User talk:Dysmorodrepanis~enwiki/Archive090423-110826

Previous: Talk page archive 07-NOV-22 - 09-APR-15

Malaconotoidea redux

Hey Dysmorodrepanis, I left a questionnow archived on Malaconotoidea as I did want to note on Australian Magpie and Artamidae their more distant relations - but I wasn't sure how generally accepted the Cacraft paper was, nor even the name - it gets a mention in Christidis and boles but I have found little reference elsewhere. I thought you may have some insight onto the matter. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:56, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Off-hand I'd say I'd go with Christidis and Boles. They are the first major work to consider the last 5 years' studies; if they say it's good it's probably as authoritative as any single source we can get. I'll look it up the next days though. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:00, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

My concern was that googling revealed precious few references to Malaconotoidea so had wondered where it was up to. I had to return the C&B book to the library but it is on google books thankfully. I'd be curious to see what comes up - fascinating clade of which I plan to buff a few articles on. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:03, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, in 3 years' time we're probably gonna see many more references on Google. A good paper needs 1-2 years til it's published. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 03:14, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Substrate

Greetings!
Thanks for your contributions to Eremopezus. One of your [Substrate recent edits] included a link to {{{3}}}, a disambiguation page. The use of these links is discouraged on Wikipedia as they are unhelpful to readers. In the future, please check your links to make sure they point to articles. Thanks!

twirligig_T to^the C 21:57, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds May newsletter

The May 2009 issue of the Bird WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

• Newsletter delivery by xenobot 06:05, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Hidden text

Hi there, what is the purpose of this edit? Tim Vickers (talk) 16:24, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Or this one: which you put into several cattle articles?

Please read the note at the top of this page. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:54, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I will be reverting these whereever I find them. They are supported under no policy of Wikipedia and add nothing useful to the article. If you need to collect notes for yourself, please do so on your user subpages. Rmhermen (talk) 21:02, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

The burden lies with you as you are the one adding cryptic texts to Wikipedia in hidden comments - which can only be interpreted by tracking you down as the editor and tracking down a list on your user page. Please present any other editor doing anything like this, any policy which describes hiding unused references in the lead to the references section, anyone claiming that this is useful to any editor and, more importantly, any reader. (Aside: I am sure you will find plenty of edits of mine in empirical science articles.) Rmhermen (talk) 01:32, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

"The burden lies with you [...] ..." - I provided several items of Wikiedia SOP, MOS and other policy; I rested my case; prove me wrong. Where, for example, does it say that the "comment" markup code is deprecated and must not be used for its intended purpose?

"Please present..." - One editor has added comment like here in 100s if not 1000s of articles; my bot I presume. The average Polbot article has 1.7 comments or so. There is at least one other user who annotates scientific sources at Mammals and I have also come across annots in bird articles which did not use the formatting I use, but I can't shake one of these out of my wrist (I come across them every few weeks or so). These are examples I can immediately think of. Comment is also widespread in templates.

"cryptic texts [...] which can only be interpreted..." - Though as I compress as much as I can for space reasons, making the odd title a bit hard to decipher... in what way would anything like "PNAS[volume][startpage]" or "MolPhylEvol[volume][startpage]", annotated at the start of a section entitled "References" or "Sources" or, if neither is present, in the position where it will eventually be placed, hard to fathom out for anyone with at least undergraduate education in the sciences hard to understand? So you have trouble reading a shorthanded scientific citation? No big deal, there are enough people who can read it. Myopia does not justify threats of rampant deletionism.

Perhaps you might want to re-read comment (programming) also.

Coders insert comment for a purpose, and is a Very Bad Thing to rm any programming code "just because" you do not grok it. Please leave comments to people who do grok it. We try and keep it to the minimum necessary, 'kay?

And again, look what good it did for Galliformes. The information was strewn about in bits and pieces across a half-dozen major and again as many minor sources, and as you can see in the History, it took a quarter of a year to sort out the (sometimes contradictory) information once enough was accumulated. But one would not hog the Talk page for that; we did that for Passerine but Passerine was epic.

P.S.: There is very little overlap in what articles you and I edit. And if I - or someone else - provide a source here and there, you might rather use the link at the top of this page and see whether you can get the article. If you do it ever so often, you'll be in for a lot of pleasant surprises. I have helped the occasional editor make sense of a particularly unusual citation I annotated, and as far as I know, most found the studies in question highly useful for their work. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 02:56, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Re:Bonellia

Thank you for the info, you probably saved me much time making the same mistake over and over again, but individually fixing the many of many of articles that I created is unpractical and quite possible impossible. You see, the way the bot works is by replacing certain areas that I say to in the edit window with the title of the page.

ex. - Title: Bonellia,  *** becomes Bonellia
ex. - Title: Acatochaeta africana, $$$, becomes Acatochaeta (Acatochaeta africana)
ex. - Title: Acatochaeta africana, @@@, becomes A. africana (Acatochaeta + . africana)

And individually changing the refs defeats the purpose, unless the genus is apart of the url, like in nomen.at. Do you think there is any to work with this? Bugboy52.4 (talk) 22:22, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

P.S. - Please replay on my talk. Bugboy52.4 (talk) 22:27, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
P.S. plus - I have created at most 8,000 articles using these refs!

? Bugboy52.4 (talk) 15:53, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Aphelocoma's etymology

Hello. I noticed that a couple of years ago you added to all aphelocoma articles an etymological footnote. Well, this etymology you added, apart from unreferenced, it seems to be quite nonsensical at first glance. The actual grc word is hapalos, not apalos. Plus, it is quite obvious that aphelo- comes from ἀφελής - apheles "simple"; and finally the Latin coma is ultimately a loanword from Greek κόμη "hair" (btw, this view is supported by MyEtymology.com site as well). The aphelo- (unrelated to hapalo-) is already used in the species names Aphelocephala amd Aphelandra. Could you please correct the etymology sections of all the relevant articles? Cheers. --Omnipaedista (talk) 07:03, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Can do, thanks for pointing it out! In fact, I am unable to fathom where I got the info from in the first place. It is not in my usual etymology sources. Probably I was mislead by (h)apalos (the most accurate way to write it, as presence/absence of the glottal fricative depended on the dialect and was eventually lost altogether) meaning "soft" in some contexts (e.g. "soft music", "soft breeze"), but a better translation would be "mellow". For a bird's plumage, I believe, biological taxonomy would rather use malaco- which is found in contexts where it means "physically soft" (cf Malacostraca). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 11:55, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you both for your detailed answer and the correction of the respective articles. By the way, I appreciate your work here in general! --Omnipaedista (talk) 19:03, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Re:Tachinidae

I don't think you understand what I need, I need a reliable (Like you said) list of Tachinidae genera and species; maybe a website like ITIS and nomen.at format so it would make it easy to create the list of species of Tachinidae. Another problem would be, even if the sources are reliable, the page would need to be constently in check. Bugboy52.4 (talk) 23:51, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I do, but I am not an expert on Diptera, only edit them perhaps two or three times a year. But WT:ARTH might know of a source you can use. User:Dyanega is not specialized in arthropods, but he is a well-known entomologist and taxonomist and probably one of the #1 insect experts here on Wikipedia. He either knows a source, or knows someone who knows a source ;-) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 03:13, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Telescopus

You added a dispute tag at Telescopus hoogstraali but never said what was in dispute, so I removed it. kwami (talk) 15:48, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The same thing you noted on the Talk page ;-)

It is actually worse than you thought, and I added some Talk text to that effect and reenabled the dispute tag.

Thanks for notifying me! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 16:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I created the genus stub and deleted the false claim, so I removed the tag again. Have some pix of T. semi. that I'll select to post hopefully today. kwami (talk) 16:50, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 16:51, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a beautiful snake. Supposedly extremely aggressive and with painful venom, but they actually make nice pets.

Could you code the synonym correctly? I don't see it in the taxobox template instructions. I'll fix up the sp. synonyms per your link, as I was going off multiple sources. kwami (talk) 16:53, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Done. Cleaned up spacing, taxobox, links etc while I was at it. (I remove the "This article was created by Polbot" comment after cleanups, it helps to keep track of which Polbot stubs have been error-checked)

The source that proposed to treat it as subspecies of fallax is here. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 17:01, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant for the genus, but I figured it out.

This is nicer than I remember. Most pix were of it perched on my glasses or climbing a puppy. kwami (talk) 17:28, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Nelson's Horsenettle

In this edit, you changed the classification from native to endemic. I don't understand why you did this, so I'm reverting it. Viriditas (talk) 22:43, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok, I see why you did it now. A previous editor (the person who started the article) added the word "endemic". But, this continues to be unclear in reference to the "Pacific Islands". It is not endemic to Hawaii, for example. Viriditas (talk) 22:46, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

It also looks like the IP address copied the material wholesale from Webster’s Quotations, Facts and Phrase. Viriditas (talk) 22:48, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

But it doesn't mention the Hawaiian Islands. If it did, I had written something else ;-)

Soo... is it emdemic to (unspecified) Pacific islands? Then this can be written accordingly, because Oceania is a distinct biogeographic region, and it is good to use such terminology when describing taxon ranges.

About the copypasta... none of the sources present seem to contain sufficient info to change that. The article should be flagged for expansion; I only added the (referenced) synonymy data anyway and am not a horsenettle specialist. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:53, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Before 1999, most of the sources (including the current USFWS documents) called it a native plant species, but after 1999, Kim Starr refers to at as an endemic. So my question is, why doesn't the USFWS currently recognize it as an endemic species? Viriditas (talk) 23:21, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I wonder if it has anything to do with the classification of Midway Atoll as an unorganized, unincorporated territory of the United States. It does look like Nelson's Horsenettle is endemic to Hawaii. Viriditas (talk) 23:31, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I think you are right. Nelson's Horsenettle is endemic to the Pacific Islands; I've reverted my changes accordingly. Viriditas (talk) 04:44, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Image Galleries

• I've noticed that you've recently been deleting large image galleries from the WP:Bird Project, there was debate recently on the usefulness of these 'galleries' to show 'Various views and plumages' and the consensus seemed to be that they were a indeed a useful addition albeit with limited images and no duplicates.

Rather than deleting the whole gallery it might prove more useful just to trim out unnecessary pics. Sending them to the 'Commons' is rather pointless as they will probably never be utilized by WP readers.

Also as a major media contributor to WP:Birds I feel rather offended when my images are removed unnecessarily after spending precious time uploading them to a non-commercial site.

Please read WP:Image Policy WP:IG It might help explain better than I can. Aviceda talk 05:42, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not deleting them, merely outcommenting; the entire code is still there as you will have seen. On Wikipedia, image gallery is generally very restricted. Typically, there should not be more than 4-5 images per gallery, and the gallery should directly refer to some fact(s) in the article text, such as in Wattled Curassow (where the gallery illustrates the similar species discussed above).

Some users delete galleries outright, but I do not think this is good. Better leave the code, I though, because users might disagree. Regardless, the policy to keep in mind regarding image galleries is WP:NOTREPOSITORY.

In a nutshell, any section with a title "Gallery" on wikipedia is considered fair game for deletion by most users. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 15:44, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately the feedback I received when I originally questioned the 'Gallery' removal was that they were very useful to most readers, they offer extra information, granted they should be kept fairly small but would it not be worth changing your script to ask for the duplicate images to be 'thinned-out'? If you continue applying this I will have to reassess whether I want my media associated with WP. Aviceda talk 18:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm... I am not using scripts. Other users might, however. Are you sure you got the right guy here?

And I am not deleting anything for precisely this reason: that the user who added potentially objectionable content can choose by himself what to keep. I am not on vandal patrol or something, merely streamlining some code in such cases (like removing the bot notices and updating taxonomy). The person who provided the photos (in this case you) knows better than I do which photos should be there in any case (even of 80% of a 20-image gallery is removed). I f you click "edit", you'll see that everything is still there. You only need to remove the <!-- --> and tzhe note I added to fully restore the gallery.

You might want to discuss this issue not here but on Wikipedia talk:Image use policy, where cases exactly like these we have here are right now being discussed by users who have a stronger opinion in the matter than I do.

What I do in any case is to delete the "Gallery" section header. Because, as I said, some will simply delete anything that is in a section titled "Gallery" (one user even deleted the galleries from Common Kestrel, which are entirely un-objectionable I think). But there are cases like in Green-backed Tit, where the layout is much better with the gallery than without it.

Another thing: you should really really really put those galleries on Commons, no matter whether they are kept on Wikipedia or not. There is a strong movement on Commons which wants to ban galleries almost completely, and your galleries, with all their information, make excellent showcases on why banning galleries on Commons is a very bad idea (I think).

I shall in the future only outcomment those galleries that are very large, or where the page layout is badly affected. Of the rest, I shall only remove the "Gallery" section header, so that people who hunt down galleries are not as easily drawn to them, and so that the galleries tie in closer with the text, and perhaps move the galleries to a "Description" or "Behaviour" section, when this is already available. Would that be OK? Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:18, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Hint (you might be aware of this and I might confuse you with another user): place Commons tags directly under a section header. This way, they will not play havoc with the "Edit" links on the page. Also, adding "-inline" to a Commons (or Commons category) link, e.g. {{commons-inline|Falco tinnunculus}}, will turn the right-hand box into a left-hand text line. Very useful for those very short stubs, to improve the layout. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

• I'm also baffled to why you are deleting Wikispecies links? The taxonomy on WP seems to be exactly the same as on Wikispecies but you have deleted the template on several, I have reinstated a number of them but will not go further if you have a satisfactory explanation (seems a bit strange to me!) Aviceda talk 06:33, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

No, Wikispecies is still based on the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, an obsolete system from the 1990s that never really caught on and is based on the outdated phenetic method. It is, in other words, not up to modern scientific standards. The reason is that when Wikispecies was originally established, some user (probably from Japan) built the entire Sibley system into it. As long as it is there, it cannot be used on Wikipedia. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 15:44, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

• Thanks for clarifying, it certainly helps me understand the reasoning behind your actions, hopefully we can make the 'Galleries' a useful but not an annoying feature (...and apply a name change). I will try and find time to implement your suggestions, do you know of a way of retrieving articles that you have attached <!--[please move long galleries to Wikimedia Commons]--> tags? I can then thin out those that are too full and apply your formatting suggestions.

• I've used 'Various views and plumages' rather than 'Gallery' to annotate Galleries, I would like a better phrase but do you think this would be OK for the time-being?

• I'm a bit unsure how to transfer the galleries to Commons (would there be any copyright issues moving someone elses images?) or is it simply a case of providing your Commons tags hint that you mentioned above? Regards, Aviceda talk 07:26, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Ipomoea pes-caprae

Hello, again. What does this mean? Thanks in advance. Viriditas (talk) 12:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

That a tidbit of information on this species is found in the journal Micronesica, volume 40, starting page 169. Which is here. (It is some distributional and ecological data) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:20, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, but why are you using inline comments instead of the further reading section? Viriditas (talk) 12:32, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Because a) the "further reading" section never seems to get done (we have bird articles where it is already three times as long as the article itself), b) it would be a waste of space as articles generally need to be A-class for such peripheral information to be added in a meaningful way (another example: you cannot meaningfully add information about a bird's habits in winter quarters in a particular national park in Bhutan, if the article is a stub containing only the name and distribution and habitat, with no words on altitudinal data and circannual rhythm and so on), and c) this is not an inline cite but a comment ;-) in other words, the information is largely unusable to the casual editor. (For that reason, it is also not well-placed on the Talk page... if any reference placed there ever gets used. I have not seen many refs from Talk getting used, and usually just in cases where there is an ongoing dispute and talk page attention by veteran editors is high)

In this particular case, the article is lacking an overall source, and I would like to see that added first, and the marginal "pantropical creeping vine with purple corolla that grows on beach habitat" tidbit (which is nice to know, and here we have a scholarly source for it) added on top of it. Otherwise, one would have to use {{citation needed}} to excess, as the info would go right into otherwise unsourced paragraphs, and ref-after-punctuation, which is commonly used, will mislead the reader about the extent to which the information has been verified. And as I don't have a textbook or other robust source for the other information, the honour of adding the Micronesica ref goes to the first user who'll source the existing article text thoroughly. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:44, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Ok, but then why isn't it added as a source or even to the reference section? I'm still not understanding why you are using the inline comment for this. Are you aware that sources like this are added as a reference or a further reading citation? Viriditas (talk) 12:50, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Read and understand the Wikipedia article on Comments in computer programming, as well as WP:COMMENT, and compare with an article where references have been added as "further reading": Harris's Sparrow (which has been like this for 2 years now). "Further reading" lists do not seem to get made into proper references; it may be because outside WP:TOL they are used differently (to list general or in-depth reference works never intended to be used as inlined sources).

