had the idea of linking the year of description inside a taxobox like this: [[Species described in <year>|<year>]]. This would be a nice feature if one wanted for example to check out what other species were described in the same year. right now, when the year is just linked like this: [[<year>]], this is not really useful, because it will link to a very long list of events that are normally not interesting to the user following the link. Alternatively, this could be implemented as categories, analogous to Category:People born in <year>. If this feature would be deemed useful, it would probably be best to let a bot do the work of changing the existing taxoboxes. Alternatively, or additionally, there could be an extra optional field like binomial_authority_year, but that would lead to problems when first describers stand in parentheses. -- Sarefo 01:25, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Just to see what this would look like, I've created two lists from the latest database dump, for two years chosen completely at random. See User:Eugene van der Pijll/Animal species described in 1758 and User:Eugene van der Pijll/Animal species described in 2006 for the results. (Note, these are just the raw output of a simple script; the format of the output can still be improved.) Eugène van der Pijll 14:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
It's a simple concept with no simple solution. Do you want only to link for species themselves, or for higher taxa as well? Both get a year in the descriptor, and if you only wnat one and not the other, that will confuse editors. Other the other hand, if you utilize a category ([[:Category:Taxa erected in <year>|<year>]]) you can get a nice complete picture, but the listing won't be in any particular order. *shrugs* I'd like to see something done with the year, but I'm torn between the pros and cons of all the options. - UtherSRG 16:40, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I know this has been brought up a lot, but it has gotten nowhere, and I think I have come up with a solution which should work. I would like to create a guideline, which would be kept under the TOL project. If we create a guideline, it would make it muich easier to move, merge and delete articles in quicker time, and clean up this whole mess much quicker. It would go along the lines of:
"Categories related to the flora and fauna of a region should should be based on the common grouping of that region used by zoological/botanical publications. For example, if it is common to seperate a region based on political boundries (as in parts of Europe), categories should be seperated by countries. If it is common to seperate regions based on geographic features (such as New Guinea), categories should be seperated by geographic region."
I wouldn't like to apply this guideline to articles, as it would be too restrctive, and I don't particularly agree with it. I think the main arguments that occured with this discussion occured because people of different countries were relating it to their country/region. As an Australian, it could go either way, but Americans seem to prefer the use of political boundaries. The reason to have this, is that there are many regions which are represented by more than one category, and it creates over-categorisation, and under-population of some articles/categories. Thanks. -- liquidGhoul 13:34, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
There is an inconsistency over Sugarbird (Promeropidae) that needs resolving. The family is categorized as Passerida, but listed under the Corvida page. One of these is clearly wrong, but I don't know which. Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask the question. JohnCastle 21:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Beginning cross-post.
End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.
Currently there are three automatically added categories for conservation statuses:
These are automatically added, e.g. when status = EN. They can currently be turned off on an article-by-article basis with "|category=off" or something like that.
I'd like to stop all of these categories from being automatically added, so they can be controlled more easily on an article-by-article basis. There are two or three problems:
The main questions, if people are happy with the overall change, are:
— Pengo talk · contribs 11:01, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Can somebody either merger synonym (botany) and synonym (zoology) or work a way to switch between them in the taxobox? Because it is now a disambiguation page (as it should have been, might I add), and the previous state was not much better anyway. Circeus 18:29, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I was excited to see the topic, but now I'm wondering if I misunderstood. I'm wondering if maybe we could also list binomial synonyms in the taxobox as well? I think it comes up in botany more than in zoology, but in florae like An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States and Canada, there are often numerous sysnonymous binomials listed, and I think it would be a good addition to our taxoboxes. This would be particularly valuable for the plants that have different binomials in "horticultural" vs. "plant taxonomical" parlances, as well as giving the search engine something to grab at if someone were reading an old book that uses deprecated names.
I guess the problem with this is that it would require a lot of new fields if there were a lot of synonyms, though it could be kept to a minumum if we used piped links to authorities rather than separate fields for them. -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 14:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering what people here think about dropping the kingdom Protista, and treating them directly as basal eukaryotes. When we started not enough was known about their relationships to make that really practical, but now they most of them could be arranged in terms of a few unranked supergroups, following current systems like Adl et al. I know we normally prefer ranked taxa, but recently enough editors have been trying to move towards a clade-based system that it has made the current organization hard to maintain.
We wouldn't have to change other kingdoms, and could keep using lower ranks from phyla on down. The new organization would then look something like this:
If people support this, I'd be happy to adjust all protist articles, taxoboxes, and categories as necessary. Josh 03:49, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
The newer ones come from Cavalier-Smith (2002), who treats most of them as infrakingdoms of his paraphyletic kingdom Protozoa. This is fairly recent, but papers written since generally seem to accept them, including ones like Baldauf (2003) and Adl et al. (2005) which have done a lot to promote their use. The main variation is whether the Chromista form a separate group, but that's appeared in more-than-five-kingdom systems since the '80s and has never been solidly rejected, so I think it's safe to use. Josh
Ok, it doesn't seem likely anyone is going to object to using unranked supergroups. Since users like Kupirijo and WeroTheGreat had already started adding them, and others like KP Botany have expressed concerns about using the paraphyletic kingdom, I'll start switching the protist articles to that system. Josh 07:09, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Cavalier-Smith treats these as ranked taxa, which is definitely a bit forward, but by now I think the supergroups themselves are mostly solid. A few editors have a lot of enthusiasm for them, which is why I wanted to switch to them, instead of letting a mix of phylogenetic-placed and kingdom-placed pages develop. But I guess I did sort of jump the gun here. Explaining alternative systems has often proven to be tricky, because it's not easy to find out what everyone uses, but I promise I'm not going to remove mention of the other systems. From the start, it's been very important to me that everything can be found in several ways, including old categories like algae, flagellates, etc. It's just our "primary" organization system I wanted to change. Josh 23:23, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
As several people have probably noticed, I have been changing the color of some of the taxoboxes. This was not to wreak vandalistic havoc on Wikipedia, but because I thought that having all non-animal-plant-fungi eukaryotes have khaki taxoboxes would be rather silly. If the majority feels all the "protists" should have khaki taxoboxes, then so be it, I will switch them back. However, I feel that since the three still accepted kindgoms have their own taxobox colors, then why not have the other supergroups, chromista, alveolata, rhizaria, etc. have their own taxobox colors, rather than be all lumped together just because they used to all be in kingdom protista. Werothegreat 21:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Do you want them khaki or the eukaryote brown? Werothegreat 16:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Animalia | pink |
---|---|
Plantae | lightgreen |
Fungi | lightblue |
Protista | khaki |
Bacteria | lightgrey |
Archaea | darkgray |
Virus | violet |
The background colors are based on this table, eukrayote brown is not listed, although I've seen it on the eukaryote page. Since Protist is more refined, and they were already khaki, they should just stay where they were, until a decision is made to do otherwise. KP Botany 17:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Cavalier-Smith treats them as the kingdom Plantae, as do some of the systems listed on red algae, so there isn't a sharp divide between Linnaean and other systems on that - just between different versions. I think it would probably be best to throw them in Plantae, but as you said there's no easy way to reach consensus - it seems to me that not enough people have expressed interest to decide between different preferences. Josh
Hi everyone,
I was wondering whether anyone had access to the "Zootaxa" journal (ISSN 1175-5334). I want to find out how to differentiate some species in the Mixophyes genus, and this is the only reference to work off, as the species are brand new. I am specifically looking for the paper: "Species boundaries among barred river frogs, Mixophyes (Anura: Myobatrachidae) in north-eastern Australia, with descriptions of two new species" 1228: 35-60 (2006). My uni doesn't have a subscription to this journal, so it makes it hard :).
