User talk:Quetzal1964/Archive 1
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Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | → | Archive 5 |
Welcome
Welcome!
Hello, Quetzal1964, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
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before the question. Again, welcome!
Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:21, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
- Hi, thanks for your octopus article. I've tweaked it a bit, you might want to look at Eledone moschata to see if there is anything more you can do to improve your article. In-line references are good, but not compulsory. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:24, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Jim
Thanks for all your help with the Curled Octopus article. I saw in the NBN Gateway that Curled Octopus was the commonest Octopus in Scottish waters and was surprised that there was no wikipedia article on this species. I then decided to add my own, although my knowledge of Octopii is limited. I have added some new information today.
DavidQuetzal1964 (talk) 20:46, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
- Thanks, I know nothing about cephalopods, but I've been around a long time, so I can do the formatting and such-like. I've move one of your refs in-line, you might want to do the same with the others. Try to vary your wording a bit more from the original texts, I know it's not intended, but too-close paraphrasing risks copyright infringement. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:24, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
I was speaking to a colleague today whose brother is a lobster and crab fisherman in Fife and in his experience this species is a significant pain, he hardly ever sees them as they exit the creels before they are raised but when they eat three lobsters from a single creel that's a big loss. I can't think of anyway of including that anectdotal information in the article but I found some science to back it up.
Wasps
Hello Quetzal1964, I noticed your new articles pop up in the "new pages" list lately and just wanted to say: keep up the good work! You are doing a great job. Glad to see someone else working on insect articles. Ruigeroeland (talk) 09:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, enjoying this so will continue.Quetzal1964 18:38, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
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This is an automated message from MadmanBot. I have performed a search with the contents of Dipogon (Plant), and it appears to be very similar to another Wikipedia page: Dipogon. It is possible that you have accidentally duplicated contents, or made an error while creating the page— you might want to look at the pages and see if that is the case. If you are intentionally trying to rename an article, please see Help:Moving a page for instructions on how to do this without copying and pasting. If you are trying to move or copy content from one article to a different one, please see Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia and be sure you have acknowledged the duplication of material in an edit summary to preserve attribution history.
It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. MadmanBot (talk) 06:16, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
Cryptocheilus bicolor ... spooky
When I tried to ID this morning's photo, the species page didn't exist, but when I came back this evening, you'd created it! Thanks. --99of9 (talk) 12:40, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Dipogon
Hi, and thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you recently tried to give Dipogon a different title by copying its content and pasting either the same content, or an edited version of it, into Talk:Dipogon (plant). This is known as a "cut and paste move", and it is undesirable because it splits the page history, which is needed for attribution and various other purposes. Instead, the software used by Wikipedia has a feature that allows pages to be moved to a new title together with their edit history.
In most cases, once your account is four days old and has ten edits, you should be able to move an article yourself using the "Move" tab at the top of the page. This both preserves the page history intact and automatically creates a redirect from the old title to the new. If you cannot perform a particular page move yourself this way (e.g. because a page already exists at the target title), please follow the instructions at requested moves to have it moved by someone else. Also, if there are any other pages that you moved by copying and pasting, even if it was a long time ago, please list them at Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen. Thank you. --CharlieDelta (talk) 19:33, 3 April 2012 (UTC)
Science lovers wanted!
Science lovers wanted! | |
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Hi! I'm serving as the wikipedian-in-residence at the Smithsonian Institution Archives until June! One of my goals as resident, is to work with Wikipedians and staff to improve content on Wikipedia about people who have collections held in the Archives - most of these are scientists who held roles within the Smithsonian and/or federal government. I thought you might like to participate since you are interested in the sciences! Sign up to participate here and dive into articles needing expansion and creation on our to-do list. Feel free to make a request for images or materials at the request page, and of course, if you share your successes at the outcomes page you will receive the SIA barnstar! Thanks for your interest, and I look forward to your participation! Sarah (talk) 18:32, 16 April 2012 (UTC) |
SIA project!
Hey David! So happy that you came by the Smithsonian Institution Archives project and signed up to participate! We've got a great list of subjects that need to be improved upon or written about. I do hope you'll visit the to-do list and dive in - do let me know if you need anything. And of course, your contributions can earn you the official oh so fancy SIA barnstar :) Thanks again! So happy to have you on board! SarahStierch (talk) 23:09, 19 April 2012 (UTC)
Hello, Quetzal1964, and thank you for your contributions!
An article you worked on Priocnemis coriacea, appears to be directly copied from http://www.bwars.com/index.php?q=wasp/pompilidae/pepsinae/priocnemis-coriacea. Please take a minute to make sure that the text is freely licensed and properly attributed as a reference, otherwise the article may be deleted.
It's entirely possible that this bot made a mistake, so please feel free to remove this notice and the tag it placed on Priocnemis coriacea if necessary. CorenSearchBot (talk) 09:16, 29 July 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedian in Residence at the National Library of Scotland
I'm just dropping you a quick note about a new Wikipedian in Residence job that's opened up at the National Library of Scotland. There're more details at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scotland#Wikimedian in Residence at the National Library of Scotland. Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 15:03, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
October 2013
Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Beaudouin's Snake Eagle may have broken the syntax by modifying 3 "[]"s. If you have, don't worry: just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.
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- In a narrow band from [[Guinea-Bissau]], [Senegal]] and [[Gambia]] through southern [[Mali]] and [[Burkina Faso]], northern [[Nigeria]] and [[Cameroon]
- ]]<ref>BirdLife International (2013) Species factsheet: Circaetus beaudouini. Downloaded from http://
Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 12:42, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
Your submission at Articles for creation: Sphyraena sphyraena has been accepted
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You are more than welcome to continue making quality contributions to Wikipedia. Note that because you are a logged-in user, you can create articles yourself, and don't have to post a request. However, you may continue submitting work to Articles for Creation if you prefer.
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Thank you for helping improve Wikipedia!
Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:38, 6 April 2015 (UTC)- Given the quality of this article I believe it is no longer necessary for you to submit your drafts to the Articles for Creation process, you could rather move them directly into mainspace when they are ready. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 13:43, 6 April 2015 (UTC)
Scottish Fairground Culture Editathon, May 2015
Hey there! As a Wikipedian in Scotland I thought you might be interested in the Scottish Fairground Culture editathon taking place on 7 May at the Riverside Museum - drop me a line if you'd like to know more, or if you'd be interested in taking part remotely! Lirazelf (talk) 12:15, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
- Oh dear, linkfail! Here's the correct one... Scottish Fairground Culture Editathon Lirazelf (talk) 09:55, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
A page you started (Delta dimidiatipenne) has been reviewed!
Thanks for creating Delta dimidiatipenne, Quetzal1964!
Wikipedia editor Animalparty just reviewed your page, and wrote this note for you:
Note that images in {{taxobox}} should be entered in the format
Filename.jpg
, not in thumbnail markup or Image:Filname.jpg. This assures the image fills the entire space, and it looks nicer too.
To reply, leave a comment on Animalparty's talk page.
Learn more about page curation.
Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:53, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
A page you started (Niklas Westring) has been reviewed!
Thanks for creating Niklas Westring, Quetzal1964!
Wikipedia editor Animalparty just reviewed your page, and wrote this note for you:
Note that we should NEVER use other Wikipedia articles, in any language, as a reference, per WP:CIRCULAR. Otherwise we risk perpetuating unverifiable information, or outright falsehoods. Cheers.
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Spider articles
Nice article on Xerolycosa nemoralis. We need more spider editors, so keep going! Just to point out that as per WP:SECONDARY, where possible we should use secondary sources, especially for taxonomic matters, so authorities and synonyms are best referenced to the World Spider Catalog, which is the accepted international source of spider taxonomy. The project page, WP:SPIDERS, has links to useful information, although the project is not very active at present. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:14, 28 August 2016 (UTC)
Taxonomy templates
Hi, in taxonomy templates (i.e. "Template:Taxonomy/..." pages), there's no formatting in the fields. Have a look at Template:Taxonomy/Trochosa as I fixed it. (It's also now used in the article Trochosa.) Ideally also include a reference to the World Spider Catalog both in the article and the template; see e.g. Template:Taxonomy/Gelanor. The automatic taxobox system is quite complicated; there's an introduction at Template:Automatic_taxobox/doc/intro, but I'm always happy to help or advise if you leave a note on my talk page. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:25, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
Nice article; synonyms from WSC
Nice start article at Cheiracanthium erraticum!
Unfortunately the World Spider Catalog does not directly list synonyms, as is explained at Wikipedia:WikiProject Spiders/Style guide#Synonyms (there really needs to be an index to the project's information!). In this specific case:
- The line "Clubiona nutrix Hahn, 1831a: 7, f. 98 (mf, misidentified)" shows that this is not a synonym but a misidentification.
- The lines "Clubiona erratica Walckenaer, 1805: 43" and "Cheiracanthium erraticum Westring, 1861: 380" show that in 1805 Walckenaer transferred the species from his earlier Aranea to Clubiona and in 1861 Westring then transferred it to Cheiracanthium. In zoological nomenclature, when a species is moved from one genus to another retaining the second part of the binomen (the species name), the name and date of the original author is kept, placed in parentheses (see Author citation (zoology)). The mover is ignored (unlike botanical nomenclature). So the correct citations of these two names are "Clubiona erratica (Walckenaer, 1802)" and "Cheiracanthium erraticum (Walckenaer, 1802)". You can check the correctness of the second one from the entry for the species in the WSC.
Sometimes one of the other references will give a true synonym list with taxon authors and dates, but the WSC is usually more detailed, so is often the best source once it has been "decoded". Peter coxhead (talk) 09:55, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
- Xysticus cristatus is another nice article, but the synonyms are still not right. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:59, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
A page you started (Dissosteira carolina) has been reviewed!
Thanks for creating Dissosteira carolina, Quetzal1964!
Wikipedia editor Animalparty just reviewed your page, and wrote this note for you:
Note that sources like ZipcodeZoo and BugGuide.net may be not reliable sources themselves, as the first primarily aggregates other databases (including Wikipedia: see WP:CIRCULAR), and the second is user generated.
