This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
User:John.Conway has suggested that WP:DINO editors not neglect concept articles like origin of birds for FA-factory genus articles. While I don't plan to stop writing genus articles, I do see his point and I've been thinking about redoing this article for awhile. As the article obviously falls under the purview of both of our Projects, I thought I'd put the word out here too. Anyone who can help spiff this article up would be tremendously appreciated! Sheep81 09:56, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Hello there. I originally posted this question on the talk page of Kakapo, but it seems to be a bit quiet around there. My question concerns the taxonomy of the Kakapo. Currently, in the article, it is said to be in the family Psittacidae, and the subfamily Psittacinae. I'm currently reading through " A parrot apart: the natural history of the kakapo (Strigops habroptilus), and the context of its conservation management", and its chapter on taxonomy states that it is in the subfamily Strigopinae. Verbatim, "[...] but Smith (1975) used anatomical, morphological and ethological characters to place it in the endemic New Zealand subfamily Strigopinae, which has usually been followed since (Turbott 1990)." It then goes to explain the similarities between the Kea and the Kaka, and does not actually state the Psittacinae subfamily. I'm wondering about this: the resource I linked to is very reputable and informative, but there seems to be a bit of a conflict with the article. It seems that, at the very least, a bit more explanation on the taxonomic groups this bird belongs to would be well-placed (the article is featured, after all). Or maybe I'm just not reading this right, since birds are not my field of expertise (but I find them very interesting). —msikma ( user, talk) 19:19, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
Having read most of this exchange above, I am increasingly convinced that all species level articles should follow their Latin names, with redirects for common names. I find DJLayton4's argument for plant articles convincing, and I believe we should keep the MOS as simple as possible. Going with Latin names is the only way to achieve this. Parentheses are ugly, cause layout and rendering difficulties, and break up prose visually. I think we should abandon them entirely for Latin names, not just the first line. However, my strongest belief is that we should not create yet another exception for the first line, so what I am "voting" for here is consistency between the first line and every other instance of a binomial, and I believe this is most achievable with the comma. I hold this opinion in spite of parentheses being standard in abstracts of peer-reviewed publications. I think Wikipedia can do better, and we may just wish to drop the apologetic parentheses entirely. Latin names are nothing to be ashamed of. Spamsara 11:41, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm about to start a massive expansion of the woefully inadequate Nest article. Any comments on whether we should have a separate article on BIRD nests or whether we should incorporate all animal nests (including birds, great apes, wasps, turtles, alligators, snakes, dinosaurs, etc.) into the same article? MeegsC | Talk 22:49, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
How bout we start trying to get pictures of the species eggs on bird articles? 84.9.35.112 03:21, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
- I need to identify which of the four goldfinch articles this belongs to. Original clip came form here. Borisblue 05:22, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Somebody has added a "Japanese Turkey, Meleagris japonicus" to Late Quaternary prehistoric birds. Google is unable to find a source, no ref I have ever come across mentions such a taxon, and altogether I find the idea of turkeys in Japan biogeographically as absurd as post-Paleogene hummingbirds in Europe. Apparently some lapsus or misunderstanding, but what is it based upon? People don't just so invent taxa that are taxonomically possible but not systematically... usually, they'd make mistakes like capitalizing the species name or ending everyting with "-us"... the user in question has spent an inordinate amount of time to create redlinks (which I will prune away as is probably SOP for such lists. At least the sp indet's. We have these taxa as redlinks on the genus pages, so the list should not be a sea of red but only linked when the pages become available) Dysmorodrepanis 04:38, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi folks, I have started to discuss the new penguin paper from PNAS at Talk:Penguin. It's a motherlode of information, but some cannot be taken at face value. Get it, read it, fire away! It needs discussion, because it has far-ranging implications, being the first study of fossil penguins in 60 years(!) that gives sufficient resolution to actually translate it into taxonomy. Dysmorodrepanis 16:42, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