I noted that editors didn't take the "further reading" bait. So I choose this approach - even if it takes time for the refs to be put to use, the do not mess up the layout. Wikipedia is about providing encyclopedic content, not about providing "further reading" lists, and the space afforded to either should reflect this. See also WP:NOTDIR, WP:LINKFARM, WP:INDISCRIMINATE and WP:NOT PAPERS. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 13:10, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Take a look at your talk page and archives. I don't see any support for your method. What editors typically do in this situation, is one of two things: 1) Format the reference and add it inline or to a separate reference section, or 2) Add it to a further reading section. I have no idea why you think further reading sections do not get made into proper references. They are proper references (and a proper section per MOS) and whenever possible, they are moved into the body of the article as needed. There seems to be a basic disconnect with what you are doing and how the community handles this issue. Sources can simply sit in a further reading section. There is no reason to place them anywhere else if they aren't needed. Now, the way I usuallly work is, I do the research, find the sources, and add them to further reading. Then, as I source the material, I merge them inline. Ideally, I will end up deleting the further reading section as it is no longer needed, but in most cases, I will be left with less than half a dozen because I already have enough sources but I want to provide good pointers to anyone interested in more research. One strange situation that stands out is The_Lathe_of_Heaven. I did a lot of research on this topic and found the best sources that would help expand the article, but I didn't have time to work on it. So, I added them to further reading and made a note on the talk page. Anyone who wishes to expand this article and turn it into a GA or FA will need these sources. Because I already did the research, I provided them in the further reading section, making it that much easier for any editor who wishes to expand the article. And these are not just sources that mention the novel in a few words. They go into the topic in depth and offer a wealth of material. Viriditas (talk) 13:25, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Manual of Style explicitly recommends comments for

"leaving instructions about part of the text, where this is more convenient than raising the matter on the talk page"

and the "Further reading" method, as you propose it, is liable to run afoul of a whole load of WP:NOT.

"I don't see any support for your method." - what do you expect? Notifications like "I find your use of the comment markup great YAYYYYY!"? Why should anyone who knows what comments were invented for in the first place complain about them being used? The complaints are arguments from ignorance of people who know nothing about computer programming. Check out any HTML page's source code these days. Comments abound. So it is OK to complain about excessive (paragraph-length) use of comments, but to complain about use of comments in general at present violates the official Wikipedia Manual of Style.

So if you don't like comments and would rather see the code deprecated, the appropriate place to discuss this is not here, but here and here. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 13:50, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Hey, you are way off base. I understand exactly how comments are used (and I suspect so do your detractors) and this has nothing to do with it. You are interpreting the MOS out of context to fit your own approach. You have not left a single instruction in the comments, and this type of style is generally confined to explicit instructions asking the reader to be aware of something, like the repeated insertion of trivia, etc. So, you aren't following the MOS here. Look, take a step back for a moment and try to see the problem. In this particular case, you are supposed to add the references inline (notes or references) or in their own section (references or further reading). Comments are not used for references. Viriditas (talk) 13:54, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Nobody who has ever edited or ever will edit Wikipedia cannot recognize a short-hand reference (journal, volume, startpage) to a scientific publication!? I find that hard to believe. If I say for example "PNAS106:7899", the meaning is obvious to everyone who knows what "PNAS" is. And if the meaning were obvious to the general public, I would put it on Talk or whatnot.

"You are interpreting the MOS out of context to fit your own approach" - again,

"Invisible comments are useful for flagging an issue or leaving instructions about part of the text, where this is more convenient than raising the matter on the talk page. They should be used judiciously, because they can clutter the wiki source for other editors. Check that your invisible comment does not change the formatting, such as introducing unwanted white space in read mode."

"Comments are not used for references." - these are not references. These are "instructions about part of the text, where this is more convenient than raising the matter on the talk page" (emphasis added). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:11, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

(An alternative approach would have been:

• Raise an eyebrow or two about the crazies that edit WP these days, but as the edit in question was not disruptive but a legitimate (if unusual) use of WP code make no issue of it
• Dig up some reference work, field guide or whatnot that finally sources the information already found in the article
• Expand article text with information from general reference
• Weave the Micronesica data into that.
• Having read the Micronesica article, (probably) realize immediately why it was not used as reference outright
• ????
• PROFIT (in the form of a 5x expand DYK hook, e.g. "...that the ubiquitous tropical Beach Morning Glory vine was not found in a survey of Aiwa Island in Fiji, though it is abundant on nearby Lakeba?")

Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:43, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

A case where commenting has been used to an extent that, while technically legitimate from the information contained therein, arguably comes close to "clutter[ing] the wiki source" is for example in Violaceous Euphonia (section "External links"). But I have not touched that (neither in inserting nor in deleting), because whoever removes it in my view has to draw the range map first, and I suck at Inkscape... Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 15:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

You are misinterpreting how comments are used on Wikipedia. There are no "instructions" in your usage. Furthermore, the number of editors who have come here complaining about your unilateral usage, is proof positive that it isn't working. References are used in the appropriate sections per MOS. This has been explained to you many different times by a number of editors. Since you are only doing this for your benefit, I would ask you to stop at this time and engage in a broader discussion on this usage in a larger forum until we reach a community resolution. Viriditas (talk) 22:38, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

(butting in) I am in two minds, I just found FieldianaZool114:1 i a comment at Guaiabero, which I am expanding for DYK. Now I can go look it up as some preliminary searches on google did not turn up much. I think this is more helpful than harmful myself. Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:52, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

This came up on the bird talk page in December 2008 Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Birds/archive_27#Bot_for_mining_references. From my point of view little was explained to me and I note that the little hidden references continue to appear. I think that several people have objected to these, which in my opinion should be fully explained and approved by the wikipedia project or stop. In December 2008 I suggested that the meaning of these hidden marks to be explained perhaps on a subpage, but my suggestion did not get reply and my suggestion was not taken up. The wikipedia is not for making notes that nearly no one else can understand, so in my opinion, this must stop in its current format. Snowman (talk) 20:40, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I have no problem with them. They do not hamper the readability of the article to the end readers and they help editors wanting to expand the article. To my mind that makes them a net benefit to the project. Sabine's Sunbird talk 20:53, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that it is a pity that they were not explained in Dec 2008 when I expressed an interest in them. I feel that they should be put in a format that is self explanatory. I feel that they have probably caused many readers some inconvenience in wondering what they are. If they are to help editors, they should be self-explanatory, so that more editors can use them. I did not get any reply to my suggestion in Dec 2008 that they should be explained, so in my case, their meaning is lost on me. I feel that they should not have this secretive quality. I have worked on many pages where these hidden marks have appeared and they have never been any help to me, and they were not explained to me when I expressed an interest in them. I think that there are several conventional ways to list where references can be found, and that there is no need for rather secretive hidden notes. Snowman (talk) 21:05, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

True, true. But (IONO if you were here already back then) we had this immense list of "further reading"s pinned under most of the NAm songbirds; some probably remember, a lot of regulars were pissed. So then we had Polbot, and I found the Polbot note annoying at first, but later on helpful to keep track (by removing it) of articles which have undergone expert review. So I thought "hmmmm comments... why not?" Helps also to cleanup taxonomy lapsi, parentheses issues, differing author dates from spurious Web sources; the alternative would be a Talk section which is just as incomprehensible to 95%+ of all users.Unsigned paragraph by Dysmorodrepanis (talk) at 23:07, 2 June 2009; see this edit

The hidden text by Polbot is written in plain English and is easy to understand. Snowman (talk) 19:40, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Comments are not hidden; you'll see that once wyou become actively aware of their existence you can often predict where the buggers are hiding. And simply clicking "edit" in the reference secion (or "edit" in general if it's a short article) will let you see whatever is there. But perhaps most people edit differently, on a per-section basis. IONO how many ppll found the comments and ignored them (knowing better than to mess with a comment that they neither understand nor is profanity) or used them (probably less than 100 altogether, perhaps as few as a dozen); I have come across the odd comment by others -- mostly longer ones "this and this 'fact' is a piece of crap, pls fix it, too lazy/esoteric an issue to go to Talk, kthxbye" kind of complaints -- and fixed the pertinent issues, but I have never thought of notifying the original editor who inserted the comment. Unsigned paragraph by Dysmorodrepanis (talk) at 23:07, 2 June 2009; see this edit

I think they are called "hidden" because of the wiki code that hides a section of the original mark-up code from normal view. Snowman (talk) 19:40, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I may also have underestimated the number of people who do read scientific literature on 'pedia, but I think especially the Bird and Dino projects have done much to raise the scientific credibility of the entire project. You can get bird and dino information from Wikipedia and need not be ashamed of yourself. And we have >100 editors who admit of having a peer-reviewed publication of themselves ;-) So there ought to be a lot of editors who have seen such "cryptic strings" as I add before. Unsigned paragraph by Dysmorodrepanis (talk) at 23:07, 2 June 2009; see this edit

Unfortunately, I sometimes find it impossible to determine what journal the hidden text refers to from the the compressed jargon within the hidden text. Snowman (talk) 19:40, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

In summary, I might have promoted it more openly. The literature is often accessible to the average reader, provided 5 minutes of Google are spent (or one minute on Wikipedia, by asking nicely). A few ppl have asked about the notes, about half were pissed off, about half were dumbfounded, and of these I never heard of half again and the other half was rather thrilled by the literature I pointed them at. But overall I would say the number of editors who have given good grounds against it is fairly limited, we have >10K active editors and probably <0.01% have voiced serious complaints, few of them edit-heavy (Viriditas is the first real heavyweight who categorically insists that there is a problem). Compared to the shitstorm that breaks loose/banhammer that descends when someone does really bad things, that is not that much. Most people do not seem to care at all, and simply gloss over any cryptic stuff written between <!-- -->, which, I think, is in line with coding etiquette. Unsigned paragraph by Dysmorodrepanis (talk) at 23:07, 2 June 2009; see this edit

Unfortunately, I find that it is not always easy to determine what journal is indicated by the compressed jargon, and so no amount of google searching using the hidden text will help me elucidate the meaning of the hidden text, nor find any further reading material. Snowman (talk) 19:40, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

(From a purely scientific standpoint, the theory needs to be falsified though that this is all just part of a secret plan to pave the way of WikiProject Birds towards Wiki Domination by having it provide the bestestest and most robustly and comprehensively sourced articles.) 23:07, 2 June 2009 (UTC) Unsigned paragraph by Dysmorodrepanis (talk) at 23:07, 2 June 2009; see this edit

I think WikiProject Birds would be best served with further reading links that more people can understand. Snowman (talk) 19:40, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Additional sources are added to either the reference or further reading section. They are not added to inline, hidden comments, and your "comments" contain no instructions of any kind. Many editors have no idea what these comments are supposed to mean, and even a published scientist like Tim Vickers couldn't figure it out.[1] Unless you actually add instructions to your comments, you cannot continue to appeal to that guideline. And unless you can explain why using the reference or further reading section doesn't work for you, then I see no reason why you are insisting on your own personal style here. So, either provide actual instructions in your comments that anyone can figure out, or argue why your style is superior to best practices. I'm getting the sense that you are doing this to seek attention, because editors keep coming to your talk page to ask you what these "comments" mean. Has it occurred to you that this is not how comments are used? Comments should be explicit and self-explanatory. If you are going to insist on using inline comments, the least you can do is follow the guideline. As Tim Vickers and Rmhermen[2] pointed out above, this would not make sense to most editors on Wikipedia, and cannot be considered a "comment" of any kind. Viriditas (talk) 08:04, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I entirely agree that a comment like that would not make any sense to the vast majority of editors. I note that it has been deleted. Snowman (talk) 09:20, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

In which case you can ignore it. It doesn't hurt anyone and can be highly useful. Maybe we should set up a proper consensus discussion on it - an RfC. Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:23, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I think that you are mistaken in asking editors to ignore what is present in the wiki mark up code on the page. One does not generally ignore MOS breaches. What if every editor added there own private notes in hidden text? Surely, cryptic hidden text should be entirely banned from the wikipedia. Snowman (talk) 09:35, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps, RfC will come up with many creative solutions. Prior to going to RfC, I would like to know if User Dysmorodrepanis thinks that hidden text comments in a certain format are a problem or not. I would also like to know if User Dysmorodrepanis will reformat all the the problem hidden comments are rewrite them in a format that is compatible with MOS. Snowman (talk) 09:51, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

First off this is not really a MOS question, which concerns itself with the style of the article as seen by readers. Readers are unaffected, so this is really more of a technical/behind the scenes kind of question. Secondly, perspective please. This is not a big issue. This is a small issue. It affects very few people, offends even less, and there is no percentage over making a big deal about it. Even if we decide not to continue doing things this way it is not damaging to the encyclopaedia, or disrupting it, and it is not wrong. Acting as if Dysmorodrepanis is somehow a disruptive or bad faith editor is 100% out of line. And finally, with regard to the statement I think that you are mistaken in asking editors to ignore what is present in the wiki mark up code on the page - I disagree entirely. If I don't understand a piece of markup I leave it well alone. I am not a coder by nature and playing with code I don't understand leads to things being broken. I assume that most editors are content to leave a lot of code they don't understand alone too for fear of breaking things. Sabine's Sunbird talk 00:05, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not acting as if Dysmorodrepanis is "somehow a disruptive or bad faith editor". In fact, I am sure User Dysmorodrepanis edits were made in good faith. Nevertheless, there are several editors including several senior editors, who are pointing out that hidden comments consisting of a compressed short-hand jargon can be confusing to many editors. To me these sort of hidden comments go against what the wikipedia is about, partly because these hidden comments are very difficult to interpret making it impossible for most other editors to take-up the baton and work on the existing material. I think that it is obvious that the hidden comments are jargon and they are MOS breaches. I think that most senior editors understand wiki mark-up adequately concerning hidden comments and would not break anything on the page in the deletion of hidden text. I think that most editors would want to remove almost incomprehensible compressed short-hand jargon, especially when it is in a hidden comment. I do not think that these sort of hidden comments should be ignored. Snowman (talk) 17:01, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I note that the hidden comment on Ipomoea pes-caprae (the title of this section) has been removed and remains removed, and I think that it is highly likely that User Dysmorodrepanis is aware of this. This seems to me to indicate that User Dysmorodrepanis has been persuaded against using these sort of hidden comments; this is an assumption made in the absence of a contribution by User Dysmorodrepanis over the last few days to this discussion. Snowman (talk) 17:16, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

• See also: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_life#Comments_requested_on_a_References_issue_in_articles_under_this_project. Snowman (talk) 21:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

No, User Dysmorodrepanis has done 4 PCRs in the meantime, has had to keep up on his lab journal, has had to brush up his knowledge of secondary endosymbiosis and had to fix his bike with a new chain. That takes time.

