Wikispecies:Village Pump/Archive 27

Happy 2015!

Restarting the Pump I figured I'd post something so this isn't barren. Here's looking forward to structured data, more internationalisation, and further documentation of taxonomic data. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:26, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes indeed! Happy New Year! Let me open up 2015 with this new proposal: First see my category page Category:Challenger voyage taxa. This page link will probably settle on bottom under this discussion. Is my concept of presenting data of biological expeditions. As very important taxonomic data derives from expeditionary reports, I have made a page for HMS Challenger voyage as example of what can be assembled for up to date, updateable, complete information. My concepts here:

1. Initial section provides expedition name, duration, location of collections, and primary reference citation of original reports.

2. Reference templates for taxon groups treated. These should contain on their pages lists of new taxon names as originally proposed. These will link into regular taxon pages.

3. Additional references and links for type specimen inventories made at later dates.

4. Taxon authorities. Listing of taxon authorities directly involved in project. Link to taxon authority pages, and are derived from reference authors.

5. Taxon subcategories. They link one to one with references in #2. Taxa listed are accepted present forms of original taxa proposed.

I have only made this page. It sort of evolved over past one month from different idea, and it may work out better set up as main page rather like Repositories pages.

Neferkheperre (talk) 03:03, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Arecibota

Saw this new page Arecibota started by an anon. I can't find any evidence for the existence of this name as any taxon at all and was about to delete it, but thought I'd better check here first in case I made a mess of my first significant admin action ;-) MPF (talk) 10:04, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I only found out that the alleged taxon author is a Polish astronomer, who worked at the Arecibo Observatory and discovered a pulsar - en:Aleksander Wolszczan. Seems to be a hoax. Please delete. --Franz Xaver (talk) 10:58, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Almost funny, but yes, please delete. Dan Koehl (talk) 11:22, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Done! - MPF (talk) 12:06, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

A new one, Thorsettelassea brahminum, was created by IP 74.37.6.164 about 20 minutes ago, stating "Delta Arecibota" as its regnum and "Arecibota" as superregnum. It is now deleted. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 02:36, 10 January 2015 (UTC).

@Franz Xaver: @MPF: @Dan Koehl: @Tommy Kronkvist: For anyone who doesn't know the background on this, here it is. You will note with some research that the IP Tommy Kronkvist gives above is in the Wyoming Valley area of northeastern Pennsylvania, USA. There is a serial creator of hoax taxon articles both here and at enwiki who operates from IPs in this area. He has continued this behavior for several years now on and off. Despite numerous warnings and blocks at enwiki for it, nothing seems to cause him to understand that/why hoaxes are not OK, and some of us are not sure if the user understands what a hoax is at this point. Pages usually contain extensive structures composed mainly of many levels of bogus taxa, and are often are fairly easy to spot as a result of the names not being constructed in the same way as valid ones (i.e. if something seems completely unfamiliar about a new name in an article made by an IP, check up on it, it is often this hoaxer). Hopefully this will make it easier for all of you to control the hoaxes more easily. Koumz (talk) 17:46, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the information. I regularly monitor the user names and IPs of material I delete or editors I block, but sometimes it can certainly be helpful to have some background intel. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 01:20, 15 January 2015 (UTC).

Categories, templates and disambiguation terms

There have been several contributors here of late who are pursuing (without prior discussion) various content/format novelties of their own invention. I offer some suggestions:

1. Don't start anything which cannot be done on a large scale. Nobody wants just a few of a great many relevant pages to have a "novelty";
2. Don't put "Notes" or distributional information on a main taxon page, put it on the talk page;
3. If you must do something with distributions, etc., then please use categories, not templates. Categories minimise the disruption to main taxon pages;
4. If you must use distribution categories like, for example, Myosotis from United States, then please use [[Category:Myosotis (United States)]], rather than anything else (like [[Category:Myosotis, United States]]). The former allows easy linking between pages, using 'United States' as a disambiguation term, and is therefore much more versatile.