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Another nice article
Nice start article on Allan Frost Archer! You can search the bibliography at the World Spider Catalog – see here. These could be added to the article, perhaps. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:17, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
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The Original Barnstar |
Great work on Pepsis grossa. You are doing great work on building that article, and I would greatly encourage writing more content: we need more editors like you around the community. Sadads (talk) 03:01, 25 September 2016 (UTC) |
Link in taxonomy template
Hi, when a genus article is not at the genus name, as for Zora which is at Zora (spider), the taxonomy template (in this case Template:Taxonomy/Zora) needs to be set up as it is now. The |link=
field is given the (apparent) value actual article name|taxon name
. (I won't try to explain here why it's only an "apparent" value). Unfortunately there are quite a few taxonomy templates around not correctly set up in this way to serve as bad examples! Peter coxhead (talk) 18:03, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
Invite to the African Destubathon
Hi. You may be interested in participating in the African Destubathon which starts on October 15. Africa currently has over 37,000 stubs and badly needs a quality improvement editathon/contest to flesh out basic stubs. There are proposed substantial prizes to give to editors who do the most geography, wildlife and women articles, and planned smaller prizes for doing to most destubs for each of the 55 African countries, so should be enjoyable! Even if contests aren't your thing we would be grateful if you could consider destubbing a few African wildlife articles during the drive to help the cause and help reduce the massive 37,000 + stub count, of which many are rated high importance. If you're interested in competing or just loosely contributing any article related to a topic you often work on, please add your name to the Contestants/participants section. Might be a good way to work on fleshing out articles you've long been meaning to target and get rewarded for it! Diversity of work from a lot of people will make this that bit more special. Thanks. --Ser Amantio di NicolaoChe dicono a Signa?Lo dicono a Signa. 04:57, 13 October 2016 (UTC)
A little early I'm afraid, it starts in just under 3 hrs time :-) You can add the articles done already to Wikipedia:WikiProject Africa/The 10,000 Challenge though, but the contest has to start on the 15th to make it a fair run!♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:14, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
Ah that explains why no one else seemed to be participating. Thanks, missed that point.Quetzal1964 20:19, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
Haha, yeah that's why! Can you make sure that all refs are filled out though, the Botswana entry had two sources in the middle which need publisher info, all the sourcing will have to be sound to be approved. Nice job other than that though! Just add the two or three you did to the challenge and then you can have a whole six weeks to do what you want in three hours time ;-). Best of luck and look forward to seeing more great articles coming in! If there's anybody else you might know who hasn't signed up and might be interested give them a bell too!♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:22, 14 October 2016 (UTC)
Can you remember to update the talk page project tag to start class too! I often forget that myself!♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:46, 15 October 2016 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
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The Tireless Contributor Barnstar |
An impressive body of work today, excellent stuff! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:04, 15 October 2016 (UTC) |
Africa Destubathon
Hi, thanks for your work so far! Can you do me a favour though and always add every entry you do to the main list here as well as the entries page, regardless if yet approved or not as that's the master list of all articles being done. It's just veyr time consuming for me to be judging the articles, trying to contribute myself and chasing up what people have done and filling it out for people each time. So if you can take care of that this would be a great help, there's some part filled out ones underneath so you just need to add country, article name and then you username. Thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:33, 16 October 2016 (UTC) Will do, you haven't included Edible Bullfrog under the total for Zambia on the leaderboard, I assume I am not supposed to edit that. Back at work now, so edits should slow down a bit! Quetzal1964 07:42, 17 October 2016 (UTC)
Can you remember to add entries to the main page list. Thanks.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:51, 19 October 2016 (UTC) Thought I was, what did I miss? Quetzal1964 19:55, 19 October 2016 (UTC)
Congrats after one week you're currently leading the contest with 6 countries held.♦ Dr. Blofeld 17:27, 22 October 2016 (UTC)
I have removed some of the content you added to the above article, as it appears to have been copied from http://www.owlpages.com/owls/species.php?s=1300, a copyright web page. All content you add to Wikipedia must be written in your own words. Please let me know if you have any questions or if you think I made a mistake. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 21:45, 23 October 2016 (UTC) @Diannaa: I have rewritten it, actually most of the information on The Owl Pages has been taken from the book Owls by Konig, Weick and Becking which I own a copy of. I hope this version passes muster. Quetzal1964 06:03, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
Reference errors on 23 October
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Reference errors on 26 October
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DYK for Tetragnatha montana
On 27 October 2016, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Tetragnatha montana, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that in a Polish study, the silver stretch spider ate an average of 3.7 mosquitoes per day in early June? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Tetragnatha montana. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Tetragnatha montana), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Maile (talk) 01:11, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
Reference errors on 4 November
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Reference errors on 6 November
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Reference errors on 8 November
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Merge proposal - "Acacia (Vachellia)" into "Vachellia"
Hi Quetzal1964. I see you have been doing work on vachellias, thought of letting you know about this merge proposal. It was tagged for merger, but the discussion was not created at the time, so it never happened. Perhaps you might want to look at it and act on the proposal. I merely created the merge discussion, but don't really know enough, especially with all the name changes (my father was a botanist, I still know things by the old names). Regards, Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 00:40, 9 November 2016 (UTC)
Reference errors on 12 November
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Reference errors on 16 November
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ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!
Hello, Quetzal1964. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
Reference errors on 23 November
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African scops owl
Thanks for spotting the corrupted file. I've re-uploaded it and it looks OK in Commons, but still distorts on Wikipedia. Weird. Charlesjsharp (talk) 10:20, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
sorted now. cleared cache. Charles (born Dundee) Charlesjsharp (talk) 10:28, 25 November 2016 (UTC) ps we came close against Australia - again!
Reference errors on 27 November
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- More about this is here.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:48, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
Prizes
Hi, as you did a lot of wildlife/geo articles I think you could claim enough articles to win some vouchers under "Most geography and wildlife articles destubbed" if you want them at here You could use them to buy a book on wildlife you want or whatever. Given how many you did I'd guess you'd finish near the top on that. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:53, 28 November 2016 (UTC) Dr. Blofeld Sorry I was at work today, claim now in and I count 210, not including the pre challenge ones. Quetzal1964 16:33, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
Africa Destubathon
Hello congratulations on winning first place in the Africa Destubathon. Please contact me at karla.marte@wikimedia.org.uk to coordinate sending the prize your way. Thanks, Karla Marte(WMUK) 12:16, 7 December 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karla Marte(WMUK) (talk • contribs)
Collect your prize
Hi, please carefully read the instructions at the bottom of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Africa/The Africa Destubathon for collecting your remaining winnings. I will need you to send me an email, your wiki name, what I owe you and your preference for currency in dollars or pounds/country of residence.♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:42, 13 December 2016 (UTC)
Merry Christmas!
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Reference errors on 1 January
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DYK for Chelidonura fulvipunctata
On 23 January 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Chelidonura fulvipunctata, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that sea slug Chelidonura fulvipunctata is likely an anti-Lessepsian migrant? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Chelidonura fulvipunctata. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Chelidonura fulvipunctata), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:01, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Taxonbars for spiders
Could you please explain to me what you think is the point of adding {{Taxonbar}} to spider articles, such as Pardosa monticola for example.
- You haven't included the most important taxonomic database for spiders, the World Spider Catalog – this has to be added manually at present.
- Fauna Europaea's taxonomy is hopelessly out of date; the division of Araneae into three suborders, Araneomorphae, Labidognatha and Orthognatha, was abandoned years ago.
- ITIS says clearly that it got its data from an old version of the World Spider Catalog, so why include what is just a mirror site?
- GBIF also copies from the World Spider Catalog, as noted here.
- That leaves EoL, basically a lightly curated blog, no more reliable (and usually less so) than Wikipedia.
- The only one of the taxonomic databases that adds anything is GBIF.
So what's the point of cluttering spider articles in this way? Peter coxhead (talk) 09:04, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
Hi, you're very welcome to contribute to this long term. It's slowed down since the Destubathon but we're nearly at 3000! More contests planned, though Europe may be the next destubathon.♦ Dr. Blofeld 11:05, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
- @Dr. Blofeld:, Thanks, just added a couple. I have been having fun with a wee bit of a personal project on the List of Lessepsian migrants, mainly new articles but some destubbing and other editing. The articles involve Africa too as Lessepsian migrants have been found as far west as Algeria. Some of the facts are really interesting, especially where species which were previously unknown to science were described in the med but were found to be invaders from the Red Sea but I can't nominate my own articles for DYK. (talk) Quetzal1964 20:38, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
- Excellent. Yes it's a pity that the African content production has decreased in recent months. Hopefully I can get a few contests running again though, they're definitely the best way to get content improved enmasse.♦ Dr. Blofeld 20:39, 16 March 2017 (UTC)
Thanks on behalf of Wikiproject Insects Hymenoptera task force!
Thanks for all your recent edits adding automatic taxoboxes to wasp pages! The taxonomy of many insect groups is often rewritten, and having automatic taxoboxes is a great way to deal with the changes to many pages at a higher level. I hope you continue to help shore up the many wasp pages! If you have any insights as to tasks that need to be done with Hymenoptera at large, consider visiting the task force page. Cheers! M. A. Broussard (talk) 23:05, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
Taxonomy template link parameter
Hi, the taxobox at Boulder chat should show the genus name, Pinarornis, in bold text and without a link – bold because the article is about the monotypic genus as well as the species, and unlinked because otherwise the link would be circular, just leading back to the article. When I first looked at the article, the line in the taxobox looked like this: "Genus: Pinarornis", whereas it should look like this: "Genus: Pinarornis".
To achieve this, |link=
at Template:Taxonomy/Pinarornis must be given the value Boulder chat|Pinarornis
. What happens then is that the code that sets up the taxobox starts off with a wikilink like [[Boulder chat|Pinarornis]]
, but the Wikimedia software recognizes that the article is called "Boulder chat" so this is a circular link, and replaces it by bolding.
The general point is that |link=
must be set to have the actual article title as the first value, and not rely on a redirect, otherwise the taxobox formatting won't always be correct.
One more of these subtle points about automated taxoboxes! Peter coxhead (talk) 20:08, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
DYK for Myrtle Florence Broome
On 30 April 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Myrtle Florence Broome, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Myrtle Florence Broome and the Canadian epigrapher Amice Calverley traveled together throughout Egypt taking trains and often driving across the desert in a Jowett car they named Joey? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Myrtle Florence Broome. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Myrtle Florence Broome), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Mifter (talk) 01:41, 30 April 2017 (UTC)
Proposed deletion of Symmorphoides
Your prod rationale was "this genus has no species in it according to GBIF and insectoid.info". Does that make it non-notable? All the best, Miniapolis 17:20, 10 May 2017 (UTC)
- @Miniapolis: See my comment on the talk page.