As regards I. pes-caprae, well, as it stands User:Viriditas has removed what s/he at first called "a reference", and what definitely was a pointer to a WP:RS. And without adding the information to article, not even unsourced. As this is an ongoing dispute, why should I take further action, except for taking note of what would in other contexts be (rightly) decried as vandalism. And of Nelson's Horsenettle (see above) versus Hodgson's Treecreeper and the Siberian Stonechat. And that is, basically, why I am a bit pissed off here. I feel a bit like if a creationist lectured me on avian phylogenetics, and my silence is not to be interpreted as consent. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:24, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

What? I have removed nothing. Your unique style of "comments" are still in the article. Care to retract? Look for yourself:[3] Viriditas (talk) 07:29, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I retract that. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:22, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

As regards crypticness and inability to Google the ref - that is true, and I apologize for that. I see no problem of adding the full journal title, even to the point of ProceedingsOfTheNationalAcademyOfSciencesUSA. The MoS advises that comments better be curt, and I was zealous to follow that advice. If I was overzealous - as it looks like - that can be easily ameliorated. (The last stuff I annotated was from Forktail anyway, and has not been abbreviated.)

See either of the two articles above for the kind of information found in ref comments - Forktail may well be peer-reviewed, it certainly qualifies as a scholarly source; it is a secondary source offering raw field data which tertiary sources do not have. Note also that in Hodgson's Treecreeper, the source had to be added by an expert editor - both the bird and the pine are under Wikipedia rules split from those taxa mentioned in the source.

Scholarly secondary peer-reviewed sources are #1 on Wikipedia, in particular for articles on scholarly topics where mass media sourcing is adequate for a pop science work maybe. They are hard to understand, though people with devoted interest into a topic usually learn to read scientific papers quite quickly.

Well, and how do you best note down that some source exists, so that an editor who has expert/professional knowledge of the topic at hand, and is right at that time in a mood for a major edit fest, has an "evolutionary advantage" in locating the sources over people who find loads of unused "Further Reading" lists annoying and an eyesore? Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:24, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Open display of to-read references has been tried before; excessively though. This is not to point fingers at an editor (nice work with the maps in fact. Much obliged.) - it is to show that the amount of unused prime-quality sources that could be annotated for later use is extreme, and that an open list is probably not a good idea. Open lists of unused refs do not get converted into proper refs very fast (100s at least of sources were added back then, and how many of thesee have been used? A few dozen, perhaps), and are likely to attract, in essence, a mild version of WP:Linkspam soon enough. Vandalism of "to read" sources is also hard to detect, until a citation is looked up and found to be nonexistent. Faking reliably-looking sources is really harmful to Wikipedia, and an open listing of sources is so much vandal bait: one'd simply have to switch few words here and there and a figure or two, and sum up the edit with "correction", and Vandal Patrol would be more like the Keystone Kops.

Talk page... doesn't seem to work very well. Evolution of the horse, Equus (genus)... I put sources on Talk - some of them of major significance -, and were they incorporated? eh, no. I wonder what will become of Kinnareemimus...

I would have used a better way if I had ever found any. None, I note (except for cosmetic changes which I'd gladly incorporate if it makes the sources more accessible to whoever wants to read them), has come up in the discussion so far. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:24, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

how do you best note down that some source exists, so that an editor who has expert/professional knowledge of the topic at hand, and is right at that time in a mood for a major edit fest, has an "evolutionary advantage" in locating the sources over people who find loads of unused "Further Reading" lists annoying and an eyesore?

Use inline notes like everybody else: <ref>For more information see: Smith, A. (2009) "Title". Publisher. pp.1-10</ref> Viriditas (talk) 07:33, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

That would only work if the article already contains information pertinent to the information provided by the source. In other words, no, it would not work in cases like those under discussion here. Also, scholarly treatments of primary data cannot be dealt with in such a careless manner. Typically, the information in such articles comes in bits and pieces and without being contextualized properly it is useless or even misleading, positively false or harmful. And to properly contextualize it, it requires an editor interested in the matter at hand and ideally with expert experience.

How about a practical demonstration: try and add this source to Mountain Scops-owl, Yellowish-bellied Bush-warbler, Coral-billed Scimitar-babbler, Fire-breasted Flowerpecker (to name but a few), in a way that is not misleading or out-of-context and maintains the specificity of the information provided in the source, and that utilizes the information in the source to the fullest, and that can be replicated en masse (say 1000s of articles and sources, because that's the number of birds stubs we're working to rack up to Start or better) without inviting spam and/or making article sources so unreadably full of reftag code that novice editors are effectively prevented from contributing.

Because from a purely theoretical standpoint, your argument makes sense. However, I do not trust your practical experience with handling large amounts of minor WP:RS very much, or at least I do not trust it to be higher than mine. How often do you add new RS to articles each week? Think you can discuss and source the homonymy issues of the Nicobar Bulbul when even BirdLife International has failed to note for almost 20 years that their approach places the type species of Ixos in Hypsipetes while they maintain Ixos as distinct genus?

If not - leave it to the people who can, and do not interfere with their work please.

"inline notes like everybody else" --

• WP:NOTDEMOCRACY
• "Everyone else" -- which I take to mean "the bulk of editors with moderate to high experience" -- also seems to consider (depending on their political leanings) Fox News or MSNBC WP:RS, judging from the kind of references that are added most often.
• (technical issue not relevant to the present discussion) "Everyone else" does not include, for example, the veteran editors who made William Shakespeare great, or in fact almost any veteran editors of Humanities articles. Like these, I have switched to WP:CITESHORT for the actual reference work, because "plain" footnotes become unwieldy in long well-referenced articles, particularly if different page numbers are to be cited e.g. from monographs or if information is summarized from multiple piecemeal sources. In a nutshell, the Humanities have always been the most citation-heavy sciences, because experimental or observational data is often impossible and replaced by referencing learned opinion and interpretation, and thus, my conclusion is that if a citation style works for "Willam Shakespeare", it is bound to work for any article under any circumstance, and will not break down under the high load of references we are encouraged to achieve. (It might be significant, from an empirical standpoint, that the referencing style you propose was extensively used by the Humanities 2 years ago, but as they saw its limitations, they now actively discourage its use.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dysmorodrepanis (talk • contribs) 14:22, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Look, you are a good editor and an expert in your field, but are you aware that what you have written above does not make any sense? I'm guessing you are feeling stressed and upset, so your reaction is understandable, but can you try to provide a compromise that would satisfy all parties? Have you thought about adding a DOI that anyone can track down, or extending the citation format to make it easier for others to find the information? Right now, your shortened cites do not make sense to most people. On Wikipedia, we try to to write for the largest audience. Clearly, you are doing a good service by adding these pointers, but what you don't get is that the very people who you would like to help expand the article don't know what the pointers mean. Either extend the citation format, use DOI's, or make the comment more explicit. I think this is a reasonable request. If you cannot do this, then use further reading sections and inline notes like everbody else. Viriditas (talk) 20:57, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

DOI and all, has been tried. Result: MoS violation due to verly long comment code. Apparently there are also more people who know at least the more famous scientific journals by name than there are people who know what a DOI is and how it is used.

"On Wikipedia, we try to to write for the largest audience" - my point precisely. The mere existence of a source that provides novel (though not paradigm-changing, in which case everyone is to be informed on Talk) information regarding issues not yet mentioned in an article at all is useless to "the largest audience". Hence, it clearly qualifies as something to be annotated as comment.

Essentially,

• Open article text: information provided by any editor to any reader
• Comment in article text: information provided by any editors to (expert) editors, concerning minor issues with article (here: that changes be affected that enable addition of particular source(s))
• Open Talk text: information provided by anyone to any editor, concerning pressing issues with article

One thing Jimbo did not foresee is the flood of information that the Web has unleashed upon the world. Wikipedia is the only place with any degree of credibility (IMHO) that has taken up the task to sift through it. The Wiki software has no good way of handling to-do lists, and regarding to-do reference lists one has to be entirely expecient because there is no markup specifically for such a task. "Further reading" has always been a kind of orphaned section whose meaning differed between editors. I chose the current (comment) way of annotating sources to be considered because I found it the one to produce the most unobtrusive and clean code that did what it was supposed to do and nothing beyond. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

• Polbot includes directions to a page with explanations. You could have a direction to a subpage to your talk page where you could list all the abbreviations (in alphabetical order) used with the full version and give an explanation. I note that you failed to even reply to a similar suggestion that I made in December 2008. Nevertheless, I would prefer to see proper listing in a further reading section. Snowman (talk) 16:35, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

I didn't answer because I am still pondering it, but generally I like to avoid code bloat. In any case, I made that section of readymade code snippets of journal titles (e.g. ''[[Nature (journal)|]]'') that may be helpful. Linked it at page top. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:42, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Can we defer this for a few days? I have found the Hypsipetes issue to be highly problematic; might take up to a week to resolve but I might get it done on Monday. (Damn you Gregoy and Inskipp... ;-) ) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:54, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Trisauropodiscus

Hi, Dysmorodrepanis;

Do you know off-hand the reference for Trisauropodiscus as a possible heterodontosaurid ichnogenus? I know that North American examples may be Anomoepus, usually interpreted as an ornithischian, but I haven't run across anything as detailed as heterodontosaurid. J. Spencer (talk) 02:40, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

If you ask the question exactly like that ("possible heterodontosaurid ichnogenus"), yes. I think it was mentioned explicitly, albeit in passing, but I cannot remember where (Ameghiniana?). It was neither doi:10.1016/0031-0182(91)90030-U nor here (note that there is a typographic error in the latter paper: "ó" is a dash) - but add this and we have, indeed, heterodontosaurs as possible trackmakers of Trisauropodiscus. It might have been something closely related to (but not in) Heterodontosauridae though.

You might thus want to tweak the wording a bit. I wrote the piece in the heterodontosaur article off the wrist, and I think the terminology I used in Bird ichnology, "Heterodontosaurus-like animal", is better, because that is precisely what the research of Gierlinski and Rainforth indicates. Or you could discuss the relationship between the two ichnotaxa in detail, but given the recent nadir of Trisauropodiscus studies, which synonymizes it in part with Gruipeda - an ichnogenus that is superficially similar and was made, without doubt, by Neoaves - discussing ichnotaxonomy might land you deep in BAND-land. But to me, the following (from here) is still the bottom line:

the null hypothesis is that [Trisauropodiscus] tracks represent non-avian dinosaurs, and this has yet to be falsified in a convincing manner.

This is probably also significant, for it supports the assumption that Anomoepus/Trisauropodiscus was not made by the juvenile of the (unspecified) Grallator trackmaker or some other diminutive non-avian theropod (as has also been proposed, e.g. here).

Candidate references I have not (to my memory) seen and which might explicitly state heterodontosaurs as probable trackmakers of Trisauropodiscus: this, this and "Crouching theropods in taxonomic jungles" (Informaworld is currently on maintenance, hence the link might not work). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:09, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

A typical example of the mess one gets into here is the Nature paper that described the "bird-like footprints" from Argentina:

The poorly preserved Triassic specimens of Trisauropodiscus are similar to Anomoepus however, that ichnogenus is believed to be the product of an ornithischian trackmaker.

Whatever the ichnotaxonomic affinities of [the Argentinan] footprints, their producers are unknown from Late Triassic skeletal remains. In particular, the Late Triassic theropodan record is sparse and no theropod shows evidence of an avian-like reversed hallux. Consequently, these bird-like footprints can only be attributed to an unknown group of theropods showing some avian characters.

So their argument goes: "Only theropods can leave bird-like footprints, and as Trisauropodiscus was apparently made by an ornithischian it cannot be the same as the bird-like tracks here, and thus the footprints here are proof of the existence of bird-like theropods in the Triassic". Circular reasoning; nowhere do they show that their assertion "if it's bird-like it must be from a theropod" is actually correct, and in the end they throw in an ad hoc hypothesis ("unknown group of theropods"), as if to add insult to injury.

Sometimes one wonders why the papers extended abstracts in Nature are so highly-valued, while, say, Acta Paleontologica Polonica is only known among specialists... Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:28, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! I'll have a look at those and see about wording things. J. Spencer (talk) 02:43, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds June newsletter

The June 2009 issue of the Bird WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

• Newsletter delivery by xenobot 13:50, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I added a DYK nom

Couldn't think of anything too interesting for here -Template_talk:Did_you_know#Articles_created.2Fexpanded_on_June_6 - but you never know...Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:01, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! (Though I could have just left it at the 2 bits. BLI does note a decline, but it does not seem to be pronounced, even w/RWB and post-tsunami) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:56, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Nicobar Bulbul

Hello! Your submission of Nicobar Bulbul at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and there still are some issues that 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! Ironholds (talk) 22:24, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Ipomoea pes-caprae part 2

See here. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:29, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Snowfinch

On June 11, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Snowfinch, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 05:28, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Nicobar Bulbul

On June 11, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Nicobar Bulbul, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Royalbroil 23:28, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

The Passing of the Great Race

Hello, just wondering if you could include the sources from which you took the information recently added to this article? Mahalo,  Skomorokh  15:25, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Pick any treatise on logic you like from Circular_reasoning#References. Grant's logical fallacy is a (perhaps the) leitmotif of late 19th/early 20th century scientific racism, and though Mosse's Towards the Final Solution does not discuss Grant specifically, it discusses this specific fallacy at quite some length.

As for the Etruscans, it's a bit tricky since scholars tend to disagree whether the Latin or the Etruscan influence was more relevant in the birth of early Roman mores; most older sources lean heavily one way or the other, but the degree of Latin vs Etruscan influence is not relevant here.

Pallottino's The Etruscans is old but makes a reasonable synthesis as regards the Etruscans specifically (and as he discusses the difference between "origin of people" vs "origin of their culture" in detail, perhaps relevant here). Forsythe's Critical History of Early Rome might be the best single source; it is one of the newest at least, but since I do not have it it would need to be checked out. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 16:27, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Common Treecreeper

You've tagged the article as needing updating - what does it need? (Anyone but you and I would have just ditched the tag you know). Sabine's Sunbird talk 08:07, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Just the Hodgson's Treecreeper taxa, which should be set apart from the rest of the ssp. (The CT article is basically the only significant work, scholarly or otherwise, that still lumps ;-) ). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:00, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Phyla (genus): Factual accuracy disputed, but no discussion

Howdy. In (apparently) November 2008 you (apparently) templated Phyla (genus) with "This article's factual accuracy is disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page."
As there has been apparently zero clarification/discussion of just what is being disputed on the article's Talkpage, I have boldly deleted this template.
I would have no problem at all with the template being re-added to the article, if some clarification were added. Thanks. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 20:10, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Fixed. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:48, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I also left a note at WikiProject Plants to see if anyone's interested in working on Phyla (genus) and Phyla species. Have a good one. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 12:45, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Pnoepygidae

Have you seen this new paper yet? At least (unlike the Malagasy warblers) they actually came out and named the wretched family! Sabine's Sunbird talk 23:38, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Actually, they mostly resurrected some names of C.L.L. Bonaparte and other early authors. Nice work indeed! and a wise decision to rank them as subfamilies. It is very satisfying, comes out niecely.

The new family - well, it's risky. As long as we have this list of "Genera incertae sedis", who knows what might go there (and provide a better name, or has already been published as one)?

I see a lot of radiations in birds that consist maybe 75-90%ish of a handful or two of main lineages, the rest being made up by oligotypic ones including the odd monotypic one). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:51, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

heads up on buffing and polishing of Procellariiformes

heads up on buffing and polishing of Procellariiformes - figured you and SS were the best folks to make sure everything classificatory that needs to be said is said in the article. what else should go in? :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:09, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

For me ATM only that Pelagornithidae are not close relatives ;-) whatever they are, the cladistic analyses are quite straightforward about their similarity to albatrosses being convergence.

I have not yet seen the new paper by Mayr (doi:10.1002/mmng.200900003) but it is rather significant to the article. The abstract will give you the basic idea already; basically we have two flight modes in tubenoses (water-treading flap-gliding vs dynamic soaring)

Presently I'm expanding the pelagornithids (eightfold and counting...), gonna be done by the end of the week or so. But til then, it's synonymy hell...