Thanks, Stho002 (talk) 23:01, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

For example, I use Categories for New Zealand taxa. I use, for example, [[Category:Myosotis (New Zealand)]]. On the category page, I link automatically to NZOR (an external website database about New Zealand taxa). I link to NZOR using {{Title without disambig‎|{{BASEPAGENAMEE}}}}. I can only do this if the 'New Zealand' is a disambiguation term (i.e. within parentheses). Otherwise it doesn't work. ... Stho002 (talk) 00:28, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: I've noticed that for some reason, there are only geographic data for New Zealand. Has there ever been a discussion on this? Presumably, you are opposed to notes on the main namespace because this is a multilingual source, but you are using English place names. Why is this? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:32, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Koavf: There isn't only geographical data for N.Z. I have been trying to add data for Australia and New Caledonia also, but it all takes time, and people have to manually add the data. Any data is better than no data, but the important thing is to do it in a well-defined and sensible way, so that it doesn't overcomplicate main taxon pages, which should be kept simple and clear. Notes (in any language) have never been allowed in main namespaces. They are far too prone to the limitations of understanding of those who write them. Main namespaces need to be kept free of that. This isn't the first time you have suggested that I have some "issue" with multilinguality, but I don't, and I don't understand why you seem to think that I do? Stho002 (talk) 03:38, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Why not use ISO codes rather than English names? Why not use something standardized and more easily intelligible? Has there ever been a community discussion on this? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 03:58, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

For what exactly? Type localities should be quoted verbatim, or else they are interpretations. Stho002 (talk) 04:00, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: What? What are you talking about? How is "los Estados Unidos" an interpretation but "the United States" isn't? What are you talking about? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:03, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Who in the world doesn't know what "United States" is? Do you really want to translate everything into all languages?? Good luck with that ... Stho002 (talk) 04:08, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: You didn't read what I wrote evidently, so I'll try again: 1.) why not us ISO codes? and 2.) has there ever been a community discussion about this? These are simple questions. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:09, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

The answer to (2) is no, not as far as I know. As for (1), I would say that it is unnecessary. I wouldn't object entirely to BOTH verbatim AND ISO code (in []) specifications of type locality, but it is a lot of extra work for no real benefit. Countries change name and we would have to update all relevant pages accordingly, every time this happens. Remember Yugoslavia, Formosa, Burma, ...? Stho002 (talk) 04:14, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Isn't that an argument against using these at all? And what do you mean by "verbatim"? English? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:16, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

By "verbatim", I mean a direct copy of what is written in the publication. Even without the issue of countries changing names, I still don't see any compelling (or even good) reason for your proposal. Stho002 (talk) 04:20, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Sorry: that makes even less sense to me. So now we'll have categories for every name from every publication? And that includes a category for "Burma" and one for "Myanmar" and one for names in Burmese and Karen and Kachin as well? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 04:21, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

What you are saying makes no sense to me. I don't know if you are talking about type localities or about distributions. Type localities should be cited verbatim so that the citation doesn't change if the name of the country changes. We could use ISO codes for distribution categories (and just use redirects if country names change). We would have to decide whether or not to adopt the latter approach. Stho002 (talk) 04:24, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Also, you need to bear in mind that "distributions" are far more complicated than just checking boxes. All sorts of taxa have been reported in the literature from all sorts of countries where they do not in fact occur, or the records were based on interceptions only, or vagrants, or captive/cultivated individuals, or the evidence for their presence in the stated country is weak and/or disputed, or they were temporarily established, etc. etc. This is why I do this stuff on category pages, i.e. so as to not overcomplicate main taxon pages, which should be kept simple and clear. I have no objections to others here using categories and writing whatever they like on category pages, just not on main taxon pages. Stho002 (talk) 04:58, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion, the best way to handle species-distribution issues is by using distribution maps (see here and here). I see little use for distribution-categories, in that rarely a user will wish to make a query for "all the Hemiptera species which have been ever seen in New Zealand" for example. What a normal user would wish is to perceive quickly where a certain species is located and a map will do the trick. Mariusm (talk) 05:25, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

And how does a map handle records based on interceptions only, or vagrants, or captive/cultivated individuals, or the evidence for their presence in the stated country is weak and/or disputed, or they were temporarily established, etc. etc. Stho002 (talk) 05:29, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

These trifles are irrelevant, because WS doesn't delve into such depths. Moreover, these anomalies distract us from our main task here which is to provide just the basic species data and nothing beyond that.Mariusm (talk) 05:47, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Distribution maps are already beyond the basic Wikispecies data. As I said, people can do what they like using categories, as these, as you said, don't "distract us from our main task here" (i.e. the basic information on main taxon pages). So, if you want to provide (oversimplified) maps or whatever, just move it all to a category page linked to the main taxon page (or the talk page). That's what I do. The main taxon page is just for name information, classification and selected references. I will remove anything else (except category links). Stho002 (talk) 06:11, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Here's my five cents on the matter. Personally I think that with very few exceptions, this kind of information is irrelevant for Wikispecies. Data regarding a species' distribution, etymology of scientific name, notes about vernacular names etc – that's all Wikipedia stuff. If one feel such information should be at all present on Wikispecies, then using categories is a good way to keep that data out of the main namespace. After all, Wikispecies is a "wiki-based taxon directory and a central database of taxonomy" – but nothing much else. We should stay focused on the primary task at hand.
Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 08:01, 8 January 2015 (UTC).

