Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Animals/Archive 2

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Archive 5

Animals and ethics

Posted to WT:WikiProject Philosophy, WT:WikiProject Animals and WT:WikiProject Animal rights, discussion preferred at WT:WikiProject Philosophy

I don't think we have a broad article on the place of non-human animals in ethics. There are a few specific articles like animal rights, ethics of eating meat, animal cognition etc, but nothing on the broader issue. Going in the opposite direction, there are articles broader than animals that cover more 'holistic' views, e.g. environmental ethics and deep ecology, though given that most animals are probably not conscious beings that would also overlap with the subject. I guess such an article could be called animals in ethics or something like that. It might also mention the prehuman precursors to morality seen in other animals (which relates to the origin of morality, another needed article), although this is broadening the scope a little more. Richard001 (talk) 04:55, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds June 2008 Newsletter

Archives  |  Tip Line The Birds WikiProject Newsletter Issue IV (June 2008)
Welcome to the fourth issue of the Birds WikiProject newsletter. It's been a good month for article improvement, with six new GA articles, and one new FA article. And we managed to save the featured status of List of birds in Canada and the United States, which had been threatened with delisting. There's still plenty to do on all fronts, of course...	Articles of note New featured articles and lists: Cattle Egret (May 8) New good articles: Pamela C. Rasmussen (May 8) White-winged Fairy-wren (May 17) European Robin (May 19) Common Treecreeper (May 24) Puerto Rican Amazon (May 26) Flammulated Flycatcher (May 30) Welcome to our newest members Kirkmona (talk · contribs) Pamela Gardiner (talk · contribs) PrehistoricManiac08 (talk · contribs) Sting au (talk · contribs) Bird article statistics Bird articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 2 19 61 152 234 FL 1 6 24 31 FM 616 616 GA 6 10 34 149 199 B 10 37 66 230 343 C 12 100 254 1,061 5 1,432 Start 5 114 831 6,173 3 7,126 Stub 16 1,311 7,965 2 9,294 List 10 75 733 106 1 925 Category 4 3,866 3,870 Disambig 2 195 197 File 1 305 306 Portal 57 57 Project 58 58 Redirect 1 14 98 222 2,016 2,351 Template 1 276 277 Other 6 6 Assessed 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 11 27,322 Unassessed 12 12 Total 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 23 27,334 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 98,549 Ω = 5.29
Collaboration efforts We improved our April collaboration (Cattle Egret) all the way to FA status! Help us to do the same with this month's project collaboration. The White Wagtail is a very variable species (or is it several species, as some authorities insist?) found throughout much of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa, and in small numbers in westernmost Alaska. Be sure to vote for July's collaboration, which will be chosen on 21 June. We could use a few new nominations...
Domestic pigeons task force We have our first official task force, covering articles related to domestic pigeons; new project member OnorioCatenacci (talk · contribs) started the group in May. If you're interested in helping with that suite of articles, drop by the new task force page at WP:PIGEONS.
Project news The ongoing drive to improve our bird family articles continues; there are still at least 36 bird family articles currently rated as stubs. If you'd like to help improve one or more, the list of those needing work is here. A change in Wikipedia's taxobox setup has meant the removal of the IUCN status scale image from all articles. To re-display the scale, add "| status_system = iucn3.1" to the taxobox parameters in any article for which it is appropriate.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!
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This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 12:53, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Template

Should we create a template:animals (it would replace the redirect)? It could include various taxa, general articles etc. If the answer is an obvious 'yes', how about we work on a draft here before we make it? Richard001 (talk) 09:28, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Palaeontology

Hi everyone,

A new WikiProject, Palaeontology has been set up, and aims to be the umbrella project uniting Dinos, pterosaurs and monsters from the deep, alongside all the other palaeo article out there that aren't under a strict wikiproject. It was only set up today, so support, opinions and/or criticism is needed. I have come around to this idea, as there are a large number of articles out there in dire need of work, and this would be an excellent way to bring in some collaborative editing. Cheers guys and dolls, Mark t young (talk) 16:21, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Rename proposal for the lists of basic topics

This project's subject has a page in the set of Lists of basic topics.

See the proposal at the Village pump to change the names of all those pages.

The Transhumanist 10:35, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 22:23, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Shall we adopt C-class then? Richard001 (talk) 01:13, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed merge

Should deposit feeder and saprotroph be merged into Detritivore? I feel they cover very much the same ground. Comments welcome. Anxietycello (talk) 02:54, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Redirects on "G. species" disambiguation pages

Please see this discussion so that we can come to a conclusion about redirects used on "G. species" disambiguation pages.

Thank you, Neelix (talk) 22:34, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Flatworm / Planarian memory

I think that the most widely-known "factoid" about flatworms / planaria is the Thompson-McConnell maze-memory experiment.
Flatworm discusses this at Flatworm#Biochemical_memory_experiments. Talk:Flatworm says "The flatworm "biochemical memory" is today abandoned as a scientific theory, but has almost become an urban myth, and is still often found in non-scientific contexts." The article itself mentions, but perhaps does not sufficiently emphasize (or explain for the layperson) "McConnell's results are now attributed to observer bias. No double-blind experiment has ever reproduced his results."
Planarian does not mention this at all.
We may want to tidy up discussion of this in both Flatworm and Planarian.
-- Writtenonsand (talk) 01:55, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Zoology books and/or books about animals?