For starters, see the sources at Audubon's Shearwater and Shearwater. For the fossil record - there is not much that cannot be assigned to family, and what there is I have just put in the article. This is still about as good as any if one throws the 2009 Mayr Paleogene book and Diomedeoididae paper on top of it. Some more sources are found elsewhere on Wikipedia, see the comments in the "Taxonomy and systematics" sourcecode. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 13:58, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Cool! I am sure Sabine's Sunbird will wade into this soon enough - thx++ :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:37, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

What I have added is, in a nutshell, a cursory summary of the information in the Mayr book. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:48, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

I should be able to get that Mayr paper, it's on Wiley. Do you need me to email it to you? Sabine's Sunbird talk 22:09, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

No thanks, it's OK; I'll get it or aks for it when I need it. I have some 5 more papers to read on pelagornithid fragments incertae sedis ;-) and after that I'll probably do a quick update on fossil sulids. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:35, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds August newsletter

The August 2009 issue of the Bird WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

Newsletter delivery by –xeno ^talk 02:19, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

r/K selection

Hi Dysmorodrepanis. Just to say that I've left a reply to your talkpage comment at r/K selection theory. I've also moved your comment to the base of the page for clarity. I agree with you re: Rushton's "ideas", but don't think that the article handles them inappropriately. Cheers, --PLUMBAGO 16:22, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Rushton is a crackpot, but moreover he's a mere bachelor of psychology with with no biological credits whatsoever. In other words, he is simply not a WP:RS here but just as "authoritative" as any average Joe's blog entry.

Read the sources I provided, especially Begon's Chapter 4; you'll see that Rushton weasel-words, defining "race" and "r/K selection" to fit his theories rather than how 99.9999...% of all biologists define them. See Morphic field#Morphogenetic field for a similar situation.

We do not discuss the Institute for Creation Research's "papers" in articles about animals either, or if we do, we don't discuss it so roundaboutly; or do we? Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 16:30, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Osteodontornis restoration

Hi, I noticed that you've pointed out an accuracy in the restoration of Osteodontornis used in the article. I've just started up a review page for paleoart here, and started a section for that image: [4] Would you mind commenting on it so it can be fixed? FunkMonk (talk) 13:47, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Done. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:11, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Just saw you're going away for a bit of time, would you mind commenting on the new edits on the Osteodontornis drawing before? FunkMonk (talk) 20:53, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Your note

Hi, just to let you know that I only just saw your note on my talk page. I'll take a look and see if I can suggest anything. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 00:42, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Darter

Hello, Dysmorodrepanis. I don't known how put this informations in article, I'm new editor in english wikipedia and a not native speaker, but i follow de Bock (1994) reference to insert that things. In Bock's list of families and synonyms, Ptynginae is present, but forward Bock explain "Ptynginae Poche, 1904 is not available because it is based on Ptynx Möhring, 1752 which is unavailable as a pre-Linnaean name. Ptynx Mohring, 1752, being pre-Linnaean, does not predate Ptynx Blyth, 1840 = Strix Linnaeus, 1758". In another explanation "Plottus and Plottinae are incorrect spelling variants of Plotus and Plotinae.", than Plottinae and Plottidae are incorrect spelling. And he descript authority of Anhinginae/Anhingidae as Reichenbach, 1849 (1815) not Ridgway, 1887 like Brodkorb (1963). The Bock's article is "History and Nomeclature of Avian Family-group Names" Bull AMNH 222. Thanks Burmeister (talk) 01:33, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Cool! Many thanks, I have the source and will add that. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:42, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Machaerirhynchidae and Colluricinclidae

Hi Dysmorodrepanis, did you known the authorities and dates for this two families, Machaerirhynchidae and Colluricinclidae? Regards Burmeister (talk) 21:31, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Tricky. Established (Machaerirhynchidae, and as it seems Colluricinclidae also) in the 2003 Howard & Moore Checklist (3rd ed.). Editor of the book was E.C. Dickinson. I do not have this at hand, so IONO the actual author as per ICZN Code §50.1. I believe we have it in the university bib, if so I'll look it up. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:46, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Many thanks ;) Burmeister (talk) 22:04, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again, this families are problematic. User Speednat normally uses brackets () in authorities of orders, families and genus (like Ratite, Struthio, Rhea (bird) and many others paleognaths articles). I remove in same articles, but there are many yet. I have a doubt about references in authorities (like in many paleognaths articles), this is necessary? and Systema Naturae is a valid reference for this? I agree with you about that SN/ZN are not a good rely reference. What can we do about this references? Remove? Thanks for help Burmeister (talk) 22:40, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

I usually leave the refs for the time being (minus parentheses around names), and will move them to the maintext as part of a general taxonomic/systematic discussion when the article is long enough. See for example Common_pheasant#Taxonomy_and_systematics. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:48, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Many Thanks. I will only remove brakets. Burmeister (talk) 23:13, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Template talk:Taxobox

I've responded to your initial post. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:53, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

DYK for Great Grey Shrike

On September 27, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Great Grey Shrike, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page (here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Gatoclass (talk) 15:42, 27 September 2009 (UTC) 20:42, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Haplochromis stappersii

• I have moved Haplochromis stappersii → Astatotilapia stappersii. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 08:57, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello again

As a Wikipedian who has created about 30% of all the articles on Wikipedia, and has been very helpful in the past, I thought you would be the perfect person to ask...

I want to make articles for a couple of amateur Canadian high-altitude balloon experiments. One appeared recently on the Discovery Channel. These buggers get over 100,000 feet to the edge of space. Here are the sites: [5] and [6] I am perplexed as to how to name the things. Trouble is there is BEAR-1, BEAR-2 etc. All caps BEAR goes to bear. The acronym is for Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio which is an awkward name for an article. I was thinking of [BEAR (experiments)] or the like. I'm at a loss. Can you suggest something? Very much obliged if you can help. (I sent this same request to User:Vaoverland but he has yet to reply.) --Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:42, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I can see no problem with using BEAR. Make a hatnote redirecting to Bear, and that should be it. Really, who would search for the animal with the all-caps term, except if having accidentally left caps-lock on?

Compare for example HUGO and Hugo. Since the "HUGO" article is rather shortish while the "Hugo" disambiguation is extensive, I assume that changing the "BEAR" redirect into your article (which I presume will be more extensive than "HUGO") seems quite legitimate.

(BTW too much praise! Much of what I did was simply copyediting articles generated by a bot ;-) But thanks nonetheless!) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 17:30, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

What on earth is a hatnote? Yes, HUGO and Hugo go to different places, but when I search BEAR, it goes to Bear. Pardon my stupidity. I am often confused by simple things. I still haven't figured out clear glass. --Anna Frodesiak (talk) 03:33, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

FYI I have made the article under Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio, but I can always change it. I await your advice on the matter (and also the glass thing).--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 03:35, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Box jellyfish: elucidate?

Regarding your comment on Talk:Box jellyfish: it might help anyone trying to fix the article if you would elucidate a bit further on that talk page. My guess is that other editors will not know what you mean by "WoRMS", "T. Rex effect", or italicized family names as a "sure sign that an article is untrustworthy". —IslandGyrl (talk) 11:22, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Those who do not know what it means should not try to fix it. The article needs a good makeover from a marine biologist. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:46, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Cayman Islands

Hi there, to be totally honest, I have no idea why you added that comment under the References section for Cayman Islands, and there was no edit summary. So, I undid it. This is not a personal attack in any way, I am just confused as to why it should be added there. Sorry, and feel free to revert my edit if there is a reason for the message. Thanks, Kevinmon•talk•trib 22:50, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

I changed it back because it appears to have something to do with Cayman Island birds, so it looks important. Kevinmon•talk•trib 22:56, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Refs

It's certainly an improvement, but I still don't see any reason why footnote and bibliography sections need to be used in concert in this type of media at all. In print, the purpose is to have quick citations at the foot of each page, ties to a full bibliography at the end of the document. In Wikiepdia, there are no distinct pages, and therefore no reason not to put all citations in a single section. Linking directly to the full cite still seems the best option to me and is supported by the official MoS. If non-citation explanatory notes are needed, why not just use this system [7]? Dinoguy2 (talk) 00:02, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough, but WP:DINO still uses "bread-and-butter" sources almost exclusively. Over short or long, the proportion of non-English non-straightforward sources will increase, and then you'll either have to cut corners in what you'll provide to the reader, or drop the present format for something that is not as ugly. For the least thing, you'll find that translational footnotes (or verbatim quotes in the original language) often become a necessity, and it does muddle thing up a lot when one-third of the "References" section is in fact footnotes...

Linking directly to the full source creates ugly code that violates a basic tenent of Wikipedia, namely that ANYONE should be able to edit ANY page at ANY time.

The method used in Archaeopteryxloooks promising however. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:44, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Minor Edits

Dysmorodrepanis, please do not misuse the minor edit marker, as you did recently in your edit to Wattled Curassow. The formatting change you made has repercussions for users on devices with smaller screens (five columns may require them to scroll horizontally) and you also deleted content from the article, so this was clearly not a minor edit. Thank you. —Notyourbroom (talk) 04:34, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, but it was only a revert. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:00, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Marking a revert as a minor edit is fine when dealing with vandalism ("The intended use of the rollback feature is for cases of vandalism, where the act of reverting any vandalism should be considered minor and can be ignored in the recent changes list"), but (1) this was not a revert of an unambiguously unproductive edit, (2) it was a "long-distance" revert of changes made a few revisions past in the article's history, and (3) you removed content from the article, which in itself is an unambiguous case of a major edit. There is no grey area in this case—you clearly made an error based on the consensus regarding the usage of the minor edit marker. I see from your edit history that you commonly employ that marker, so I am encouraging you to review the current community consensus so that you do not make similar errors in the future. —Notyourbroom (talk) 19:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Oh we could bicker endlessly about this, but let's just rest it at (1) point taken and (2) there is a grey area - what about removing content (Major) whose addition, though in good faith, violated policy in the first place (Minor, as per "requires no review and could never be the subject of a dispute")?

(As regards "dispute", check out Wattled_Curassow#Similar_species and WP:IG, and maybe WP:TOL#Taxoboxes/WP:TAXOBOX as well. There you'll find the policy regarding galleries (and general image use) in animal/plant articles.)

The photo should really be used as thumbnail - perhaps to illustrate the section starting with "There may be somewhat more than 10,000 adult...". Because it is a captive bird (hence that section) and it does not clearly demonstrate the species-specific identification marks (hence not in the gallery or taxobox). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:44, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Cockatoos redux

Hey Dysmorodrepanis, you wrote here before on cockies, the article for which is now buffed up nicely. You wouldn't know anything about the cockie's sister group (closest relatives) outside their own group? Still hanging for any article which discusses hypothesised evolution of plumage like you did there :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:22, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Well as far as I remember, the sister group should be the Psittacidae sensu lato (including lories but of course excluding New Zealand parrots). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 13:24, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Shoulda thought of that. I guess what I was musing on was how unequivocal the finding had been (placed similarly by all studies). Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:26, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, the (minor) problem is the dating of the NZ parrots. All kinds of effects come into play; founder effects, that some time during the Early Miocene IIRC New Zealand was completely submerged, except for a few small islands perhaps, the Taupo Volcanic Zone "supervolcanism" and so on. I think there have been anomalies found in every NZ taxon genetically studied. doi:10.1111/j.1365-294X.2007.03451.x cannot be directly compared (dealing with a plant even less mobile than a Kakapo), but it can be used to illustrate these problems. But nonwithstanding, the baseline theory is that the NZ lineage branched off first, though probably not as early as the mol-data suggests at face value. Biogeography (with its Australian origin of the Psittacidae) kind of requires it to work, now we know that the lorikeets are not that distinct.

The only thing I can think off the top of my head suggesting against it is the lack of structural coloration (blue/green) even in the most basal cockatoos. But this may simply be due to a loss early on in the cockatoo lineage (though given the Psittaciformes' unclear phylogenetic position the ancestors may not have had it either). If there was an early loss, this is even a candidate for causing the lineage split that is as good as any and better than most; signal color differences are as important as bioacoustics in acting as gene flow barriers in birds, and in Psittaciformes color is if anything more important than sound. Nobody can be sure of course, with no time machine being available to go and look. But it certainly is not a possibility that is easily dismissed; other differences between cockatoos and other Psittaciformes (such as lack vs presence of a gall bladder) can be dismissed as cause of the original speciation/split. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 13:59, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for that - the last is interesting too...now hopefully someone will come along and review the article...Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:07, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Gr[ae]y Catbird

Hello, I noticed you moved the article from the American spelling Gray Catbird to the British spelling Grey Catbird with the comment "per SOP." The only problem is, the English Wikipedia doesn't prefer one variety of spelling over the other, and generally leans toward the style used by the initial author, which in this case is the American spelling; it was originally created as "Gray" Catbird in 2003. Would you be OK with moving it back? --Fran Rogers (talk) 17:15, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Well I moved it because I see "Grey" far more often than "Gray" on WP these days, and Grey suggests that it's the preferred spelling. If you like to move it back, I don't mind. Though you might want to ask at WP:BIRDS if we have a policy on that. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:17, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

"Gray Catbird" does seem to be the most used spelling in for the species' common name in reference works and academic papers (2,680 hits for "Gray Catbird" on Google Scholar vs 136 hits for "Grey Catbird"); as well as in common use (143,000 vs. 126,000). WikiProject Birds doesn't mention spelling in their guidelines, other than that the most common name should be the title and significant alternative names should be in the lead in bold (as "Grey Catbird" would be in this case). Keeping the American spelling would also keep it consistent with other "Gray" North American birds, like the Gray Jay and Gray Vireo. I'll move it back, but keep the "Gray" spelling mentioned in the lead as suggested. Fran Rogers (talk) 20:36, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Redirect to Gigantornis

You redirected Gigantornis eaglesomei to Gigantornis. Would it be better if Gigantornis redirected to Gigantornis eaglesomei, since Gigantornis eaglesomei is the only species in the genus? --The High Fin Sperm Whale (Talk · Contribs) 22:05, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

It may be. I never know which way's which for these "Tertiary" birds. WP:BIRDS redirects to species, while WP:DINO redirects to genus. I have usually used redirect to genus for prehistoric birds, because we usually know 3 species at best per genus, and do not have separate species articles - species redirecting to genus is more convenient for paleo articles. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:12, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

But here, there is only one species, and it definitely comes under BIRDS, not DINOS. --The High Fin Sperm Whale (Talk · Contribs) 22:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I just thought I'd let you know, since you've been involved, that I just redirected Gigantornis to Gigantornis eaglesomei. --The High Fin Sperm Whale (Talk • Contribs) 02:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow

These two articles look interesting but I can only see the abstracts (I can get medical articles easily enough but not nonmedical - I'd love to see the fulltexts :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:03, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Taxonomy fun...

Hey have a look at the link here, which I have set up a discussion of at the cockatoo talk page. heh. Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:07, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Happy Dysmorodrepanis's Day!

User:Dysmorodrepanis has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, and therefore, I've officially declared today as Dysmorodrepanis's day! For being such a beautiful person and great Wikipedian, enjoy being the Star of the day, dear Dysmorodrepanis! Peace, Rlevse 01:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC) A record of your Day will always be kept here.

For a userbox you can add to your userbox page, see User:Rlevse/Today/Happy Me Day! and my own userpage for a sample of how to use it. — Rlevse • Talk • 01:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Happy Holidays

		Merry Christmas
		Your gift this year: A Fabergé Egg! Originally a Christmas present from King George V to his wife Queen Mary of Teck, then pinched by me from a museum in 1982, and used to hold the window open in my kitchen ever since. May your Christmas be white and merry. May your table have cheeses and lox. May the gravy be hot and double. May your presents be other than socks. Happy Holidays!! Anna Frodesiak (talk) 02:08, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposing category for rename

Hi. I noticed you tried to use {{move}} to propose the renaming of Category:Eudaminae. That template is only used for articles and pages in the Wikipedia namespace, so I have removed it from the category talk page. To propose the renaming of a category, post it to the categories for discussion page. You can read instructions for how to do so here. — æk^Talk 03:00, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Ah! Thank you, that's why it didn't work ;-) Have fixed it.