If someone could read it, and right up somewhere how to tell the difference between species (morphologically), that would be great. The abstract says there are morphological differences. Thanks. -- liquidGhoul 11:53, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
There is now a proposed project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Veterinary Medicine to deal with matters of veterinary medicine, a subject which currently has disproportionately low content in wikipedia. Any wikipedia editors who have an interest in working on content related to the subject are encouraged to indicate as much there. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Would anyone be able to ID this fly pictured in Victoria, Australia and listed at: Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Image:Housefly white background.jpg? I think it may be Calliphora stygia, common brown blowfly or eastern goldenhaired blowfly, but it's not my field of expertise. [11] [12] [13]-- Melburnian 09:28, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
User:Werothegreat ( contribs) has been modifying some taxoboxes, changing their color and changing "regnum = Protista" to "domain = Eukaryota unranked_phylum = Rhizaria". This looks highly controversial to me but I'm underqualified to address this, please someone look in to this.-- Steven Fruitsmaak ( Reply) 18:31, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Is there already a policy regarding undescribed taxa, and, if not, should we have one? I have come across a couple of examples of articles about species with provisional names ( Tripteroides sp. No. 2 and Paramoera sp). They each deal with a good species and include a verifiable reference to back it up, but in each case the species has not been designated a name. I can see several ways of dealing with this (in order of increasing harshness):
I think I'm leaning towards option 2, but I'd like to hear what others think. -- Stemonitis 12:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I imported this to wikibooks this morning to make a how-to page, and my research hit on a lot of things not in the article (and in fact contrary to it insofar as the safety claims are concerned. At least two extension service websites and one "medical Q&A" website noted that the organism was indeed capable of infecting mammals, including humans. However, these references were made "in passing" on the Extension sites, and the EPA factsheet doesn't address the issue at all. There are references on the wikibooks page (the {{ Cite web}} template works the same way, so feel free to just copy them).
I still have a bunch of work to do in the wikibooks page, but I'll copy what I have so far into the edit history of the WP article (for the GFDL requirements), and maybe someone could have a look and see? I'd really just like some general pointers on how to re-incorporate additional research done on the wikibooks side back into the original wikipedia article as a matter of course, since I often come up with a lot of "encyclopedic" information along with the "how-to" stuff that I'm actually looking for. See the topic below too: would heavy-handed reorganisations following wikibooks standards be inappropriate for wikipedia?
Also, I'm wondering if someone with paid access to the New York Times could have a look at the article referenced for the potential use of B. bassiana for malarial mosquito control. In particular, I'd like to know if that article has any discussion of potential pathogenicity in humans. -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 14:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm building a gardening manual on wikibooks, and most of the pages are imported copies of wikipedia articles. When I get them onto the wikibooks page, I first add a substituted template that provides an organizational structure for the page (e.g., b:Template:Weedprof or b:Template:Biocontprof). They provide headers, hidden editor's notes, and automatically add non-substed templates as well (for us that would probably just be the taxobox in most cases, though it could add the nutritional templates for food crops as well).
Having done this 100 or so times now, I'm wondering if applying something similar to the wikipedia TOL articles might not be a good idea too. When I'm taking the articles apart and fitting the information into the templated structure, I've noticed that every article follows a different structure. Worse still, there's often a paragraph about one thing, then a sentence on the end of a paragraph further down the page that should be part of the first paragraph's structure (nonsequitors abound).
What I'd suggest is maybe something like the following:
In the wikibook, using these templates has helped give the book a consistent, "professional" feel, which I think is certainly something we should be aspiring to on wikipedia as well. In some cases I've also come back and edited the wp article as well if the structure was just really out of hand, but I'm wondering if implementing a "standard templatization" regime on wikipedia would also be helpful in doing a wide-ranging (and long term...this is time consuming) cleanup of the TOL areas. -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 14:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Templates have a way of getting fetishized around there; if an article is a three-line stub, the availability of an article template will result in the article having three lines of text plus a dozen headings with no content in any of them. It just tells readers that we've been spending time on adding window dressing rather than content, and according to Google, there's already plenty of websites with content-less ToLs :-/ . One possible way to approach here is to recommend the template as a step to getting a ToL article to featured status, but not for any article that has still got a ways to go. Stan 15:58, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
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Here are some tasks awaiting attention:
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Aren't there any pictures of Archaea? I've seen some in various locations (books, websites, etc.) but I haven't seen any on Wikipedia except for one of a thermophilic location on one of the more obscure archaea. I've also posted on the Archaea discussion page that a picture of an Archaea cell (like the bacteria cell picture on the bacteria page, the eukaryote cell picture on the eukaryote page) would considerably add to the article, especially since Archaea cells are very different from bacterial cells. Any thoughts? Werothegreat 12:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I have posted this on the deuteromycota page, and the fungi page, and now i'm bringing it here. The deuteromycota page needs a lot of work. Its creation was by User:Jaknouse, though for for some reason in the discussion it says that it was created by a 15 year old boy. This was the entirety of the discussion page before I added my comment for help:
"This Fungi is a division form of fungi, it uses sexual reproduction.it is more recentyl known as mitosporic fungi. the common forn of this fungi is a mushroom. the DNA based technology we can clarify the difference between other fungi. Fungi is mold and can be found on many things sunch as bread in he form of mold. this articel was written by a 15 year old boy."
The article needs work from an expert, or perhaps an entire rewrite. Yes, it is only the incertae sedis of kindgom fungi, but it is still a major division, listed on the taxobox of the kindgom fungi page.
Also, on a different note, the animal page has a very nice collage picture in its taxobox. Since the fungal kingdom contains more than mushrooms, wouldn't it be aestheticly pleasing if fungi also had such a collage? Thoughts? Comments? Rants? Werothegreat 22:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Something like this is what i meant: File:Fungus collage.jpg Werothegreat 00:36, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I suspect Clyb ( talk · contribs · logs) may be Brya. Those of you with more experience with Brya than me might like to check it out. Hesperian 11:45, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
I've added a bunch of other conservation status systems to the taxobox template. See Wikipedia:Conservation status and Taxobox usage for details (I moved the taxobox usage page too because the old super long name was bugging me). Anyway, for an e.g. see Banksia brownii. Enjoy. — Pengo talk · contribs 11:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
Been a while since I last posted here, but I've got two images of a damselfly I'd like to get identified. It was taken beside a river at Swifts Creek, Victoria, Australia in November 2006. Thanks for any help! --
Fir0002
07:08, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
Come up with another batch of photos I would appreciate help in identifying! --
Fir0002
04:44, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
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The first is the White-faced Heron, the rest I have to look up, I'll reply in a sec. -- liquidGhoul 04:52, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi again!
Back so soon you say? Yes well sorry but I'm not that great on biology.
Thanks again for your help you guys! -- Fir0002 04:40, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Took these yesterday, they were on a Black walnut ( Juglans nigra). The tree was also covered in Japanese honeysuckle ( Lonicera japonica), if that makes any difference.
Anyone wanna take a stab? -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 13:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
A trivial but escalating edit war is in process here, and I unfortunately am a participant. Another editor is Americanizing the spelling of colour on the basis of what appears to me to be a made-up policy. It's getting a bit unpleasant on both sides, and any constructive intervention would be welcome. jimfbleak 15:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English plainly states
The policy does not refer to a unique tie; merely to a strong tie. The population of cardinals is higher in the United States than in any other anglophonic nation. — SlamDiego 16:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Could interested people please comment on the renaming/deletion of some illogical categories recently added for rats and mice, see rat breeds and mice breeds here. Thanks. -- Peta 22:38, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi all, DYK there are no fungal Featured Articles on wikipedia at all? I've modelled this on the dinosaur collaboration which has yielded a few FAs. Please have a look and cast your vote and we'll try a real concerted attempt at an FA. Link here...... Fungi Collaboration
(hope I got all the templates right...) cheers Cas Liber 10:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I think the tag saying the article does not cite its sources isn't needed anymore, as the article has a section labeled "References." Maybe someone higher up could remove the tag? Werothegreat 12:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
The category Tree of life is up for deletion. [14] It doesn't appear to be being used properly, so maybe it should be deleted, but it would be nice to have a coherent evaluation of its value, proper usage, and alternative titles if necessary. KP Botany 02:58, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm still confused about what you want the Tree of life category to be. What categories will it contain, and what categories will it be in? Since everyone seems to agree that it's a good idea, I'm going to go ahead and create the Organisms cat and fill it properly-- ragesoss 05:23, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I will be updating the Carnivora taxa articles shortly, to match the listing in MSW3. I have previously updated many of the other mammalian orders in this way. However, I see there is plenty of disagreement in the taxonomy. I will try to use a gentle touch in editing the articles. However I thought it prudent to post here my intentions. You can also see the MSW3 taxonomy at User:UtherSRG/Carnivora. - UtherSRG (talk) 00:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
I took a photo which seems to match the description of Sydney rock oyster. If anyone knows about these things, could they look at the photo I added and try and confirm it? Thanks. Stevage 00:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
If i wanted to create an infobox which was similar to another infobox, do i need to list it somewhere? It will only be a variation of that original infobox. Simply south 20:35, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Anyone have an idea what this is? They kind of look like very small pippies, they were found on the beach and are 3-4mm long. I have no idea what they are attached to, it kind of looks like plastic, but could be biological (calcium carbonate?). Thanks. -- liquidGhoul 06:17, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
The amount and variety of lifeforms we know of is simply staggering. Having said that, we actually don't have all that many projects out there extant to deal with all of them. Right now, this is what we've got:
and that's it. Personally, I am far from being expert in this field, but I think that there are a lot of life forms which do not yet have any organized project dealing with them. On that basis, I would like to encourage anyone who believes that there is a significant number of articles dealing with specific life forms out there to propose a project dealing with them at
Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals and see if there is sufficient interest in such a project to create one. Thank you for your attention.