I think a category on animal books is long overdue. Its "sister", Category:Botany books suggests the name Category:Zoology books, but as I was about to create this I noticed there is a Category:Books about animal rights. Perhaps a slightly more inclusive Category:Books about animals would be better, to include both scientific and ethical books? Or perhaps we should have both, with zoology being a subcategory of books about animals? I presume this is not an issue for the plants category, unless anyone has written about "plant rights" (perhaps a fruitarian?). Richard001 (talk) 04:28, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Zoology books or Zoological books? Or even Zoological literature? Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:01, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

• I just checked and there is already a category Category:Ornithological literature with a number of subcats. At present it is a subcat of Category:Biological literature. Most of that cats subcats use lit, not books. I think zoology is better than animal, more correct. Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:41, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I suspect Category:Books about animals might be a little misleading unless the intention is to include Black Beauty, Born Free, etc. Sabine's Sunbird's suggestion of Category:Zoological literature is, I think, a good idea. Tim Ross (talk) 10:15, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, hadn't thought about fiction... Okay, I'll start with zoology books, which follows the same precedent set by e.g. botany books, biology books etc. I have also added Category:Zoological literature as a parent category, though this one is not very populated at the moment (needs journals etc). Richard001 (talk) 00:13, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Have added Category:Zoology journals too. Richard001 (talk) 01:14, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup

Currently, 418 articles are assigned to this project, of which 127, or 30.4%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 14 July 2008.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place the following template on your project page:

{{User:WolterBot/Cleanup listing subscription|banner=WikiProject Animals}}

If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:42, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds August newsletter

Archives  |  Tip Line The Birds WikiProject Newsletter Issue VI (August 2008)
Welcome to the sixth issue of the Birds WikiProject newsletter. Things were a bit slower in the "Articles of Note" department last month, but many editors were quietly working away on an impressive array of tasks. Casliber (talk · contribs), in particular, has expanded multiple articles—getting many of them featured in the Main Page DYK section in the process.	Articles of note New featured articles and lists: Nuthatch (July 25) New good articles: Greater Crested Tern (July 15) Great Spotted Kiwi (July 29) Bird article statistics Bird articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 2 19 61 152 234 FL 1 6 24 31 FM 616 616 GA 6 10 34 149 199 B 10 37 66 230 343 C 12 100 254 1,061 5 1,432 Start 5 114 831 6,173 3 7,126 Stub 16 1,311 7,965 2 9,294 List 10 75 733 106 1 925 Category 4 3,866 3,870 Disambig 2 195 197 File 1 305 306 Portal 57 57 Project 58 58 Redirect 1 14 98 222 2,016 2,351 Template 1 276 277 Other 6 6 Assessed 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 11 27,322 Unassessed 12 12 Total 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 23 27,334 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 98,549 Ω = 5.29
Macaws Collaboration efforts This month's collaboration is our first group attempt to upgrade a genus level article. Ara is a genus of macaws—spectacularly large parrots which live in the neotropics. Several of the eight living species are highly endangered (at least one is already extinct), and all are beloved by aviculturalists. Help us improve the article about these intriguing birds. In a related note, be sure to vote for September's collaboration, which will be chosen on 21 August. As always, we could use a few new nominations...
WikiProject Birds Cleanup listing Thanks to Snowmanradio (talk · contribs), there's now a link to the most recent cleanup listing right from the navigation bar. And according to that listing, we've added nearly 100 new bird articles in the past month, with only a small rise in the number of articles needing attention, so we're doing something right! There are still more than 700 articles requiring work though—everything from copyediting and the addition of sources, to requests for expansion and verifications of facts. If you're looking for something helpful to do which takes less time than creating an article from scratch, sorting some of these problems out might be right up your alley. Special thanks to Rabo3 (talk · contribs), who's been plugging away on the neotropical articles, resolving all sorts of issues...
Project news Improve me! We're finally down to fewer than 30 "stub" bird family articles, thanks to herculean efforts by Sabine's Sunbird (talk · contribs). Can you help to improve the remainder? If so, the list of those needing work is here. A change in Wikipedia's taxobox setup has meant the removal of the IUCN status scale image from all articles. To re-display the scale, add "| status_system = iucn3.1" to the taxobox parameters in any article for which it is appropriate.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!
To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please list yourself in the appropriate section here.

Proposed rename

There is an ongoing discussion about renaming homosexuality and bisexuality in animals to homosexual behavior in animals. Please feel free to offer your comments! — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 14:59, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

New WikiProject proposal: Biota of the UK and Ireland

I've proposed a new WikiProject named WikiProject Biota of the UK and Ireland which would encompass all species and conservation efforts within Britain, an extremely interesting area. The project would include vegetation classification, Category:Lists of British animals, Category:Conservation in the United Kingdom, Category:Ecology of the British Isles, Category:Forests and woodlands of the United Kingdom, Category:Fauna of the British Isles and anything else to do with the flora and fauna of Britain. If anyone is interested just leave your name on the proposal page. Cheers, Jack (talk) 17:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Scatter-hoarder

Scatter-hoarder is an interesting subject relating to animal behaviour but is perhaps missnamed. The article seems to drift between the concept of caching food/hoarding and scatter hoarding, which is a specific type of hoarding. The article gets muddled, refering to the behavior, for example, of Acorn Woodpeckers, which is an example of hoarding but not scatter hoarding (which is what a jay or squirrel might do). Any objections to moving the article to hoarding (animal behaviour)? Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:40, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

made the move and am editing the article to reflect the change and remove the confusion. Sabine's Sunbird talk 07:19, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Animal evolution

I think there should be an article on animal evolution (or the evolution of animals if you like). Currently one of these redirects to evolutionary history of life: animals are only one taxon that has not even been around all that long, while the other redirects to animal: the evolution of animals cannot be described within a single section of an article. I think this is one of the most important of our missing articles. Does everyone agree that we should have such an article, even if it might be a while until someone starts one? Richard001 (talk) 08:38, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

An animal behaviour subproject?

I'm thinking about an animal behaviour subproject. The millions of species of animals is enough for any project, but even without behaviour there are also many other fields of zoology besides behaviour, e.g. physiology, biochemistry, cytology, anatomy, morphology, ecology, genetics etc. Animal behaviour is a very large area for a project to cover too, so I don't think there is any concern that it would be too specific. The main question is whether there would be enough people interested. Despite having been around for a year, this project itself, and even the parent biology and science projects don't have that much participation and activity. Is it too soon to think about a behaviour project? Perhaps I should wait another six months or a year? Or should I give it a shot at the proposals page and see how much interest there is? Richard001 (talk) 02:33, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

There is, I note, a WikiProject Neuroethology, though this is a bit more specific than what I was thinking - it's really where an ethology project would overlap with the existing neuroscience project. At this stage I don't know much at all about neuroethology. Richard001 (talk) 11:41, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Animal

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 20:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Chordate - please update / review

Chordate has been selected for v 0.7, but is currently Start-class. I doubt if there's time to get it to GA / A-class, but I think we can and should aim for B-class. I've updated most of the article including the lead, but do not have the resources to handle the "Classification" section - my main interest is paleontology. Please review my contributions and the "Classification" section in order to get the article to B-class (or better) as soon as possible. -- Philcha (talk) 17:10, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Arthropod

I've had a go at getting Arthropod into good shape for Wikipedia Version 0.7. I doubt whether there's time to get it up to A-class or GA, but I'd hope B-class would be easy enough. Please comment.

