Wikispecies:Village Pump

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2008 As of 29 February 2008

Contents 1 Participation in a workshop 2 Species which undergo metamorphosis 3 The genus template and disambiguation 4 Spam and placeholders 5 New Templates for Old References 6 Wiki markup: 7 Some bad news

[edit] Participation in a workshop

Greetings,

Don't mean to intrude, but I'd be very interested in having an active member of this community participate in a discussion about social technology and biodiversity. This is an all day workshop at University of Maryland on May 30. Details are at http://www.leptree.net/social_technology_for_biodiversity_workshop

You can contact me if you are interested or have questions, at csparr --at-- umd.edu.

Thanks!

Thanks for letting us know. However, I don't think we have a member near Maryland so it's near-impossible for any of our member to attend. Sorry. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:30, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, well I will try to look around this forum and get insights that may contribute to the discussion. I may post some of the discussion questions that I'll direct at the participants and see if I can represent your point(s) of view. (Signing this time) --Csparr 22:58, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I have been to the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) and look up fish, birds, trees, etc. and they are easy to find. I search for colossal squid, for instance, and get 233 hits (see Encyclopedia of Life: http://www.eol.org/index ). Where do I search for colossal squid in Wikispecies? I find it in Wikipedia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Squid), but not Wikispecies. I cannot find anything in Wikispecies from the homepage. Can you help? I am lost.

You must be looking for Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni. In Wikispecies, every page about species are in their latin species name. Since colossal squid's species name is Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni, the corresponding page name in Wikispecies is Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:52, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Generally, each species' vernacular name (what they're usually called by) can be searched by, and the appropriate article located. For example, for a search for "great white shark",[1] the result is Carcharodon carcharias. Similarly, if a Spanish-speaking user were to look for "Gran tiburón blanco"[2], they'd be directed to the same article. It's not a perfect system, and is largely dependent upon the article having the proper name in the {{VN}} table, but it works in most cases; it didn't in yours because the article didn't have the English name in its "Vernacular names" section, only the Japanese name. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:45, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Species which undergo metamorphosis

For species which undergo metamorphosis, which image should we use? The adult form or the larva/nymph form? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:47, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Adult seems appropriate. Lycaon 00:11, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

The form that they spend the majority of their life as would be the best choice. For most, that form is as an adult. EVula // talk // ☯ // 19:36, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The genus template and disambiguation

In the Droseraceae article one of the genera is disambiguated. Is it still possible to use the genus template? As it is now, I left that genus’ formatting as it was. /Kess 09:08, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it still works the same way. Take a look of Enterobacteriaceae and find genus Yersinia OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 22:58, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks! --Kess 08:22, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Spam and placeholders

Noticed the newly added Euophryum rufum and Orthetrum silvarum articles by the IP 209.62.94.50. What could/should I as an ordinary user do? Blank the article, notice someone of it, something else? The best approach, I guess, would be for me to fix them, but I really don’t know enough about animal taxonomy to do that. --Kess 10:36, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Add {{delete}} to the article and it will be put the article in a category for deletion and an admin will take care of it. Thanks for asking. --Open2universe | Talk 11:46, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

We received quite a lot of vandalism for past few days. God knows why... OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:22, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New Templates for Old References

If the example reference format: "Carolus Linnaeus: Systema Naturae 3: 25" is really a standard here (as given on the page Help:Reference section), I'd like to propose a new template, Template:SPP, so that all the Species Plantarum citations can easily be made consistent now and in the future (see the two example pages that use {{SPP}}: Solanum lycopersicum and Thymus serpyllum). Google now shows most Species Plantarum entries don't follow the standard since only about 49 results in Google have both "Species Plantarum" and "Linnaeus" on the same page, while over 1500 pages have "Species Plantarum" but not "Linnaeus". What does everyone think about the {{SPP}} template? If we reach a consensus about it, or I get little to no feedback after a few weeks, then I'll propose a bot to do the updates. (We could do the same for Systema Naturae by improving Template:SN). --Georgeryp 23:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Good suggestion. Send it to bot approval when it's ready. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 01:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

With all respect to Carolus Linnaeus he's just one out of hundreds if not thousands of authors! We do need a good template to handle a general author & a general citation. One possibility is this:

{{AUTH|Author Name|Book or Magazine|volume|page}}

will produce:

Author Name: Book or Magazine volume: page

Mariusm 05:07, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

As someone who has been bad about formatting references, I agree that a template would be good. The english wikipedia has a number of citation templates that we could base it on. E.g. en:Template:Cite journal --Open2universe | Talk 13:20, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Why not have both? - a general "author" template and also some shorter, simpler ones for works by authors with hundreds to thousands of species to their names? Ok, so "...[Linnaeus is] just one out of hundreds if not thousands of authors!"

However:

1. How many single authors are on thousands of pages?
2. It's embarrassing to see such an early, major figure misspelled or at least referenced inconsistently: see at least "Linneaus" and "Linné" on this site.
3. We can always have the more specific templates depend on the more general template so a change to the general template automatically effects all the specific ones (kind of like the nested taxonavigation templates here).
4. Finally, my proposal is not for the "Linnaeus template" (author-centric), it's for the "Species Plantarum template" and "Systema Naturae template" (reference work-centric) in much the same way we've already created "ITIS" and "FishBase" templates instead of just one general "Taxon Reference" template.

Do those reasons help justify Template:SPP and Template:SN? --Georgeryp 00:43, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that Species Plantarum and Systema Naturae are special enough to warrant their own template --Open2unverse | Talk 00:56, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I second that sentiment. Lycaon 05:31, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

1. Carolus Linnaeus usually authored the most obvious and prominent species, so I suppose the majority of his contributions are already present in Wikispecies.
2. The most recurring mistake regarding citations in Wikispecies is to leave-out the author's name and to put in only the book or magazine name. This includes Species Plantarum and Systema Naturae. It would be nice to run a bot to correct this.
3. The citation's year of publication sould be mandatory and not optional; also it must be inserted just after the author's name. So the correct format is "Carolus Linnaeus, 1753: Systema Naturae 3: 25"
4. The usual practice by professionals is to write only the abbreviations of the common books & magazines in the citation. So Syst. Nat. stands for Systema Naturae and Sp. Pl. stands for Species Plantarum (Look in google and see how many are using them!) I think it is a good practice to make use of it here too.

Mariusm 06:22, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wiki markup:

hi,

I beleive the wikimarkup editing help-line has a minor mistake in it.

Namely: Synonyms has three equations signs on each sides while it should only have two!!

Wiki markup: {{}} {{{}}} | [] [[]] [[Category:]] #REDIRECT [[]]  

Wikispecies tools: † ==Taxonavigation== ==Name== ''{{BASEPAGENAME}}'' ===Synonyms=== ==References== ==Vernacular names==

PeterPodgoršek 06:50, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The "Synonyms" title is correct as it is - with the three equation marks. It is not a separate section heading but serves as a subsection heading to the "Name" section.

Mariusm 09:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps something could be done to make ==Vernacular names== one link (instead of two)? --kess 18:55, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Not too sure if that can be done, since there is a space in between. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 20:12, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Some bad news

According to the Zoological Society of London, wildlife populations (of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) are decreasing yearly by 1%. Since 1970 about 30% of wildlife have been wiped out. [3] This is frightening news, especially for us at this community. This also makes the task of documenting more important and pressing. Can we here do something to increase the public awareness to this decline?

Mariusm 08:53, 16 May 2008 (UTC)