Badbilltucker
21:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
This prob doesn't quite fit here but there didn't appear to be a more suitable place to ask this - do people feel that it would be useful to add a page listing various (often technical) terms describing animal lifestyles and habitats? I'm thinking about words like fossorial, lacrustine, piscivorous, crepuscular, graviportal, etc. Some of these have stubs but quite a few don't. I was thinking of keeping it simple and elegant, something like...
Will obviously include relevant wl and could include an example animal for each term. I'm happy to use different format. Yays or nays anyone? Secret Squïrrel 03:23, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Cat has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 22:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Having trouble identifying this limidae species. I took this picture in Sulawesi, Indonesia. This fellow was almost a meter wide and it had electric sparks flashing on its mantle. A google search for "electric fire clam" provides video footage of the electric sparks. Would appreciate if anyone could help with the identity. And of course if anyone would like a go at an article of this species, that would be great too.
P.S. I posted this on Marine Life Portal discussion page December 16th, but didn't get an answer. So trying my luck here.
Jnpet
06:52, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
How should I title an article about the flora of a region? Flora of California seemed obvious, but apparently not. So, in general, what is used? KP Botany 00:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I think that the water mould article needs some work. In its taxobox, it lists seven orders, only four of which I have actually found in other sources, and only two of those actually have articles to go with them. Could some with experience in Chromistan taxonomy do some editing to this article and its sub-articles? Werothegreat 14:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_February_3#Category:Species_of_Wolf - UtherSRG (talk) 14:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
The kelp genus Nereocystis contains only one species, Nereocystis luetkeana, and yet the genus and the species have seperate pages. I think that it would function better as a single page, as both pages are essentially giving the same information. I don't know how I would go about merging the pages, so could someone higher up lend a hand if they agree with me? Werothegreat 21:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Found this page Wikipedia:Expert retention and feel that more folks here should add their comments. Shyamal 06:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
The article "under construction", "Time range of Hexanchiformes species", which was deleted on February 9th without previous discussion, is the only on-line source I found for Mesozoic frilled-shark species ( Chlamydoselachus—the article is still on-line in several WP clones). It wasn't suitable for the article namespace, since not only that it contained non-canonical terms like "Cretacic" instead of Cretaceous, etc., but, above all, it was completely lacking references. But I think it should be restored in a user's namespace (I don't know whodunnit). -- Hämbörger 16:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I've brought up a request about putting the chromosome number into the Template:Taxobox. If you would like to comment, please direct your comments here − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 07:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
If you go to this site, http://www.biology-direct.com/content/1/1/19, you will find a paper Mr C-S published in July of last year. I didn't understand most of it, but what I did understand really changed my views on a 3-domain system and the monophyletic-ness of Bacteria. Take a look. Werothegreat 17:11, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Someone please revert User:Influencey on monkey. - UtherSRG (talk) 20:26, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
I started an article a while back, Postelsia, and I'd like some tips on how I could improve it. This is the first article I've started all by myself, and it's kind of hard to judge your own work. I would really like to improve it enough to be a good article, and maybe even that most coveted of prizes, featured article status. Any tips? Comments? Things I did absolutely wrong? Werothegreat 20:16, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
The section on common names doesn't say anything about their capitalisation - I prefer "Neon Tetra" to "neon tetra" (and to the article name " Neon tetra") and note that. elsewhere Little Grebe (for example) is capitalised. Is there a standard? Andy Mabbett 22:33, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
and
(Western Cape, SA). Also I have an image of an huge Outeniqua Yellowwood, Podoarpus falcatus, but I don't know where to use it. jimfbleak 13:10, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm not at all an entomologist, but the beetle looks like some sort of tock tock, family Tenebrionidae. I believe they are the ones that acquire moisture as dew on their backs. -- Aranae 00:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
The right-hand picture is a juvenile grasshopper. I'm not an entomologist either, so don't ask for the genus, let alone the species. Werothegreat 16:55, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Please be aware of the proposed Species microformat, particularly in relation to taxoboxes. Comments welcome here or on the wiki at that link. Andy Mabbett 15:28, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Project participants might find iSepcies, a species search engine, useful. Andy Mabbett 16:34, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I found these old photos from uni, from when i'd jammed my old point-and-shoot camera against the microscope eyepiece and got some surprising results. Now I need help with what they are. The left image i'm pretty sure is some sort of Penicillium sp., the right is some sort of fungus, but I don't know beyond that. Any help? — Pengo 06:22, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
There's a proposal at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_March_8#Category:Fauna_of_Europe_subcategories to merge all 35 categories like "Fauna of Estonia", "Fauna of Spain", etc., to just "Fauna of Europe". This is a pilot to get rid of all geographical fauna categories for countries and smaller regions, replacing them with lists. If you have an opinion on this, you might want to vote. — JerryFriedman 23:01, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Archives for WT:TOL | ||
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1 | 2002-07 – 2003-12 | Article names |
2 | 2003-11 – 2004-02 | Taxoboxes |
3 | 2004-02 | Taxoboxes |
4 | 2004-02 – 2004-08 | Bold taxa; taxonomy |
5 | 2004-03 – 2004-04 | Taxonomy; photos; range maps |
6 | 2005-04 – 2004-06 | Capitalization; authorities; mammals |
7 | 2004-06 – 2004-08 | Creationism; parens; common names |
8 | 2004-05 – 2004-08 | Templates; †extinct; common names |
9 | 2004-05 – 2004-08 | Categories; taxoboxes |
10 | 2004-08 – 2004-12 | Categories; authorities; domains; Wikispecies; ranks; G. species; capitalization; Common Names |
11 | 2004-11 – 2005-05 | Capitalization; common names; categories; L.; authorities; algae; cultivars |
12 | 2005-03 – 2005-05 | Ranks; common names |
13 | 2005-05 – 2005-06 | Hybrids; taxobox format; cultivars |
14 | 2005-06 – 2005-07 | Categories; food plants; identification; Capitalization |
15 | 2005-07 – 2005-09 | Synonyms; types; authorities; status; identification |
16 | 2005-09 – 2005-12 | Paleontological ranges; Rosopsida; Taxobox redesign; identification |
17 | 2005-12 – 2006-04 | Taxobox redesign; identification; APG; common names; capitalization |
18 | 2006-04 – 2006-10 | Categorization; include in references; snakes; range maps; seasonality graph; common names; bioregions; brya; |
19 | 2006-10 – 2007-03 | various |
20 | 2007-03 – 2007-06 | various |
21 | 2007-06 (Next 64 Kb) | various |
22 | (Next 64 Kb) | various |
23 | (Next 64 Kb) | various |
24 | (Next 64 Kb) | various |
Did i once see a way to write in a bit of code and wikipedia would do some wizzy work and produce a taxonomy tree? Something similar to the <math> function. Did i see this, or was it just an experimental thing? chris_huh 18:38, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
All US "fauna by state" categories have been nominated for deletion. I think this would be of interest.
I am trying to get a discussion going on the Flora of <region>/Forna of <region>/Biora of <region> caregories.
Please comment on the move and reversion jimfbleak 05:49, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
What should one do with taxoboxes for groups where their classification is still not well agreed upon, such as whether or not Rhodophyta (and Glaucophyta) should be separated from the other protists and put with the plants? It's not exactly a new concept for the Rhodophyta, but the taxoboxes leave no allowance for it, and it is one of the issues people take strong stands on, whether the Rhodophyta are protists or plants. What can be done so that the taxobox reflects the level of ambiguity in the taxonomic placement? Can the boxes have a color slash, khaki above, green below? Should they reflect Wikipedia's current classification system--although I think the one article listed on the protist page does classify Rhodophyta with the plants, not with the protists? Should it be majority rules as primary and the secondary classification within the article? Can the boxes be stacked so both are represented by taxoboxes?