Then we can consider the V 0.7 offer of free copyediting. -- Philcha (talk) 11:18, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Mollusca

I've had a go at getting Mollusca into good shape for Wikipedia Version 0.7. I doubt whether there's time to get it up to A-class or GA, but I'd hope B-class would be easy enough. Please comment.

Then we can consider the V 0.7 offer of free copyediting. -- Philcha (talk) 14:40, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

megafauna?

An anon IP is adding the cat for megafauna to a bunch of articles. I reverted the addition of the tag to Frigatebird, but it got me wondering what the definition was. Is a Great Barracuda megafauna? I would say no... but I'm not sure. Sabine's Sunbird talk 01:54, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds October newsletter

Archives  |  Tip Line The Birds WikiProject Newsletter Issue VII (October 2008)
Welcome to the seventh issue of the Birds WikiProject newsletter. Ties to our project are growing: Avibase, one of the internet's largest generators of database-driven country checklists, now directs its users to Wikipedia's pages for more information on individual species.	Articles of note New featured articles and lists: Willie Wagtail (August 4) List of birds of Ontario (August 8) Greater Crested Tern (August 12) Puerto Rican Amazon (August 14) White-breasted Nuthatch (August 25) Red-necked Grebe (September 2) Welcome to our newest members Diucón (talk · contribs) Grantus4504 (talk · contribs) LNG123 (talk · contribs) oneelephantpickle (talk · contribs) Richard001 (talk · contribs) Article statistics Bird articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 2 19 61 152 234 FL 1 6 24 31 FM 616 616 GA 6 10 34 149 199 B 10 37 66 230 343 C 12 100 254 1,061 5 1,432 Start 5 114 831 6,173 3 7,126 Stub 16 1,311 7,965 2 9,294 List 10 75 733 106 1 925 Category 4 3,866 3,870 Disambig 2 195 197 File 1 305 306 Portal 57 57 Project 58 58 Redirect 1 14 98 222 2,016 2,351 Template 1 276 277 Other 6 6 Assessed 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 11 27,322 Unassessed 12 12 Total 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 23 27,334 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 98,549 Ω = 5.29
What is a bird of prey? Collaboration efforts Bird of prey, this month's collaboration article, is an overview of the many species of diurnal and nocturnal raptors. Please help us boost the quality and content of this important article—which is currently a mere start! In a related note, be sure to vote for November's collaboration, which will be chosen on 21 October. As always, we could use a few new nominations...
Project news A listing of bird-related articles destined for the next Wikipedia DVD is available here.[1] Unfortunately, a few of the identifed articles are currently stubs (Apodiformes, Columbiformes and Cuculiformes), and others have banners indicating various problems. We should try to get as many as possible updated and upgraded before the October 20 cutoff—the date by which we need to identify "safe" versions for inclusion. The bot that runs the project's cleanup list has unfortunately developed some problems since its last run (in August), but there are still plenty of corrections to make on the existing list! We're still on course to reach our (informal) target of 100 good / featured articles or lists by the end of the year, with only 12 more to go. Antbird is currently at FAC (where reviews would be helpful). Do you have an article nearing completion that needs some copyediting, reference searches or writing assistance? Let the project know!
Bird news A new species of white-eye is described in October's issue of Ibis. The bird, dubbed Vanikoro White-eye (Zosterops gibbsi) by its describers, is endemic to the Vanikolo Islands, which are part of the Solomon Islands. The Wikipedia editor who creates a new article on this species (containing at least some basic information) will be named in next month's newsletter. An abstract of the Ibis article is available here.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!
To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please list yourself in the appropriate section here.

This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 00:18, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Sponge

I've had a go at improving Sponge, but there are still some loose ends:

• Statements not supported by refs to WP:RS.
• Small gaps for which I have not found WP:RS.
• A significant structure issue. Normally I leave "Taxonomy" until fairly late in zoology & paleontology articles, since introducing taxon names will just confuse readers if they do not already have a picture of the animals. However with Sponge I'm beginning to think "Taxonomy" would be usful if placed just after cell types, water flow and body shapes, as it could be presented as a table of features by class - the article already has a partial table of this type.

Please comment at Talk:Sponge. --Philcha (talk) 11:23, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds November newsletter

Archives  |  Tip Line File:Pitta-like Ground-roller.jpg The Birds WikiProject Newsletter Issue VIII (November 2008)
It'll mean a sprint to the finish line to reach our informal goal of 100 FA/GA articles by year's end; we're currently 11 articles shy of that total. A list of possible candidates—articles already containing significant amounts of information, which only need a bit more work to nudge them into contention—can be found here, if you'd like to help.	One of the many antbirds... Articles of note New featured articles and lists: Antbird (October 19) New good articles: Indigo Bunting (October 30) Welcome to our newest members Bogbumper (talk · contribs) Vuerqex (talk · contribs) WikiLambo (talk · contribs) Article statistics Bird articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 2 19 61 152 234 FL 1 6 24 31 FM 616 616 GA 6 10 34 149 199 B 10 37 66 230 343 C 12 100 254 1,061 5 1,432 Start 5 114 831 6,173 3 7,126 Stub 16 1,311 7,965 2 9,294 List 10 75 733 106 1 925 Category 4 3,866 3,870 Disambig 2 195 197 File 1 305 306 Portal 57 57 Project 58 58 Redirect 1 14 98 222 2,016 2,351 Template 1 276 277 Other 6 6 Assessed 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 11 27,322 Unassessed 12 12 Total 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 23 27,334 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 98,549 Ω = 5.29
Penguin could use some help... Collaboration efforts This month's collaboration article is Penguin—an iconic and well-known family that is the project's third most popular "read" (after Bird and Chicken). With more than 80,000 readers a month, this article deserves to be one of our first-class entries. Though it's in reasonable shape at the moment, it needs the expansion of a few key sections, and could use considerable referencing as well as some copyediting. Can you help? In a related note, be sure to vote for December's collaboration, which will be chosen on 30 November. As always, we could use a few new nominations—Birdwatching is the only contender at the moment.
Project news Over the last month, we've obtained many new photos from the photosharing website Flickr. Some photos on Flickr are already suitably licensed for use on Wikipedia. However, it's also possible to ask uploaders to change the license of those photo(s) which are unsuitably licensed (by far the majority), and a good proportion of them have been willing to release images when asked. This is particularly useful for articles that currently have no images. There are still thousands of bird articles needing photos and few people involved in this process. Contact Richard001 (talk · contribs) or Snowmanradio (talk · contribs) for more information about how you can help. We have a newly-generated cleanup list to work on. According to its latest stats, we now have more than 13,750 articles in the project, with 760 (5.5%) tagged as needing corrections or improvements of some kind.
Newletter challenge Maias (talk · contribs) took up last month's challenge, and started our article about the newly-described species Vanikoro White-eye. This month, we're looking for someone to create an article on the Northern Rockhopper Penguin, Eudyptes moseleyi, which has been split by many of the world's authorites; this will remove a redlink from our Penguin article as well. The editor who starts this article and gets it to at least a reasonable stub class will be mentioned in next month's newsletter.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!
To stop receiving this newsletter, or to receive it in a different format, please list yourself in the appropriate section here.

