User talk:Plantdrew

Although you have contributed since 2013, and obviously know what you are doing it doesnt make any sense to use the welcome template. Still, Id like to wish you welcome to the project, even if it comes late! Dan Koehl (talk) 17:12, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl:, thank you very much for the belated welcome (and the attitude of respect and civility towards potential contributors implied by that welcome). I actually used to contribute here many years ago as User:AndrewT and was previously welcomed at that time. I'd like to see Wikispecies succeed, but I am not at all interested in working here under present conditions. The atmosphere of Wikispecies for the past several years has seemed too toxic and dysfunctional for me to enjoy participating (and to be clear, my negative perception of the atmosphere here has nothing to do with your actions or those of any others who currently hold an admin postion). Plantdrew (talk) 02:48, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Myrrhis

@Plantdrew: Hi I have this genus down on my watchlist as I had a lot to do with modifying it. I accept your argument about treating both The Plant List and Tropicos with circumspection when it comes to including species on a WS list. However, I am still unclear why you removed Myrrhis nuda from the species list, as you did not provide a reference for your decision. Was the lack of a reference an oversight? Myrrhis nuda is a legitimately published combination etc., etc. and I am not ware of any work on it and Osmorhiza or any other genera in the tribe that may have resulted in changes. Perhaps I am not looking far enough! Does it now revert to its basionym - Osmorhiza nuda? In which case this genus will need amending surely? Are there changes in other genera in the tribe as well? If you can provide recent references then I am more than happy to work through the species lists.
I do not now often use the term "accepted" simply as it too often abused. But I am now not happy with the Plant List, but in the absence of other easily available sources - pragmatism rules OK?!. By the way my main interest in the work on Apiales was to try and bring it in line from the order, through family, tribe, genus and so on in line with the references I (and others) provided on the relevant taxon pages. Species lists became a quick fix I am sorry to say (hangs head in shame!). I look forward to your reply. Regards Andyboorman (talk) 11:00, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

• @Plantdrew: I found and added a reference to Osmorhiza (Lowry and Jones, 1984) that seems to do the job and have added the synonyms to Osmorhiza berteroi. However, Lowry and Jones deal with the synonymy as Osmorhiza chilensis, but not being an expert on this genus I have gone with the species list on the existing taxon page - our old friends TPL and Tropicos! Any thoughts? Andyboorman (talk) 15:54, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

@Andyboorman: I agree with following TPL for pragmatic reasons; it's the best thing we've got for a taxonomic consensus on plants, but it's far from perfect. Many families/genera are very good, but others are quite problematic. As I alluded to in my edit summary on Myrrhis, genera where large numbers of taxa are flagged as "accepted" according to Tropicos are a big red flag (Tropicos in itself is excellent, but it doesn't actually flag names as accepted or synonyms, merely reports on how other sources treat the name, so it's up to the user to make a judgement call). TPL tends to flag things as accepted by Tropicos whenever Tropicos doesn't explicitly have a source supporting synonymy; that's what happened with Myyrhis nuda'; it's a fairly obscure name, Tropicos doesn't have much data on it, so TPL decided to call it accepted. Sorry I didn't provide a reference when I removed it; it was a knee jerk reaction to seeing what I knew to be TPL mishandling Tropicos data (I've since come across Osmorhiza nuda synonymized with Osmorhiza chilensis in a flora, although Lowry and Jones is a better source).

If you can, I'd suggest avoiding working on genera that TPL has largely sourced to Tropicos, and if you do want to work on any of them, follow up with other sources. Ouratea is one of TPL's Tropicos heavy genera; edits to that genus kicked off a fair amount of drama here last year, but I don't really see a point in WikiSpecies reproducing garbage entries from TPL. Unfortunately, Osmorhiza is another genus where TPL is overly reliant on (their misinterpretations) of Tropicos.

I have now got into the habit of cross checking TPL as a source, but some of my older contributions still need a re-edit. WCSP and its sister eMonocots are my preferred source as a starting point, but of course are limited to those taxa where review has been more or less completed. WCSP is not prefect - take their problem with the volume numbers for Sp. Pl.! The Ouratea drama seems to have been a classic confrontation between a genuine expert on Malpighiales and an ex-contributor who was unwilling to admit subject ignorance and went off the rails. Then some of us got pulled into the mess, not good! Andyboorman (talk) 20:41, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Getting into specifics, TPL claims Osmorhiza berteroi is accepted by WCSP. But when I go directly to WCSP, I don't get results for any Osmorhiza. Something is funky there. Clearly WCSP doesn't cover Osmorhiza yet, so it's not clear why TPL has a couple species attributed to WCSP.

I have had a few conversations with Govaerts and had more or less got my head around the internal dynamics of TPL vis-a-vis WCSP. When TPL/Tropicos Refer to WCSP as a source it may not always mean the online database, but the internal working databases or the team of experts working on them, which is why we cannot often find the taxon on the WCSP site itself. Andyboorman (talk) 20:41, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Tropicos doesn't have much data for O. berteroi (just a single source treating it as a synonym of O. chilensis). Tropicos does have 16 sources that accept O. chilensis (although most aren't particularly recent). In the absence of a recent monograph to the contrary (I haven't looked), I'm pretty confident that O. chilensis should be accepted. I'm not very confident about what to do with O. berteroi, but I'm not inclined to trust TPL on it. TPL isn't reliable for Osmorhiza and other sources need to be consulted. Plantdrew (talk) 23:31, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Looking into it further, I'm a little confused (but missing access to some cited sources at the moment). Is redirecting Osmorhiza chilensis to Osmorhiza berteroi based on the USDA/ARS record [1]? Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks like USDA/ARS references mostly have berteroi as a synonym of chilensis, but the database itself is going the other way. Nevermind, missed that berteroi apparently has priority according to USDA/ARS, will look into it further though. Plantdrew (talk) 08:16, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: berteroi was published 3 years before chilensis so must have precedence I assume. Thanks for your constructive comments. However... Euphrasia and Rhinanthus are another couple of controversial taxa I am interested in that I have unsatisfactorily edited using the TPL/Tropicos route. Are you able to offer clues as how I can disentangle their messes? Andyboorman (talk) 20:41, 18 July 2015 (UTC)