DYK for Jacobus van der Vecht
On 11 May 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Jacobus van der Vecht, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that a number of insect species were named in honour of Dutch entomologist Jacobus van der Vecht? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Jacobus van der Vecht. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Jacobus van der Vecht), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Mifter (talk) 04:38, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
DYK nomination of Giovanni Gribodo
Hello! Your submission of Giovanni Gribodo at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 16:57, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
- Please see new note on your DYK nomination. Yoninah (talk) 16:05, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
Speedy deletion nomination of Dahlbohminus fuscipennis
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1d/Information_icon4.svg/48px-Information_icon4.svg.png)
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You may want to consider using the Article Wizard to help you create articles.
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. This is a notice that the page you created, Dahlbohminus fuscipennis, was tagged as a test page under section G2 of the criteria for speedy deletion and has been or soon may be deleted. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.
If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Field Marshal Aryan (talk) 07:52, 10 June 2017 (UTC)::
- Field Marshal Aryan No problem it was a typing error so the title was misspelled, I am currently creating the page Dahlbominus fuscipennis with the name correctly spelled. Quetzal1964 (talk) 10:07, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
- Quetzal1964 Oh OK! I didn't know about that. Good luck with the article :) Field Marshal Aryan (talk) 06:25, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
DYK for Giovanni Gribodo
On 23 June 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Giovanni Gribodo, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Giovanni Gribodo, an architect in the Italian Art Nouveau Liberty Style, also published 42 scientific papers describing 377 new taxa of Hymenoptera? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Giovanni Gribodo. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Giovanni Gribodo), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
IronGargoyle (talk) 01:43, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi Quetzal, thanks for reviewing the nomination. It looks like the <!-- tag is still there before your comment so it isn't displaying. I'd remove it myself for you, but I'd need to play around with your signature to make it work. Regards, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 05:09, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
Incomplete DYK nomination
Hello! Your submission of Template:Did you know nominations/Colletes halophilus at the Did You Know nominations page is not complete; if you would like to continue, please link the nomination to the nominations page as described in step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{db-g7}}, or ask a DYK admin. Thank you. DYKHousekeepingBot (talk) 06:02, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Bees
Great work on the bees. FYI: I have a Sandbox page listing all Bee species, already wikified. You might be interested in using this list to make genus articles? See: [1] Ruigeroeland (talk) 08:32, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
DYK for Colletes halophilus
On 3 August 2017, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Colletes halophilus, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that one of the largest colonies in England of the rare sea aster mining bee is in an artificial mound of sand? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Colletes halophilus. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Colletes halophilus), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
IronGargoyle (talk) 00:03, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
Snowy Egret
Thanks, but are you sure? I linked the wikidata item to three egrets, because the commons categories are not clear (and neither are the museums. Talking about this. So if correct, thanks, but can you check the others I linked in the Wikidata item - theoretically only one should be linked. Thx Jane (talk) 19:56, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
- Jane Absolutely sure. My reasoning is, putting aside that I am a birder with experience of most of the world's species called egrets, as you know the image is from Birds of America by Audubon (published originally in my home city of Edinburgh) and the image shows a small Egretta species in breeding plumage. The only candidate in North America in the early 19th Century would be Snowy Egret, Great egret is a much bulkier beast and in proportion more like the Great Blue Heron or Grey Heron. Here is a great egret from Birds of America http://audubon.nyhistory.org/great-egret/ and here is the link to the image you posted http://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america/snowy-heron-or-white-egret . The old world little egret and cattle egret have now spread to the Americas too.Quetzal1964 (talk) 20:09, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
- Nice. It would be nice to have all of these linked to Wikidata items that point to the proper bird in Wikidata through Wikispecies. The Audubon images have all been uploaded and are indexed with page numbers here: Wikipedia:GLAM/NHMandSM/NHM Galleries/Treasures/The Birds of America/Pages. Jane (talk) 21:58, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
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Michael Patrick Stuart Irwin
Hello Quetzal1964, I see you have added a date for the death of ornithologist, Michael P.S. Irwin. As an article for him does not yet exist and I am interested in starting one, do you have a link to his obituary? The only ref I have currently is this page. The September 2012 Honeyguide issue also looks promising, but I only have access to the index. 'Cheers, Loopy30 (talk) 23:14, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
- Loopy30 I subscribe to a listserv called African Birding and it was announced on that listserv that Michael Irwin had died on 13 September 2017 so it's a wee bit early for formal obituaries, of which I am sure there will be many. The first ones will probably be in the British press such as The Guardian, The Times or the Daily Telegraph. As he was born in Northern Ireland the Belfast Telegraph may also carry an obituary. The ornithological journals will take longer, as you are no doubt aware, but British Birds or Ibis will probably publish one. I own a 2nd edition copy of his Birds of Zimbabwe which has very limited biographical information on its author. Quetzal1964 (talk) 06:23, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
- Oooh, that is recent. I will just have to wait a bit before looking some more. Thanks, Loopy30 (talk) 10:07, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
- Loopy30 The death notice has appeared in The Babbler http://www.birdlifezimbabwe.org/Babblers/Babbler%20138.pdf but I can't see any signs of a formal obituary yet.Quetzal1964 (talk) 07:09, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
- Oooh, that is recent. I will just have to wait a bit before looking some more. Thanks, Loopy30 (talk) 10:07, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
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- Dr. Blofeld yes personal circumstances. I tried to look at a few missing articles and its just that most would be outside my area of knowledge and interest and finding online sources seemed very difficult. Most of the articles appear to be BLPs which are normally a type of article I try to avoid. I certainly aim to try and edit or create a few more articles on women, especially women who have been active in biological sciences (see new "stub" on Louise Schilthuis) but not in a competitive way. Yes I do hope WMF continue to support your competitions and this one would have been a real challenge for me but at this moment I do not have the time.Quetzal1964 (talk) 07:12, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
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--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:13, 27 December 2017 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Technical move request declined
Hello, I removed your technical move request because the rationale you provided was incorrect. If you see FishBase, you will find that the scientific name is invalid. Of course, you may open an RM if you feel my removal was in error. With thanks. --QEDK (桜 ❄ 伴) 20:22, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- QEDK Thanks for that, it's not a problem, actually it looks like Fishbase has got itself (and me) confused over this, see Fishbase. So its Nemacheilus inglisi that should be changed from a redirect to an article which explains what's going on. Actually what you are refusing is not what I thought I was asking for, although looking closer the refusal would apply to my originally intended request. Quetzal1964 (talk) 22:04, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- That's alright. Hope I could help. With thanks. --QEDK (桜 ❄ 伴) 04:35, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
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Family for Pareledone
Hi, I know nothing about the taxonomy of cephalopods; I merely constructed a taxonomy template, as it was missing, based on the article. I've changed Pareledone to fit the family you put in the taxonomy template, but there are no refs supporting this in the article, and those that are there support "Octopodidae". Can you add a ref for "Megaleledonidae"? Peter coxhead (talk) 07:50, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
- @Peter coxhead:Peter, Thanks that's it done now with ref in template and article.Quetzal1964 (talk) 08:01, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
Sasakiopus salebrosus
Hi, Quetzal1964. I have moved the genus to the species because I do not think it makes sense to have two pages for what comes to be the same animal. I see it as useless, and in fact, it's something that I agree with. I think a taxon has to have a page if it contains two or more taxa. And the common names, it does not matter, usually put the common names of title, but it is not mandatory. By the way, in your message you tell me "but it will not follow the accepted conventions on Wikipedia". Is there any policy that affirms this? --Super Ψ Dro 21:28, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
- @Super Dromaeosaurus: see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (fauna) and in particular the section on monotypic taxa. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:02, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
- Okey, thank you. I feel the inconveniences that I have caused to both of you. Super Ψ Dro 09:18, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
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Incomplete DYK nomination
Hello! Your submission of Template:Did you know nominations/Sepia australis at the Did You Know nominations page is not complete; if you would like to continue, please link the nomination to the nominations page as described in step 3 of the nomination procedure. If you do not want to continue with the nomination, tag the nomination page with {{db-g7}}, or ask a DYK admin. Thank you. DYKHousekeepingBot (talk) 11:08, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
Nice work!
Awesome contributions on Sepia et al.! Nice to see cephalopods receiving some much needed attention. Keep up the good work! :-) mgiganteus1 (talk) 18:53, 18 February 2018 (UTC)
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DYK nomination of Sepia australis
Hello! Your submission of Sepia australis at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Yoninah (talk) 00:13, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
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DYK for Sepia australis
On 30 March 2018, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Sepia australis, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that despite its "tasty flesh" and abundance, the southern cuttlefish Sepia australis is currently of little interest to fisheries? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Sepia australis. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Sepia australis), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:02, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Why suppressing the ref link ? Pueblopassingby (talk) 14:19, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
- The word "catholic" does not need a citation, it has been used to emphasise that this species is not host specific. In this context "catholic" means non specialised, unfussy.Quetzal1964 (talk) 14:21, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
- that does not answer the question. Please do.Pueblopassingby (talk) 14:24, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
- or maybe you did not pay enough attention to see that there was a link added to a ref in the same edit ? Pueblopassingby (talk) 14:26, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
- Is a url needed when there is a doi? They both link to the reference so is having both not otiose? Quetzal1964 (talk) 14:29, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
- By all means change "catholic" to a synonym if you think its more suitable. I think catholic is the most appropriate in this context. Quetzal1964 (talk) 14:33, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
- @Pueblopassingby:I am not going to revert that, I still think catholic in its non religious context "including a wide variety of things; all-embracing" is the correct term, and I was brought up as a Roman Catholic, but you didn't answer my question on why a url and a doi are both needed in a citation? Quetzal1964 (talk) 14:39, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
- lol, I was answering it but your edit came along.