Agree. That is why I keep my NZ distribution stuff out of the way in category pages. Stho002 (talk) 19:35, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Accassidy:, @Dan Koehl:, @EncycloPetey:, @Keith Edkins:, @Mariusm:, @MKOliver:, @MPF:, @Neferkheperre:, @Tommy Kronkvist:, @Uleli:, @Koavf: and @Orchi: I have restored and protected the template nadi which was deleted by Stho002 on the 8th Jan 2015, as it has been the subject of persistent delete/restore. The reason he gave was that it is "not allowed on a main taxon page", which is fair enough if we had reached consensus on the debate in this section. The problem, as I see it, is that the information has taken a lot of effort to produce and will need to go into an as yet to be created category, if we are to follow the advice offered by Tommy Kronkvist and Stho002 among others. My advice is that we leave it alone and give the users of the offending template time to transfer the data to a category if this their and the community's wishes. Would somebody else be prepared to contact these users and offer a way forward? - I wish I could do bots. Please believe me I do not want this to be seen as having a go at Stho002, but as a way of keeping the users of the template in the WS community and not losing information! I hope other crats and admins do not think that I have overstepped my authority, but I am not involved in the template edit war and tend to agree with Tommy Kronkvist above, but I also think that unilaterally removing information that is not vandalism is unacceptable. After all we all have discussion pages and the pump. Andyboorman (talk) 16:55, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

@Andyboorman: Can you point me to an example of the use of Template:Nadi on a taxon page, so that I can see how it is used? A simple search did not come up with anything. Accassidy (talk) 17:24, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

@Accassidy: - here you are, the full set ;-) - MPF (talk) 17:48, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I also restored @Fagus:'s Template:Endemic. - MPF (talk) 18:02, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

More generally, I'm not convinced that either categories, or templates, is the best method of indicating distribution. Both are language-dependent - should a Chinese endemic have the category, or template, in English? Or should it be in Chinese? Ideally, neither, as wikispecies policy prefers language independence. Also, both systems are highly complex with regard to circumscription. New Zealand is pretty unique in being a small, self-contained region with a largely endemic flora and fauna. But take for example, a species endemic to the Caucasus Mountains. It will occur in much of Armenia, Georgia, parts of Azerbaijan, maybe a little bit of Turkey, - and, most significantly - a tiny part (maybe 0.01%) of Russia. Adding Russia, either by template or category, rather suggests a wide distribution in the country, and isn't helpful. My suggestion is to remove the entire distribution by category and template setup altogether, and instead, to use maps. I already suggested this a year and a half ago, though it attracted no comment, either positive or negative. To what I said there, I'd add that maps have the huge advantage of being language-neutral, and show directly what the range of a taxon is without lengthy descriptions. Couple of examples using maps: Acer platanoides, Rhea americana. Thoughts, anyone? - MPF (talk) 18:07, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Well with three models the genie is well and truly out of the bottle! None of these use the recommended "Distribution and range data can be included in the talk page of an article." Therefore all are rewriting this statement found in the scope section of The Help pages. However, it is worth noting that many editors deviate from the guidance in these pages and it has been often stated WS evolves and is a broad church. For example short notes are common as is the separation of internet sites and journals. The question then is do we put the genie back into the bottle or accept that as long as a page is primarily describing nomenclature and taxonomy then some freedoms are allowed? If it the later then we could define these freedoms or trust contributors and interfere only when there is a major concern or after discussion. If the former then it is the discussion page or nothing. Comments? Andyboorman (talk) 17:04, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Stho002s edit war with Fagus user page

Dear members of Wikispecies, yesterday it seems User:Fagus took a decision to leave Wikispecies, after discussions with User:Stho002, regarding the template Template:Endemic, which User:Stho002 in an edit-war marked for deletion between 22.43‎ and 23.02‎.