Application for Checkuser

Referring to earlier discussions regarding a local Checkuser policy, I herebye apply to get Checkuser user rights, although we havnt reached a consensus reg Checkuser policy, but I want to give it a try if I can get the required votes. For a request to succeed a minimum of 25 support votes and an 80% positive vote are required (subject to the normal bureaucrat discretion). Requests for checkuser run for two weeks, and I ask kindly that somone starts the poll, like we do for adminship applications.

Please also note that CheckUser actions are logged, but for privacy reasons the logs are only visible to other Checkusers. Because of this, Wikispecies must always have no fewer than two checkusers, for mutual accountability. I dont want to suggest anyone, but hope that someone feel inspired and will step forward and also apply for checkuser.

My request to the Wikispecies community is here

Dan Koehl (talk) 01:40, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Another application for Check User

As pointed out above by User:Dan Koehl, we need at least two Check Users for this wiki. I am nominating myself and would be happy to receive any feedback that you have to give (positive, negative, or neutral). Wikispecies:Checkusers/Requests/Koavf. Thanks. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:08, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Additional Checkuser Application

I also have added my name to those willing to be a checkuser. Please see my application here Wikispecies:Checkusers/Requests/Faendalimas. I listed this yeasterday but have been encouraged to do a mass mail. I would also take the opportunity to make sure everyone knows that any editor can vote but that it is imperative that as many do as possible, for all 4 of the current applicants, please have your say. Checkuser voting has strict policy rules regarding number of votes. You will have other messages from the other Users concerned you can also read about it in the discussion on the Village Pump - Wikispecies:Village_Pump#Application_for_Checkuser. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:53, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Standing for role of checkUser

Like some of our colleagues (who I support), I am offering to serve as a checkuser, not least to ensure adequate coverage in case one of the others is unavailable.

Please comment at Wikispecies:Checkusers/Requests/Pigsonthewing.

[Apologies if you receive a duplicate notification; I wasn't aware of Wikispecies:Mail list/active users, and sent my original notification to the list of administrators instead.] MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:59, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

RFC on Checkusers

With one week to go I wanted to remind everyone of the importance of voting on the current CheckUser applications. They can all be found together on a single RFC: Wikispecies:Requests_for_Comment#Checkusers.

It is extremely important with votes such as this for everyone to be involved. There are strict rules in the Wikimedia Foundation Policy guidelines on these votes. I would urge people to have a good understanding of what a CheckUser does. This can be read up on here on the page discussing CheckUser's Wikispecies:Checkusers. Links on this page will take you to other policy information on Meta, HowTo for our site etc.

I would also urge people to look at our own policy development and some past discussion on this can be found here: Wikispecies_talk:Local_policies#Local_CU_Policy.

Wikispecies has in the past had issues that has required the intervention that is supported by the ability to do a CheckUser. Many of us are aware of this. The capacity to do this ourselves greatly speeds up this process. Although SockPuppetry can sometimes be identified without using a CheckUser in order to do the necessary steps to stop it or even prevent it requires evidence. We all know that sockpupets can do significant damage.

This is an important step for Wikispecies. It is a clear demonstration we can run ourselves as a Wiki Project part of Wiki Media Foundation. When I and several others first discussed this we knew it would be difficult at the time to meet all the criteria. We have only now decided to try and get this feature included in Wikispecies. By doing this it can lead to other areas where Wikispecies can further develop its own policies. In some areas we have unique needs, different to the other Wiki's. It is timely we were able to develop all these policies.

Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:15, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Request for vote reg use of BASEPAGENAME

The previous discussions regarding if we should subst:ing BASEPAGENAME and change all [[BASEPAGENAME]] into [[susbt:BASEPAGENAME]] did not really reach a consensus.

Please vote here on the Village pump!

If you are not sure on your opinion, you can read and join the discussion about the claimed advantages and disadvantages of using BASEPAGENAME

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:29, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Wikispecies Oversighter

Wikispecies has no local Oversighter. Since I had the communitys confidence regarding the previous application for Checkusers rights, as per local Oversight policy on META, I hereby apply to get Oversighters user rights, as a request to the Wikispecies community.

Application is located at Requests for Comment.

Please also note that Oversighter actions are logged, but for privacy reasons the logs are only visible to other Oversighters. Because of this, Wikispecies must always have no fewer than two oversighters, for mutual accountability. I don't want to suggest anyone, but hope that someone feel inspired and will step forward and also apply for oversighters rights.

Dan Koehl through MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:01, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Oversight nomination

Please refer to Wikispecies:Oversighters/Requests/Koavf for a second Oversight nomination. Note that we must have at least two Oversigthers in order for anyone to have these user rights. All feedback is welcome. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:50, 3 March 2017 (UTC)