Talk:Wells and Wellington affair

Wells and Wellington affair is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on March 18, 2021.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
May 14, 2020	Good article nominee	Listed
November 5, 2020	Featured article candidate	Promoted

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on May 20, 2020.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that in the Australian Journal of Herpetology, a first-year student and a high school teacher reassessed the taxonomy of Australia's entire reptile class, naming 33 novel genera and 214 new species?

Current status: Featured article

This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

Australia Low‑importance

	Australia portal Wells and Wellington affair is within the scope of WikiProject Australia, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Australia and Australia-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.AustraliaWikipedia:WikiProject AustraliaTemplate:WikiProject AustraliaAustralia articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	Need help improving this article? Ask a Librarian^{What's this?} at the National Library of Australia.
	The Wikimedia Australia chapter can be contacted via email to helpwikimedia.org.au for non-editorial assistance.

Academic Journals

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Academic Journals, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Academic Journals on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Academic JournalsWikipedia:WikiProject Academic JournalsTemplate:WikiProject Academic JournalsAcademic Journal articles
See WikiProject Academic Journals' writing guide for tips on how to improve this article.

Amphibians and Reptiles Low‑importance

	Wells and Wellington affair is part of WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles, an effort to make Wikipedia a standardized, informative, comprehensive and easy-to-use resource for amphibians and reptiles. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.Amphibians and ReptilesWikipedia:WikiProject Amphibians and ReptilesTemplate:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptilesamphibian and reptile articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Turtles Low‑importance

Wells and Wellington affair is part of WikiProject Turtles, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, comprehensive and easy-to-use turtle resource. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.TurtlesWikipedia:WikiProject TurtlesTemplate:WikiProject Turtlesturtle articles

Low This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Interested in helping WikiProject Turtles? See the project discussion or the to-do below:

edit
history
watch
purge

Get involved with WikiProject Turtles discussion.

Here are some tasks awaiting attention:

Copyedit : Green sea turtle!
Expand : Emydidae, Tortoise, Spotted turtle, Glyptemys
Photo : Find a photo of turtle articles needing a photo
Stubs : Expand a stub article.
Update : Emydidae, Tortoise
Other : * Out of date turtle articles abound, mainly taxonomy issues, get a list here and scroll down for articles. Taxonomy information is available in WikiProject Turtles resources.
- {{Extinct turtles}} and fossil forms of both living and extinct turtles requires attention:many extinct articles require either expansion or creation and sources seems hard to come by. A list of fossil forms is being compiled so progress can be charted.
- Patrol: recent changes to turtle articles and check for improvements or errors.

Tree of Life Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Tree of Life, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of taxonomy and the phylogenetic tree of life on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Tree of LifeWikipedia:WikiProject Tree of LifeTemplate:WikiProject Tree of Lifetaxonomic articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:

Weule, Genelle (7 May 2023). "The Australian gecko that was named after David Attenborough (for a while)". ABC News. Archived from the original on 1 August 2023.

Merge/rename proposal[edit]

This article is wrongly named as it is not about the journal but solely about the "Wells and Wellington affair" (W&W). Basically all text is about the last few issues in which the W&W articles appeared. There is also discussion of works by W&W that appeared in completely different publications. This should either be renamed "Wells and Wellington affair", or perhaps merged to Richard W. Wells, where there currently is scant discussion of this affair, but which seems to belong there (Wells apparently being the more important actor).

I have not put a "merge to" or other template on this article as it will apparently be an FA in a few days. It would be good if the above changes could be enacted before that time. --Randykitty (talk) 16:05, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Australian Journal of Herpetology. [1]SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:21, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The article is now at Wells and Wellington Affair, but the first sentence uses lower case on affair: The "Wells and Wellington affair" is a name ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:33, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I hadn't intended it to be; based on other affairs (1, 2, 3, 4) it seems like lowercase makes the most sense and is largely consistent across the encyclopedia (though not entirely). —Collin^{t c} 21:50, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thought so ... you will need to ping Wehwalt to work this out. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:03, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Everything else listed at Wikipedia:Featured_articles is lower case. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:32, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Will the redirect, 'document to affair', be deleted eventually? ~ cygnis insignis 15:34, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

references[edit]

In the photo of Myuchelys purvisi, recognition and usage of the name purvisi as the valid senior syn stems from Iverson et al 2001, but it is probably best to use Thomson and Georges 2009 the description of Myuchelys as this paper formally assigned the species to Myuchelys including this one with the Wells and Wellington name. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 14:49, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Fine by me! Added the reference. Thank you! —Collin^{t c} 15:59, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Background gaps[edit]

How did a first-year undergraduate student become the editor of a newly established scientific journal? Was/is it usual practice in the relevant area? --Paul_012 (talk) 18:09, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is not clear from the available sources. From what I can surmise, Wells was at least in his mid-20s by this point and had already done some work as a collector for a few museums, so while he was a first-year student, he wasn't wholly unqualified, and his role was largely focused on the production of the journal with the editorial board managing most of its content seemingly. I cannot say if it's usual practice or not but the AJH was a small journal so it doesn't strike me as too odd. I added a little bit to the article about Wells's background as a collector. —Collin^{t c} 18:28, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WP:REFERS?[edit]

As this is an FA, I’m more curious than anything. The opening sentence uses “...is a name given to...”. I can’t see any discussion of WP:REFERS in the FA, so wondering why this is considered ok? DeCausa (talk) 18:53, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That was just a leftover from some late changes made just before TFA (see above on this talk page); I attempted a fix. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:56, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Something still seems amiss, maybe "describes" or: The Wells and Wellington affair was a controversy ... ~ cygnis insignis 19:03, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Or that [2] :) ~ cygnis insignis 19:04, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! DeCausa (talk) 19:05, 18 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Additional source[edit]

I'm not sure how much overlap there is, but the WikiSpecies article on Wells mentions another source:^[1] (the article is also available here). --Pokechu22 (talk) 00:47, 19 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Kaiser, Hinrich; Crother, Brian I.; Kelly, Christopher M.R.; Luiselli, Luca; O’Shea, Mark; Ota, Hidetoshi; Passos, Paulo; Schleip, Wulf D.; Wüster, Wolfgang (March 2013). "Best Practices: In the 21st Century, Taxonomic Decisions in Herpetology are Acceptable Only When Supported by a Body of Evidence and Published via Peer-Review" (PDF). Herpetological Review. 44 (1). Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles: 8–23. ISSN 0018-084X. OCLC 5713410927. Retrieved 19 March 2021.

[1] Kaiser, Hinrich; Crother, Brian I.; Kelly, Christopher M.R.; Luiselli, Luca; O’Shea, Mark; Ota, Hidetoshi; Passos, Paulo; Schleip, Wulf D.; Wüster, Wolfgang (March 2013). "Best Practices: In the 21st Century, Taxonomic Decisions in Herpetology are Acceptable Only When Supported by a Body of Evidence and Published via Peer-Review" (PDF). Herpetological Review. 44 (1). Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles: 8–23. ISSN 0018-084X. OCLC 5713410927. Retrieved 19 March 2021.

[1]