I have been slowly going through the articles created by Polbot operated by Quadell (basically, it crawls through IUCN redlist, and creates stubs where the articles do not exist), and came across this. There is now a Polbot-created article for White-Tailed Ptarmigan (Lagopus leucura) and a much longer article for White-tailed Ptarmigan (Lagopus leucurus). I would assume there simply was a typo in IUCN Redlist... or is L.leucura used, too? – Sadalmelik 08:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Congratulations, all! What a beautiful article! Keep up the great work. Best, Firsfron of Ronchester 11:03, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Dear all, there is a debate going on at AfA about Lions in popular culture, which admittedly is a messy article but could have wider implications (eg Ravens in pop culture page for starters) - thus this could set some form of precedent so may be worth debating once and for all there (has it been debated before?). cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 04:25, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Can some ornithologist who sprichts German check the article. This behaviour was first described by Erwin Stresemann in German as einemsen in Ornithologische Monatsberichte XLIII. 138 in 1935. Is it einemsen or something like einameisen ? Shyamal 07:15, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Greetings. Periodically I come across discussions on other taxonomic articles where people (usually non-scientists) want to capitalise the names. For example, there's a discussion over at Lion whether it should be "lion" or "Lion" throughout. As a scientist, I know that capitalisation is never used for the vast majority of animal names, but amateurs seem not to. Birds seem to be an exception because you have large numbers of amateurs observing birds and an agreed set of common names for each species. What is frustrating for me is seeing people use WP:BIRD as justification for capitalising clams and trees and bacteria and whatnot. There are no "official" common names for anything other than birds, and absolutely no tradition of capitalising their common names in the scientific literature. Can we please have a statement added to WP:BIRD somewhere that makes it clear that the naming guidelines put forward here are unique to birds and not general to animals? Having capitalised animal names on Wikipedia looks like amateur hour to me and probably most scientists. I've managed to negotiate a set of scientifically sound rules over at WP:FISH that you're free to reference. Thanks so much! Neale Neale Monks 09:56, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
1. As much as I may respect the profession, having known and worked with quite a few scientists in my time, I think the last thing I'd want to depend on the scientific community for would be advice on spelling, grammar, punctuation, or capitalization.
2. The terms 'amateur' and 'scientist' are not mutually exclusive. Next time you feel the need to draw a distinction, try 'layman' instead. It may not suit your sense of superiority quite as well, but it will get your point across much more effectively.
'Card 11:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Also, in Britain, much literature uses the initial capital naming convention for moths, dragonflies, plants. SP-KP 12:36, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Wonder if there is support for bot archival for this page. Seems to have become one of the most active WP:TOL talk pages ! Shyamal 14:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking about starting a few categories for birds that are endemic to specific countries, islands, etc., starting with Category:Endemic birds of South Africa. Does anyone have any comments?
Also, some people may want to consider listifying the "bird by country" categories and merging them into "bird by continent" or "bird by ecoregion" categories. The categories in some articles, such as Ortolan Bunting and Lesser Flamingo, almost look like spam. (Pick out the category for the birds of Egypt in either article.) Dr. Submillimeter 20:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good. Some of these already exist, and similar categories exist as regions. I'd recommend you work your new categories into the category hierarchy at Category:Endemism in birds, being mindful of the distinction between an endemic and a restricted-range endemic. SP-KP 22:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
The lists for countries in the Western Palearctic (e.g. List of birds of Spain, List of birds of Morocco, etc., etc.) need a lot of rearranging and spellchecking to bring them into AERC standard order and orthography (see e.g. List of birds of Great Britain, which is correct). Anyone want a big job? - MPF 00:09, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
One of the comments generated from the peer review of bird was the inconsistent usage of bill or beak. I need to pick one and make it consistent throughout the article. So, straw poll time: which is it going to b?. If no clear consensus is arrived at I'll be bold and flick a coin and change it that way. Bill seems to be preferred in the UK (and British English is what the article bird is written in) and some of the ornithological community, beak is preferred in the US and is where the Wikipedia article is. I don't care either way. So, vote away. BTW this is purely for the bird article, I don't wish this to be imposed throughout the rest of WP. Sabine's Sunbird talk 08:00, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
There appear to have been two parallel discussions initiaited on this - the one above, and one at Talk:Bird which didn't get beyond two contributions. I've copied it below. I'm going to assume that this is the main discussion, on the basis that it has the majority of contributions. SP-KP 09:02, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Copied from Talk:Bird:
We use both (as noted in the peer review). We should probably pick one and go with it. The Wikipedia article is at beak, although I personally prefer bill. At this point I don't care though. What should we use? If no consensus emerges I shall be bold, flick a coin and go with that. Sabine's Sunbird talk 02:18, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