(There ought to be some sort of warning - using the wrong template doesn't work, but the user is not pointed to the correct procedure. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 17:03, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Uncivil edit summaries

Some of your recent edit summaries have been uncivil, like this and this. I would sugest you have a read through WP:CIVIL to acquaint yourself with this Wikipedia policy. I would also suggest that if you are feeling angry at other editors that a break might be preferable to responding with uncivil comments. - Ahunt (talk) 16:51, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

What can I do if other editors don't know WP:DBAD? Increasing other editor's workload through ignorance is not civil in the first place, so frankly I do not consider myself to blame here. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 16:55, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Regardless of any perceived provocation, there is no excuse for uncivil behavior. Being a collaborative project civility is largely what makes Wikipedia possible. So, I would ask of you that, even when provoked, you keep it civil for the sake of the project as a whole. - Ahunt (talk) 17:01, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, just to let you know, both of those articles were already created at Darpa (skipper) and Alenia (skipper). One or the other should be a redirect; I'm inclined to suggest redirecting to the more specific title ("skipper" vs. "butterfly"), but that doesn't have to be the case. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 17:15, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know! (This is precisely the mess the redlinked hatnotes would have avoided)

No, it would be a redirect to "(butterfly)". Technically, it would be "skipper butterfly", but we have been using "butterfly" throughout, and "skipper" being itself ambiguous makes it not a good choice in the first place. Because a genus can only be valid once per regnum, even "(animal)" would be specific enough (we found it more user-friendly to be somewhat more precise than that), so there won't be any other skipper, butterfly or other animal with that name.

I'll fix it, because I made the mess, I'll fix the messs :). I think I know what had happened: we had a user - probably a bot - who created many 100s of these stubs from a database and introduced "(skipper)" which was previously never used. Now I know that, my work is much easier, and many errors will be avoided. Again, thanks very much. 17:38, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Done. (When the "(skipper)" articles were created, no disambiguation hatnotes were added. Since I will need to need to review most Hesperiidae pages anyway, I'll fix most of these too.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 17:47, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I did a lot of the article generation using AWB, but I was going off of a template full of redlinks which had a number of those "skipper" vs. "butterfly" issues. I hadn't realized it had been discussed before - sorry to cause any undue trouble. And happy to be able to alert you. :-) --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 18:51, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Once one is aware of it, it is easy enough to fix. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:52, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Well, I have a couple of chores to attend to, but once I'm back I can give you a hand, if you like. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 19:05, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Silktails

Any thoughts on this paper? There seem to be quite a few papers out at the moment looking at the Melanesian enigmas. Sabine's Sunbird talk 05:31, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, but I had to revert at Tulip mania

Great about the poisonous nature of tulips - I loved to read it - it's typical MacKay - Great story, but too good to be true. But I reverted it, simply because we need a reference. Can you get a reference? I'll send flowers if you do! Thanks again Smallbones (talk) 22:26, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

As for toxicity - e.g. this is semischolarly and discusses it in detail. As for the taste... IONO who'd seriously challenge that allicin does not at all taste like glycosidic esters (e.g. tuliposides)... but if chemical formulae and some background on the different secondary metabolites of Liliaceae and Alliaceae are needed, see Frosch et al. (2006) Contact dermatitis sections 41.3.1. and 41.3.3. and the sources thereof. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:07, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

The tulip Barnstar for helping to debunk Mackay yet again

Please do check to see if I didn't get too close to OR. Smallbones (talk) 23:59, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

comparisons

"to produce a similar amount of light":
 incandescent: 25   to 100 watts;     hi/lo = 4
 flourescent:   5   to  30 watts;     hi/lo = 6;  25/5.0 = 5;  100/30 = 3.3
 LED:           0.5 to   6 watts;     hi/lo =12;   5/0.5 =10;   30/ 6 = 5
                                                  25/0.5 =50;  100/ 6 =16.6

Hi. The numbers at Watt#Examples of usage don't seem to "add up" to me. They seem to imply either: the brighter the light, the LESS efficient the "newer" technology; or: the bottom and the top of the ranges are not "similar amounts of light". What do you think? Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 14:58, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Nah, I just took the wattage range that is usually sold these days for home appliances. The technologies are not really easily compared; the comparison uses the entire bulb's effective output and not the raw output of the filament or the gas or the LED ("bulb" construction is entirely different between the three types, and the effect is most pronounced in LED bulbs since they use multiple LEDs and the stacking pattern of these of ccourse affects the effective light output).

And indeed, LEDs have a relative disadvantage at higher wattages since the heat then generated is too much for them to work properly. They're still far more efficient, but from about 10 watts upwards the cooling problem becomes severe (but the light output is extreme already then - think 100W incandescent with reflective backing. Far too bright to look at).

But you're right, the LED comparison should really start at 1 watt. I just loooked it up again, a 0.5 W LED "bulb" is rated about equivalent to a 10-15 watt incandescent, depending on how well the LED "bulb" is built. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:18, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Pdfpdf (talk) 00:19, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Naming conventions

Hello! Long time. Hope you are well. I just read something quite helpful and interesting that you wrote.[8]] I understand what you're saying about the use of "common". You didn't comment on capitalization. It is often inconsistent in articles. I keep seeing things like: Common Cherry Tree, Common Cherry tree, common cherry tree, and even common Cherry tree.

Please zap me with your de-confusilator. Thank you! Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:23, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Sexual dimorphism

Hello - I rewrote the evolution section of Sexual dimorphism and was hoping you might have a look. It's a bit basic but places less undue emphasis on the handicap principle, and I think it reflects what textbooks say. Comments appreciated. Evercat (talk) 19:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, thanks! The handicap principle needs an own article anyway; it is much studied (i.e. there are many WP:RS). In some species it is prevalent, in others insignificant, and everything in between. If we check these out (which can be done by and by) we can see whether there is a clear pattern. For example, the Irish Elk seems to have had something similar - not because their antlers got stuck in the woods, but because their bones were delpeted of minerals to form the antlers. Whereas for example the tails of swallows are also aerodynamically important and enforce a feeding guild switch if they lengthen/shorten - which may be good or bad dependin on where the swallow lives.

I'd presume that if we have "pure" sexual/social ornaments - that have little other functional significance - and vary individually between large and gargantuan, then if we find them gargantuan we are liokely to have a handicap-selected trait. One might keep the eyes open for taxa with such traits, and look in the literature for them. Examples are always good. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:49, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Handicap principle article does indeed exist. Evercat (talk) 20:52, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Good! I'll look out for papers, and when I find some I'll annotate them in the source code of the article. Like I did here ("Edit" the references section to see).

Don't expect much soon though, because I'll have to do some reading/writing for my thesis these weeks. But since those papers are often quite tough a read, I think it's OK just to collect them by-and-by so that they can be added at leisure. When adding a serious scientific paper to Wikipedia, one has to be in the mood for it, or it gets tenuous. 21:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Signpost interview

Hi Dys, User:Mabeenot is writing an article for The Signpost and wanted to do an interview with WP:DINO editors. The interview questions are here. Since you're a prolific editor on the project, I thought you might want to comment. Firsfron of Ronchester 08:59, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Well thanks! But apart from having to give an appreciating nod to the other regulars here and there, it's very much about non-avians, and I actually only happen to get do work on avians occasionally. Keeping the list up to date is my main task. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:24, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Minor term query

Over at Sooty Tern, when you expanded the article considerably, I'm not sure, but I think you might have said "interspecific" when you meant "intraspecific", in the taxonomy section? And either way, a disambiguation might be helpful, although I don't think the existing disambigs have anything that quite matches the intra/interspecific variation you were talking about there. -- J. Randall Owens | (talk) 23:10, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Request for Interview Concerning Encyclopedia of Life (EOL)

Dysmorodrepanis, I'm a graduate student at the University of Maryland working with the EOL and hoping to better understand the integration of Wikipedia content into EOL (and visa versa). I've noticed the important and unique role that you play in Wikipedia related to species pages (specifically biology & zoology) and am hoping that you will let me interview you to get your thoughts on the subject. If you are willing, send me an email at kprocita at umd dot edu and we can set up a call. Thanks. Kprocita (talk) 21:56, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Wow

Knew you are writing , adding , changing a lot , but this is an amazing blast - Now I know what U mean with "training".Kéep on!Greetz —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.78.195.13 (talk) 12:25, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Mainly occupied with other work these days; currently revamping Cassidinae. Present status is here, not likely gonna change much til June at least. Otherwise doing mainly fixes and such cleanup work. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 05:36, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Re:Tortricidae

Thanks! You are doing a great job yourself! Adding the Torticidae species was a never-ending job, but I'm glad I was able to finish it eventually. I will be adding Tort species in the future, but first I am working on updating North American Noctuidae species according to a recently published checklist with all species. After that there is also this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Rocket000/Lepidoptera, consisting of images on commons, without pages on wikipedia which I would like to work through.. There is no end to the work! But I'm glad your're helping out. Ruigeroeland (talk) 11:53, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and thanks for letting me know about the characters, I will keep an eye on that when using info from that site. Ruigeroeland (talk) 11:55, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

As far as I have found out yet, "é" and "ä" were deleted by the database ("Ral" and "Herrich-Schffer"), but "ü" may be converted to simple "u" ("Schiffermuller", "Hubner") or also deleted ("Oberthr"). The "ü"->"u" was probably in their sources already; it would be very weird otherwise. Somebody might write them a note.

It is not that much of a problem, because as soon as the authors get linked (which will eventually happen) it will be noted and fixed. We have had many cases on Wikipedia where umlauts were written as simple vowels; usually they are fixed soon enough. The missing letters are more insidious, but also more conspicuous. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:25, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Cheers, I might fix some later on when I finish my current project. Great work on expanding the genera articles by the way! Nice to see some content other than the species. I also noticed you are adding genus level synonyms. I was thinking about doing that when I was adding the species, but that was so much work I let that slip. Nice to see someone else is picking up on that. Ruigeroeland (talk) 12:29, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know as well. How many examples of it do you know of? If there are a lot it should be easy enough to run AWB to fix them. --Ser Amantio di Nicolao^{Che dicono a Signa?}_{Lo dicono a Signa.} 19:20, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

• "é" seems to be missing always if it was in the original source (and not just "e", e.g. "Guinee" is present but IONO if it ever had an "é". "Ral" is the most insidious I have come across yet; it looks legitimate but his(?) specific names having a Spanish feel made me suspicious.
• As regards "ä", I have not seen it once either, and AFAIR neither seen simple "a" as replacement.
• "ü" is either missing or "u".
• I have not seen "ö", "á", etc, but have not looked for them.
• Hübner and Schiffermüller errors are probably very common, given that they made comprehensive taxonomic reviews. Réal is probably also quite common. French and other Romance names logically need to be checked, and there might be Polish scientists also affected (Razowski made comprehensive studies, and likely had colleagues). The problem is widespread, but from our side it would probably require serious sifting to avoid a large number of false positives/negatives (autocorrecting "Ral" looks like trouble). IONO how finely tuned AWB can be to find tha actual articles to correct, but it may be possible.

The easiest course of action would be to notify the authors (they know the sources and algorithms, so it's easier for them than us to correct it, and it has to be corrected anyway) and run a simple comparison - have a bot grab the records from the DB when it is updated, and compare them for differences in the string following "_authority" + "=", IF that string does not contain "[[" (those with "[[" must have been checked already). These articles could get updated by bot.

If we need to start it on our own, it would be good to start at List of zoologists by author abbreviation and work through the list. There are of course several tortricid authors missing from the list, but those that I have seen were Russian etc and did not have problems. There may be more recent German authors, and there are probably recent French authors, but I have not consciously noted anyone more recent than Réal. The Savela page can also be used to check (advantages of being Finnish: umlauts and general familiarity with freaky spelling ;-) ).

In any case, we can use the ref of the "World DB" as restricting criterion (I think) - only such articles can be affected by the problem. If we could get a bot to make a list of all possible strings of the 30 or so characters following "_authority"+"=" in these articles, it should give a complete list. With that we could also do it the other way around - compile our list, fix it, and forward the list to the DB authors to help them fix it.

BTW Cnephasia. The "World DB" cutts off after "sensu" :( but Internet Archive, Google Books etc are SOOOOOO helpful! And why did I do it? To be able to add the 4 words about dry leaves at the Flax Tortrix - Grabe uses the old name, and I'm working through this article presently... But that's the joy of discovering things. Well worth the work I think. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:53, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Scythrididae

You tagged Scythrididae for speedy deletion as a redirect to its superfamily. I replaced the redirect with a stub, but I am puzzled because the corresponding German article uses a different spelling, de:Scythridinae. Could you please take a quick look at the stub? Eastmain (talk • contribs) 05:31, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, will do! (family/subfamily division of Gelechoidea is still very hodge-podge, hence the different placements) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:12, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Problem with de: is that referencing-wise they are still where we were 4 years ago. I'll expand the article now, add some blurb, see that I'll get it referenced, but as regards the main (unreferenced) content from de:, I'll leave it out for the time being. It needs to be checked whether it refers only to the locally-occurring taxa or to all Scythridinae (they range to California at least, and I presume that there are differences in ecology between there and Central Europe) etc.

Interesting...

I was buffing up Grey Currawong and found this interesting paper by Dean Amadon from 1951, where he notes similarities between Cracticidae and Vangidae......Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:55, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Ah! Didn't check it right now - did he also compare to Aegithinidae, Malaconotidae and Platysteiridae? Because these 5 form a clade in the supertree, but their internal relations are not resolved well. (The 5 families are the sister of the clade containing crows, birds-of-paradise, true shrikes etc)

In such cases, it is often hard to judge where OR begins, particularly if nobody has ever connected the dots in a RS, which is often the case with this kind of study. What I usually do if a "cited by" Google Scholar search yields no good source: I take a RS phylogeny (for this case, the supertree works well, but there might be a newer paper dedicated to that clade or part thereof). And because Wikipedia is not Conservopedia (i.e., we do believe Darwin was right), one can simply sum up the significant results of (in this case) Amadon and point out their meaning under the current evolutionary scenario. Just as one can e.g. convert a measurement in pieds du roi into metric without having to cite citing the Law of Frimaire 19, Revolutionary Year VIII (which standardized the pied du roi and hence is the ultimate RS), or discussing something falling down without citing Newton and Einstein (who provide the explanation of why stuff moves in such a direction as it does).

Since a phylogenetic hypothesis is still a hypothesis, there needs to be room for doubt anyway. We can't say "this proves they're related", but we can say "if they're related (and [ref] say it's pretty plausible) this-and-this trait would be a synapomorphy." Or "as Amadon already noted in 1951, [description of trait and which taxa share it], which is in line with the current phylogenetic hypothesis."

Had a similar case recently - some moths whose host-plants turn out to form a nice phylogenetic pattern under the APG II system. There did not seem to be a source noting this (the APG II is just too new), so I simply grouped the host-plant families according to the APG taxa (which have well-referenced articles of their own). It was thus obvious that host plant choice was not random, but what to make of it (coevolution or such things) is left for the reader to ponder. This way, one can use information that would be misleading (IIRC back then they still believed vangas and starlings were fairly close) if one strictly follows the source.

(Such problems are quite prominent in paleontological topics - e.g. in the second half of Pterodactylus they had to follow old sources to the point in some regards, and in others reject them completely.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 07:07, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I've kept an eye out for any further mentions of Malaconotoidea but none to date..agree that avoiding OR can be a bit like hopscotch... Casliber (talk · contribs) 07:49, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

synonymy

Is "preoccupied" relly the best way to show this? One typically expects the displayed word to be somehow explained in the link.... this link goes to the Hamadryas genus, not an explanation of taxonomic preoccupation. I would think linking Hamadryas earlier in the synonym, and then a link to explain preoccupation, would be better. - UtherSRG (talk) 18:57, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, for one thing it's the scientifically accurate way to write this without being too wordy (it has to fit in the taxobox after all). For another, when an article has progressed to the point where taxonomic issues are progressed, it will be discussed (I hope - at least I do it every time, compare Euclemensia, which was which led me to this whole thing).