This has been an automated delivery by TinucherianBot (talk) 07:17, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Bdelloid rotifers

Hi, folks. I decided to cross the great divide between botany and zoology and write up a short stub on an inquiline of one of my pet plants. I ran into a small question on taxonomy that I hope is relatively simple to answer. The article on the rotifers lists three classes: Monogononta, Digononta, and Seisonidea. However the text still lists Bdelloidea instead of Digononta. Further confusing is the taxonomy listed at Seison. I'm not sure where to turn for appropriate authoritative taxonomy info - any suggestions? Can anyone help a botanist who stumbled into invertebrate land? --Rkitko ^(talk) 02:51, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

delete Category Mollusc of country

Feel free to share your opinion of this problem at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 December 11#Molluscofcountry. --Snek01 (talk) 07:20, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

capitalization

I disagree with method three being the most correct. Prehaps it is most correct orthographically (not sure what that is), but that does not make it most correct grammar for an encyclopedia. Also in the example of category three, you could really decide to capitalize ANY class of thing. Compare:

• "The Tiger is a carnivore" but "three tigers were observed in the conservation area."

• "The Submarine is a ship" but "three submarines were observed in the war zone."

Note, even if you disagree with me...my point is not just that I'm right someone else is wrong, but that the issue is not settled. TCO (talk) 13:39, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, TCO, "Submarine" isn't equivalent with "Tiger", because there are many types (e.g. "species") of submarines, but only one species of Tiger. The equivalent might be Gato (class) or U-boat—both of which are capitalized in our submarine articles! MeegsC | Talk 16:30, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Each example is a class, that has subclasses and is part of larger classes. Capitalizing names of animals is a new fangled thingie. You all are trying to drive usage. Not observe the most common usage. Even if there were a non-subdividable class, that would not make it a proper noun. It would make it a class with individual examples. Submarine capitalization by class is based on the proper noun of the lead ship of the class. Just like a Darwin's finch (made up animal). You don't capitalize nuke or diesel, though, which are subclasses of submarine. Should we capitalize electron?

• "The Eelectron is a particle, but three electrons were found in the lithium atom?

Or would that be Lithium Atom? lol!!!

In any case, this is an aspect that is in debate, not agreed. TCO (talk) 17:27, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia naming conventions for organisms

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (flora) is being assaulted for over two months now by two editors, User:Philip Baird Shearer and User:Born2cycle whose intent now seems to be only to disrupt editing. However, their battle is largely about trying to force plant editors to use "the most commonly used name," for plant article titles. While attempting to get the two of them to source precisely where plant editors should find the most commonly used name, I have come to realize that all Wikipedia naming policies for organisms which require the use of common names are destined for failure. It simply cannot be done. All attempts to use the most commonly used name in English for article titles, for all but a few organisms, are ethnocentric, full of original research, and create problems and opportunities for disruption by editors such as PBS and B2c that would not exist at all if Wikipedia simply had a naming convention policy for organisms that required the articles be titled with the scientific name, according to the rules of scientific nomenclature, introduce the most common names in the lead, discuss them early in the article, and create redirects from the common names to the scientific name. --KP Botany (talk) 19:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I suggest this be discussed in full at Wikipedia naming conventions. --KP Botany (talk) 19:34, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Pachyostosis

I just created an article for Pachyostosis, which is was a redlink in Dugong, Dinocephalia, and Anteosaurus. It is rather stubby right now and could use some beefing up and proper cats, but I do not know enough to provide this. Any help expanding and classifying would be appreciated. Thanks! --Kevmin (talk) 18:08, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Cold-blooded and Warm-blooded work

I am in the process of revamping the "cold-blooded", "warm-blooded" and related articles, and making them disambiguation pages and proper articles for the actual scientific terms. Cold-blooded is already done. I could use some help, specifically with sources and adjustments to some of the concepts. I also created {{thermoreg}} as a navbox between pages. StevePrutz (talk) 21:54, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Making them DAB pages may not be the best approach. The phrase "warm-blooded animal" generally implies mammalian or higher body temperature (via tachymetabolism, i.e. high Basal metabolic rate) and endothermy as well as stability - ignoring any periods of hibernation. Some fish are also described as "warm-blooded" but usually in quotes, e.g. "“warm-blooded” sharks". I'd make warm-blooded a short article that explains that the term generally refers to a package of traits. I see cold-blooded is already a DAB page, with good reasons, but would suggest e.g. Cold-bloodedness (zoology) explaining the complexities and borderline cases such as "“warm-blooded” sharks" and inertially homeothermic large marine turtles. --Philcha (talk) 22:19, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I definitely realize the terms endo- and ectotherm are not clear cut, but I do not think all of the terms lumped into a single page is the best choice for presentation. StevePrutz (talk) 01:24, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds February newsletter