In Britain, the term used amongst birders in my experience is bill; beak is regarded more as a word used by "the public", a bit like seagull. HBW seems to use bill exclusively (someone will now find an example where it doesn't, I'm sure!) SP-KP 06:16, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
The size of Category:bird stubs has grown hugely recently, necessitating further splitting. Sub-types by order seem to be the established pattern, and I've made a detailed proposal here. I have to say that a lot of these articles look on the long side to be stubs at all, though; it might be worth the the WPJ having a discussion about localised stub criteria, especially if you're also doing 1.0-style article assessements. Alai 18:23, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
This list is almost complete. I need help, though, finding out which birds are accidental, hypothetical, extirpated, etc. I have a number of them marked, but I'm aware that there are still some unmarked accidentals in there (e.g., Atlantic Puffin). Please help. -- Birdman1 talk/ contribs 20:11, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
There's a cats portal, a dogs portal - but no birds portal! We need one. Please comment. I'm willing to learn the code necessary to make pretty tables. I'll need backup, though. -- Birdman1 talk/ contribs 23:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
The portal is pretty much complete. All that needs to be done is adding quotes. I will automate it a week after it has been put up. Please find bird quotes and add them. Notify me when you think it's done, and I will announce it. --
Birdman1
talk/
contribs 14:33, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Portal:Birds is cool! And I add interwiki to Portal:Birds. Jbdy 16:08, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
I've been a bit vague and the time for choosing next months collaboration has past. Still there is a clear winner for May, and its bird. I've been working like crazy on it and its actually close to finished though. It'll be peer reviewable in a week or less. Do we want to collaborate on it through this stage or do we want to pick something else? Thoughts? Sabine's Sunbird talk 06:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I have just rewritten this article. I would appreciate any assistance in improving it in the hope of getting it somewhere near feature article status! -- Abbott75 11:37, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
I highly recommend Kenya for birding! Here are some pictures of birds that have no articles… just in case anyone has a source and feels like writing something. If no one does, I'll make stubs for them eventually, but stubs are all I can do with Zimmerman, Turner, and Pearson. Although Shrikes and Bush-shrikes by Tony Harris is searchable at Amazon.
I made a page for each one at Commons under the scientific name. Those pages include the author, so you can look it up there.
I'm going to upload a couple more pictures, but this will do for a start:
— JerryFriedman 18:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Under the task list (at the bottom of the project page), I've added a list of the bird genera for which articles do not yet exist. I've used the Clements list as my source - and the good news is that we only have about 10% of the c.2100 genera left to do (Polbot is currently working through those which begin with the letter T so by the time it's finished, I imagine there will be fewer than 200 articles left outstanding. Given the high number of active contributors of bird-related material, we ought to be able to complete this task easily - how about we set ourselves a little target of having them all done by the end of the year? SP-KP 21:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Jerry, the SACC guys are usually very on their toes about these things; I suspect it's AOU and Clements that are lagging behind. I suggest we split Nyctanassa out - or if we don't, create a redirect and explain the synonymy in the Nycticorax article. SP-KP 22:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
User:Sabine's Sunbird, above, asked me if I could get Polbot to change all references to family Acanthizidae in the articles Polbot created to Pardalotidae. I've done this now, no problem. (If anyone has similar requests, let me know.) But lots of other articles still link to Acanthizidae, many in lists of birds in various regions. See Special:Whatlinkshere/Acanthizidae for a list. Should there be a redirect? – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 22:10, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I noticed (while taking a look at the work-in-progress List of birds of The Gambia page) that White-backed Night-Heron was still showing as a red-link. However, I've discovered that Polbot has created an article called White-backed Night-heron. Since the other night-herons are all listed as Night-Heron, should I redirect that one to make the capitalization standard? MeegsC | Talk 22:10, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
We also have Tiger Herons and Tiger-herons, which should probably be standardized as well. And is it White-crested Tiger-Heron or White-crested Bittern? If the latter, we'll need to change all the appropriate Africa lists... MeegsC | Talk 22:19, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Looking at the list of genera to do made me notice the caption at the example taxobox in the project page. I'd like to suggest that in captions, people think about what information readers need and what they don't need.