If you refer to Baboon - most mammal articles have not yet emphasized taxonomic aspects, so it sure stands out a bit. But eventually, the complete synonymy list will have to be added. In the case of Papio it is not overly long, but quite complex and it would indeed warrant a separate section.

It just was a quick fix, because... well, give me one more hour and then check out Hamadryas ;-) You'll understand why I could not write a complete section in each and every case. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:11, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

(It is also unusual to have a situation like here. Usually, the "preoccupied" would link to an article which has a hatnote detailing the homonymy, as I did at Euclemensia. But "Hamadryas (butterfly)" is ambiguous itself... well, I fixed the Cracker butterfly article with a hatnote since we already had that "dis"ambiguation but redirecting it to "Hamadryas" would be wrong as the junior homonyms never were used for long Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:30, 28 April 2010 (UTC))

I think you don't understand my concern... When clicking on something called "preoccupied", I would expect to be taken to an explanation of what preoccupied means. I understand what you are doing, and agree that most mammal articles need a good deal of taxonomic discussion added, but linking "preoccupied" to the preoccupying taxon isn't what I would expect of that link. In other words, the destination of a link should primarily be about the text of that link. It shouldn't be a minor point in that article: "preoccupied" should go to an article that describe preoccupation, not to a butterfly. - UtherSRG (talk) 21:13, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

I see. I shall try out to link the junior homonym to the article about the senior homonym, and "preoccupied" to junior homonym, OK? I cannot think of anything other we could use the synonym to link to, so I guess it should work as you say. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:39, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

OK, check out Baboon for example, is that what you mean?

The only potential problem I can see as of now is that we'll usually end up with a fat redlink in the synonyms list. Tempting for not-quite-novice editors to make it a redirect to the junior homonym's article (since we usually do that with synonyms) and unlink the junior homonym.

We have no standard criteria for quickdeleting these redirects since it's such a specialized case, so admins that happen across it are liable to insist on a discussion. I have seen people argue against deleting such redirects because "at present it's the only article where the term is mentioned", and in any case the discussion is usually tedious because you have to explain to the maintenance ppl all the technical terms before they say "ah OK, who could object to this?" and delete it.

It would help in general if WP:TOL made a policy (such as we did for "Taxoboxes", "Categories") on redirects that declared such deletions "maintenance", and thus covered by the quickdelete rules (rule G6), instead of having to discuss such cases one by one (there are bound to be 1000s; I myself have erroneously redirected junior homonyms as they're not always marked as such in synoymy lists). E.g. a statement along the lines of "junior homonyms are not made into redirects except to the article dealing with the senior homonym". Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:29, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

There are a few exceptions where the "old" format must be used. This is when we have uncorrected junior homonyms listed on a family page or similar (e.g. "Holcoceroides" at Blastobasidae#Genera). In these cases, the junior homonym must indeed link to an article about it, since it is obviously perceived as a distinct group (even though it does not have a valid name at the moment), e.g. "Platycryptus".

But such cases are fairly rare overall (though they are amazingly common among ichneumon wasps for whatever reason).

Alternatively, one could link the senior homonym per "(non [[senior homonym]] [author, date]: preoccupied)". But that would probably a be a bigger problem than having "preoccupied" link to the senior homonym, as it a) departs from the usual format and b) does not work well (or does not work at all, strictly speaking) layout-wise whereever the author/date/annotation are in small font (as is usual these days).

So, a perfect solution does not exist. But I'd prefer the inconvenience of having a link to something else than what you'd expect in a few cases which a) are usually taxa of lesser interest (or else it would have been fixed already one would think) and where b) an explanation needs to be given in the introduction anyway, than to depart from the usual taxobox style by cramming even more small text in there... Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:31, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Cyrmia

A tag has been placed on Cyrmia, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a redirect from an implausible typo.

Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. If you believe that there is a reason to keep the redirect, you can request that administrators wait a while before deleting it. To do this, affix the template {{hangon}} to the page and state your intention on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Sghfdhdfghdfgfd (talk) 11:47, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Speedy declined on Stachys scardia

G6 doesn't apply to enforcing guidelines from an individual wikiproject. You'll have to go through RFD.—Kww(talk) 02:12, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Ehm, it is not Project policy/guideline enforcement, but Project housekeeping. I.e. making a Project page conform to global rules (in this case Wikipedia:Redirect#Self-redirects and WP:R#DELETE #9), hence "uncontroversial maintenance" as per G6.

If you care for a long explanation of why this is so, see systematics and taxon. Briefly, the primary "what links to" tree of WP:TOL recreates a sequence of nested sets as wikipages, and the "nested" is the crucial point. It is fairly unique to WP:TOL, but think about US Dollar redirecting to Currency, or France redirecting to Country, with more precise term being only mentioned once (as part of a list, with no further details given) in the general article. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 05:15, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Not to worry... I saw this and went ahead and deleted the redirect. You were certainly right, D. - UtherSRG (talk) 06:00, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Stub tag

Thanks for the compliment, and the note. The (main) reason for this is to put the stub categories at the end of the category list. The two blank lines thing: note SB and other AWB bots will generally put these in, there was a proposal to make a change to the site-wide CSS which would make the two-blank-lines thing un-necessary. Think it got lost in bureaucracy... Rich Farmbrough, 11:13, 5 May 2010 (UTC).

Camera wasp genus

Hi, Dysmorodrepanis. You added "Camera (wasp)" to Camera (disambiguation) back on 11 May 2008. It is still a red link. I tried a Google search to confirm the existence of this genus but failed to find reference to it. Are you sure it is a genus of wasp? If it is a genus, it should be "Camera (genus)" in any case. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:58, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Well, wasp genera are always tricky. And 2008 - that was before I added a qualifier, such as (in this case) "geline wasp". And that's what I've been suspecting... Gelinae. (I found it easily via "what links here". For spurious dab redlinks, it's the first thing to try).

Gelinae, easily the worst taxonomic nightmare I have seen during my time on Wikipedia. And a genus established in what I then called an "idiosyncratic" review...

Now, as regards Camera... Google can make much more of it if either of "Townes", "1962" or "Cryptini" are added. The following information I just found:

• it is American
• it is placed in the Cryptini
• the author is probably not "Townes, 1962", but "Townes & M.Townes, 1962"
• the 28s rRNA of a supposed member of this genus has been sequenced

That's an almost-clear "Heureka!" - it is very very likely that it's still considered valid. With Gelinae, this is always a problem, since the bulk of genera are unreviewed in recent times (see also "Platycryptus").

I have gotten hold of the original description, meaning that we have - very very tentatively - the name of one species. "Tentatively" because it might still be a junior synonym, and because Townes' work was, well,

Sooooo... two ways to deal with this:

• leave it, knowing that it is probably a good genus, until someone expert in ichneumon wasps comes along and can say something about it
• I could make it (til tomorrow or so) a bare-bones stub based on the (tentative and in any case not WP:RS'able) info I found

I'll leave that choice to you ;-)

---

"If it is a genus, it should be "Camera (genus)" in any case."

No, this must be avoided like Yersinia pestis ;-) and is the actual underlying reason for having these redlinks in the first place. We have had loads of trouble with "(genus)" - it was the usual disambiguation in the early years, say up to 2007 or so, but by then it had led to so much move/rename trouble and debates between the Animals and the Plants people on who has dibs on some article title that it was clearly not usable anymore.

Because every valid genus name may refer to up to 3, maybe 4 valid genus taxa (once for a plant or fungus, once for an animal, and once for a bacterium... and some might even be possible for a virus genus). Add junior homonyms, and you get things like the genus Hamadryas ;-)

Thus, the only way that will work (almost) 100% of the time is to make "(genus)" a redirect and use a more precise qualifier. WP:TOL has settled on "(moth)", "(beetle)", "(spider)", "(bird)" and so on, but more precise terms may be necessary. For the plant people, "(plant)" works fine usually.

"(genus)" can then redirect to the actual article if we have only one genus by that name. And if it turns out that several genera (valid or not) exist under that name - or if new ones are described -, it can be made into a disambiguation page, or redirect to the disambiguation page if there is already one (e.g. Erica (genus)). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:41, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed reply. I learned two things from it. It had never occured to me to use "what links here" for red links. I also had always assumed that any given name for a genus was unique. Since you seem well-versed in this, I will leave the link alone. Cheers. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:06, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Speedy deletion declined: Elachista infuscata

Hello Dysmorodrepanis. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Elachista infuscata, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: If it's a valid species, why are we deleting it? Do you want to move the redirect target here? . Thank you. GedUK  19:37, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Have also declined Elachista baltica for the same reason. Please let me know if you want them moving, and I'll sort if out. If not, I'm confused. GedUK  19:38, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

We have Wikipedia articles for neither E. infuscata nor Elachista baltica, and only the sources cited in Fauna Europaea (which is considered a RS if no quality peer-reviewed article stands against it, as is not the case here AFAICT). And nobody has read the Fauna Europaea sources et. So they need to be redlinks, because the use of these names for the species is not correct, and WP:R#DELETE #9 vs no reason to WP:R#KEEP. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:37, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Reasons to keep or delete redirects are mostly for deletion discussions. They are not by themselves criteria for speedy deletions as applied to redirects. (there are only two of them.) So I've declined the speedy deletion for Origanum vulgare hirtum. It is mentioned in the target article and where it really inhibits expansion is debatable. You may want to bring it to WP:RFD.--Tikiwont (talk) 20:45, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Well as you in parallel changed the target and per above discussions I've deleted it anyways so the subspecies are now all redlinks. You may want to consider your approach though, to avoid having to explain things all over again and because in many other cases redirects to the general are just considered fine and thus correctly excluded form CSD.--Tikiwont (talk) 20:58, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Well you are right. I overlooked that this time there was significant information in the article, but it has no sources of note and it should to before we consider split articles off. A redlink is premature, at this strage a redirect is fine; I shall revert the changes to the way you proposed (i.e. redirect to the relevant subsection). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:05, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Question about Eunice

Hi Dysmorodrepanis,

I was trying to organize the dab page Eunice, and one of the entries is "Eunice, an invlid genus of brush-footed butterflies now called Eunica". My first guess is that "invlid" is supposed to say "invalid", but since I have next to no knowledge of biology or taxonomy, I thought I'd double-check. Going into the history, I saw that you were the one who added this entry, in this diff more than a year ago. So, if it's not too much trouble, would you mind verifying what it's supposed to say? Sorry to bother you about something so minuscule, I just didn't want to mess up if it wasn't what I thought it was.

Thanks! Princess Lirin (talk) 06:43, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I fixed it up. Turns out to be more complex than it looked... Thanks for notifying me! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 09:41, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of it. I'm glad I asked! Princess Lirin (talk) 21:43, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Mafia move follow-up

You recently participated in a move request of Mafia. Since the final location of the page was not settled, please discuss it at Talk:Mafia (disambiguation) if you care. — AjaxSmack 02:42, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Passiflora

Back in November 2008 you removed the image gallery from Passiflora. I've just put it back as the images on that page were getting cumbersome. (We have a problematical IP editor working on subtropical fruits - one of his less problematic stylistic markers is adding images to articles, but he added enought to mess the formatting of the Passiflora article.) Lavateraguy (talk) 21:28, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Oecophoridae / Elachistidae

I noticed your changes on commons:Category:Oecophoridae and I'm planning to make the moves you requested (commons:Category:Hypertrophidae & commons:Category:Xyloryctinae), but I can't find any good sources to work from. You mentioned Wikispecies but there's too many inconsistencies and unclear sources over there to be of any help. I found this page (also this) that gives a good overview of these family groups, however, the classifications are quite at odds with the ones used here as well as on Commons. Before I make any major changes, I would like to get your input. (Maybe you know of something better to work from?) Thanks. Rocket000 (talk) 17:56, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Problem is, there is no good source. See the Gelechioidea Talk page on Wikispecies and the Gelechioidea article here. It's the old problem: what to do when there are several (apparently) reliable sources, but they are mutually exclusive? I picked the Wikispecies taxonomy because that way, we're at least consistent across all Wiki projects, and when a robust taxonmic scheme is achieved, it'll be easier to change.

I presume that Bucheli and/or the Mississippi State researchers will be the ones to do the job, but at present the situation is a wholesale mess. Bucheli has, however, laid the groundwork for a revision (and the scheme used on Wikispecies appears to be based on this paper, judging from the page history), but we'll have to wait for 1-2 more years until anything of substance can be said. If you check out the classifications they have at MSState - most of the sources are a quarter-century old or more, meaning they are based on phenetics or simply an individual researcher's whim, and cannot be considered reliable sources for taxonomic decisions anymore. As Bucheli points out, this is the state of things in the whole superfamily. Meaning we'll have to settle on something less-than-satisfactory until the problem is tackled with a comprehensive cladistic analysis. Or in Wikipedia terms: in this case, satisfying WP:V violates WP:NPOV, and vice versa. So we have to settle for an expedient interim fix (here, it would probably be Bucheli, 2009) until a solution becomes available in the literature.

What I do in such cases on Commons is to add a caveat emptor statement, such as I did here or here. That way, people will be able to locate any content even though their favored taxonomc scheme may not be used. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:54, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

It looks like that Bucheli reference was simply tacked on[9] without any changes to the listing. The list as it is was that way since 2006[10] so I'm not too confident using 'Species. Usually, in these situations, I try to make a consensus classification with a bias towards newer publications. And if there's not too many conflicts, try to be consistent with the other Wikimedia projects (unfortunately, if one wiki uses a poor out-dated source, the other Wikipedias tend to copy and propagate that). I'll try and figure something out, but I think I'll not make too many changes until more stuff starts appearing online. Rocket000 (talk) 01:27, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

Nathaniel Isaacs

Hi Dysmorodrepanis. You flagged the accuaracy of the article Nathaniel Isaacs as being suspect. I have made a few changes - are you happy for the banner to be removed? Martinvl (talk) 14:07, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that'll do; thanks a lot!

Should you want to add more content, History in Africa 19: 411-433 ("Textual Incest: Nathaniel Isaacs and the Development of the Shaka Myth") may provide a wealth of information, original quotes from Isaac's diary and later writings etc. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:58, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - I will do that. BTW, I am curently doing a bit of work on Charles Rawden Maclean which is where I cam e across Isaacs. Martinvl (talk) 15:19, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Aldabra Giant Tortoise

Hi Dysmorodrepanis.

I've just been looking at the list of self-contradictory articles, and I notice you put the contradict flag up on Aldabra Giant Tortoise in May 2008. I can't see any contradictions in the article, and there's no comments regarding them in the talk page, or in your edit summary. I expect someone's changed it in the past 2 years so I've gone ahead and removed the tag, but if you do remember what the issue is or can see it again, please do feel free to put the tag back Cheers -- WORMMЯOW  13:25, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Query

Could you please describe what you did here? The edit summary is blank(please use edit summaries to describe edits others may not understand in the future), and provides no insight into what the edit adds, and how it is useful to the article. I initially removed it, as it appeared to be a username of some sort; however, since you are the one that added it, and you have been here for some time, I reverted and went here.— Dædαlus ^Contribs 05:37, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

(butting in) it is a note/bookmark for an article mentioning the bird in a peer-reviewed journal, so that later on someone can go look at it, and add material to the WP article. cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:06, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, that certainly clarifies things. Do you think a template should be made to that effect? Or is it only available off-line?— Dædαlus ^Contribs 06:12, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

AFAICT the articles are various -many will be abstract-only unless one is able to get fulltext access. I have used a few (I think?) here and there and incorporated into articles. wikiproject birds is pretty active so we'll sift through a few no doubt. How would you envisage a template working? Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:09, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

This particular case makes an interesting example. As you can see, the Wikipedia article is still very basic; no specific information beyond the bare necessities is provided. The source I annotated can be accessed here. As you can see, it states that in the mid-1960s, P. leucotis was very common (by owl standards) in Côte d'Ivoire; in fact, that of all the owls found in that country (the source lists only 4, but in fact over one dozen occur there!) only the Barn Owl was more common. It also describes the species' call.