- By experience doi work less often than url (I did not think so to start with and I really son't see why it should be so, but...). That's only my own experience, though must say it happened once more (!) only today. Also and more importantly, when the weblinks get broken, the works are easier to recover with the "broken link" data; whereas I don't know of the equivalent for doi (if there is one, please do tell: it would be very useful to know that). So I have taken to adding web links quite systematically. Pueblopassingby (talk) 14:43, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
- N.B.: I fail to see how "catholic" can be considered as having a non-religious signification. In both en and fr, using it in a 'non-catholic' context still implies that catholic is a reference for 'agreed-upon norm'. As a bit of humour I'd say that considering the world's political context I quite appreciate it for all human affairs, but I'd rather we humans leave bees out of politics! :) Pueblopassingby (talk) 14:53, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
- @Pueblopassingby:I am not going to revert that, I still think catholic in its non religious context "including a wide variety of things; all-embracing" is the correct term, and I was brought up as a Roman Catholic, but you didn't answer my question on why a url and a doi are both needed in a citation? Quetzal1964 (talk) 14:39, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
- By all means change "catholic" to a synonym if you think its more suitable. I think catholic is the most appropriate in this context. Quetzal1964 (talk) 14:33, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
- Is a url needed when there is a doi? They both link to the reference so is having both not otiose? Quetzal1964 (talk) 14:29, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Ex. of "broken doi" : same article, "Species of Melittobia (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae) established in Bahamas, Costa Rica, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and Trinidad". Just updated it. Another reason I put web links is that with the web link, En wiki very intelligently puts a link on the whole title of article/book/aso - I find this somehow easier to use, it's more direct. Doi does not do that. Pueblopassingby (talk) 15:03, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
- You may personally fail to see how catholic can be used in a non religious context but as an ex-Roman Catholic, a native speaker of British English (Scottish variety) and a Biology graduate I find catholic has a scientific meaning too. Just google "catholic host choice in parasitoids" (annoyingly you have to add the last two words or you get articles about the Eucharist) and you will see the term is widely used. Quetzal1964 (talk) 15:14, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
An interesting Google search is for "catholic diet" OR "catholic diets" biology
. It does produce a few related to religion, but judging at least from the first few pages of hits, most of the 800,000+ are biology-related. One result, for "their catholic diet and a geographically variable sex life completes a portrait of an unusual animal" struck me as somewhat amusing if you think that "catholic" always has the religious sense. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:06, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
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--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:15, 29 May 2018 (UTC) via MassMessaging
thanks
thanks for fixing up Centriscidae . I had no objections to the contents--it's just that the edits I reverted seem to have accidentally placed deletion tags on the article, and I couldn't otherwise figure out quickly how to fix them. I may have been a biologist, but I am totally ignorant about plant taxonomy. tell one plant DGG ( talk ) 19:59, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
- No, thank you! That's what happens when you're in a rush. I too know very little about plant taxonomy, or fish taxonomy for that matter, but I love learning. Quetzal1964 (talk) 20:07, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
DYK for Walter Kenrick Fisher
On 20 June 2018, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Walter Kenrick Fisher, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the marine biologist Walter Kenrick Fisher illustrated the book The Salinas: Upside Down River written by his wife Anne B. Fisher? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Walter Kenrick Fisher. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Walter Kenrick Fisher), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Alex Shih (talk) 00:01, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
Walter Kenrick Fisher
Please see WP:ENGVAR. The author of the article doesn't matter, it's the subject. GiantSnowman 19:01, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
- GiantSnowman (talk · contribs) What about the third last word of the artcle?: Quetzal1964 (talk) 19:08, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
Done GiantSnowman 19:11, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
- GiantSnowman (talk · contribs)Excellent! Quetzal1964 (talk) 19:16, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
Invitation to participate in study
Hello,
I am E. Whittaker, an intern at Wikimedia with the Scoring Team to create a labeled dataset, and potentially a tool, to help editors deal with incivility when they encounter it on talk pages. A full write-up of the study can be found here: m:Research:Civil_Behavior_Interviews. We are currently recruiting editors to be interviewed about their experiences with incivility on talk pages. Would you be interested in being interviewed? I am contacting you because of your involvement in Wikipedia’s Women in Red project. The interviews should take ~1 hour, and will be conducted over BlueJeans (which does allow interviews to be recorded). If, so, please email me at ewhit@umich.edu in order to schedule an interview.
Thank you Ewitch51 (talk) 20:25, 20 June 2018 (UTC)
July 2018 at Women in Red
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The Signpost: 29 June 2018
- Special report: NPR and AfC – The Marshall Plan: an engagement and a marriage?
- Op-ed: What do admins do?
- News and notes: Money, milestones, and Wikimania
- In the media: Much wikilove from the Mayor of London, less from Paekākāriki or a certain candidate for U.S. Congress
- Discussion report: Deletion, page moves, and an update to the main page
- Featured content: New promotions
- Arbitration report: WWII, UK politics, and a user deCrat'ed
- Traffic report: Endgame
- Technology report: Improvements piled on more improvements
- Gallery: Wiki Loves Africa
- Recent research: How censorship can backfire and conversations can go awry
- Humour: Television plot lines
- Wikipedia essays: This month's pick by The Signpost editors
- From the archives: Wolves nip at Wikipedia's heels: A perspective on the cost of paid editing
August 2018 at Women in Red
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The Signpost: 31 July 2018
- From the editor: If only if
- Opinion: Wrestling with Wikipedia reality
- Discussion report: Wikipedias take action against EU copyright proposal, plus new user right proposals
- Featured content: Wikipedia's best content in images and prose
- Arbitration report: Status quo processes retained in two disputes
- Traffic report: Soccer, football, call it what you like – that and summer movies leave room for little else
- Technology report: New bots, new prefs
- Recent research: Different Wikipedias use different images; editing contests more successful than edit-a-thons
- Humour: It's all the same
- Essay: Wikipedia does not need you
September 2018 at Women in Red
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The Signpost: 30 August 2018
- From the editor: Today's young adults don't know a world without Wikipedia
- News and notes: Flying high; low practice from Wikipedia 'cleansing' agency; where do our donations go? RfA sees a new trend
- In the media: Quicksilver AI writes articles
- Discussion report: Drafting an interface administrator policy
- Featured content: Featured content selected by the community
- Special report: Wikimania 2018
- Traffic report: Aretha dies – getting just 2,000 short of 5 million hits
- Technology report: Technical enhancements and a request to prioritize upcoming work
- Recent research: Wehrmacht on Wikipedia, neural networks writing biographies
- Humour: Signpost editor censors herself
- From the archives: Playing with Wikipedia words
AfroCine: Join us for the Months of African Cinema in October!
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Africa_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg/100px-Africa_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e7/Video-x-generic.svg/100px-Video-x-generic.svg.png)
Greetings!
You are receiving this message because your username or portal was listed as a participant of a WikiProject that is related to Africa, the Carribean, Cinema or theatre.
This is to introduce you to a new Wikiproject called AfroCine. This new project is dedicated to improving the Wikipedia coverage of the history, works, people, places, events, etc, that are associated with the cinema, theatre and arts of Africa, African countries, the carribbean, and the diaspora. If you would love to be part of this or you're already contributing in this area, kindly list your name as a participant on the project page here.
Furthermore, In the months of October and November, the WikiProject is organizing a global on-wiki contest and edit-a-thon tagged: The Months of African Cinema. If you would love to join us for this exciting event, also list your username as a participant for this event here. In preparation for the contest, please do suggest relevant articles that need to be created or expanded in different countries, during this event!
If you have any questions, complaints, suggestions, etc., please reach out to me personally on my talkpage! Cheers!--Jamie Tubers (talk) 20:50, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
October 2018 at Women in Red
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The Signpost: 1 October 2018
- From the editor: Is this the new normal?
- News and notes: European copyright law moves forward
- In the media: Knowledge under fire
- Discussion report: Interface Admin policy proposal, part 2
- Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbcom
- Technology report: Paying attention to your mobile
- Gallery: A pat on the back
- Recent research: How talk page use has changed since 2005; censorship shocks lead to centralization; is vandalism caused by workplace boredom?
- Humour: Signpost Crossword Puzzle
- Essay: Expressing thanks
Welcome to the Months of African Cinema!
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Africa_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg/100px-Africa_%28orthographic_projection%29.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e7/Video-x-generic.svg/100px-Video-x-generic.svg.png)
Greetings!
The AfroCine Project welcomes you to October, the first out of the two months which has been dedicated to improving contents that centre around the cinema of Africa, the Caribbean, and the diaspora.
This is a global online edit-a-thon, which is happening in at least 5 language editions of Wikipedia, including the English Wikipedia! Join us in this exciting venture, by helping to create or expand articles which are connected to this scope. Also remember to list your name under the participants section, if you haven't done so already.
On English Wikipedia, we would be recognizing Users who are able to achieve the following:
- Overall winner (1st, 2nd, 3rd places)
- Country Winners
- Diversity winner
- High quality contributors
- Gender-gap fillers
- Page improvers
- Wikidata Translators
For further information about the contest, the recognition categories and how to participate, please visit the contest page here. For further inquiries, please leave comments on the contest talkpage or on the main project talkpage. See you around :).--Jamie Tubers (talk) 22:50, 03 October 2018 (UTC)
Get ready for November with Women in Red!
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--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:40, 14 October 2018 (UTC) via MassMessaging
Good day, why did you remove the "Phylogeny of Apogonidae" section from the wikipage Apogonidae? It was properly cite and the work was from a reputable peer reviewed journal. If it was too detailed on lower level clades, you could have just taken off the genera and/tribes and let the subfamilies.Videsh Ramsahai (talk) 19:42, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
- Hi @Videsh Ramsahai: Thank you for getting in touch. The accepted taxonomy for Wikipedia's Wikipedia:WikiProject Fishes is the Fifth Edition of Nelson's Fishes of the World, I was following that. I removed the cladogram because it does not agree with Nelson. You are free restore it, naturally, but it should be to be presented as an alternative to the "accepted" classification of Nelson which only recognises two subfamilies. Quetzal1964 (talk) 20:05, 15 October 2018 (UTC)
The Signpost: 28 October 2018
- From the editors: The Signpost is still afloat, just barely
- News and notes: WMF gets a million bucks
- In the media: Bans, celebs, and bias
- Discussion report: Mediation Committee and proposed deletion reform
- Traffic report: Unsurprisingly, sport leads the field – or the ring
- Technology report: Bots galore!
- Special report: NPP needs you
- Special report 2: Now Wikidata is six
- In focus: Alexa
- Gallery: Out of this world!
- Recent research: Wikimedia Commons worth $28.9 billion
- Humour: Talk page humour
- Opinion: Strickland incident
- From the archives: The Gardner Interview
?