What do you think? — JerryFriedman 15:08, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Most of you are probably aware of the impact that Polbot has had - it's basically filled in all the missing redlinks. I'm not thrilled, but, whatever. Time to clean up. I've asked the bot's creator for a list of everything created so that we can see what needs doing, but first off, a bit of duplication. We have Scrub-robin already, genus Cercotrichas, Polbot created an article for the genus Erythropygia and put all the scrub-robin articles it created there. Which genus do we want to use? I don't know my scrub-robins. Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:21, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Can the bot be held? It has a number of problems: monotypic genera, nonstandard IUCN link code, "habitat destruction", not using italics in genus taxoboxes, nonstandard use of markup in synonyms section, entirely wrong and indiscriminate use of parentheses in synonyms section. These NEED to be fixed, or we'll be wasting our time on cleanup til the WP server park freezes over. Dysmorodrepanis 16:41, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
More bugs (easy to fix methinks):
Here are the lists of Polbot created bird articles. According to some people the use of bots might help eliminate systematic problems...
Another problem I just noticed - this article has the common name of the family in the intro line (many don't), it reads as The Vermilion Cardinal (Cardinalis phoeniceus) is a species of cardinal (bird) in the Cardinalidae family. It should be is a species of cardinal in the or better as is a species in the cardinal family ( Cardinalidae). Sabine's Sunbird talk 19:57, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Greetings! I was just made aware of this thread, and thought I would comment here. This discussion is very useful, and I hope to improve Polbot as I go. I'm also quite willing to have her fix the inevitable problems she creates if you let me know what they are (and if they can be fixed by simple repetitive changes).
First off, let me admit my limitations: I'm just a computer programmer who thinks birds are pretty. I'm not an ornithologist -- I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't had a formal biology class of any sort since high school. I absolutely need the advice from you experts to get these new stubs right. For taxonomy, I'm just using IUCN info, which is not uncontroversial but not markedly wrong either, apparently.
Now I'd like to address some of the concerns here, and ask for advice.
Are there other suggested improvements? Please let me know. (I've added this page to my watchlist.) – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 02:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I've finished the birds now. Polbot created over 5,000 articles on bird species. They are all listed at User:Polbot/taxa listing. – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 00:35, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Anyone have any strong opinions on whether the eight species in the aptly named Plocepasserinae (Histurgops, Philetairus, Plocepasser, Pseudonigrita) belong with the Ploceidae (HBW) or the Passeridae (IUCN, ITIS)? If no one does, I'm going to put them back into Ploceidae, contrary to Polbot. And since people seem to classify these four genera together, do we need a stub on them?