Now, this is quite a lot of information for the two short sentences which the source allocates to the species. But to make sense of it, the article needs to be expanded. Much. That this owl was remarkably common in one specific country almost half a century ago is, at the article's present state, the kind of information that makes Wikipedia haters sigh and say: "this piece of sh*t 'encyclopedia' is no good." But as soon as the article is given an expansion to B-class, the info suddenly becomes quite valuable indeed, because then there is enough other data to put it in context (namely: how common this owl is today and elsewhere. And the call is much more useful when we have other sources that describe this or other vocalizations). Thus, I annotated the source so it will be found by future editors. Particularly since it is not a main source for this species, it is easily overlooked.

(NB: It is fascinating that of all articles this one in particular comes to discussion. I just had to ID an owl wing, found during a Burkina Faso-Côte d'Ivoire expedition (I have no idea what happened to the rest of the owl). This was one of the candidate species, but as it turned out, the specimen was just a wintering Otus scops. Spent half an hour poring over owl wings today I did... O. scops and O. sengalensis are bitches to tell apart as soon as they're dead. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:57, 29 September 2010 (UTC))

New papers

I presume you have seen http://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.ympev.2010.07.008 and perhaps also http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0013321 - I have been looking up the material on White-bellied Shortwing and it is clear that that the Rasmussen treatment under Myiomela has little backing evidence (and yet is followed by the IOC) and the first paper (supplement of which with sampled taxa is not available to me) seems to have nothing on this either. Unfortunately, it seems like the PLoS guidelines for submission of sequences (to the EMBL database) and their citation in the paper does not seem to have been followed in the "sky island" paper. I have moved the taxonomy back to the conservative (but perhaps incorrect treatment under Brachypteryx - the type of which seems to shows marked sexual dimorphism) - wonder if you might like to check that I have not made any serious error here. Shyamal (talk) 13:44, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, no - but I will catch up soon. (Hell hath nothing like Passer domesticus and P. hispaniolensis hybridizing in Morocco. If avian biology were like oil prospecting, I'd say: "we hit a source". 80% of the specimens seem to be at my hands. I have no idea what to make of that, and I don't want to. In other news, there are two recorded Chiroxiphia caudata femmes with young-male plumage, and one of these was reproducing when it died. I have no idea what to make of that either, except that birds being ZZ/ZW, it doesn't refute anything fundamental (ZZ/ZW means that without other cues, an individual is or looks like male by default). Matter of fact, "my" specimen is from Ilhabela, as is the Wikipedia video. Gotta go there some day, the avifauna is stunning.

I shall check out the papers in the next 1-2 weeks. As regards the IOC: I'd say awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Too much, too soon. (Their placement of Patagioenas is just... it hurts. If you recognize that genus (which I'd very much agree with - even though I'm equivocal on "molecular-data-only" decisions, this one seems pretty well OK), why put it there in the linear sequence? Why oh why oh why?!) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 06:23, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Robertgreer

Why, thank You! (mv to userpage) 06:23, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Re:Xestia

Your new version of Xestia looks great! And thanks for the tip, I will try the
option sometime. Especially when there are a lot of synonyms, moving them to the text might indeed be better. I normally only use funet as a ref for the author, but I agree it is better to ref the source funet is using, although it is a problem that this source is not always available to me. Anyway.. good work on the extracted images.. They look amazing! If you feel like doing more in future, please let me know.. I will gladly make articles for them. When you are done with Xestia I will try if I get articles up on all species. It is a shame there are so little good sources for this big family, I have been struggling with that for some time now. Even relatively well known taxa from North America have little info available online. Ruigeroeland (talk) 08:56, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Great work! I am working on Sphingidae at the moment (I found a great online source for the whole family), but I will see if I can make some Xestia species after that! Ruigeroeland (talk) 08:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Old World suboscines

I'm working on the pittas at the moment. Do you think it's time to split the family into three genera per Irestedt (2006)? And time to lump the asities and sapayoa with the broadbills? Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:31, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

As regards Pitta, yes please. Using HBW as source (to be precise cite the plates), one can circumscribe color characteristics for each genus; I may even have done this somewhere in a 'pedia discussion earlier.

Eurylaimidae is more tough, for the two main primary sources contradict and the secondary material is definitely obsolete. Moyle et al 2006 is quite outspoken about it a 2-family treatment of Eurylaimides despite noting that a trichotomy has been found earlier. Whereas Irestedt et al (2006) suggests to split Eurylaimidae (Smithornis and Calyptomena). So their treatment would be these 5 families:

• Eurylaimidae s. str.
• Philepittidae
• Sapayoidae
• Calyptomenidae Bonaparte, 1850 (= Smithornithidae Bonaparte, 1853)

• Pittidae

Irested et al decide not to, but Philepittidae are definitely the first to be merged - into Eurylaimidae - if anything is merged here; both papers very robustly agree on that. (I'd actually rather have Philepittinae even if it needed Pseudocalyptomeninae, but to merge Philepittidae alone would be a definite OR problem)

While the support for grouping the first 4 is barely sufficient in either study the fact that Sapayoa obviously long-branches with pittas in myoglobin-2 (Irestead paper) suggests that it is reasonable to accept Eurylaimoidea vs Pittoidea, which are both available names: given that nonmonophyly of Eurylaimidae s. str was outside the scope of Sibley et al (1988) and that they were equivocal about Sapayoa (but right in one of their guesses), they proposed Eurylaimoidea vs Pittoidea (albeit with wrong family delimitation) as we need it now: If we had written an Eurylaimoidea article back in '88, except for certainly placing Sapayoa there the actual species content would not have changed one bit. So we can probably use the superfamilies without an OR problem, and using them would be helpful because we could acknowledge both 2006 sources' data even though they are irreconcilable in their interpretations of the data.

Also relevant in this regard: WP:PRIMARY - in a pinch, stay true to the data even if you have to dump the author's conclusions. People claim a lot until their research is properly synthesized in a secondary source. E.g. Moyle et al's assessment of formative events is based on an early Late Cretaceous basal split for Passeriformes (>>80 Ma) which is very tentative, it would imply each of the three lineages surviving the K-Pg boundary and changing very little morphologically til the Eocene (for 30 million years that is). Not exactly in line with how evolution works, so their paleogeographical conclusions are best left out of the picture; they fail to discuss the large gap in the fossil record which their hypothesis requires (they cite the fossil papers but disregard those parts where a later origin is proposed).

So the Eurylaimidae issue is a balance between WP:NOR and WP:PRIMARY. It can be resolved nicely, but not without lining up the data and describing the results ("this sequence says this, that sequence says that"). This is BTW why I tend to be so detailed in citing primary sources - better to give a summary of the data only, instead of talking about unconfirmed claims the authors make, e.g. The Auer ref in Euler's Flycatcher, their data do definitely not hold true for other situations (but such data are nice "flesh" to an otherwise brief article). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:38, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker genus

Hi. I notice that back in 2006 you changed the genus of this species from Dendrocopos to Picoides with a comment "reference pending". Have you been able to track this reference down and are you still of the opinion that this is the correct genus? I haven't seen this suggestion published anywhere, so I thought I would ask whether you knew any more. Thanks. SP-KP (talk) 23:24, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I was so circumspect back then because I presumed there would be a complete revision of all Dendropicini genera, but as it seems there isn't (yet). But Picoides is becoming more popular with recent authors; many continue to use Dendrocopos but this creates paraphyly according to Moore et al. (2006) here. Picoides was in fact used earlier for the LSW (but only rarely and not based on solid data); this is apparently the reason why the Moore et al. results are simply adopted by those who have read the paper without further comment (a synonymy proposed once, even if the data basis was weak at that time, is usually not re-proposed formally if robust data becomes available, but simply adopted as authors see fit*). But the LSW is studied almost exclusively by ecologists, which usually do not read phylogeny papers (the IOC hasn't read the Moore et al. paper either... big mistake, it's one of the 2 most important works on woodpecker phylogeny/systematics), and thus Dendrocopos continues to be used even though it is definitely incorrect (Picoides has priority over Dendrocopos, so the latter cannot be correct for the LBW no matter how the genus limits are drawn). So the article can simply be updated to "in line with the results of Moore et al., Picoides is used here instead of Dendrocopos" or something.

[*] In botany, it would actually be fraudulent to re-propose it, because authors establishing new combinations/synonymies are explicitly cited for plant species, and a combination can only be validly established once. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 08:57, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Speedy deletion declined: Raphignathae

Hello Dysmorodrepanis. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Raphignathae, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: R3 only applies to recent redirects. Use WP:RFD instead. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 05:23, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

R6 (WP:R#DELETE #10 and WP:R#Self-redirects) applies regardless. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:27, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your message. It helped clarify things for me. I've deleted the redirect as you asked. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 04:03, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:05, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Picture of Brown-throated Wren

Hi, Dysmorodrepanis. I'm wondering why you identified File:Troglodytes aedon NPS.jpg as a Brown-throated Wren. The place where it was taken (a trail I know well, not that that's relevant to the identification) is hundreds of miles from the Brown-throated's normal U.S. range in southeastern Arizona. Also, maybe it's my deuteranomaly, but I don't see the buffy and brownish underparts. Isn't it a member of the aedon group? —JerryFriedman (Talk) 00:34, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I was already wondering... someone had ID'd it as BTW, and I didn't have BNA up to check the range limit. (I had more to do with musculus the last year than I'd care to, but the northern groups are a bit of an enigma to me. Deuteranomaly here too BTW.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:03, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for making the necessary changes! I think we need a support group for deuteranomalous birders and ornithologists. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 02:52, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Contradiction on Coenonympha nipisiquit

Hi. You recently tagged Coenonympha nipisiquit as a self contradictory article. I had a look through, but couldn't see a contradiction and I've removed the tag. If I've missed something, feel free to put the tag back and leave a note on the talk page. Cheers Worm^TT 15:26, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

And if you get a chance, can you put some more information re the issue on Kentish Plover on the talk page? Worm^TT 15:39, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

... and Nagoochee FrogWorm^TT 15:45, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Like below.

Taxobox: Coenonympha tullia nipisiquit

Text: Coenonympha nipisiquit

This needs some recent study on phylogeny and/or systematics and/or taxonomy if there is one (it looks there has been recent change of opinion/evidence), and a basic (secondary) RS for the whole article is needed anyway. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 02:25, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Kentish Plover -- contradiction tag

Dysmorodrepanis -- I see the contradiction tag and note re subspecis in Kentish Plover. Can you explain in the talk page what the contradiction is? An explanation and better visibility will help resolve. (I'm working on the Wikipedia:Contribution Team/Backlogs.) Thanks. --S. Rich (talk) 02:08, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Text: "This bird has six geographical races".

Taxobox lists 3.

If you have no source, I can give you one in the next days, but I was too lazy to look it up on the quick back then ;-) but basicallly, this article too needs a solid secondary RS as groundwork (if you check the sourcecode you'll note that there are a lot of primary souces waiting; while "hard science" PS data is OK if it's mainstream, it still shouldn't stand on its own but complement a secondary source). In this case it's probably Shorebirds and/or HBW. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 02:23, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Credo accounts

As a great contributor to Lepidoptera articles, I would like to point out this to you: Wikipedia:Credo accounts. Might be you already have access or have already signed up, but if not, you really should! Cheers Ruigeroeland (talk) 17:49, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

COOL! Many many thanks! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:50, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I've just heard from Erik of the Foundation about this, and apparently you have no email set in your preferences, so they're unable to forward your account details. Can you add an email address at your earlier convenience? I hope you enjoy using the account. :) Best, SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:02, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Taste well?

Would you say "It looks well on her"? Well why would you want to say "It tastes well"?

Repeat after me 50 times: "It doesn't taste good, it doesn't taste good...".

221.222.125.27 (talk) 02:21, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Dang! ;-) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 09:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Megalodacne

Hello. You removed the sources from the list of species in Megalodacne and then fact tagged it. Can you explain why? Granted there already was a warning that the species list may be inaccurate as there is no full compendium of recognized species today, so there will be synonyms, and they need to be doublechecked, but the sources are where the species list is from. Placing a copyedit tag is redundant.--Obsidi♠n^Soul 21:34, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

1. Zipcodezoo is not permitted as a source (because it is not WP:RS) except if no other source can be found. Some people have added it to many pages a long time ago, so it is seen occasionally and people think it's OK to use it. But it is not allowed and must be removed as soon as some other source is available.

2. The author/date/parentheses combinations are definitely wrong in M. imperatrix - I am currently looking at the original description, and the parentheses and date are wrong, the species was originally described in Megalodacne so it must be "Gorham, 1883" and not "(Gorham, 1823)".

This means that a) all author/date/parentheses combinations are in need of verification except for those species described before the genus was established; these will have parentheses, and b) that the other sources may also be unreliable.

Unreliable sources are not allowed on Wikipedia, so I outcommented the sources until they can be checked for reliability, and the errors in the list corrected. If you look at the source code, you will find that I have only removed Zipcodezoo. The other sources are hidden until they are reevaluated, and those that are correct can be kept but the others must be discarded. But until this is done, we cannot have them and it must be tagged as needing verification. I placed the copyedit tag to notify editors to look at the source code; it is indeed redundant and didn't work so it may just as well be removed.

(I think the Chûjô reference is good; I have been using it myself because it seemed the best I could find. But the PDF is scanned badly, there are many OCR errors - "Proc. 2001. Sot. London" is "Proc. Zool. Soc. London". So we can use it as source I presume, but it might be better not to link the PDF.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:24, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

PS: I usually solve these problems by naming the section "Selected species" and not "List of Species" whenever I have reason to believe it may be incomplete, and write: "Species of [genus] include:" followed by the list.

The reader will immediately know that the list is not necessarily complete. If I am not sure whether the list is complete, I add a "verification needed" tag behind the "include:" and <!-- leave a comment to editors to check for completeness -->. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough point. Even though I'm not an expert on anything, I still do get the gut feeling that zipcodezoo is the worst of the taxonomic databases out there, so I definitely agree. But then again, didn't know it was on the 'blacklist' so to say. Having zero access to academic journals except those found for free though, I sometimes have nothing else to rely on.

Megalodacne was perhaps my first attempt at writing a reasonably complete article on a taxon (note that this was written barely 2 months after I first started to become a serious contributor). Did it because of an argument regarding the pictures with Stremonitis (who I've since had another argument with... I'm a bit... volatile, bleh), and did it with little more than very basic knowledge of how synonymy and authorities and type species and stuff works. Looking at M. imperatrix now, that seems like a copy-paste typo from Megalodacne heros (Say, 1823). Stremonitis actually admonished me on that, as being completely ignorant of authority rules and whatnot, I was writing all the authorities enclosed in parentheses. I didn't even exactly understand what I was writing about. Looking at Chûjô now, some of those species have actually been moved to other genera. The entire article, really, could be treated as an early learning experiment, LOL.