Archives  |  Tip Line The Birds WikiProject Newsletter February 2009
Apologies for the long gap between the last newsletter and this one; if anyone is interested in helping to produce these regular updates, assistance would be much appreciated! A new year means new goals: can we get to 50 featured articles for the project before mid-year? We're only three articles away at the moment...	Articles of note New featured articles and lists (since Oct 31): Northern Bald Ibis (January 27) New good articles (since Oct 31): Huia (January 13) Djibouti Francolin (January 16) Golden White-eye (January 20) Welcome to our newest members BluWare (talk · contribs) First Light (talk · contribs) Myrecovery (talk · contribs) Nestguard (talk · contribs) Speednat (talk · contribs) The Bushranger (talk · contribs) Vulture19 (talk · contribs)
Last year's collaborations Month Article Status Jan Andean Condor FA Feb Emperor Penguin FA Mar Moa B Apr Cattle Egret FA May Cockatiel B Jun White Wagtail B Jul Hoatzin B Aug Ara (genus) B Sep Oct Bird of prey Start Nov Penguin B Dec Project news After a few month hiatus, we're about to start up our monthly collaboration article improvement drive again. The results of last year's collaborations were mixed. We started strongly, with three of our first four efforts reaching FA status—two of them before their months had even expired! However, things quickly tailed off after that, and none of our later efforts even reached GA status. Please vote for 2009's first collaboration, which will be chosen on Valentine's Day (14 February). If none of the existing nominations is of interest, consider adding a new one! Bogbumper (talk · contribs) took up the last newsletter's challenge, and started our article about the Northern Rockhopper Penguin, which is recognized by many of the world's taxonomic authorities as being worthy of species status. This month, we're looking for someone to start an article about distraction displays—behaviors used by birds to lure or drive potential predators away from nests or young. The editor who starts this article and gets it to at least a reasonable stub class will be mentioned in next month's newsletter.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!
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Input sought on ambitious proposal that may or may not be a good idea

I've made a "test proposal" at CfD to see if there is a consensus for replacing the categorization system of classifying biota "by country" with a system that would categorize biota "by ecozone". See here to read or comment. Looking for as much input as possible especially from those expert in the area. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 04:17, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Audio files

I have started uploading some audio files of animals from the US FWS website [2]. I'm working on getting all the birds up. If anyone wants to help upload the remaining files of other animals (amphibians, reptiles and mammals), please join in. You can check what we already have at Commons:Category:Audio files from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Richard001 (talk) 04:11, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 04:45, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Proposed project of interest - organismal biomechanics

Hi all, I'm trying to start a Wikiproject to cover Organismal Biomechanics, and I was wondering if anyone else would be interested? Articles such as animal locomotion. gait, muscle, and similar would be our targets. See my userpage for a list of what I'm planning to work on, including some truly awful articles in desperate need of attention. See proposal page at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals#Wikiproject_Organismal_Biomechanics. I'll keep anyone who signs up updated via their userpages until I get a project page made. Help of all kinds is appreciated, from brain dumps to wikifying, grammar and dealing with references. Mokele (talk) 22:38, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds March newsletter

Archives  |  Tip Line The Birds WikiProject Newsletter March 2009
	Articles of note Rufous-crowned Sparrow New good articles: Whitefish Point Bird Observatory (January 25) – with apologies for not including it last month Rufous-crowned Sparrow (February 13) Article statistics Bird articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 2 19 61 152 234 FL 1 6 24 31 FM 616 616 GA 6 10 34 149 199 B 10 37 66 230 343 C 12 100 254 1,061 5 1,432 Start 5 114 831 6,173 3 7,126 Stub 16 1,311 7,965 2 9,294 List 10 75 733 106 1 925 Category 4 3,866 3,870 Disambig 2 195 197 File 1 305 306 Portal 57 57 Project 58 58 Redirect 1 14 98 222 2,016 2,351 Template 1 276 277 Other 6 6 Assessed 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 11 27,322 Unassessed 12 12 Total 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 23 27,334 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 98,549 Ω = 5.29
Project news Cockatoo needs you... Our first collaboration article for 2009 is Cockatoo—a well-known Australasian family of parrots. The article is already in reasonable shape, thanks to early efforts by a number of contributors, and with a little more work, we should be able to get it to GA/FA status. Can we get our first "group star" for the year on this one? On a related note, be sure to vote for April's collaboration article, which will be chosen on March 31. If none of the existing nominations interest you, consider adding a new one! Please be sure to mark any featured lists as FL-class rather than FA-class. All of our current featured lists have been moved into this new(ish) category. Beginning in April, we'll be removing from our "active participants" list the name of any editor who hasn't edited on Wikipedia for 6 months or more, putting them instead into a "retired editors" section. (Please note that will be easy to move yourself back into the active category if you start editing again after an extended absence.) This should help us to better evaluate our project's editor retention and make for more efficient newsletter delivery.
Videos We all know the old adage "A picture is worth a thousand words." And if that's true, videos are probably worth 10,000! They're a great way to add information to articles—for instance by showing behaviours that are hard to explain with text or static pictures. They can also include audio, adding a dimension unavailable in a photo. If you don't have your own video camera, you can still help the project by finding and requesting videos from others who have already taken them (checking, for example, at Flickr, YouTube or The Internet Bird Collection). If you have questions about how to upload videos, several project members, including Richard001 (talk · contribs) or Aviceda (talk · contribs), may be able to help.
Newsletter challenge Shyamal (talk · contribs) took up the last newsletter's challenge, and started our article about distraction displays—behaviors used by birds to lure or drive potential predators away from nests or young. This month, we're looking for someone to start an article about acoustical luring, which is a method used by some predatory birds to lure potential prey into reach. The person who creates this article and gets it beyond a mere stub level will be mentioned in the next newsletter.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!
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This has been an automated delivery by Cbrown1023 talk 21:32, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

Message sent by User:Addbot to all active wiki projects per request, Comments on the message and bot are welcome here.

Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:47, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Category:Species by year of formal description

Hi, folks. I recently opened a discussion at WT:TOL that needs your input regarding the categorization of species by year of description. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life#Category:Species by year of formal description for more info. Thanks! --Rkitko ^(talk) 23:11, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds April newsletter

Archives  |  Tip Line The Birds WikiProject Newsletter April 2009
So close! After many long months of effort, we're only one article away from our project goal of 100 good or featured articles and lists. Can we make it by next month?	Articles of note New good articles: Macaroni Penguin (March 13) Tree Sparrow (March 19) Black Drongo (March 22) New project members Wiki User 68 (talk · contribs) (with apologies for not welcoming you last month!) Article statistics Bird articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 2 19 61 152 234 FL 1 6 24 31 FM 616 616 GA 6 10 34 149 199 B 10 37 66 230 343 C 12 100 254 1,061 5 1,432 Start 5 114 831 6,173 3 7,126 Stub 16 1,311 7,965 2 9,294 List 10 75 733 106 1 925 Category 4 3,866 3,870 Disambig 2 195 197 File 1 305 306 Portal 57 57 Project 58 58 Redirect 1 14 98 222 2,016 2,351 Template 1 276 277 Other 6 6 Assessed 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 11 27,322 Unassessed 12 12 Total 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 23 27,334 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 98,549 Ω = 5.29
Project news Start your puffins... April's collaboration article is Puffin—a genus-level article about the "little brothers" of the ocean. Although this is another popular article with Wikipedia readers (the 59th most popular bird article, according to February's statistics), it currently ranks only as a "Start". Help us to improve its usefulness to our readers! On a related note, be sure to vote for May's collaboration article, which will be chosen on April 27. If none of the existing nominations interest you, consider adding a new one! The latest copy of the project's cleanup listing shows we're now overseeing more than 14,000 articles. Unfortunately, nearly 900 of them (more than 6%) are tagged as needing cleanup of some kind—from citations for questioned facts and entry of missing ISBN numbers to resolution of POV disputes and requests for expansion. While a considerable number of these could be resolved in a manner of minutes, scores have been awaiting cleanup for the better part of two years! If you've got a few minutes to spare, why not dip into the list and help to reduce the backlog. Of primary importance (from a project standpoint) are the problems identified with our FA articles—including Turkey Vulture. As noted last month, we'll be removing from our "active participants" list the name of any editor who hasn't edited on Wikipedia for 6 months or more, putting them instead into a "retired editors" section. (Please note that will be easy to move yourself back into the active category if you start editing again after an extended absence.) This should help us to better evaluate our project's editor retention and make for more efficient newsletter delivery.
Commons and bird images Except in very rare cases, all bird-related images, sounds and videos should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Those uploaded directly into en.wikipedia cannot be used by other Wikipedia or Wikimedia projects, and are also much harder to find. Unfortunately, there are currently a number of such images in existence. Some are not used in articles, and most are not placed into a bird-specific image category. If you come across one, please consider moving it to Wikimedia Commons, which has a much better system for categorizing bird images. You can search for and move images yourself, but or you can simply add them to Category:Bird images (which should only contain images from en.wikipedia, with the occasional exception such as featured pictures), which allows others to find and move them. If you need any assistance in getting starting, please contact Richard001 (talk · contribs).
Newsletter challenge It was decided (by talk page agreement) that last month's challenge was too specific; instead a redirect was created to the aggressive mimicry article, which was expanded slightly with bird-related information. This month, we're looking for someone to start an article about ornithophily—pollination by bird; currently, this "article" exists only as a redirect to the more general article about zoophily. The person who creates this article and gets it beyond a mere stub level will be mentioned in the next newsletter.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!
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Anthropocentrism

IMO, too many articles on organ systems and other animal functions are anthropocentric and omit similar functions in animals, similarities and differences, general principles, etc. - AFAIK mainly the fault of over-enthusiastic medics. Please contribute to the discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Anthropocentrism. --Philcha (talk) 07:42, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds May newsletter

Archives  |  Tip Line The Birds WikiProject Newsletter May 2009
We've done it! With the awarding of a GA rating to Australian Magpie, we reached the milestone of 100 FA/FL/GA articles for the project. And that's fitting, since it was Casliber (talk · contribs) who both shepherded the magpie article to its rating, and who challenged us to the goal of reaching 100 in the first place. We also reached our goal of 50 FA articles, when Rufous-crowned Sparrow got its star. Well done everybody; those are major accomplishments. Now, on to 150…	Articles of note New featured articles: Tree Sparrow (April 4) Rufous-crowned Sparrow (April 18) New good articles: Australian Magpie (April 15) New project members Welbergen (talk · contribs) Article statistics Bird articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 2 19 61 152 234 FL 1 6 24 31 FM 616 616 GA 6 10 34 149 199 B 10 37 66 230 343 C 12 100 254 1,061 5 1,432 Start 5 114 831 6,173 3 7,126 Stub 16 1,311 7,965 2 9,294 List 10 75 733 106 1 925 Category 4 3,866 3,870 Disambig 2 195 197 File 1 305 306 Portal 57 57 Project 58 58 Redirect 1 14 98 222 2,016 2,351 Template 1 276 277 Other 6 6 Assessed 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 11 27,322 Unassessed 12 12 Total 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 23 27,334 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 98,549 Ω = 5.29
Red Knot Project news May's collaboration article is Red Knot, a widespread species which is in increasing peril across much of its worldwide range. (Some scientists have predicted that the American subspecies, for instance, may be extinct as soon as 2010.) Help us to raise the profile of this worldwide shorebird. On a related note, be sure to vote for June's collaboration article, which will be chosen on May 27. If none of the existing nominations interest you, consider adding a new one!
"Heard" birds Spoken articles are Wikipedia articles which have been read aloud and recorded. Such recordings make Wikipedia content available for visually challenged users, for those who can understand English but cannot read it, for those who enjoy podcasting, and for people learning English. Currently, WP:BIRDS has 14 spoken articles—a tiny fraction of the more than 13,000 articles and lists overseen by the project. There is a real need to increase this number, and it's easy to help with the process. Recording an article can be done using a home computer with a microphone and the free software Audacity. The Spoken Wikipedia WikiProject oversees all recording efforts, and their project pages should be followed carefully to ensure that agreed standards of access, content and performance are met. Please contact AshLin (talk · contribs) for more information.
Newsletter challenge Shyamal (talk · contribs) stepped up yet again and created an excellent, well-referenced start to the ornithophily article. This month, we're looking for someone to split the article about Bonelli's Warbler into two species: Eastern Bonelli's Warbler and Western Bonelli's Warbler, both of which currently exist only as redirects. The person who splits this article and separates the appropriate information into each new article will be mentioned in the next newsletter.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!
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• Newsletter delivery by xenobot 06:27, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

GA Sweeps invitation

This message is being sent to WikiProjects with GAs under their scope. Since August 2007, WikiProject Good Articles has been participating in GA sweeps. The process helps to ensure that articles that have passed a nomination before that date meet the GA criteria. After nearly two years, the running total has just passed the 50% mark. In order to expediate the reviewing, several changes have been made to the process. A new worklist has been created, detailing which articles are left to review. Instead of reviewing by topic, editors can consider picking and choosing whichever articles they are interested in.