This issue should also be addressed with Angiosperm taxonomy--as has been brought up before. If Wikipedia is chosing APG II as the primary classification, certain groups should not be used in the taxoboxes.
Were these issues discussed and decided before?
KP Botany 00:20, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
For most of the protists and algae, the taxonomy is really variable. The problem with saying "| regnum = Plantae / Protista" is that it implies the rest of the classification is less controversial, but although a general outline has taken shape, a lot of aspects vary from author to author. Thus the taxoboxes should really be considered representative systems, since they don't have room to explain the others. In fact, in most cases the different possibilities aren't even discussed in the articles. They should be, but it's really hard to find good information on them, as most people just pick one system and stick with it.
The question of whether red and green algae should be considered plants has come up before. Really, it depends on what the currently favored classification is, which is difficult to tell. Reading journal articles about protists, I think it's better to call them plants; but few of these worry about what counts as a kingdom, except Cavalier-Smith, and his breakdown is not entirely standard (e.g. he argues in favor of paraphyletic groups, and for that matter does not use Protista at all). Josh 05:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
The color of the Kingdom It seems to me that if we are forced to change information, ie include information that is not accurate enough or too much in conflict, to meet the limited confines of the taxobox, it's the taxobox that must change, not what is included in the article--if we conform the information to the taxobox we are doing OR or inserting our POV. How about no color and a note when the kingdom is in dispute? I had not thought of this, but once TeunSpaans said it, although it irks me as an obsessive classifier, it seems the method least likely to misinform or confuse the user, or demand contortions of the editor, while indicating to both the need to look further in the article for more information as to why this is not classified at the kingdom level, namely scientists differ in how they define the kingdoms. We could also just make the color for the questionable placements protist/plantae be orange or something.
Also, please note, it is not necessarily in conflict on most classifications to say that something is both a plant and a protist, because the former is a monophyletic clade, but the latter is simply a grouping on convenience, usually, but not always, everything that isn't in one of the other groups.
I would still like to suggest that the question marks in taxoboxes be done away with as a link to more information about the taxobox. They have a meaning, as far as I know, in the nomenclatural codes for organisms, namely a level of uncertainty as to the correct placement, depending upon their location in the organism's name. Taxoboxes now simply indicate that all kingdom level classifications are in question. It could be an asterisk or a little 'i' like someone earlier suggested, but in this instance it really can't be a question mark. However, a non-colored box with a question mark in it, indicating uncertainty as to kingdom and linking to a discussion within the article of this uncertainty would be useful.
I think the taxoboxes are useful in giving information at a glance. However, I don't think they should be allowed to misinform at a glance, and others may be right that multiple taxoboxes decreases their usability. Not including misinformation, by removing the color, and tying the issue to a discussion in the text, would erase this issue, without interfering with the usefulness of taxoboxes. KP Botany 18:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
|regnum=[[Rhodophyta#Taxonomy|Disputed]]
This option could be implemented without a taxobox change, only the colour would be suggestive of a kingdom, but adapting the taxobox would be neater.
TeunSpaans
19:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Except the kingdom is not especially disputable. For instance, look at the two classifications listed on red algae; they're similar, but one has added new classes and changed some of the ranks. What phylum Cyanidiophyceae gets is as disputed as its kingdom. And yet the relationships are the same, and I'd hesitate to leave its entire position as uncertain, when only the ranks of the groups are. (Incidentally, if most specialists working in red algae consider them plants, maybe we should follow them without worrying how more encompassing systems treat them).
Also, an explanation about the kingdoms should be given on green algae, but if we footnote each variation in classifiction in each page about each genus, we're going to have a very difficult time adjusting and maintaining it. Maybe a better idea would be to change the link from "scientific classification" to something like "typical classification", to emphasize that some authors deviate from it. It would be easy enough to add a flag to do that, like we do for viruses. The question would then be at what point we stop using it - for instead, is APG solid enough that we can treat it as authoritative, and what about the minor variations for mammal orders? Josh 19:37, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is an international organisation that is working to make the world's biodiversity data accessible anywhere in the world.
03:45, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I cited AlgaeBase, GBIF, and ITIS. I searched all three databases on Ulva lactuca, Chondrus crispus, and Pylaiella. In the case of AlgaeBase, I clicked on "taxonomy" for each alga that I looked up in order to find the Kingdom classification. I brought this matter up again specifically because in most cases it is easy to find sources that disagree on taxonomies. I suggest that for classification purposes only we rely primarily upon a limited set of very widely recognized databases rather than citing individual journal articles or textbooks. I very specifically want to avoid arguments of citing those kinds of sources back and forth because I see our role here as being that of encyclopedists trying to condense and explain large expanses of information - not as research scientists trying to explain particular findings to answer particular questions.
You have persuaded me that GBIF may be even more widely recognized an authority than ITIS is. Please note that Kingdom Chromista is not synonymous with Kingdom Protista. And AlgaeBase and GBIF put Chlorophyta and Rhodophyta within Kingdom Plantae.
Therefore, whom I am asking everyone to agree with in placing all of the algae in either Plantae or Chromista (in the case of Phaeophyta) is GBIF. As you point out, in the case of algae, GBIF relies upon AlgaeBase. I don't see anything wrong with AlgaeBase as an ultimate source for algae classification. Furthermore, I suggest that reliance upon GBIF as the main source for taxonomic classifications would work very well for all lifeforms on Wikipedia (not just algae). Other sources with conflicting conclusions may well be worth presenting in some cases in addition to the GBIF classifications, which I suggest should determine all of the taxoboxes. Peter 05:29, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
Should we be in the business of picking one classification scheme as authoritative? That seems to me to be OR. Taxoboxes can be a problem for taxa whose classification remains unsettled, but we can only reflect the state of knowledge and opinion in a field, not impose our interpretation of what is correct. My impression is that Protista is a shifting grabbag of the leftovers of Eukaria, subject to redefinition everytime someone proposes a new monophyletic clade. [1] -- Donald Albury 11:49, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
This talk page has been archived. Feel free to reintroduce any topic that needs more discussion. Also, someone else needs to list the topics of that archive in the archive TOC. pschemp | talk 14:42, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Citing temtbooks at each other seems, shall we say, a little medieval? Majority vote has nothing to do with it, either of people or of textbooks. The best evidence for the scientific consensus is recent review articles in peer-reviewed journals, or recent articles themselves if they give a good background.
The deepest divergences in land plants inferred from phylogenomic evidence PNAS 2006 103: 15511-15516; published online before print October 9 2006, 10.1073/pnas.0603335103 [not open access, unfortunately, except for the abstract, but will be in 6 months. Perhaps we should add others to this page as they appear. I will, but I'm not going to do it retrospectively. DGG 02:05, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 23:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
I took this ptoto in Turkey this year, tr:Image:Resim14.jpg, but don't know their species name. Can anyone help on this? Thanks -- Ugur Basak 11:18, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
Taxoboxes are a nice navigation interface, but they are still purely textual and lack a "graphical" component for orientation ; it would be nice to have something maybe in the form of a tree, showing where a given group is located relative to the global tree (maybe showing the sister nodes at each parent node) or at least w.r.t. to the parent and child nodes, e.g.