Your account was not blocked, only the IP range you said you were on, because of longterm vandalism. I have changed the settings, but given the amount of disruption from that range, unfortunately sometimes we have to take those measures. Drmies (talk) 19:52, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Orologio_blu.svg/48px-Orologio_blu.svg.png)
Quetzal1964 (block log • active blocks • global blocks • autoblocks • contribs • deleted contribs • abuse filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))
UTRS appeal #23100 was submitted on Oct 31, 2018 19:52:25. This review is now closed.
--UTRSBot (talk) 19:52, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
ArbCom 2018 election voter message
Hello, Quetzal1964. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.
If you wish to participate in the 2018 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
December 2018 at Women in Red
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December 2018 at Women in Red
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The Signpost: 1 December 2018
- From the editor: Time for a truce
- Special report: The Christmas wishlist
- Discussion report: Farewell, Mediation Committee
- Arbitration report: A long break ends
- Traffic report: Queen reigns for four weeks straight
- Gallery: Intersections
- From the archives: Ars longa, vita brevis
Trematochromis benthicola
Ctenochromis benthicola now moved to Trematochromis benthicola. Can I leave the post-move changes of the text to you? Cheers, Sam Sailor 09:51, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
- @Sam Sailor: Thank you, will do. Quetzal1964 (talk) 10:00, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
January 2019 at Women in Red
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The Signpost: 24 December 2018
- From the editors: Where to draw the line in reporting?
- News and notes: Some wishes do come true
- In the media: Political hijinks
- Discussion report: A new record low for RfA
- WikiProject report: Articlegenesis
- Arbitration report: Year ends with one active case
- Traffic report: Queen dethroned by U.S. presidents
- Gallery: Sun and Moon, water and stone
- Blog: News from the WMF
- Humour: I believe in Bigfoot
- Essay: Requests for medication
- From the archives: Compromised admin accounts – again
February 2019 at Women in Red
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![]() February events:
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The Signpost: 31 January 2019
- Op-Ed: Random Rewards Rejected
- News and notes: WMF staff turntable continues to spin; Endowment gets more cash; RfA continues to be a pit of steely knives
- Discussion report: The future of the reference desk
- Featured content: Don't miss your great opportunity
- Arbitration report: An admin under the microscope
- Traffic report: Death, royals and superheroes: Avengers, Black Panther
- Technology report: When broken is easily fixed
- News from the WMF: News from WMF
- Recent research: Ad revenue from reused Wikipedia articles; are Wikipedia researchers asking the right questions?
- Essay: How
- Humour: Village pump
- From the archives: An editorial board that includes you
March 2019 at Women in Red
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The Signpost: 28 February 2019
- From the editors: Help wanted (still)
- News and notes: Front-page issues for the community
- Discussion report: Talking about talk pages
- Featured content: Conquest, War, Famine, Death, and more!
- Arbitration report: A quiet month for Arbitration Committee
- Traffic report: Binge-watching
- Technology report: Tool labs casters-up
- Gallery: Signed with pride
- From the archives: New group aims to promote Wiki-Love
- Humour: Pesky Pronouns
April editathons at Women in Red
April 2019
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--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:01, 25 March 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging
(Please excuse this post if it is a duplicate!)
The Signpost: 31 March 2019
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- From the editors: Getting serious about humor
- News and notes: Blackouts fail to stop EU Copyright Directive
- In the media: Women's history month
- Discussion report: Portal debates continue, Prespa agreement aftermath, WMF seeks a rebranding
- Featured content: Out of this world
- Arbitration report: The Tides of March at ARBCOM
- Traffic report: Exultations and tribulations
- Technology report: New section suggestions and sitewide styles
- News from the WMF: The WMF's take on the new EU Copyright Directive
- Recent research: Barnstar-like awards increase new editor retention
- From the archives: Esperanza organization disbanded after deletion discussion
- Humour: The Epistolary of Arthur 37
- Op-Ed: Pro and Con: Has gun violence been improperly excluded from gun articles?
- In focus: The Wikipedia SourceWatch
- Special report: Wiki Loves (50 Years of) Pride
- Community view: Wikipedia's response to the New Zealand mosque shootings
May you join this month's editathons from WiR!
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--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:17, 27 April 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The Signpost: 30 April 2019
- News and notes: An Action Packed April
- In the media: Is Wikipedia just another social media site?
- Discussion report: English Wikipedia community's conclusions on talk pages
- Featured content: Anguish, accolades, animals, and art
- Arbitration report: An Active Arbitration Committee
- Traffic report: Mötley Crüe, Notre-Dame, a black hole, and Bonnie and Clyde
- Technology report: A new special page, and other news
- Gallery: Notre-Dame de Paris burns
- News from the WMF: Can machine learning uncover Wikipedia’s missing “citation needed” tags?
- Recent research: Female scholars underrepresented; whitepaper on Wikidata and libraries; undo patterns reveal editor hierarchy
- From the archives: Portals revisited
WikiProject Tree of Life Newsletter
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg/100px-Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg)
- April 2019—Issue 001
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Tree of Life newsletter!
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- WikiCup heating up
Tree of Life editors are making a respectable showing in this year's WikiCup, with three regular editors advancing to the third round. Overall winner from 2016, Casliber, topped the scoreboard in points for round 2, getting a nice bonus for bringing Black mamba to FA. Enwebb continues to favor things remotely related to bats, bringing Stellaluna to GA. Plants editor Guettarda also advanced to round 3 with several plant-related DYKs.
- Wikipedia page views track animal migrations, flowers blooming
A March 2019 paper in PLOS Biology found that Wikipedia page views vary seasonally for species. With a dataset of 31,751 articles about species, the authors found that roughly a quarter of all articles had significant seasonal variations in page views on at least one language version of Wikipedia. They examined 245 language versions. Page views also peaked with cultural events, such as views of the Great white shark article during Shark Week or Turkey during Thanksgiving.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/Daily_pageviews_in_English-language_Wikipedia_for_nine_bird_species.png/330px-Daily_pageviews_in_English-language_Wikipedia_for_nine_bird_species.png)
- Did you know ... that Tree of Life editors bring content to the front page nearly every day?
* ... that Dippy is the most famous dinosaur skeleton in the world? (1 April)
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You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:24, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
June events with WIR
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--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:42, 22 May 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging
DYK for Clark Hubbs
On 30 May 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Clark Hubbs, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Clark Hubbs was notorious for his collection of clothing depicting fish? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Clark Hubbs. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Clark Hubbs), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Amakuru (talk) 00:01, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
- Stuff bothers me that doesn't seem to get noticed by anyone else. Article says "... at the University of Texas in 1949." The cited home page adds "... (there was only one campus then)." Would it be reasonable to change to "... at the University of Texas in 1949 (Austin)." Shenme (talk) 03:42, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
- @Shenme: Once an article is published it's no longer my article and I try my hardest not to be precious about articles I create. Wikipedia also encourages editors to "be bold". However, I think that your suggested edit is ambiguous and implies there were other campuses. I would suggest that a qualifier be added such as "at the University of Texas in 1949, which then had its only campus in Austin."Quetzal1964 (talk) 05:24, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 31 May 2019
- From the editors: Picture that
- News and notes: Wikimania and trustee elections
- In the media: Politics, lawsuits and baseball
- Discussion report: Admin abuse leads to mass-desysop proposal on Azerbaijani Wikipedia
- Arbitration report: ArbCom forges ahead
- Technology report: Lots of Bots
- News from the WMF: Wikimedia Foundation petitions the European Court of Human Rights to lift the block of Wikipedia in Turkey
- Essay: Paid editing
- From the archives: FORUM:Should Wikimedia modify its terms of use to require disclosure?
Wild Place Project
Wild Place Project isn't a zoo, it's an animal reservation. It's a 136 acre forest, and just because it's protected doesn't mean it's a zoo - They just didn't think brown bears and grey wolves wandering out of the reservation was a very smart idea. How about starting a discussion with me next time on the page's dedicated talk section before deleting all of contribution so hastily — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noah-x3 (talk • contribs) 06:00, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
- @Noah-x3: It's a facility where animals are kept in captivity, maybe with bigger enclosures than the average zoo cage, and the public are charged for entrance. I don't see the difference between it and a safari park. There used to be a "bear park" at Balloch but I don't see anyone claiming that as a reintroduction of bears to Great Britain. It is run by Bristol Zoological Society and is called a conservation park, its the Bristol Zoo's equivalent of the Highland Wildlife Park or Whipsnade Zoo . I may have been quick to delete your edit but I was not hasty and I saw no need for discussion. Quetzal1964 (talk) 07:22, 1 June 2019 (UTC)
May 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- May 2019—Issue 002
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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- Fundamental changes being discussed at WikiProject Biology
On 23 May, user Prometheus720 created a talk page post, "Revamp of Wikiproject Biology--Who is In?". In the days since, WP:BIOL has been bustling with activity, with over a dozen editors weighing in on this discussion, as well as several others that have subsequently spawned. An undercurrent of thought is that WP:BIOL has too many subprojects, preventing editors from easily interacting and stopping a "critical mass" of collaboration and engagement. Many mergers and consolidations of subprojects have been tentatively listed, with a consolidation of WikiProjects Genetics + Molecular and Cell Biology + Computational Biology + Biophysics currently in discussion. Other ideas being aired include updating old participants lists, redesigning project pages to make them more user-friendly, and clearly identifying long- and short-term goals.
- Editor Spotlight: These editors want you to write about dinosaurs
Editors FunkMonk and Jens Lallensack had a very fruitful month, collaborating to bring two dinosaur articles to GA and then nominating them both for FA. They graciously decided to answer some questions for the first ToL Editor Spotlight, giving insight to their successful collaborations, explaining why you should collaborate with them, and also sharing some tidbits about their lives off-Wikipedia.
1) Enwebb: How long have you two been collaborating on articles?
- Jens Lallensack: I started in the German Wikipedia in 2005 but switched to the English Wikipedia because of its very active dinosaur project. My first major collaboration with FunkMonk was on Heterodontosaurus in 2015.
- FunkMonk: Yeah, we had interacted already on talk pages and through reviewing each other's articles, and at some point I was thinking of expanding Heterodontosaurus, and realised Jens had already written the German Wikipedia version, so it seemed natural to work together on the English one. Our latest collaboration was Spinophorosaurus, where by another coincidence, I had wanted to work on that article for the WP:Four Award, and it turned out that Jens had a German book about the expedition that found the dinosaur, which I wouldn't have been able to utilise with my meagre German skills. Between those, we also worked on Brachiosaurus, a wider Dinosaur Project collaboration between several editors.