Anyway, I'll instead try to fix what I can from more up-to-date (free) sources now. Will check species one by one. I just really dislike tagging as they are rather unsightly and nobody ever actually fixes them.--Obsidi♠n^Soul 04:53, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Help wanted! :)

Hello Dysmorodrepanis, I recently stumbled onto a great new source for moth genus articles. It is a database containing the complete taxonomy for the complete Pyraloidea superfamily. I already started adding info from it to wikipedia (I updated the taxonomy section on Crambidae and will continue with Pyralidae. I was wondering if you would be interested in helping out adding species to the genus articles, since you have shown an interest in similar work in the past. The database can be found at http://globiz.pyraloidea.org/Pages/Reports/TaxonReport.aspx. Cheers and any help is greatly appreciated!Ruigeroeland (talk) 18:40, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I usually work paper-based, gotta look if I have sth interesting in the pipeline. Gotta write a project report on the side, so I'll just have to see what I can do. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:51, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Since the Crambidae are all set up already and since I have found this interesting paper in my box (Far Polynesian Lepidoptera, highly interesting for my work), I think I might tinker with the other Pyralidae subfamilies. I'll look over the papers, and when there are interesting taxa which are redlinked all way down from Pyralidae, I'll build the framework down to genus, cleanup synonyms etc. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:00, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Nice! I'll switch to helping you with the Pyralidae when I finish with the Cambrids. It will take me about a week to finish them I think. There are quite some genera. All of them have an article already, but these lack species, authors, synonyms, etc. so still some work to flesh them out somewhat. Thanks for the help and good luck with the writing! Ruigeroeland (talk) 06:54, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

This is maybe the most highly useful article if you need a quick text for the subfamily articles. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:22, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

IMPORTANT! The GlobIZ database apparently does NOT contain complete species lists! All of Clarke's 1986 Ernophthora species for example are missing - I suspect that many species described from the 1980s onwards are missing! Phycita characterica is included however; possibly they add new species only by and by as they sift through the literature. (It's a database by a German institute, and P. characterica was described in a European entomology journal, while Clarke published in a North American general zoology journal. So I suspect that taxa described in the European specialist literature may be fairly complete, while those described in non-specialist overseas literature are probably not at all complete.)

I also noted a few errors regarding taxon authors/dates. I suspect they have simply copied the Savela database and the Pitkin/Jenkins genus database and perhaps Fauna Europaea, and are presently reviewing it (I hope). In short, this is not a reliable source! (GBIF is not reliable either - I used it for my thesis, and while it is better than nothing, its taxonomy is way screwed up, because taxa in GBIF are simply entered according to the databases of which GBIF consists - meaning that you can find a lot of GBIF entries which have their taxonomy simply copied from some decades- or even centuries-old museum specimen and are completely obsolete in this respect). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 09:22, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, I think I got it now. Savela is using GlobIZ as main source for Pyraloidea. Thus, we're better off of referring to Savela's sources, because he has all the GlobIZ info as well as other sources, and he has reviewed it for a large part (see version/date on funet pages). Thus, funet is the more reliable source compared to GloBIZ. It's still not fully reliable, but GlobIZ should probably not be used if funet has the info. There are some cases when they have authors/dates/synonyms funet hasn't added yet, but these are few.

The advantage of funet is also that we can properly cite it. GlobIZ cannot be cited except as the entire database, which argues against using it at all. In short, GlobIZ falls somewhat short of the WP:RS criteria. It's not as bad as to purge it from Wikipedia altogether (like zipcodezoo), but it has far too many problems to be the default source. It's better than ITIS and GBIF, but it's worse than Fauna Europaea, IUCN, WoRMS, NHM Lepidotera genera DB... Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:42, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi Dysmorodrepanis, didnt notice this before now. I finished the Crambidae using GlobIZ and these seem to be fairly complete (all except two or three genera we had pages for could be found in the database. Dont know if all species are included, but I'm sure most would be. It is always better than what we had before.. Genus articles without any species at all). I will continue with the Pyralids using funet. Thanks for sharing your findings! Ruigeroeland (talk) 12:25, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

No, wait a second!

The source is very bad in fact for genus and below, check out the primary taxonomic literature (recent articles describing species, or reviewing genera) and you will soon note a lot of errors in GlobIZ. The data quality is very uneven though; some genera are excellent while others are more errors than factual data.

So GlobIZ is NOT WP:RS! And after the trouble we had with zipcodezoo, it is better used with much restraint!

What you can do if digging through Google Scholar for every genus is too much work (it is indeed) is this: Check out funet and Wikispecies, and compare to GlobIZ. If they do not have more species, or list species that GlobIZ doesn't list, then GlobIZ is OK. Otherwise do not use it. 22:00, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

ZéroBot

Awesome, very helpful! Much appreciated! -- Dysmorodrepanis from en: moved from fr.wikipedia by Toto Azéro ^{Follow the guide !} 15:01, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi ! Thank you very much ! :) I suppose you're talking about these interwiki-changes made by my bot : [11], [12], [13] and [14] after you had published the page Phycitinae ? Regards, Toto Azéro ^{Follow the guide !} 15:01, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:49, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Question

Hi- hope you don't mind me getting in touch. I am a comparatively new entomological user and have noticed you as one of the premier entomological users. I have spotted a couple of things on wikipedia that I am not qualified to tackle, but need attention, so I am mentioning them in case you want to handle them or know someone who does.

1. The first is the Manchester Moth Euclemensia woodiella. I see you have edited that page. Page says it is monotypic, it isn't any more; Rich Brown at Missouri has been talking on facebook about numerous species from US, Trinidad etc. (and the combinations are published) I don't have the lep knowledge to handle it being a coleopterist, and I mentioned it to Rich but I don't know if he does wikipedia.

2. The second is following some Russian colleagues' pages (Vadim Gratshev, Alex Rasnitsyn etc) I found that there were dead links to Palaeoentomologist; I intitially thought that this was because they used the UK spelling, and that linking to the US spelling Paleoentomologist would fix it; however, inexplicably someone has merged 'Paleoentomology' into 'Insect Phylogenetics'; here my failing is that as a newish wikipedian if I try to disentangle that one I will mess it up, so I am mentioning it up the line to a more experienced person for suggestions. I'm sure you agree the merge is crazy, especially where the Russian labs that have never gone into phylogenetics are concerned

Feel free to ignore these comments - best wishes Max Coleopterist (talk) 00:31, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Jackdaw taxonomy

I have started a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Birds#Jackdaw_taxonomy - so basal member of Corvus or own genus...realistically slapping Linnaean binomials onto cladograms is so much fun, not....Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:33, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Iberolacerta monticola

Please see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Amphibians_and_Reptiles#Iberolacerta_monticola. Thank you. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:14, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Aetia

Dear Dysmorodrepanis, I am currently working on an article about a major Hellenistic Greek poem by Callimachus that is called the Aetia and notice that a page by this title is currently a redirect that you made to Combretum for which "Aetia" is a synonym in Adanson's terminology. I can't really tell if once I finish the page there should be a disambiguation page and the article that I'm working on should be called something like "Aetia (poem)" or if it should just replace the redirect and have one of those notes at the top of the page saying something like For the X also known as Aetia see Combretum. Greek and Roman editors would probably think the latter, but don't have a clue what science editors would think. I'm also pretty inexperienced with the structure of the encyclopedia in general, so I figured you'd be the first person I should ask since you've obviously worked an a mass of pages and redirects of this sort. Any thoughts? Thank you, The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 01:59, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Sure, see your Talk. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:48, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the help. Also, though I feel bad for the bird, your username is incredible! Especially since dysmoros is one of Achilles' more mournful epithets in the Iliad. Good to find out that Perkins didn't give up on classics once he found his vocation. Best, The Cardiff Chestnut (talk) 02:21, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Cool! :D I'll keep the Aetia article in mind, the classics are always handy in a pinch when it comes to 19th/early 20th century nomenclature and taxonomy. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 02:42, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Indian ice-cream

I noticed that you renamed the Indian ice-cream article to sxusem. I don't think that this is entirely correct, as sxusem is actually the Secwepemctsin (western dialect) name for the berries of the soapberry bush. This creates two problems:

1. Sxusem is the name for the berries, and not the whipped dessert that is made from them. Numerous other things can be also done with the berries, like making a beverage.
2. Sxusem is also not a widespread name. First Nations throughout BC eat Indian ice-cream, and sxusem only represents one dialect of one language (Secwepemctsin). In contrast, the name "Indian ice-cream" has very widespread use.

These two factors make me think that Indian ice-cream is a better name for the article than sxusem. What are your thoughts on this? Millifolium (talk) 22:19, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 07:18, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Mihirung

You were responsible for a crucial edit of this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dromornithidae&action=historysubmit&diff=73640464&oldid=66404261 I would be eternally grateful if you could find me the reference that identifies the source language of the term 'mihirung' as Djabwurrung. I'm working for the Australian National Dictionary to try to identify Aboriginal source languages for words in Australian English and 'mihirung' is on the list. Any leads are useful because they can then be verified against available word lists in indigenous languages. Please contact me at Piers DOT Kelly @anu.edu.au Thanks again. Perezkelly (talk) 01:21, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Mihirung and Brinepool

Thanks very much for the source information on Mihirung and the tip about Brinepool. I managed to get access to a transcription of the Dawson text (cited by Tindale) in archive.org and I can now proceed to check this against available material on western Victorian languages. Sorry for the delay in responding - I'm on this project only once a week. If you would like to be credited in the next edition of the dictionary, please send me your name to Piers dot Kelly at anu dot edu dot au. I can keep you informed on my future researches into these names. Cheers, Piers. Perezkelly (talk) 05:07, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Elachista

Hello Dysmorodrepanis, would you be interested in updating the Elachista article with new information from a recent publication about Australian representatives of the genus? I am going to make species articles and wanted to update the species list on the genus page, but I dont want to disrupt the nice layout you made. I have all species and groups wikified allready, see: Subgenus Atachia Wocke, 1876 erebophthalma group

• Elachista erebophthalma Meyrick, 1897
• Elachista evexa Kaila, 2011
• Elachista rhomboidea Kaila, 2011
• Elachista leucastra (Meyrick, 1906)

gerasmia group catarata section

• Elachista menura Kaila, 2011
• Elachista flammula Kaila, 2011
• Elachista crocospila Kaila, 2011
• Elachista glomerella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista sphaerella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista aluta Kaila, 2011
• Elachista sp. nr sphaerella A
• Elachista sp. nr sphaerella B
• Elachista sp. nr sphaerella C
• Elachista sp. nr sphaerella D
• Elachista sapphirella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista patersoniae Kaila, 2011
• Elachista catarata Meyrick, 1897
• Elachista mutarata Kaila, 2011
• Elachista laterina Kaila, 2011
• Elachista ictera Kaila, 2011
• Elachista asperae Kaila, 2011
• Elachista ophthalma Kaila, 2011
• Elachista coalita Kaila, 2011
• Elachista corneola Kaila, 2011

gerasmia section

• Elachista magidina Kaila, 2011
• Elachista floccella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista velutina Kaila, 2011
• Elachista carcharota Kaila, 2011
• Elachista crenatella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista bidens Kaila, 2011
• Elachista alampeta Kaila, 2011
• Elachista cursa Kaila, 2011
• Elachista eriodes Kaila, 2011
• Elachista illota Kaila, 2011
• Elachista ceratiola Kaila, 2011
• Elachista bilobella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista filiphila Kaila, 2011
• Elachista merista Kaila, 2011
• Elachista lopadina Kaila, 2011
• Elachista patania Kaila, 2011
• Elachista indigens Kaila, 2011
• [[Elachista sp. nr indigens
• Elachista averta Kaila, 2011
• Elachista anolba Kaila, 2011
• Elachista flavicilia Kaila, 2011
• Elachista tetraquetri Kaila, 2011
• Elachista effusi Kaila, 2011
• Elachista deusta Kaila, 2011
• Elachista rubiginosae Kaila, 2011
• Elachista ophelma Kaila, 2011
• Elachista catagma Kaila, 2011
• Elachista ruscella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista sarota Kaila, 2011
• Elachista syntomella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista scopulina Kaila, 2011
• Elachista nodosae Kaila, 2011
• Elachista discina Kaila, 2011
• Elachista melanthes (Meyrick, 1887)
• Elachista platysma Kaila, 2011
• Elachista stictifica Kaila, 2011
• Elachista lachnella Kaila, 2011
• [[Elachista sp. A in melanthes complex

Elachista gerasmia complex

• Elachista gerasmia Meyrick, 1889
  • Syn: Elachista egena]] Turner, 1923
• Elachista physalodes Kaila, 2011
• Elachista peridiola Kaila, 2011
• Elachista phascola Kaila, 2011

Elachista paragauda complex

• Elachista paragauda Kaila, 2011
• Elachista toralis Kaila, 2011
• Elachista paryphoea Kaila, 2011
• Elachista spathacea Kaila, 2011
• Elachista cylistica Kaila, 2011
• Elachista fabarella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista etorella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista gladiograpta Kaila, 2011
• Elachista gladiatrix Kaila, 2011
• Elachista spongicola Kaila, 2011

Elachista cynopa complex

• Elachista ligula Kaila, 2011
• Elachista toryna Kaila, 2011
• Elachista ascidiella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista repanda Kaila, 2011
• Elachista prolatella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista protensa Kaila, 2011
• Elachista campsella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista spinodora Kaila, 2011
• Elachista glossina Kaila, 2011
• Elachista opima Kaila, 2011
• Elachista pharetra Kaila, 2011
• Elachista rudicula Kaila, 2011
• Elachista corbicula Kaila, 2011
• Elachista mystropa Kaila, 2011
• Elachista trulla Kaila, 2011
• Elachista euthema Kaila, 2011
• Elachista cynopa Kaila, 2011
• Elachista epartica Kaila, 2011
• Elachista zeta Kaila, 2011
• Elachista chilotera Kaila, 2011
• Elachista mundula Kaila, 2011
• Elachista listrionea Kaila, 2011
• Elachista crumilla Kaila, 2011
• Elachista aposematica Kaila, 2011
• Elachista chloropepla Meyrick, 1897

Subgenus Elachista Elachista tetragonella group

• Elachista ensifera Kaila, 2011

Elachista bifascialla group s.l.

• [[Elachista platina
• Elachista sp. nr platina
• ''Elachista sp. bifascialla group
• Elachista micalis Kaila, 2011
• Elachista habrella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista scitula Kaila, 2011

Elachista orba group

• Elachista cyanea Kaila, 2011
• Elachista polliae Kaila, 2011
• Elachista commoncommelinae Sugisima & Kaira, 2011
• Elachista nielsencommelinae Sugisima & Kaira, 2011

Elachista praelineata group

• Elachista aurita Kaila, 2011

Elachista solena group

• Elachista ignicolor Kaila, 2011

Elachista freyerella group s.l. Elachista synethes complex

• Elachista fucosa Meyrick, 1922
• Elachista seductilis Kaila, 2011
• Elachista synethes Meyrick, 1897
  • Syn:aphanta Turner, 1923
  • Syn:scrythrodes (Turner, 1947)
• Elachista strenua Kaila, 2011
• Elachista sandaraca Kaila, 2011
• Elachista helvola Kaila, 2011
• Elachista delira Kaila, 2011
• Elachista sp. in synethes complex

Elachista freyerella complex

• Elachista propera Kaila, 2011
• Elachista dieropa Kaila, 2011
• Elachista elaphria Kaila, 2011
• Elachista cycotis Meyrick, 1897
• Elachista vitellina Kaila, 2011
• Elachista citrina Kaila, 2011
• Elachista cerebrosella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista melina Kaila, 2011
• Elachista gemadella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista ravella Kaila, 2011
• Elachista cerina Kaila, 2011
• Elachista diligens Kaila, 2011
• Elachista aepsera Kaila, 2011
• Elachista zophosema (Turner, 1947)
• Elachista litharga Kaila, 2011
• Elachista levipes Kaila, 2011
• Elachista cerrita Kaila, 2011
• Elachista velox Kaila, 2011
• Elachista impiger Kaila, 2011
• Elachista alacera Kaila, 2011
• Elachista essymena Kaila, 2011
• Elachista festina Kaila, 2011

Thanks a million! Ruigeroeland (talk) 15:21, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

(this continued on next Talk page)