Genus Balaenoptera Genus Megaptera \ / \ / \/ Family Balaenopteridae Family2 Family3 ... \ | / \ | / \ | / \|/ Mysticeti Suborder2 ... \ / \ / \/
— MFH: Talk 17:53, 27 October 2006 (UTC)
While not a much more pratical than generating images of varation of the family tree templates could be made to do this. THey currently woudl make the articles look a bit messey unless they were done as templates, and they take a bi of time to do by hand. However since what we need here can be a lot less flexable than the family tree templates It is possible that we could do away with the internal formatting and just provide the names. We could with relative ease create a template that simply took 14 inputs and formatted them into a tree, with one of them bolded or some such. The tree in the pimage above would look something like this:
Hominoidea | Superfamily | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hominidae | Hylobatidae | Family | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Homininae | Ponginae | Subfamily | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hominini | Gorillini | Tribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Homo | Pan | Gorilla | Pongo | Hylobates | Genus | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
It is also worth noting that it woudl not have to be this big. We could drop the borders and move all of the cells twards eachother, and if we built some slightly diffrent images we could compress it vertically as well, and get it to close to the same size as the image above. Dalf | Talk 23:38, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think taxoboxes really have enough room for legible cladograms, but they'd be great additions to the article texts. If the developers are OK with nesting template arguments, that might be a simpler and more flexible way to write them. Here's a quick example based on the drawing code from the family tree templates; it would still need some polishing, but is it a step in the right direction? Josh
Euglenids |
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The problem with the above two examples is that the data used is too clean. It's all nice and binary; each node has 0 or 2 children. This is not always the case. Simple binary trees are often easily understood through less graphical means, but the cases where the phylogeny is not so well defined (and the resulting trees have more than 2 branches from a node) are the ones that really need to be described graphically. For examples, take a look at the first and last images on Hominoidea#History_of_hominoid_taxonomy, or just the Strepsirrhini taxonomy, where we don't know which of the three infraorders is sister to the other two. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Compare and contrast:
Euarchontoglires ├─ Glires │ ├─rodents ( Rodentia) │ └─rabbits, hares, pikas ( Lagomorpha) └─ Euarchonta ├─treeshrews ( Scandentia) └─N.N. ├─flying lemurs ( Dermoptera) └─N.N. ├─† Plesiadapiformes └─primates (Primates)
Euarchontoglires | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Glires | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Rodentia (rodents) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Lagomorpha (rabbits, hares, pikas) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Euarchonta | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Scandentia (treeshrews) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Dermoptera (flying lemurs) | |||||||||||||||||||||||
† Plesiadapiformes | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Primates | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Euarchontoglires |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
- UtherSRG (talk) 18:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Two answers. KP, the diagram on the French page is expandable because it's an image, and I'm not sure you can do the same thing with templates. We could just use images, but the downside is we'd need a separate file for each article and they wouldn't be directly editable. Uther, it's not too difficult to make templates allow ternary or more complex nodes, as below. Josh
Arthropoda |
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I continue adapting the Euarchontoglires trees above, to get a feel for things. Josh, is there a way to pass in a style argument the way the familytree accetps one? I'm really starting to like your implementation, but I want some control over sizing. Sometimes we'll want the larger text (such as for smaller trees), while other times it would be most handy to have the smaller font. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
I'd also suggest that if there's any way that terminal taxa could line up, that would be preferred. As it is, these trees look like they are attempting to be phylograms or even chronograms with certain taxa implied to be extinct fossil taxa. -- Aranae 22:06, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
How about doing them as .png diagrams like this one (right)? A bit more robust with respect to editing (and even more, vandalism), too, as the above examples would be very difficult for a casual editor to understand on the edit page - MPF 21:01, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
I added a cladogram to the Amborellaceae article, just an image, but I will try to use this code to make it a set of clickable links. Anyone want to jump ahead and do it for me, would be fine by me. It needs a branch for angiosperms as a whole, though. KP Botany 01:21, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
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Wow that's big.... Some of hhe hugeness is because of it tries to keep boxes somewhat square, and so text wraps instead of getting pushed to the right. Even a non-breaking space is forced to break. - UtherSRG (talk) 13:06, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
In the light of discussion elsewhere regarding geographical categories for flora and fauna, I think that guidance along the following lines may be appropriate. [4] With consensus, this would be an addition to the Category subheading on the project page. [5]
Geographical categories help readers find species by location. Regional categories are preferred over a large numbers of smaller categories. For example, country/state/province categories are useful for narrow endemic species, but don't add a country/state/province category if the species occurs in more than 4 or 5 countries/states/provinces; in those cases use larger regional categories (so a widespread species like Red Fox would be in Category:Fauna of the United States and Category:Mammals of Europe, but not in Category:Fauna of West Virginia or Category:Fauna of Lombardy). In some cases, a ecoregion category such as Piney Woods forests may be more appropriate than a country/state/province. The presence of a regional category makes the its subcategories unnecessary. The latter should be removed to avoid page clutter. [6]
-- Walter Siegmund (talk) 17:15, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Sounds like a great idea, but keep specific cats for those items that are indeed extremely localized...though, in most cases, this is rare. Ecoregions for such places as the United States are generally well accepted as are those for many other larger counties. We need to be careful to not have a supercategory such as Category:Fauna of the United States become filled with ten thousand articles. I recommend we do either what Wsiegmund suggests by using ecoregions or figure out a better way to create categories so they are based on a regional structure...ie: Category:Fauna of the U.S. Pacific Northwest , etc.-- MONGO 07:04, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
The more I think about this, the more I think that categories may be the wrong way to handle it. Part of what we are trying to do is indicate range. Categories by political units doesn't work well for that most of the time, and categorizing by ecoregions isn't much better. (Another element in the current system is 'biota chauvinism', look at how many species our country/state/whatever has.) I have no clear idea of how to do this, but shouldn't we be looking at the possibility of developing range maps that provide two-way access; links to political units and ecoregions that the species range extends to, and links from political units and ecoregions to species with ranges falling in those areas. And yes, I understand that the development effort may be too much, and that maintenance of such a system might be too much, but can we kick the idea around a little bit? -- Donald Albury 13:27, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
I think this whole project is being approached rather idealisticly and will therefore produce very little in the way of substance. You need to be far more systematic. The problem is that many of the enthusiasts involved in this geography project have no idea of the numbers involved. We want categories to remain small, right? Well, then why do people keep adding category tags like "Reptiles of Africa" to the articles that I'm working on? These people have no clue just how big such a broad category is likely to become. In such cases, it would have been so much better to create a number of more specific subcategories first and only to have added those tags to the articles. However, that requires foresight and thus knowledge of the subject. I would therefore like to suggest that these people simply not bother unless they first do the necessary research. After all, recategorizing hundreds articles will be tough enough, but thousands? -- Jwinius 15:53, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
Mixed-breed dog is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy ( Talk) 23:55, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
I know these are pine sawflies, but I don't know whether they're the European pine sawfly or the red-headed pine sawfly. Anyone know which? -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 12:46, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi, this seems to match the white form of Neodiprion lecontei on this page. Hope this helps Richard Barlow 15:21, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I think the taxabox is great! Just one thing though. The link leading to this page is in a form of a question mark (?) after the common name. I've had a couple of instances where first time readers of a Wikipedia article has asked me if the question mark indicates if the identity of the species pictured was in question. This seems to be especially confusing where the common name of a species is long and the question mark appears to be attached to the common name, as in this example. The taxabox info link is important, but I'd like to suggest either that it be moved to a different location in the taxabox and/or change the symbol. Instead of a ?, perhaps an i in a circle? Jnpet 05:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
Jnpet 06:42, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
ⓘExample | ||
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![]() Just a random image
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Scientific classification | ||
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Problem with plain 'i' It disappears on my new browser, I think it needs to be the circled one, maybe an asterisk? The original user friendly goals of the taxobox are met, imo, but some folks probably want more details. I didn't really think of that, that's it is fairly self-explanatory. KP Botany 23:08, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I've been finding a few minor copyvios in plant pathology articles (like Phytoplasma), involving word-for-word inclusion of materials from the Encyclopedia of Plant Pathology. It's usually just a sentence or two... should I just add the book as a source? I just don't see why someone would bother typing something in without adding the citation (citations only improve the articles, right?). Should I bother with using <ref> tage, or just add it to the bottom? -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 10:51, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I keep running across articles on plants and fungi that either use "corrective" common names for organisms, or couch regional common names in phrases such as "mistakenly called", "misleadingly called", etc.
The most recent example I've come across was in the Gymnosporangium article, where the common name "Cedar-apple rust" (and several other cedar-other rusts) were changed to "Juniper-apple rust". This was presumably done because the telial host of the fungus is in fact a species of Juniper, (as opposed to Cedrus), but the name of the rust is "Cedar-apple rust", and the common name of the most commonly implicated "cedar" ( Juniperus virginiana) is "Eastern Red Cedar" (only a botanist or horticulturist would understand what you mean by "Eastern Juniper"... the term is not used).
It's really frustrating to go in to work on an article, only to have to waste time undoing this sort of thing.