2) Enwebb: Why dinosaurs?
- JL: Because of the huge public interest in them. But dinosaurs are also highly interesting from a scientific point of view: key evolutionary innovations emerged within this group, such as warm-bloodedness, gigantism, and flight. Dinosaur research is, together with the study of fossil human remains, the most active field in paleontology. New scientific techniques and approaches tend to get developed within this field. Dinosaur research became increasingly interdisciplinary, and now does not only rely on various fields of biology and geology, but also on chemistry and physics, among others. Dinosaurs are therefore ideal to convey scientific methodology to the general public.
- FM: As outlined above, dinosaurs have been described as a "gateway to science"; if you learn about dinosaurs, you will most likely also learn about a lot of scientific fields you would not necessarily be exposed to otherwise. On a more personal level, having grown up with and being influenced by various dinosaur media, it feels pretty cool to help spread knowledge about these animals, closest we can get to keeping them alive.
3) Enwebb: Why should other editors join you in writing articles related to paleontology? Are you looking to attract new editors, or draw in experienced editors from other areas of Wikipedia?
- JL: Because we are a small but active and helpful community. Our Dinosaur collaboration, one of the very few active open collaborations in Wikipedia, makes high-level writing on important articles easier and more fun. Our collaboration is especially open to editors without prior experience in high-level writing. But we do not only write articles: several WikiProject Dinosaur participants are artists who do a great job illustrating the articles, and maintain an extensive and very active image review system. In fact, a number of later authors started with contributing images.
- FM: Anyone who is interested in palaeontology is welcome to try writing articles, and we would be more than willing to help. I find that the more people that work on articles simultaneously with me, the more motivation I get to write myself. I am also one of those editors who started out contributing dinosaur illustrations and making minor edits, and only began writing after some years. But when I got to it, it wasn't as intimidating as I had feared, and I've learned a lot in the process. For example anatomy; if you know dinosaur anatomy, you have a very good framework for understanding the anatomy of other tetrapod animals, including humans.
4) Enwebb: Between the two of you, you have over 300 GA reviews. FunkMonk, you have over 250 of those. What keeps you coming back to review more articles?
- FM: One of the main reasons I review GANs is to learn more about subjects that seem interesting (or which I would perhaps not come across otherwise). There are of course also more practical reasons, such as helping an article on its way towards FAC, to reduce the GAN backlog, and to "pay back" when I have a nomination up myself. It feels like a win-win situation where I can be entertained by interesting info, while also helping other editors get their nominations in shape, and we'll end up with an article that hopefully serves to educate a lot of people (the greater good).
- JL: Because I enjoy reading Wikipedia articles and like to learn new things. In addition, reviews give me the opportunity to have direct contact with the authors, and help them to make their articles even better. This is quite rewarding for me personally. But I also review because I consider our GA and FA system to be of fundamental importance for Wikipedia. When I started editing Wikipedia (the German version), the article promotion reviews motivated me and improved my writing skills a lot. Submitting an article for review requires one to get serious and take additional steps to bring the article to the best quality possible. GAs and FAs are also a good starting point for readers, and may motivate them to become authors themselves.
5) Enwebb: What are your editing preferences? Any scripts or gadgets you find invaluable?
- FM: One script that everyone should know about is the duplink highlight tool. It will show duplinks within the intro and body of a given article separately, and it seems a lot of people still don't know about it, though they are happy when introduced to it. I really liked the citationbot too (since citation consistency is a boring chore to me), but it seems to be blocked at the moment due to some technical issues.
- JL: I often review using the Wikipedia Beta app on my smartphone, as it allows me to read without needing to sit in front of the PC. For writing, I find the reference management software Zotero invaluable, as it generates citation templates automatically, saving a lot of time.
- Editor's note: I downloaded Zotero and tried it for the first time and think it is a very useful tool. More here.
6) Enwebb: What would surprise the ToL community to learn about your life off-wiki?
- FM: Perhaps that I have no background in natural history/science, but work with animation and games. But fascination with and knowledge of nature and animals is actually very helpful when designing and animating characters and creatures, so it isn't that far off, and I can actually use some of the things I learn while writing here for my work (when I wrote the Dromaeosauroides article, it was partially to learn more about the animal for a design-school project).
- JL: That I am actually doing research on dinosaurs. Though I avoid writing about topics I publish research on, my Wikipedia work helps me to keep a good general overview over the field, and quite regularly I can use what I learned while writing for Wikipedia for my research.
Get in touch with these editors regarding collaboration at WikiProject Dinosaurs!
- Marine life continues to dominate ToL DYKs
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July events from Women in Red!
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--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:41, 25 June 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The June 2019 Signpost is out!
- Discussion report: A constitutional crisis hits English Wikipedia
- News and notes: Mysterious ban, admin resignations, Wikimedia Thailand rising
- In the media: The disinformation age
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- Traffic report: Juneteenth, Beauty Revealed, and more nuclear disasters
- Technology report: Actors and Bots
- Special report: Did Fram harass other editors?
- Recent research: What do editors do after being blocked?; the top mathematicians, universities and cancers according to Wikipedia
- From the archives: Women and Wikipedia: the world is watching
- In focus: WikiJournals: A sister project proposal
- Community view: A CEO biography, paid for with taxes
June 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg/100px-Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg)
- June 2019—Issue 003
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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Project name | Relative WikiWork |
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Cats | 4.79
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Fisheries and fishing | 4.9
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Dogs | 4.91
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Viruses | 4.91
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ToL | 4.94
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Cetaceans | 4.97
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Primates | 4.98
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Sharks | 5.04
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All wikiprojects average | 5.05
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Dinosaurs | 5.12
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Equine | 5.15
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Bats | 5.25
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Mammals | 5.32
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Aquarium fishes | 5.35
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Hypericaceae | 5.38
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Turtles | 5.4
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Birds | 5.46
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Australian biota | 5.5
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Marine life | 5.54
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Animals | 5.56
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Paleontology | 5.57
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Rodents | 5.58
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Amphibians and Reptiles | 5.64
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Fungi | 5.65
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Bivalves | 5.66
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Plants | 5.67
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Algae | 5.68
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Arthropods | 5.69
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Hymenoptera | 5.72
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Microbiology | 5.72
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Cephalopods | 5.74
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Fishes | 5.76
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Ants | 5.79
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Gastropods | 5.8
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Spiders | 5.86
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Insects | 5.9
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Beetles | 5.98
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Lepidoptera | 5.98
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- Spineless editors overwhelmed by stubs
Within the Tree of Life and its many subprojects, there is an abundance of stubs. Welcome to Wikipedia, what's new, right? However, based on all wikiprojects listed (just over two thousand), the Tree of Life project is worse off in average article quality than most. Based on the concept of relative WikiWork (the average number of "steps" needed to have a project consisting of all featured articles (FAs), where stub status → FA consists of six steps), only seven projects within the ToL have an average rating of "start class" or better. Many projects, particularly those involving invertebrates, hover at an average article quality slightly better than a stub. With relative WikiWorks of 5.98 each, WikiProject Lepidoptera and WikiProject Beetles have the highest relative WikiWork of any project. Given that invertebrates are incredibly speciose, it may not surprise you that many articles about them are lower quality. WikiProject Beetles, for example, has over 20 times more articles than WikiProject Cats. Wikipedia will always be incomplete, so we should take our relatively low WikiWork as motivation to write more articles that are also better in quality.
- Editor Spotlight: Showing love to misfit taxa
We're joined for this month's Editor Spotlight by NessieVL, a long-time contributor who lists themselves as a member of WikiProject Fungus, WikiProject Algae, and WikiProject Cephalopods.
1) Enwebb: How did you come to edit articles about organisms and taxonomic groups?
- Nessie: The main force, then and now, driving me to create or edit articles is thinking "Why isn't there an article on that on Wikipedia?" Either I'll read about some rarely-sighted creature in the deep sea or find something new on iNaturalist and want to learn more. First stop (surprise!) is Wikipedia, and many times there is just a stub or no page at all. Sometimes I just add the source that got me to the article, not sometimes I go deep and try to get everything from the library or online journals and put it all in an article. The nice thing about taxa is the strong precedent that all accepted extant taxa are notable, so one does not need to really worry about doing a ton of research and having the page get removed. I was super worried about this as a new editor: I still really dislike conflict so if I can avoid it I do. Anyway, the most important part is stitching an article in to the rest of Wikipedia: Linking all the jargon, taxonomers, pollinators, etc., adding categories, and putting in the correct WikiProjects. Recently I have been doing more of the stitching-in stuff with extant articles. The last deep-dive article I made was Karuka at the end of last year, which is a bit of a break for me. I guess it's easier to do all the other stuff on my tablet while watching TV.
2) Enwebb: Many editors in the ToL are highly specialized on a group of taxa. A look at your recently created articles includes much diversity, though, with viruses, bacteria, algae, and cnidarians all represented—are there any commonalities for the articles you work on? Would you say you're particularly interested in certain groups?
- Nessie: I was a nerd from a time when that would get you beat up, so I like odd things and underdogs. I also avoid butting heads, so not only do I find siphonophores and seaweeds fascinating I don't have to worry about stepping on anyone's toes. I go down rabbitholes where I start writing an article like Mastocarpus papillatus because I found some growing on some rocks, then in my research I see it is parasitized by Pythium porphyrae, which has no article, and how can that be for an oomycete that oddly lives in the ocean and also attacks my tasty nori. So then I wrote that article and that got me blowing off the dust on other Oomycota articles, encouraged by the pull of propagating automatic taxoboxes. Once you've done the taxonomy template for the genus, well then you might as well do all the species now that the template is taken care of for them too. and so on until I get sucked in somewhere else. I think it's good to advocate for some of these 'oddball' taxa as it makes it easier for editors to expand their range from say plants to the pathogenic microorganisms of their favorite plant.
- My favorite clades though, It's hard to pick for a dilettante like me. I like working on virus taxonomy, but I can't think of a specific virus species that I am awed by. Maybe Tulip breaking virus for teaching us economics or Variola virus for having so many smallpox deities, one of which was popularly sung about by Desi Arnaz and then inspired the name of a cartoon character who was then misremembered and then turned into a nickname for Howard Stern's producer Gary Dell'Abate. Sorry, really had to share that chain, but for a species that's not a staple food it probably has the most deities. But anyway, for having the most species that wow me, I love a good fungus or algae, but that often is led by my stomach. Also why I seem to research so many plant articles. You can't eat siphonophores, at least I don't, but they are fascinating with their federalist colonies of zooids. Bats are all amazing, but the task force seems to have done so much I feel the oomycetes and slime moulds need more love. Same thing with dinosaurs (I'm team Therizinosaurus though). But honestly, every species has that one moment in the research where you just go, wow, that's so interesting. For instance, I loved discovering that the picture-winged fly (Delphinia picta) has a mating dance that involves blowing bubbles. Now I keep expecting them to show me when they land on my arm, but no such luck yet.