We are always looking for new members to assist with reviewing the remaining articles, and since this project has GAs under its scope, it would be beneficial if any of its members could review a few articles (perhaps your project's articles). Your project's members are likely to be more knowledgeable about your topic GAs then an outside reviewer. As a result, reviewing your project's articles would improve the quality of the review in ensuring that the article meets your project's concerns on sourcing, content, and guidelines. However, members can also review any other article in the worklist to ensure it meets the GA criteria.

If any members are interested, please visit the GA sweeps page for further details and instructions in initiating a review. If you'd like to join the process, please add your name to the running total page. In addition, for every member that reviews 100 articles from the worklist or has a significant impact on the process, s/he will get an award when they reach that threshold. With ~1,300 articles left to review, we would appreciate any editors that could contribute in helping to uphold the quality of GAs. If you have any questions about the process, reviewing, or need help with a particular article, please contact me or OhanaUnited and we'll be happy to help. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 22:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Worm needs your help

I've been doing various edits at Worm. This article should be a general overview of the subject, with links to more specific articles.
Could use some tightening up to reduce redundancy and repetition, modification of info written by kids to something more professional, cites as appropriate, etc. - You know, the usual.
If you'd like to dive into this can of worms, your help would be appreciated. :-) -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 18:55, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds June newsletter

Archives  |  Tip Line The Birds WikiProject Newsletter June 2009
With three new additions to the project's FA/FL/GA article count, we're on our way towards our next goal — of 150 such articles. Ruff and Alpine Chough are currently good article nominations; drop by their candidacy pages to comment, review or suggest improvements!	Articles of note New featured list: List of birds of Maryland (May 23) New good articles: Azure-hooded Jay (May 1) Red-capped Robin (May 1) New project members Barn Owl 444 (talk · contribs) Dougjj (talk · contribs) Noodle snacks (talk · contribs)
Secretary Bird Project news June's collaboration article is Secretary Bird, about an iconic long-legged African raptor, which is widespread throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Our current featured articles display a decided "Anglophone" bent; can you help us to get our first African species to FA? On a related note, be sure to vote for July's collaboration article, which will be chosen on June 27. If none of the existing nominations interest you, consider adding a new one! There still 16 bird families with articles currently considered to be Stubs—great progress if you think back to the scores we had last year, but still more than we should have. Any assistance in reducing that number would be much appreciated!
Newsletter challenge SP-KP (talk · contribs) met last month's challenge and split our former "Bonelli's Warbler" article into Eastern Bonelli's Warbler and Western Bonelli's Warbler, reflecting widespread agreement among taxonomists that the two former subspecies merit their own species; jimfbleak (talk · contribs) helped with taxobox reorganization. This month, we're looking for someone to wikify our Brazilian Merganser article. The editor(s) who perform this needed service will be mentioned in next month's newsletter.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!
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• Newsletter delivery by xenobot 14:07, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Dock

Dock, a disambiguation page, is pending disambiguation of its incoming links. But first, please take a look and see if you can improve Dock. --Una Smith (talk) 14:23, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

New CSD change for non notable animals

See the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Adding animals to A7 for more information. Your opinion and feedback will be appreciated.--Ipatrol (talk) 16:32, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Author full forms, links & abvns

The page List_of_zoologists_by_author_abbreviation is likely to be placed under AFD. In which case, I suggest it be moved as a subpage under the project being an important resource.

Also see Catalog - Taxon Authorities on Wikispecies.

A user ref imp for Indian butterflies is User:VirenVaz/Taxonomists.

AshLin (talk) 17:22, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Let me explain my concern about the article. The obvious comparison is List of botanists by author abbreviation. That list is of the authorities of names under the ICBN, which have standard abbreviations endorsed by the Code. List of zoologists by author abbreviation differs in four respects:

1. Authorities of names under the ICZN are not abbreviated in the same sense that ICBN authorities are (a good example is Linnaeus: as a zoological authority, he loses "Carolus", but as a botanical authority he loses all but the "L.")
2. There is to the best of my knowledge no single standardized abbreviation for an authority of a zoological name (although I am confident that in some groups there is generalized agreement).
3. Unlike the botanical article, the zoological article does not explain what it is about, to the extent that someone added Temple Grandin and another asked about adding Steve Irwin; to the best of my knowledge, neither has authored zoological taxa, but the article provides no evidence of why they should be excluded.
4. There are two reliable sources for the abbreviations of botanical authorities, a book, and an online reference that incorporates and expands upon the book. One can look at any addition to the Wikipedia article and check the online source. The zoological article has several sources that seem unlikely to cover all the diversity regulated by the ICZN, and more important, it is not possible to say for any name in the list what the source is.

Any other list like this would have seen AfD long ago. That this one remains attests to the importance of its (hidden) subject. I would suggest changing the intro to reflect that it is about the authors of taxa, the stance of the ICZN on author names, the challenges of connecting initials and surnames to actual people, a discussion of the available reference lists and any initiatives towards standardization, and guidelines for referencing existing and new entries. I would support such an article remaining in mainspace. I would fix it myself, but my expertise is with plants.--Curtis Clark (talk) 23:06, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

Identification key

Hi!

I'm new here, but a years back I worked on articles about plants on Hungarian Wikipedia. Now I'm building a plant identifier Wiki (http://en.florawiki.org). It's usable to identifying any kind of organisms e.g. animals. FloraWiki (it's a temporary name) can be a part of Wikipedia (Semantic Mediawiki and Semantic Forms extensions are required) or Wikispecies in the future, or it can remain a different, but collaborative sister project.