While I'm at it, I'd like to propose a change in the common name we have for a species, Philetairus socius, from "Social Weaver" to "Sociable Weaver". The latter name is much more common. Google results (including Scholar) available on request. Anyway, we have to do something about the fact that Social Weaver redirects to Weaver, an article where "[[Social Weaver]]" occurs. — JerryFriedman 21:51, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Polbot has created the tern articles with all of them as members of Laridae, which i find somewhat gulling. Anyone want to skim through these and tern them into respectable Sternidae pages? Sabine's Sunbird talk 02:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Okay, that's now on Polbot's todo list. – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 01:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
User:John.Conway has suggested that WP:DINO editors not neglect concept articles like origin of birds for FA-factory genus articles. While I don't plan to stop writing genus articles, I do see his point and I've been thinking about redoing this article for awhile. As the article obviously falls under the purview of both of our Projects, I thought I'd put the word out here too. Anyone who can help spiff this article up would be tremendously appreciated! Sheep81 09:56, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Hello there. I originally posted this question on the talk page of Kakapo, but it seems to be a bit quiet around there. My question concerns the taxonomy of the Kakapo. Currently, in the article, it is said to be in the family Psittacidae, and the subfamily Psittacinae. I'm currently reading through " A parrot apart: the natural history of the kakapo (Strigops habroptilus), and the context of its conservation management", and its chapter on taxonomy states that it is in the subfamily Strigopinae. Verbatim, "[...] but Smith (1975) used anatomical, morphological and ethological characters to place it in the endemic New Zealand subfamily Strigopinae, which has usually been followed since (Turbott 1990)." It then goes to explain the similarities between the Kea and the Kaka, and does not actually state the Psittacinae subfamily. I'm wondering about this: the resource I linked to is very reputable and informative, but there seems to be a bit of a conflict with the article. It seems that, at the very least, a bit more explanation on the taxonomic groups this bird belongs to would be well-placed (the article is featured, after all). Or maybe I'm just not reading this right, since birds are not my field of expertise (but I find them very interesting). —msikma ( user, talk) 19:19, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
Having read most of this exchange above, I am increasingly convinced that all species level articles should follow their Latin names, with redirects for common names. I find DJLayton4's argument for plant articles convincing, and I believe we should keep the MOS as simple as possible. Going with Latin names is the only way to achieve this. Parentheses are ugly, cause layout and rendering difficulties, and break up prose visually. I think we should abandon them entirely for Latin names, not just the first line. However, my strongest belief is that we should not create yet another exception for the first line, so what I am "voting" for here is consistency between the first line and every other instance of a binomial, and I believe this is most achievable with the comma. I hold this opinion in spite of parentheses being standard in abstracts of peer-reviewed publications. I think Wikipedia can do better, and we may just wish to drop the apologetic parentheses entirely. Latin names are nothing to be ashamed of. Spamsara 11:41, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm about to start a massive expansion of the woefully inadequate Nest article. Any comments on whether we should have a separate article on BIRD nests or whether we should incorporate all animal nests (including birds, great apes, wasps, turtles, alligators, snakes, dinosaurs, etc.) into the same article? MeegsC | Talk 22:49, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
How bout we start trying to get pictures of the species eggs on bird articles? 84.9.35.112 03:21, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
- I need to identify which of the four goldfinch articles this belongs to. Original clip came form here. Borisblue 05:22, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Somebody has added a "Japanese Turkey, Meleagris japonicus" to Late Quaternary prehistoric birds. Google is unable to find a source, no ref I have ever come across mentions such a taxon, and altogether I find the idea of turkeys in Japan biogeographically as absurd as post-Paleogene hummingbirds in Europe. Apparently some lapsus or misunderstanding, but what is it based upon? People don't just so invent taxa that are taxonomically possible but not systematically... usually, they'd make mistakes like capitalizing the species name or ending everyting with "-us"... the user in question has spent an inordinate amount of time to create redlinks (which I will prune away as is probably SOP for such lists. At least the sp indet's. We have these taxa as redlinks on the genus pages, so the list should not be a sea of red but only linked when the pages become available) Dysmorodrepanis 04:38, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi folks, I have started to discuss the new penguin paper from PNAS at Talk:Penguin. It's a motherlode of information, but some cannot be taken at face value. Get it, read it, fire away! It needs discussion, because it has far-ranging implications, being the first study of fossil penguins in 60 years(!) that gives sufficient resolution to actually translate it into taxonomy. Dysmorodrepanis 16:42, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