3) Enwebb: I noticed that many of your recent edits utilize the script Rater, which aids in quickly reassessing the quality and importance of an article. Why is it important to update talk page assessments of articles? I also noticed that the quality rating you assign often aligns with ORES, a script that uses machine-learning to predict article quality. Coincidence?
- Nessie: I initially started focusing on WikiProject talk page templates because they seem to be the key to data collecting and maintenance for articles, much more so than categories. This is where you note of an article needs an image, or audio, or a range map. It's how the cleanup listing bot sorts articles, and how Plantdrew does his automated taxobox usage stats. The latter inspired me to look for articles on organisms that are not assigned to any ToL WikiProjects which initially was in the thousands. I got it down to zero with just copypasta so you can imagine I was excited when I saw the rater tool. Back then I rated everything stub/low because it was faster: I couldn't check every article for the items on the B-class checklists. Plus each project has their own nuances to rating scales and I thought the editors in the individual projects would take it from there. I also thought all species were important, so how can I choose a favorite? Now it is much easier with the rater tool and the apparent consensus with Abductive's method of rating by the pageviews (0-9 views/day is low, 10-99 is med, 100-999 is high...). For the quality I generally go by the ORES rating, you caught me. It sometimes is thrown off by a long list of species or something, but it's generally good for stub to C: above that needs formal investigation and procedures I am still learning about. It seems that in the ToL projects we don't focus so much on getting articles to GA/FA so it's been harder to pick up. It was a little culture shock when I went on the Discord server and it seemed everyone was obsessed with getting articles up in quality. I think ToL is focusing on all the missing taxa and (re)organizing it all, which when you already have articles on every anime series or whatever you can focus on bulking the articles up more. In any event, on my growing to-do list is trying to get an article up to FA or GA and learn the process that way so I can better do the quality ratings and not just kick the can down the road.
4) Enwebb: What, if anything, can ToL and its subprojects do to better support collaboration and coordination among editors? How can we improve?
- Nessie: I mentioned earlier that the projects are the main way maintenance is done. And it is good that we have a bunch of subprojects that let those tasks get broken up into manageable pieces. Frankly I'm amazed anything gets done with WikiProject Plants with how huge its scope is. Yet this not only parcels out the work but the discussion as well. A few editors like Peter coxhead and Plantdrew keep an eye on many of the subprojects and spread the word, but it's still easy for newer editors to get a little lost. There should be balance between the lumping and splitting. The newsletter helps by crossing over all the WikiProjects, and if the discord channel picked up that would help too. Possibly the big Enwiki talk page changes will help as well.
5) Enwebb: What would surprise the ToL community to learn about your life off-Wikipedia?
- Nessie: I'm not sure anything would be surprising. I focus on nature offline too, foraging for mushrooms or wild plants and trying to avoid ticks and mosquitos. I have started going magnet fishing lately, more to help clean up the environment than in the hopes of finding anything valuable. But it would be fun to find a weapon and help solve a cold case or something.
- June DYKs
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sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:29, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
DYK for Diplecogaster bimaculata
On 16 July 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Diplecogaster bimaculata, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the clingfish Diplecogaster bimaculata has been photographed cleaning a moray eel? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Diplecogaster bimaculata. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Diplecogaster bimaculata), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
valereee (talk) 00:02, 16 July 2019 (UTC)
August 2019 at Women in Red
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--Rosiestep (talk) 06:46, 29 July 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The Signpost: 31 July 2019
- In the media: Politics starts getting rough
- Discussion report: New proposals in aftermath of Fram ban
- Arbitration report: A month of reintegration
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- Community view: Video based summaries of Wikipedia articles. How and why?
- News from the WMF: Designing ethically with AI: How Wikimedia can harness machine learning in a responsible and human-centered way
- Recent research: Most influential medical journals; detecting pages to protect
- Special report: Administrator cadre continues to contract
- Traffic report: World cups, presidential candidates, and stranger things
Tree of Life Newsletter
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg/100px-Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg)
- July 2019—Issue 004
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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The WikiCup, an annual editing competition, is now in its fourth round. Casliber, consistent participant since 2010 and winner in 2016, is currently dominating Group A with 601 points. Largely responsible is the successful Featured Article nomination of Masked booby. The other remaining Tree of Life participant, Enwebb, is participating in her first ever WikiCup. In this round, she has a grand total of...5 points. But with the recent Featured Article nomination of Megabat, she stands to gain 600 points if successful. As it stands, though, it appears that at least one ToL editor is headed to the fifth and final round of 8 contestants, which begins September 1. Thus far, all participants in the WikiCup have generated 17 Featured Articles, 116 Good Articles, 16 Featured Lists, and 57 Featured Pictures. The Good Article Nominations backlog has been reduced as well, with 286 Good Article Reviews. |
For this month's editor spotlight we're joined by Charlesjsharp, a longtime contributor to Wikimedia Commons with a plethora of featured pictures on English Wikipedia. 1) Starsandwhales: How long have you been editing Wikipedia, and how did you get interested? How did you begin your journey of photographing wildlife?
![]() 2) S&W: Over the years, you've taken photos of many different organisms from birds to insects to big cats; you have an extensive list of favorite images. Which animals have been the most exciting for you to photograph?
3) S&W: Many articles under ToL have requests for people to add images that can go unanswered. What can the community do to improve the coverage of different organisms on Wikipedia, especially when it comes to images?
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4) S&W: What advice would you give to people new to photographing wildlife?
5) S&W: What would the Tree of Life community be surprised to learn about your life off-wiki?
* An example of cumbersome code: getting the layout of my responses to your questions. So dated, and no online spellchecker. |
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:59, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
DYK for Ornate rainbowfish
On 14 August 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Ornate rainbowfish, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that the ornate rainbowfish can survive in water as acidic as orange juice? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Ornate rainbowfish. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Ornate rainbowfish), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Maile (talk) 00:01, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
September 2019 at Women in Red
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--Rosiestep (talk) 16:25, 27 August 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The Signpost: 30 August 2019
- News and notes: Documenting Wikimania and our beginnings
- In focus: Ryan Merkley joins WMF as Chief of Staff
- Discussion report: Meta proposals on partial bans and IP users
- Traffic report: Once upon a time in Greenland with Boris and cornflakes
- News from the WMF: Meet Emna Mizouni, the newly minted 2019 Wikimedian of the Year
- Recent research: Special issue on gender gap and gender bias research
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
August 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg/100px-Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg)
- August 2019—Issue 005
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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![]() ![]() Guest column by Thomas Shafee (Evolution and evolvability), Editor in Chief of WikiJournal of Science
Firstly, WikiJSci can be a complementary system for FA review (getting external review, input, and validity). When an Wikipedia article is nominated (via WP:JAN), journal editors go out to non-Wikipedian academics and researchers who have published on the subject on the last five years and invite them to give feedback comments (e.g. Peripatric speciation and Baryonyx). The resulting changes can then be integrated back into the Wikipedia article.
Getting more editors involved in Wikipedia is always a high priority. WikiJSci can also be a way to encourage new people to contribute articles (especially on missing/stub/start topics). An example of an article that was written from scratch by a group of non-Wikipedians is Teladorsagia circumcincta. This not only resulted in a new Wikipedia page on an underdeveloped topic, but introduced the idea of Wikimedia contribution to a group of people who had previously never considered it.
The journal can be a way to get multimedia content reviewed or encourage contribution. The same approach could be easily adapted to sounds (e.g. frog mating calls) or videos (e.g. starfish feet motion). It also allows for tracking of those images in new articles via Altmetric (this example has >200, which is bananas). There aren't any biology examples in WikiJSci yet, but the sister medical journal has published a few summary diagrams, photography, and image galleries. Examples include this gallery by Blausen Medical or the diagram of cell disassembly during apoptosis.
For those interested in other Wikimedia sister projects, there's also broad scope for interactions with the WikiJournals. Perhaps peer reviewed teaching resources could be useful to sit alongside sets of Wikipedia articles and be integrated into Wikiversity courses (like this or this)? Can sections of Wikidata & Wikispecies be peer reviewed? What are the potential avenues for integration with WikiCite, WikiFactMine, Scholia, etc.? Currently, WikiJSci is aiming to be very flexible and try out different formats so long as they can be externally peer reviewed. For more info, see the 2019-06-30 Signpost article and the current sister project proposal. |
1) Enwebb: You're very prolific with DYKs, with over 2,000 nominations credited (in fact, I'll highlight which DYK nominations this month were yours below). What made you become so involved in this part of Wikipedia? Why should Tree of Life editors nominate articles for DYK?
2) Enwebb: I noticed that your DYK nominations reflect a diverse array of flora and fauna, from trees, marine invertebrates, birds, fishes, and mammals. How do you decide what to work on?
3) Enwebb: Which of your Wikipedia accomplishments are you most proud of?
4) Enwebb: What motivates you to keep contributing? What's your 10,000 ft view (pardon the non-SI) of the community and Tree of Life?
6) Enwebb: How did you first become interested in natural history?
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 15:43, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
October Events from Women in Red
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--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:36, 23 September 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging
AfroCine: Join the Months of African Cinema this October!
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/AfroCine_-_bare_logo.png/211px-AfroCine_-_bare_logo.png)
Greetings!
After a successful first iteration of the “Months of African Cinema” last year, we are happy to announce that it will be happening again this year, starting from October 1! In the 2018 edition of the contest, about 600 Wikipedia articles were created in at least 8 languages. There were also contributions to Wikidata and Wikimedia commons, which brought the total number of wikimedia pages created during the contest to over 1,000.
The AfroCine Project welcomes you to October, the first out of the two months which have been dedicated to creating and improving content that centre around the cinema of Africa, the Caribbean, and the diaspora. Join us in this global edit-a-thon, by helping to create or expand articles which are connected to this scope. Also remember to list your name under the participants section.