I have discussed this a few times with the user who routinely makes these changes, and he feels strongly that there are "proper" and "improper" common names for plants. I, on the other hand, feel strongly that common names are part of the English language, and can't be "proper" or "improper", but rather are just words used to describe things that are found in the environment. Just as "Lorry", "Truck", and "Semi" are all names for the same thing, each just as proper as the other when used in one region or another, so are the various names for plants, animals, fungi, etc. The English language is wonderfully diverse, and an english encyclopedia should describe (from a neutral point of view) how the language is used, and discuss the things that English words are used for. It's not meant to be used as a tool for codifying the language, but rather a description of what the language is, how it describes the world, and above all what the things in the world are, whatever they're called.-- SB_Johnny| talk| books 11:08, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Would there be much interest in seeing a large number of species articles being generated from the information on the IUCN red list. The generated articles would contain a taxobox with conservation status, a reference (to the red list), a stub notice, a category, and very little actual text. Example: Apron Ray.
I think populating the encyclopedia this way would give a good starting point for a great many entries, and make it easier for people looking to start articles on a species.
I'm quite time poor at the moment but am interested in doing this. The above example was hand made and not generated, but it would not be very difficult to generate such articles.
Thoughts? — Pengo talk · contribs 04:39, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Categories could be chosen by finding the next higher taxon that already has a category.. I guess a new category could be created if there's a bunch of species (4 or more?) with the same genus or family. Common names are listed in the database, so for animals the first one listed would be put into Title Case and used (admitadly they're not all unique names. I guess I'd have to check for that). Alternatively we could stick to generating articles with binomial names and let someone choosing a name simply move the article? I wouldn't create an article if the any of the common names or binomial synonyms already exist.
By the way, when I ran Beastie Bot in June there were 33827 binomial names found in the red list (including least concern) that weren't found as wikipedia articles. So a bit less than that number would be a ballpark figure for how many articles might get created. — Pengo talk · contribs 15:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
This is a new proposed deletion policy that should interest ToL contributors. Many articles, especially about species as diverse as Moray eel or Tongue Orchid, lack references or sources and will fall under this speedy deletion policy if it gets adopted. Consequences could be enormous. We should follow this discussion closely and participate in it to discuss the consequences. JoJan 13:19, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Is there any naming standard for breeds/varieties? I see that list of breeds of cattle has X (cattle), X cattle, and X Cattle. List of breeds of horses also has all three. List of breeds of dogs is mainly X Dog with a few X (dog). Is there any standard? Rmhermen 14:57, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Folk, the list of placental mammals is up for deletion. - UtherSRG (talk) 10:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
There is currently a barnstar proposal at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals#Wildlife Barnstar for a barnstar which would be available for use for this project. Please feel free to visit the page and make any comments you see fit. Badbilltucker 15:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Over the past few weeks I've transwikied some ToL pages that had contained how to sections, all are now on wikibooks and will be incorporated into other books (mostly b:Animal Care). The howto sections should probably be removed now, if anyone's interested in helping with the cleanup:
I'll mostly be doing the cleanup on the wikibooks side, if anyone wants to help dewikify the wikibooks versions, that would be great! -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 11:55, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Stemonitis and I had the idea of linking the year of description inside a taxobox like this: [[Species described in <year>|<year>]]. This would be a nice feature if one wanted for example to check out what other species were described in the same year. right now, when the year is just linked like this: [[<year>]], this is not really useful, because it will link to a very long list of events that are normally not interesting to the user following the link. Alternatively, this could be implemented as categories, analogous to Category:People born in <year>. If this feature would be deemed useful, it would probably be best to let a bot do the work of changing the existing taxoboxes. Alternatively, or additionally, there could be an extra optional field like binomial_authority_year, but that would lead to problems when first describers stand in parentheses. -- Sarefo 01:25, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Just to see what this would look like, I've created two lists from the latest database dump, for two years chosen completely at random. See User:Eugene van der Pijll/Animal species described in 1758 and User:Eugene van der Pijll/Animal species described in 2006 for the results. (Note, these are just the raw output of a simple script; the format of the output can still be improved.) Eugène van der Pijll 14:05, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
It's a simple concept with no simple solution. Do you want only to link for species themselves, or for higher taxa as well? Both get a year in the descriptor, and if you only wnat one and not the other, that will confuse editors. Other the other hand, if you utilize a category ([[:Category:Taxa erected in <year>|<year>]]) you can get a nice complete picture, but the listing won't be in any particular order. *shrugs* I'd like to see something done with the year, but I'm torn between the pros and cons of all the options. - UtherSRG 16:40, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I know this has been brought up a lot, but it has gotten nowhere, and I think I have come up with a solution which should work. I would like to create a guideline, which would be kept under the TOL project. If we create a guideline, it would make it muich easier to move, merge and delete articles in quicker time, and clean up this whole mess much quicker. It would go along the lines of:
"Categories related to the flora and fauna of a region should should be based on the common grouping of that region used by zoological/botanical publications. For example, if it is common to seperate a region based on political boundries (as in parts of Europe), categories should be seperated by countries. If it is common to seperate regions based on geographic features (such as New Guinea), categories should be seperated by geographic region."
I wouldn't like to apply this guideline to articles, as it would be too restrctive, and I don't particularly agree with it. I think the main arguments that occured with this discussion occured because people of different countries were relating it to their country/region. As an Australian, it could go either way, but Americans seem to prefer the use of political boundaries. The reason to have this, is that there are many regions which are represented by more than one category, and it creates over-categorisation, and under-population of some articles/categories. Thanks. -- liquidGhoul 13:34, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
There is an inconsistency over Sugarbird (Promeropidae) that needs resolving. The family is categorized as Passerida, but listed under the Corvida page. One of these is clearly wrong, but I don't know which. Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask the question. JohnCastle 21:48, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Beginning cross-post.
End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.
Currently there are three automatically added categories for conservation statuses:
These are automatically added, e.g. when status = EN. They can currently be turned off on an article-by-article basis with "|category=off" or something like that.
I'd like to stop all of these categories from being automatically added, so they can be controlled more easily on an article-by-article basis. There are two or three problems:
The main questions, if people are happy with the overall change, are:
— Pengo talk · contribs 11:01, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Can somebody either merger synonym (botany) and synonym (zoology) or work a way to switch between them in the taxobox? Because it is now a disambiguation page (as it should have been, might I add), and the previous state was not much better anyway. Circeus 18:29, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I was excited to see the topic, but now I'm wondering if I misunderstood. I'm wondering if maybe we could also list binomial synonyms in the taxobox as well? I think it comes up in botany more than in zoology, but in florae like An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States and Canada, there are often numerous sysnonymous binomials listed, and I think it would be a good addition to our taxoboxes. This would be particularly valuable for the plants that have different binomials in "horticultural" vs. "plant taxonomical" parlances, as well as giving the search engine something to grab at if someone were reading an old book that uses deprecated names.
I guess the problem with this is that it would require a lot of new fields if there were a lot of synonyms, though it could be kept to a minumum if we used piped links to authorities rather than separate fields for them. -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 14:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I was wondering what people here think about dropping the kingdom Protista, and treating them directly as basal eukaryotes. When we started not enough was known about their relationships to make that really practical, but now they most of them could be arranged in terms of a few unranked supergroups, following current systems like Adl et al. I know we normally prefer ranked taxa, but recently enough editors have been trying to move towards a clade-based system that it has made the current organization hard to maintain.