I have been slowly going through the articles created by Polbot operated by Quadell (basically, it crawls through IUCN redlist, and creates stubs where the articles do not exist), and came across this. There is now a Polbot-created article for White-Tailed Ptarmigan (Lagopus leucura) and a much longer article for White-tailed Ptarmigan (Lagopus leucurus). I would assume there simply was a typo in IUCN Redlist... or is L.leucura used, too? – Sadalmelik 08:51, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Congratulations, all! What a beautiful article! Keep up the great work. Best, Firsfron of Ronchester 11:03, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Dear all, there is a debate going on at AfA about Lions in popular culture, which admittedly is a messy article but could have wider implications (eg Ravens in pop culture page for starters) - thus this could set some form of precedent so may be worth debating once and for all there (has it been debated before?). cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 04:25, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Can some ornithologist who sprichts German check the article. This behaviour was first described by Erwin Stresemann in German as einemsen in Ornithologische Monatsberichte XLIII. 138 in 1935. Is it einemsen or something like einameisen ? Shyamal 07:15, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Greetings. Periodically I come across discussions on other taxonomic articles where people (usually non-scientists) want to capitalise the names. For example, there's a discussion over at Lion whether it should be "lion" or "Lion" throughout. As a scientist, I know that capitalisation is never used for the vast majority of animal names, but amateurs seem not to. Birds seem to be an exception because you have large numbers of amateurs observing birds and an agreed set of common names for each species. What is frustrating for me is seeing people use WP:BIRD as justification for capitalising clams and trees and bacteria and whatnot. There are no "official" common names for anything other than birds, and absolutely no tradition of capitalising their common names in the scientific literature. Can we please have a statement added to WP:BIRD somewhere that makes it clear that the naming guidelines put forward here are unique to birds and not general to animals? Having capitalised animal names on Wikipedia looks like amateur hour to me and probably most scientists. I've managed to negotiate a set of scientifically sound rules over at WP:FISH that you're free to reference. Thanks so much! Neale Neale Monks 09:56, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
1. As much as I may respect the profession, having known and worked with quite a few scientists in my time, I think the last thing I'd want to depend on the scientific community for would be advice on spelling, grammar, punctuation, or capitalization.
2. The terms 'amateur' and 'scientist' are not mutually exclusive. Next time you feel the need to draw a distinction, try 'layman' instead. It may not suit your sense of superiority quite as well, but it will get your point across much more effectively.
'Card 11:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Also, in Britain, much literature uses the initial capital naming convention for moths, dragonflies, plants. SP-KP 12:36, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Wonder if there is support for bot archival for this page. Seems to have become one of the most active WP:TOL talk pages ! Shyamal 14:22, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking about starting a few categories for birds that are endemic to specific countries, islands, etc., starting with Category:Endemic birds of South Africa. Does anyone have any comments?
Also, some people may want to consider listifying the "bird by country" categories and merging them into "bird by continent" or "bird by ecoregion" categories. The categories in some articles, such as Ortolan Bunting and Lesser Flamingo, almost look like spam. (Pick out the category for the birds of Egypt in either article.) Dr. Submillimeter 20:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Sounds good. Some of these already exist, and similar categories exist as regions. I'd recommend you work your new categories into the category hierarchy at Category:Endemism in birds, being mindful of the distinction between an endemic and a restricted-range endemic. SP-KP 22:03, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
The lists for countries in the Western Palearctic (e.g. List of birds of Spain, List of birds of Morocco, etc., etc.) need a lot of rearranging and spellchecking to bring them into AERC standard order and orthography (see e.g. List of birds of Great Britain, which is correct). Anyone want a big job? - MPF 00:09, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
One of the comments generated from the peer review of bird was the inconsistent usage of bill or beak. I need to pick one and make it consistent throughout the article. So, straw poll time: which is it going to b?. If no clear consensus is arrived at I'll be bold and flick a coin and change it that way. Bill seems to be preferred in the UK (and British English is what the article bird is written in) and some of the ornithological community, beak is preferred in the US and is where the Wikipedia article is. I don't care either way. So, vote away. BTW this is purely for the bird article, I don't wish this to be imposed throughout the rest of WP. Sabine's Sunbird talk 08:00, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
There appear to have been two parallel discussions initiaited on this - the one above, and one at Talk:Bird which didn't get beyond two contributions. I've copied it below. I'm going to assume that this is the main discussion, on the basis that it has the majority of contributions. SP-KP 09:02, 24 July 2007 (UTC)
Copied from Talk:Bird:
We use both (as noted in the peer review). We should probably pick one and go with it. The Wikipedia article is at beak, although I personally prefer bill. At this point I don't care though. What should we use? If no consensus emerges I shall be bold, flick a coin and go with that. Sabine's Sunbird talk 02:18, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
In Britain, the term used amongst birders in my experience is bill; beak is regarded more as a word used by "the public", a bit like seagull. HBW seems to use bill exclusively (someone will now find an example where it doesn't, I'm sure!) SP-KP 06:16, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
The size of Category:bird stubs has grown hugely recently, necessitating further splitting. Sub-types by order seem to be the established pattern, and I've made a detailed proposal here. I have to say that a lot of these articles look on the long side to be stubs at all, though; it might be worth the the WPJ having a discussion about localised stub criteria, especially if you're also doing 1.0-style article assessements. Alai 18:23, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
This list is almost complete. I need help, though, finding out which birds are accidental, hypothetical, extirpated, etc. I have a number of them marked, but I'm aware that there are still some unmarked accidentals in there (e.g., Atlantic Puffin). Please help. -- Birdman1 talk/ contribs 20:11, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
There's a cats portal, a dogs portal - but no birds portal! We need one. Please comment. I'm willing to learn the code necessary to make pretty tables. I'll need backup, though. -- Birdman1 talk/ contribs 23:44, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
The portal is pretty much complete. All that needs to be done is adding quotes. I will automate it a week after it has been put up. Please find bird quotes and add them. Notify me when you think it's done, and I will announce it. --
Birdman1
talk/
contribs 14:33, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
Portal:Birds is cool! And I add interwiki to Portal:Birds. Jbdy 16:08, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
I've been a bit vague and the time for choosing next months collaboration has past. Still there is a clear winner for May, and its bird. I've been working like crazy on it and its actually close to finished though. It'll be peer reviewable in a week or less. Do we want to collaborate on it through this stage or do we want to pick something else? Thoughts? Sabine's Sunbird talk 06:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I have just rewritten this article. I would appreciate any assistance in improving it in the hope of getting it somewhere near feature article status! -- Abbott75 11:37, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
I highly recommend Kenya for birding! Here are some pictures of birds that have no articles… just in case anyone has a source and feels like writing something. If no one does, I'll make stubs for them eventually, but stubs are all I can do with Zimmerman, Turner, and Pearson. Although Shrikes and Bush-shrikes by Tony Harris is searchable at Amazon.
I made a page for each one at Commons under the scientific name. Those pages include the author, so you can look it up there.
I'm going to upload a couple more pictures, but this will do for a start:
— JerryFriedman 18:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
Under the task list (at the bottom of the project page), I've added a list of the bird genera for which articles do not yet exist. I've used the Clements list as my source - and the good news is that we only have about 10% of the c.2100 genera left to do (Polbot is currently working through those which begin with the letter T so by the time it's finished, I imagine there will be fewer than 200 articles left outstanding. Given the high number of active contributors of bird-related material, we ought to be able to complete this task easily - how about we set ourselves a little target of having them all done by the end of the year? SP-KP 21:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Jerry, the SACC guys are usually very on their toes about these things; I suspect it's AOU and Clements that are lagging behind. I suggest we split Nyctanassa out - or if we don't, create a redirect and explain the synonymy in the Nycticorax article. SP-KP 22:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
User:Sabine's Sunbird, above, asked me if I could get Polbot to change all references to family Acanthizidae in the articles Polbot created to Pardalotidae. I've done this now, no problem. (If anyone has similar requests, let me know.) But lots of other articles still link to Acanthizidae, many in lists of birds in various regions. See Special:Whatlinkshere/Acanthizidae for a list. Should there be a redirect? – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 22:10, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
I noticed (while taking a look at the work-in-progress List of birds of The Gambia page) that White-backed Night-Heron was still showing as a red-link. However, I've discovered that Polbot has created an article called White-backed Night-heron. Since the other night-herons are all listed as Night-Heron, should I redirect that one to make the capitalization standard? MeegsC | Talk 22:10, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
We also have Tiger Herons and Tiger-herons, which should probably be standardized as well. And is it White-crested Tiger-Heron or White-crested Bittern? If the latter, we'll need to change all the appropriate Africa lists... MeegsC | Talk 22:19, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Looking at the list of genera to do made me notice the caption at the example taxobox in the project page. I'd like to suggest that in captions, people think about what information readers need and what they don't need.