The basic mechanism is: the taxons are pages and they are markable with morphological data and users can create identification keys for search by these data (have a look at here for details). If you think so, it's a good idea, please help me, but if don't, type your opinions. Thanks! Pipi69e (talk) 13:48, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Birds August newsletter

Archives  |  Tip Line The Birds WikiProject Newsletter August 2009
We're looking for input on several topics this month — including whether we should change the period of time we work on collaboration articles from a month to a quarter, and whether we should change the authority for our species (and article) naming from Handbook of Birds of the World to the International Ornithological Committee's World Bird List. Be sure to add your two cents (or pence or rand or rupees or pesos or bolivars or whatever other currency is appropriate) to the discussions...	Articles of note Macaroni Penguin — just one of the project's new Featured Articles New featured articles: Macaroni Penguin (June 2) Australian Magpie (July 7) Ruff (July 14) New good articles: Alpine Chough (June 23) Red-throated Diver (July 18) New project members Dger (talk · contribs) Frosted Orange (talk · contribs) KnowledgeRequire (talk · contribs) Skinips (talk · contribs) Article statistics Bird articles by quality and importance Quality Importance Top High Mid Low NA ??? Total FA 2 19 61 152 234 FL 1 6 24 31 FM 616 616 GA 6 10 34 149 199 B 10 37 66 230 343 C 12 100 254 1,061 5 1,432 Start 5 114 831 6,173 3 7,126 Stub 16 1,311 7,965 2 9,294 List 10 75 733 106 1 925 Category 4 3,866 3,870 Disambig 2 195 197 File 1 305 306 Portal 57 57 Project 58 58 Redirect 1 14 98 222 2,016 2,351 Template 1 276 277 Other 6 6 Assessed 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 11 27,322 Unassessed 12 12 Total 37 320 2,736 16,717 7,501 23 27,334 WikiWork factors (?) ω = 98,549 Ω = 5.29
Potential collaboration changes The question has been raised as to whether we should change our collaboration article period from monthly to quarterly. Please weigh in on the debate — and be sure to list anything you'd like to have considered for possible collaboration efforts.
Project news What's my name? Help decide — see the text. A proposal has been made to change the standard source for species (and article) names from Handbook of Birds of the World to the International Ornithological Committee's World Bird List. Do you agree or disagree? Comments and opinions are sought here. There's renewed interest in getting some of our nearly-there topics ready for a run at Featured Topic. Currently, there are a trio of potentials: the Procellaridae, the New World vultures and the choughs. Each of the first two have two articles that will need to be improved to at least GA-class before the topic can be nominated. For the procellarids, Procellariiformes is currently B-class and Diving-petrel is currently Start-class. For New World vultures, New World vulture is currently B-class, and Cathartes is currently Start-class. The choughs are currently up for Good Topic listing — but getting either Alpine Chough or Chough to FA-class would enable us to put that one up for featured topic as well. Last month saw the start of an Outline of Birds, which should eventually provide a project index, allowing interested readers to more easily access all of the articles associated with WikiProject Birds. Help to populate the outline with any articles you find missing.
I need a proper introduction! Newsletter challenge Prashanthns (talk · contribs) met the last newsletter challenge and wikified the Brazilian Merganser article. This issue, we're looking for someone to expand the Semnornis (toucan-barbets) article from Stub-class to Start-class. The editor who does so will be named in next month's newsletter.
Got a suggestion? A correction? Something you'd like to see included in a future issue? Drop a note at the Tip Line with your ideas!
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Newsletter delivery by –xeno ^talk 02:11, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

Request

I'm currently working on an article covering the evolutionary history of vertebrates. I need an a suitable in the lead paragraph and would to like request one made for this purpose. I searched through the uploaded files on Wikipedia and the Commons, but none were approriate. The image just have to incorporate and contain an image of one organisms from each vertebrate taxa: Mammals, Birds, Amphibians, Reptiles, and Fish. An example of the image structure would be like this:

File:Animals fullquality.jpg

If anyone can help, please do. KnowledgeRequire (talk) 22:46, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd be happy to piece one together for you using existing images. Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:31, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. KnowledgeRequire (talk) 18:39, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Enjoy! Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:52, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

BOT notice

Hello,

I have created a bot that will be using a database of prehistoric genus information to fill in the tables on pages like List of prehistoric starfish#The list. Please see its bot request and comment there. Suggestions for improvements and/or people willing to spot check its work are welcome and appreciated.

Thank you, ThaddeusB (talk) 02:00, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Taxobox

How can I fix the malformed taxobox on Trochosa ruricola? I asked this on the help desk and the admin that replied said to click on edit this page (No duh. I'm not a newbie). Joe Chill (talk) 16:21, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Tell me what you'd like changed, Joe. Tim Ross (talk) 16:38, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

It was already fixed diff. It's the known {{Taxobox colour}} issue where regnum = needs to hold a keyword ([[Animal]]ia or [[Animalia]] for animal taxoboxen) in order for the taxobox to choose the correct color for that group. In this case, the regnum field was misspelled. Simple fix. --Rkitko ^(talk) 16:47, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

NOTICE. Request For Comment: Changes to Naming policies which may affect WikiProject naming conventions.

Following recent changes by some editors to the Wikipedia:Naming conventions policy page, a Request For Comment, (RFC) is now being held. This is to debate the removal of the passage permitting individual WikiProject and other naming conventions to make exceptions to the standard policy of using Common Names as the titles of Wikipedia articles.

This WikiProject is being notified since it operates such a specific naming convention. Editors are invited to comment on the proposed change at this location. Xandar 02:27, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

The above "notification" is a grossly biased misrepresentation of the changes under discussion. The old version of the naming conventions policy tried to lay down binding rules; we don't work that way, so it was necessary also to make explicit exceptions. The new version articulates principles, and allows for consensus to establish how they should be applied. Thus there is no longer any need for exceptions. In fact, making exceptions is nonsense, since there are no rules to make exceptions to. These changes are good for specific conventions. Xandar is trying to induce moral panic in those who stand to gain the most from this. Xandar is only opposed to the new version because he thinks the wording, not the general thrust, weakens his position in a dispute unrelated to this RfC. Don't be fooled. Hesperian 02:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)