On English Wikipedia, we would be recognizing participants in the following manner:
- Overall winner (1st, 2nd, 3rd places)
- Diversity winner
- Gender-gap fillers
For further information about the contest, the recognition categories and how to participate, please visit the contest page here. For further inquiries, please leave comments on the contest talkpage or on the main project talkpage. See you around :).--Jamie Tubers (talk) 00:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
The Signpost: 30 September 2019
- From the editors: Where do we go from here?
- Special report: Post-Framgate wrapup
- Traffic report: Varied and intriguing entries, less Luck, and some retreads
- News from the WMF: How the Wikimedia Foundation is making efforts to go green
- Recent research: Wikipedia's role in assessing credibility of news sources; using wikis against procrastination; OpenSym 2019 report
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
September 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg/100px-Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg)
- September 2019—Issue 006
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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Tree of Life subprojects and task forces by start year and whether currently considered active or not This month saw a vanishingly rare occurrence for the Tree of Life: a new WikiProject joined the fold. WikiProject Diptera, however, is also unusual in being a classroom project. Whether or not this project will stay active once the semester ends remains to be seen. It does not bode well, however, that WP:WikiProject Vespidae—a creation from the same instructor at St. Louis University—faded to obscurity shortly after the fall semester concluded in 2014. WikiProject Vespidae is defunct and now redirects to the Hymenoptera task force of WikiProject Insects. Since 2014, the Tree of Life has seen a string of years where one or zero projects or task forces were created. The only projects and task forces created since then are WikiProject Animal anatomy (2014), Hymenoptera task force (2016), Bats task force (2017), WikiProject Hypericaceae (2018), and now WikiProject Diptera (2019). The year 2006 saw the greatest creation of WikiProjects and task forces, with fourteen still active and the remaining six as "semiactive", "inactive", or "defunct". |
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 22:26, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
November 2019 at Women in Red
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--Rosiestep (talk) 22:59, 29 October 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The Signpost: 31 October 2019
- In the media: How to use or abuse Wikipedia for fun or profit
- Special report: “Catch and Kill” on Wikipedia: Paid editing and the suppression of material on alleged sexual abuse
- Interview: Carl Miller on Wikipedia Wars
- Community view: Observations from the mainland
- Arbitration report: October actions
- Gallery: Wiki Loves Broadcast
- Recent research: Research at Wikimania 2019: More communication doesn't make editors more productive; Tor users doing good work; harmful content rare on English Wikipedia
- News from the WMF: Welcome to Wikipedia! Here's what we're doing to help you stick around
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
October 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg/100px-Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg)
- October 2019—Issue 007
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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By request from another editor, this month I wrote an overview of ways that content is featured on Wikipedia. Below I have outlined some of the processes for getting content featured: Did You Know (DYK)What is it: A way for articles to appear on the main page of Wikipedia. A short hook in the format of "Did you know...that ___" presents unusual and interesting facts to the reader, hopefully making the reader want to click through to the article How it works: The DYK process has fairly low barriers for participation. The eligibility criteria are few and relatively easy to meet. Some important guidelines:
The process for creating the nomination is somewhat tedious. Instructions can be found here (official instructions) and here ("quick and nice" guide to DYK). Experience is the best teacher here, so don't be afraid to try and fail a few times. The last few DYK nominations I've done, however, have been with the help of SD0001's DYK-helper script, which makes the process a bit more streamlined (you create the template from a popup box on the article; created template is automatically transcluded to nominations page and article talk page) Once your nomination is created and transcluded, it will need to be reviewed. The reviewer will check that the article meets the eligibility criteria, that the hook is short enough, cited, and interesting, and that other requirements are met, such as for images. If you've been credited with more than 5 DYKs, the reviewer will also check that you've reviewed someone else's nomination for each article that you nominate. This is called QPQ (quid pro quo). You can check how many credited DYKs you've had here to see if QPQ is required for you to nominate an article for DYK. Good Article (GA)What it is: A peer review process to determine that an article meets a set of criteria. This adds a How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Anyone can nominate an article—you don't have to be a major contributor, though it is considered polite to inform the major contributors that you are nominating the article. The article is added to a queue to await a review. In the ToL, it seems that reviews happen pretty quickly, thanks to our dedicated members. Once the review begins, the reviewer will offer suggestions to help the article meet the 6 GA criteria. Upon addressing all concerns, the reviewer will pass the article, and voilà! Good Article! Advice to a first-time nominator: Look at other Good Articles in related areas before nominating. If you're unsure about nominating, consider posting to the talk page of your project to see what other editors think. You can also have a more experienced editor co-nominate the article with you. Featured Article (FA)What it is: An exhaustive peer review to determine that an articles meets the criteria. This adds a How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Nominated articles are usually GAs already. Uninvolved editors can nominate, though the article's regular editors should be consulted first. Several editors will come by offering feedback, eventually supporting or opposing promotion to FA. A coordinator will determine if there is consensus to promote the article to FA. For an editor's first FA, spot checks to verify that the sources support the text are conducted. Advice to a first-time nominator: The Featured Article Candidate (FAC) process is a bit intimidating, but several steps can make your first one easier (speaking as someone who has exactly one). If you also did the GA nomination of the article, you can ask the reviewer for "extra" feedback beyond the GA criteria. You can also formally request a peer review and/or a copy edit from the Guild of Copy Editors to check for content and mechanics. First-time nominators are encouraged to seek the help of a mentor for a higher likelihood of passing their first FAC. Good and Featured Topics (GT and FT)What it is: It took me a while to realize we even had GT and FT on Wikipedia, as they are not very common relative to GA and FA. Both GT and FT are collections of related articles of high quality (all articles at GA or FA, all lists at Featured List). GT/FT have to be at least 3 articles with no obvious gaps in coverage of the topic, along with other criteria. For GT, all articles have to be GA quality and all lists must be FL. For FT, at least half the articles must be FA or FL, with the remaining articles at GA. How it works: Follow the nomination procedures for creating a new topic or adding an article to an existing topic. Other editors weigh in to support or oppose the proposal. Coordinators determine if there is consensus to promote to GT/FT. Advice to a first-time nominator: There are very few GT/FT in Tree of Life (5 GT and 11 FT). Most of the legwork appears to be improving a cohesive set of articles to GA/FA. |
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Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 03:34, 3 November 2019 (UTC) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk)
ArbCom 2019 election voter message
December events with WIR
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--Megalibrarygirl (talk) 18:44, 25 November 2019 (UTC) via MassMessaging
The Signpost: 29 November 2019
- From the editor: Put on your birthday best
- News and notes: How soon for the next million articles?
- In the media: You say you want a revolution
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- Arbitration report: Two requests for arbitration cases
- Traffic report: The queen and the princess meet the king and the joker
- Technology report: Reference things, sister things, stranger things
- Gallery: Winter and holidays
- Recent research: Bot census; discussions differ on Spanish and English Wikipedia; how nature's seasons affect pageviews
- Essay: Adminitis
- From the archives: WikiProject Spam, revisited
November 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg/100px-Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg)
- November 2019—Issue 008
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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News at a Glance |
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Class is in Session in the Tree of Life |
In an interesting turn of events, this month's guest column is by my alter-ego, Elysia (Wiki Ed): *Puts on Wiki Education hat* Hi everyone, I'm Elysia and I work for Wiki Education. You may know me as Enwebb. I got a request last month to let you know how Wiki Education is intersecting with the Tree of Life subprojects. As one of Wiki Education's major goals is to improve topics related to the sciences, leading to our Communicating Science initiative, we end up supporting quite a few in the biological sciences. Here are the TOL-related courses active this term: What is the impact of student editors in Tree of Life? ![]() Altogether, these 16 courses have 347 student participants. As the end of the semester hasn't come yet, these numbers are still growing, but these students have:
Some of our best student work this semester (of any kind, not just biodiversity) has come from Agelaia's Behavioural Ecology course—you may remember this as the course that created WikiProject Diptera. The students have several Good Article nominations, including Dryomyza anilis, Anastrepha ludens, Aedes taeniorhynchus, Drosophila silvestris, Drosophila subobscura, and Ceratitis capitata. And while long-term participation from students is low, there's always the chance that we'll discover a Wikipedian. I had never edited before my Wikipedia assignment in 2017 and I'm still here nearly 20,000 edits later! After I poked around in the beginning of the semester, I had the realization that not many people write Wikipedia, and very few of those have a special interest in bats. If I didn't stick around to write the content, there was no guarantee that it would ever get done. Why are species articles suitable for students? Writing about taxonomic groups is a great fit for students, as it keeps them away from areas where new editors traditionally struggle. The notability policy is generous towards taxa, and there is little danger of a student's work getting removed for lack of notability; this is to be expected when students write biographies. Students may struggle with encyclopedic tone for biographies and stray towards promotional writing, but this is much less common when writing about a shrew or algae! Additionally, we're never going to run out of species to write about. Students have a bounty of stubs and redlinks to pick from. Creating a new article or expanding an existing one also takes a fairly predictable structure, with plenty of articles that students can model after. Don't students just create messes for volunteers to clean up? Our sincere hope is that, no, they don't, and we take several steps to try to minimize the burden on volunteer labor. With automatic plagiarism detection, alerts when students edit a Good or Featured Article, and notifications when students edit an article subject to discretionary sanctions, we try to stay ahead of problems as much as possible. We also review all student work at the end of each term. Ian, Shalor, and I are always happy to receive pings alerting us to student issues that need to be addressed. |
November DYKs |
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Nomination for deletion of Template:Taxonomy/'Oomyzus
Template:Taxonomy/'Oomyzus has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Gonnym (talk) 15:16, 19 December 2019 (UTC)
January 2020 at Women in Red
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The Signpost: 27 December 2019
- From the editors: Caught with their hands in the cookie jar, again
- News and notes: What's up (and down) with administrators, articles and languages
- In the media: "The fulfillment of the dream of humanity" or a nightmare of PR whitewashing on behalf of one-percenters?
- Discussion report: December discussions around the wiki
- Arbitration report: Announcement of 2020 Arbitration Committee
- Traffic report: Queens and aliens, exactly alike, once upon a December
- Technology report: User scripts and more
- Gallery: Holiday wishes
- Recent research: Acoustics and Wikipedia; Wiki Workshop 2019 summary
- From the archives: The 2002 Spanish fork and ads revisited (re-revisited?)
- On the bright side: What's making you happy this month?
- WikiProject report: Wikiproject Tree of Life: A Wikiproject report