What do you think? — JerryFriedman 15:08, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Most of you are probably aware of the impact that Polbot has had - it's basically filled in all the missing redlinks. I'm not thrilled, but, whatever. Time to clean up. I've asked the bot's creator for a list of everything created so that we can see what needs doing, but first off, a bit of duplication. We have Scrub-robin already, genus Cercotrichas, Polbot created an article for the genus Erythropygia and put all the scrub-robin articles it created there. Which genus do we want to use? I don't know my scrub-robins. Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:21, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Can the bot be held? It has a number of problems: monotypic genera, nonstandard IUCN link code, "habitat destruction", not using italics in genus taxoboxes, nonstandard use of markup in synonyms section, entirely wrong and indiscriminate use of parentheses in synonyms section. These NEED to be fixed, or we'll be wasting our time on cleanup til the WP server park freezes over. Dysmorodrepanis 16:41, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
More bugs (easy to fix methinks):
Here are the lists of Polbot created bird articles. According to some people the use of bots might help eliminate systematic problems...
Another problem I just noticed - this article has the common name of the family in the intro line (many don't), it reads as The Vermilion Cardinal (Cardinalis phoeniceus) is a species of cardinal (bird) in the Cardinalidae family. It should be is a species of cardinal in the or better as is a species in the cardinal family ( Cardinalidae). Sabine's Sunbird talk 19:57, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
Greetings! I was just made aware of this thread, and thought I would comment here. This discussion is very useful, and I hope to improve Polbot as I go. I'm also quite willing to have her fix the inevitable problems she creates if you let me know what they are (and if they can be fixed by simple repetitive changes).
First off, let me admit my limitations: I'm just a computer programmer who thinks birds are pretty. I'm not an ornithologist -- I'm embarrassed to admit I haven't had a formal biology class of any sort since high school. I absolutely need the advice from you experts to get these new stubs right. For taxonomy, I'm just using IUCN info, which is not uncontroversial but not markedly wrong either, apparently.
Now I'd like to address some of the concerns here, and ask for advice.
Are there other suggested improvements? Please let me know. (I've added this page to my watchlist.) – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 02:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I've finished the birds now. Polbot created over 5,000 articles on bird species. They are all listed at User:Polbot/taxa listing. – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 00:35, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Anyone have any strong opinions on whether the eight species in the aptly named Plocepasserinae (Histurgops, Philetairus, Plocepasser, Pseudonigrita) belong with the Ploceidae (HBW) or the Passeridae (IUCN, ITIS)? If no one does, I'm going to put them back into Ploceidae, contrary to Polbot. And since people seem to classify these four genera together, do we need a stub on them?
While I'm at it, I'd like to propose a change in the common name we have for a species, Philetairus socius, from "Social Weaver" to "Sociable Weaver". The latter name is much more common. Google results (including Scholar) available on request. Anyway, we have to do something about the fact that Social Weaver redirects to Weaver, an article where "[[Social Weaver]]" occurs. — JerryFriedman 21:51, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
Polbot has created the tern articles with all of them as members of Laridae, which i find somewhat gulling. Anyone want to skim through these and tern them into respectable Sternidae pages? Sabine's Sunbird talk 02:02, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
Okay, that's now on Polbot's todo list. – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 01:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)