We wouldn't have to change other kingdoms, and could keep using lower ranks from phyla on down. The new organization would then look something like this:
If people support this, I'd be happy to adjust all protist articles, taxoboxes, and categories as necessary. Josh 03:49, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
The newer ones come from Cavalier-Smith (2002), who treats most of them as infrakingdoms of his paraphyletic kingdom Protozoa. This is fairly recent, but papers written since generally seem to accept them, including ones like Baldauf (2003) and Adl et al. (2005) which have done a lot to promote their use. The main variation is whether the Chromista form a separate group, but that's appeared in more-than-five-kingdom systems since the '80s and has never been solidly rejected, so I think it's safe to use. Josh
Ok, it doesn't seem likely anyone is going to object to using unranked supergroups. Since users like Kupirijo and WeroTheGreat had already started adding them, and others like KP Botany have expressed concerns about using the paraphyletic kingdom, I'll start switching the protist articles to that system. Josh 07:09, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Cavalier-Smith treats these as ranked taxa, which is definitely a bit forward, but by now I think the supergroups themselves are mostly solid. A few editors have a lot of enthusiasm for them, which is why I wanted to switch to them, instead of letting a mix of phylogenetic-placed and kingdom-placed pages develop. But I guess I did sort of jump the gun here. Explaining alternative systems has often proven to be tricky, because it's not easy to find out what everyone uses, but I promise I'm not going to remove mention of the other systems. From the start, it's been very important to me that everything can be found in several ways, including old categories like algae, flagellates, etc. It's just our "primary" organization system I wanted to change. Josh 23:23, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
As several people have probably noticed, I have been changing the color of some of the taxoboxes. This was not to wreak vandalistic havoc on Wikipedia, but because I thought that having all non-animal-plant-fungi eukaryotes have khaki taxoboxes would be rather silly. If the majority feels all the "protists" should have khaki taxoboxes, then so be it, I will switch them back. However, I feel that since the three still accepted kindgoms have their own taxobox colors, then why not have the other supergroups, chromista, alveolata, rhizaria, etc. have their own taxobox colors, rather than be all lumped together just because they used to all be in kingdom protista. Werothegreat 21:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Do you want them khaki or the eukaryote brown? Werothegreat 16:15, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Animalia | pink |
---|---|
Plantae | lightgreen |
Fungi | lightblue |
Protista | khaki |
Bacteria | lightgrey |
Archaea | darkgray |
Virus | violet |
The background colors are based on this table, eukrayote brown is not listed, although I've seen it on the eukaryote page. Since Protist is more refined, and they were already khaki, they should just stay where they were, until a decision is made to do otherwise. KP Botany 17:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
Cavalier-Smith treats them as the kingdom Plantae, as do some of the systems listed on red algae, so there isn't a sharp divide between Linnaean and other systems on that - just between different versions. I think it would probably be best to throw them in Plantae, but as you said there's no easy way to reach consensus - it seems to me that not enough people have expressed interest to decide between different preferences. Josh
Hi everyone,
I was wondering whether anyone had access to the "Zootaxa" journal (ISSN 1175-5334). I want to find out how to differentiate some species in the Mixophyes genus, and this is the only reference to work off, as the species are brand new. I am specifically looking for the paper: "Species boundaries among barred river frogs, Mixophyes (Anura: Myobatrachidae) in north-eastern Australia, with descriptions of two new species" 1228: 35-60 (2006). My uni doesn't have a subscription to this journal, so it makes it hard :).
If someone could read it, and right up somewhere how to tell the difference between species (morphologically), that would be great. The abstract says there are morphological differences. Thanks. -- liquidGhoul 11:53, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
There is now a proposed project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Veterinary Medicine to deal with matters of veterinary medicine, a subject which currently has disproportionately low content in wikipedia. Any wikipedia editors who have an interest in working on content related to the subject are encouraged to indicate as much there. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 22:07, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Would anyone be able to ID this fly pictured in Victoria, Australia and listed at: Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Image:Housefly white background.jpg? I think it may be Calliphora stygia, common brown blowfly or eastern goldenhaired blowfly, but it's not my field of expertise. [11] [12] [13]-- Melburnian 09:28, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
User:Werothegreat ( contribs) has been modifying some taxoboxes, changing their color and changing "regnum = Protista" to "domain = Eukaryota unranked_phylum = Rhizaria". This looks highly controversial to me but I'm underqualified to address this, please someone look in to this.-- Steven Fruitsmaak ( Reply) 18:31, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
Is there already a policy regarding undescribed taxa, and, if not, should we have one? I have come across a couple of examples of articles about species with provisional names ( Tripteroides sp. No. 2 and Paramoera sp). They each deal with a good species and include a verifiable reference to back it up, but in each case the species has not been designated a name. I can see several ways of dealing with this (in order of increasing harshness):
I think I'm leaning towards option 2, but I'd like to hear what others think. -- Stemonitis 12:01, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I imported this to wikibooks this morning to make a how-to page, and my research hit on a lot of things not in the article (and in fact contrary to it insofar as the safety claims are concerned. At least two extension service websites and one "medical Q&A" website noted that the organism was indeed capable of infecting mammals, including humans. However, these references were made "in passing" on the Extension sites, and the EPA factsheet doesn't address the issue at all. There are references on the wikibooks page (the {{ Cite web}} template works the same way, so feel free to just copy them).
I still have a bunch of work to do in the wikibooks page, but I'll copy what I have so far into the edit history of the WP article (for the GFDL requirements), and maybe someone could have a look and see? I'd really just like some general pointers on how to re-incorporate additional research done on the wikibooks side back into the original wikipedia article as a matter of course, since I often come up with a lot of "encyclopedic" information along with the "how-to" stuff that I'm actually looking for. See the topic below too: would heavy-handed reorganisations following wikibooks standards be inappropriate for wikipedia?
Also, I'm wondering if someone with paid access to the New York Times could have a look at the article referenced for the potential use of B. bassiana for malarial mosquito control. In particular, I'd like to know if that article has any discussion of potential pathogenicity in humans. -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 14:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm building a gardening manual on wikibooks, and most of the pages are imported copies of wikipedia articles. When I get them onto the wikibooks page, I first add a substituted template that provides an organizational structure for the page (e.g., b:Template:Weedprof or b:Template:Biocontprof). They provide headers, hidden editor's notes, and automatically add non-substed templates as well (for us that would probably just be the taxobox in most cases, though it could add the nutritional templates for food crops as well).
Having done this 100 or so times now, I'm wondering if applying something similar to the wikipedia TOL articles might not be a good idea too. When I'm taking the articles apart and fitting the information into the templated structure, I've noticed that every article follows a different structure. Worse still, there's often a paragraph about one thing, then a sentence on the end of a paragraph further down the page that should be part of the first paragraph's structure (nonsequitors abound).
What I'd suggest is maybe something like the following:
In the wikibook, using these templates has helped give the book a consistent, "professional" feel, which I think is certainly something we should be aspiring to on wikipedia as well. In some cases I've also come back and edited the wp article as well if the structure was just really out of hand, but I'm wondering if implementing a "standard templatization" regime on wikipedia would also be helpful in doing a wide-ranging (and long term...this is time consuming) cleanup of the TOL areas. -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 14:53, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
Templates have a way of getting fetishized around there; if an article is a three-line stub, the availability of an article template will result in the article having three lines of text plus a dozen headings with no content in any of them. It just tells readers that we've been spending time on adding window dressing rather than content, and according to Google, there's already plenty of websites with content-less ToLs :-/ . One possible way to approach here is to recommend the template as a step to getting a ToL article to featured status, but not for any article that has still got a ways to go. Stan 15:58, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
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Here are some tasks awaiting attention:
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Aren't there any pictures of Archaea? I've seen some in various locations (books, websites, etc.) but I haven't seen any on Wikipedia except for one of a thermophilic location on one of the more obscure archaea. I've also posted on the Archaea discussion page that a picture of an Archaea cell (like the bacteria cell picture on the bacteria page, the eukaryote cell picture on the eukaryote page) would considerably add to the article, especially since Archaea cells are very different from bacterial cells. Any thoughts? Werothegreat 12:13, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
I have posted this on the deuteromycota page, and the fungi page, and now i'm bringing it here. The deuteromycota page needs a lot of work. Its creation was by User:Jaknouse, though for for some reason in the discussion it says that it was created by a 15 year old boy. This was the entirety of the discussion page before I added my comment for help:
"This Fungi is a division form of fungi, it uses sexual reproduction.it is more recentyl known as mitosporic fungi. the common forn of this fungi is a mushroom. the DNA based technology we can clarify the difference between other fungi. Fungi is mold and can be found on many things sunch as bread in he form of mold. this articel was written by a 15 year old boy."
The article needs work from an expert, or perhaps an entire rewrite. Yes, it is only the incertae sedis of kindgom fungi, but it is still a major division, listed on the taxobox of the kindgom fungi page.
Also, on a different note, the animal page has a very nice collage picture in its taxobox. Since the fungal kingdom contains more than mushrooms, wouldn't it be aestheticly pleasing if fungi also had such a collage? Thoughts? Comments? Rants? Werothegreat 22:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
Something like this is what i meant: File:Fungus collage.jpg Werothegreat 00:36, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I suspect Clyb ( talk · contribs · logs) may be Brya. Those of you with more experience with Brya than me might like to check it out. Hesperian 11:45, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
I've added a bunch of other conservation status systems to the taxobox template. See Wikipedia:Conservation status and Taxobox usage for details (I moved the taxobox usage page too because the old super long name was bugging me). Anyway, for an e.g. see Banksia brownii. Enjoy. — Pengo talk · contribs 11:01, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
Been a while since I last posted here, but I've got two images of a damselfly I'd like to get identified. It was taken beside a river at Swifts Creek, Victoria, Australia in November 2006. Thanks for any help! --
Fir0002
07:08, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
Come up with another batch of photos I would appreciate help in identifying! --
Fir0002
04:44, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
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The first is the White-faced Heron, the rest I have to look up, I'll reply in a sec. -- liquidGhoul 04:52, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi again!
Back so soon you say? Yes well sorry but I'm not that great on biology.
Thanks again for your help you guys! -- Fir0002 04:40, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Took these yesterday, they were on a Black walnut ( Juglans nigra). The tree was also covered in Japanese honeysuckle ( Lonicera japonica), if that makes any difference.
Anyone wanna take a stab? -- SB_Johnny| talk| books 13:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
A trivial but escalating edit war is in process here, and I unfortunately am a participant. Another editor is Americanizing the spelling of colour on the basis of what appears to me to be a made-up policy. It's getting a bit unpleasant on both sides, and any constructive intervention would be welcome. jimfbleak 15:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English plainly states
The policy does not refer to a unique tie; merely to a strong tie. The population of cardinals is higher in the United States than in any other anglophonic nation. — SlamDiego 16:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Could interested people please comment on the renaming/deletion of some illogical categories recently added for rats and mice, see rat breeds and mice breeds here. Thanks. -- Peta 22:38, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi all, DYK there are no fungal Featured Articles on wikipedia at all? I've modelled this on the dinosaur collaboration which has yielded a few FAs. Please have a look and cast your vote and we'll try a real concerted attempt at an FA. Link here...... Fungi Collaboration
(hope I got all the templates right...) cheers Cas Liber 10:26, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I think the tag saying the article does not cite its sources isn't needed anymore, as the article has a section labeled "References." Maybe someone higher up could remove the tag? Werothegreat 12:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
The category Tree of life is up for deletion. [14] It doesn't appear to be being used properly, so maybe it should be deleted, but it would be nice to have a coherent evaluation of its value, proper usage, and alternative titles if necessary. KP Botany 02:58, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm still confused about what you want the Tree of life category to be. What categories will it contain, and what categories will it be in? Since everyone seems to agree that it's a good idea, I'm going to go ahead and create the Organisms cat and fill it properly-- ragesoss 05:23, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I will be updating the Carnivora taxa articles shortly, to match the listing in MSW3. I have previously updated many of the other mammalian orders in this way. However, I see there is plenty of disagreement in the taxonomy. I will try to use a gentle touch in editing the articles. However I thought it prudent to post here my intentions. You can also see the MSW3 taxonomy at User:UtherSRG/Carnivora. - UtherSRG (talk) 00:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
I took a photo which seems to match the description of Sydney rock oyster. If anyone knows about these things, could they look at the photo I added and try and confirm it? Thanks. Stevage 00:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
If i wanted to create an infobox which was similar to another infobox, do i need to list it somewhere? It will only be a variation of that original infobox. Simply south 20:35, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Anyone have an idea what this is? They kind of look like very small pippies, they were found on the beach and are 3-4mm long. I have no idea what they are attached to, it kind of looks like plastic, but could be biological (calcium carbonate?). Thanks. -- liquidGhoul 06:17, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
The amount and variety of lifeforms we know of is simply staggering. Having said that, we actually don't have all that many projects out there extant to deal with all of them. Right now, this is what we've got:
and that's it. Personally, I am far from being expert in this field, but I think that there are a lot of life forms which do not yet have any organized project dealing with them. On that basis, I would like to encourage anyone who believes that there is a significant number of articles dealing with specific life forms out there to propose a project dealing with them at
Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals and see if there is sufficient interest in such a project to create one. Thank you for your attention.
Badbilltucker
21:00, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
This prob doesn't quite fit here but there didn't appear to be a more suitable place to ask this - do people feel that it would be useful to add a page listing various (often technical) terms describing animal lifestyles and habitats? I'm thinking about words like fossorial, lacrustine, piscivorous, crepuscular, graviportal, etc. Some of these have stubs but quite a few don't. I was thinking of keeping it simple and elegant, something like...
Will obviously include relevant wl and could include an example animal for each term. I'm happy to use different format. Yays or nays anyone? Secret Squïrrel 03:23, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Cat has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 22:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Having trouble identifying this limidae species. I took this picture in Sulawesi, Indonesia. This fellow was almost a meter wide and it had electric sparks flashing on its mantle. A google search for "electric fire clam" provides video footage of the electric sparks. Would appreciate if anyone could help with the identity. And of course if anyone would like a go at an article of this species, that would be great too.
P.S. I posted this on Marine Life Portal discussion page December 16th, but didn't get an answer. So trying my luck here.
Jnpet
06:52, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
How should I title an article about the flora of a region? Flora of California seemed obvious, but apparently not. So, in general, what is used? KP Botany 00:43, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I think that the water mould article needs some work. In its taxobox, it lists seven orders, only four of which I have actually found in other sources, and only two of those actually have articles to go with them. Could some with experience in Chromistan taxonomy do some editing to this article and its sub-articles? Werothegreat 14:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Please see Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_February_3#Category:Species_of_Wolf - UtherSRG (talk) 14:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
The kelp genus Nereocystis contains only one species, Nereocystis luetkeana, and yet the genus and the species have seperate pages. I think that it would function better as a single page, as both pages are essentially giving the same information. I don't know how I would go about merging the pages, so could someone higher up lend a hand if they agree with me? Werothegreat 21:50, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Found this page Wikipedia:Expert retention and feel that more folks here should add their comments. Shyamal 06:51, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
The article "under construction", "Time range of Hexanchiformes species", which was deleted on February 9th without previous discussion, is the only on-line source I found for Mesozoic frilled-shark species ( Chlamydoselachus—the article is still on-line in several WP clones). It wasn't suitable for the article namespace, since not only that it contained non-canonical terms like "Cretacic" instead of Cretaceous, etc., but, above all, it was completely lacking references. But I think it should be restored in a user's namespace (I don't know whodunnit). -- Hämbörger 16:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I've brought up a request about putting the chromosome number into the Template:Taxobox. If you would like to comment, please direct your comments here − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 07:56, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
If you go to this site, http://www.biology-direct.com/content/1/1/19, you will find a paper Mr C-S published in July of last year. I didn't understand most of it, but what I did understand really changed my views on a 3-domain system and the monophyletic-ness of Bacteria. Take a look. Werothegreat 17:11, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Someone please revert User:Influencey on monkey. - UtherSRG (talk) 20:26, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
I started an article a while back, Postelsia, and I'd like some tips on how I could improve it. This is the first article I've started all by myself, and it's kind of hard to judge your own work. I would really like to improve it enough to be a good article, and maybe even that most coveted of prizes, featured article status. Any tips? Comments? Things I did absolutely wrong? Werothegreat 20:16, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
The section on common names doesn't say anything about their capitalisation - I prefer "Neon Tetra" to "neon tetra" (and to the article name " Neon tetra") and note that. elsewhere Little Grebe (for example) is capitalised. Is there a standard? Andy Mabbett 22:33, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
and
(Western Cape, SA). Also I have an image of an huge Outeniqua Yellowwood, Podoarpus falcatus, but I don't know where to use it. jimfbleak 13:10, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm not at all an entomologist, but the beetle looks like some sort of tock tock, family Tenebrionidae. I believe they are the ones that acquire moisture as dew on their backs. -- Aranae 00:46, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
The right-hand picture is a juvenile grasshopper. I'm not an entomologist either, so don't ask for the genus, let alone the species. Werothegreat 16:55, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Please be aware of the proposed Species microformat, particularly in relation to taxoboxes. Comments welcome here or on the wiki at that link. Andy Mabbett 15:28, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Project participants might find iSepcies, a species search engine, useful. Andy Mabbett 16:34, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I found these old photos from uni, from when i'd jammed my old point-and-shoot camera against the microscope eyepiece and got some surprising results. Now I need help with what they are. The left image i'm pretty sure is some sort of Penicillium sp., the right is some sort of fungus, but I don't know beyond that. Any help? — Pengo 06:22, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
There's a proposal at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_March_8#Category:Fauna_of_Europe_subcategories to merge all 35 categories like "Fauna of Estonia", "Fauna of Spain", etc., to just "Fauna of Europe". This is a pilot to get rid of all geographical fauna categories for countries and smaller regions, replacing them with lists. If you have an opinion on this, you might want to vote. — JerryFriedman 23:01, 8 March 2007 (UTC)