User:Stho002 also performed edit-war with User:Fagus user page, as well as with User:Fagus talk page, and marked them "retired", even after Fagus changed his user page. Please take a look at:

• https://species.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Fagus&action=history
• https://species.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Fagus&action=history
• https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Stho002#Regarding_Template:Endemic

I ask for your feedback and opinion regarding those issues. Dan Koehl (talk) 11:32, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Don't cherry pick diffs, please Koehl! Please cite all the relevant diffs, such as https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Fagus#Distribution_templates where I explain my reasoning, and Accassidy also voices reservations about the use of the endemic template. Stho002 (talk) 19:34, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

I find that messing with another person's user-page or another person's talk-page is intolerable. Also blanking a template used in multiple pages, by this eliminating a considerable amount of work, is intolerable too. Chasing away a valued user such as User:Fagus in such a brutal manner is particularly painful. This conduct practiced by User:Stho002 isn't something new, it is being practiced here for a very long time. Mariusm (talk) 12:05, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Can you explain what you were thinking here and why you feel like this is appropriate? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:50, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

It is quite simple. Fagus blanked his own user and talk pages and marked them for deletion. Deletion is unnecessary in such circumstances, so I simply replaced the delete tag with the word "retired", after he had stated that he was leaving. There is nothing sinister about that. By stating that he was leaving and blanking his own user page, he had effectively given away any claim to his user page. Stho002 (talk) 19:28, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Stopped by the Village Pump in the new year to see if anything has improved. Nope, still seeing personal attacks and people refuseing to drop the ball. Not worth coming back at this point. Bye again. Back in 3 to 6 months and see if things have changed. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:03, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: That's inappropriate: if he wants his user page deleted, that's up to him. You need to stop edit-warring and trying to own common resources here. Frankly, you need to be blocked for a little while and if I had the tools, I would have done it already. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:31, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the deletion of a user page, I don't see it that way, but I apologise if I am wrong. If I am wrong then it is a simple mistake. Why are you blowing a trivial issue up out of all proportion? Stho002 (talk) 22:35, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: It's not trivial: you're outright hostile to several users here and have driven them away from the project. You seem to willfully ignorant about consensus or working with others and the majority of Village Pump activity for the past several months has been other users complaining about how you are impossible to work with and no one comes to your defense. It's increasingly obvious that you're unwilling to actually work with someone else without petty edit-warring and page ownership which is why you were desysopped. You have not learned from that, so you need to have some kind of further restriction on your editing until you're willing to be more constructive. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:51, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Well that's your opinion, and one that you keep voicing over and over ad nauseam. I still don't understand the link between your lobbying on this matter and my putting 'retired' on a blanked user page that was marked for deletion, but I guess you will find a way to twist anything that I say or do in order to further your agenda against me. Stho002 (talk) 22:54, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Another hallmark of your behavior is acting like someone's out to get you: no one would have anything against you if your behavior weren't inappropriate. When everyone is opposed to you and no one is in your favor, it should be obvious that what you're doing is not correct. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 22:56, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Paranoid am I? Well, OhanaUnited has just commented (above) on your personal attacks Stho002 (talk) 23:01, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: Did you mean me in your above comment? (Eagerly awaiting a response). —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:04, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

No it's not you, @Koavf:. And that makes it perfectly clear who I directed my comment to. It's to the one admin that repeatedly threatened to quit but never actually carried out, just like an insincere goodbye with the intention to draw attention upon himself and hoping that the community will shower him with "don't leave" messages. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:23, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

And you don't even bother to get your facts right! I was not desysopped, and so have nothing to "learn from that". I resigned. Please stop all this whinging and whining Stho002 (talk) 22:58, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: You mean this: where you resigned in the middle of a community vote where everyone was in favor of you being desysopped? Are you kidding? You had no chance of keeping your admin tools because of abuse and harassment, so don't pretend like you were noble about stepping down: there was a clear community consensus for you to have them taken from you. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:03, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

No, "everyone" was not in favour. Was OhanaUnited in favour? Was Neferkheperre in favour? Was MKOliver in favour? Sure everyone who voted in favour was in favour, but that's hardly surprising! Stop this rhetoric please. As I correctly stated, I was NOT desysopped. Period. Stho002 (talk) 23:07, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Good point: not everyone—Winston Churchill and Mickey Mouse weren't opposed to you being an admin. Just everyone who voted. There was a clear community consensus for you to be desysopped and I'm not going to argue with you about it anymore. Your actions are belligerent and have caused numerous resignations of editors. You need to take a break and learn to play nice. Again, had I the tools, I would have done it already. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:09, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Then it is a good thing that you don't have the tools, as you have clearly stated the intention to use them unilaterally, and based on poor judgement Stho002 (talk) 23:11, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

And I'm sure that valued WS contributors OhanaUnited, Neferkheperre and MKOliver won't appreciate being rated on a par with Mickey Mouse when it comes to their relevance to WS. Stho002 (talk) 23:15, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Accassidy:, @Andyboorman:, @Dan Koehl:, @EncycloPetey:, @Keith Edkins:, @Mariusm:, @MKOliver:, @MPF:, @Neferkheperre:, @Tommy Kronkvist:, and @Uleli:: you are all admins who have been active recently. What say you? This is another thread where someone is resigning because of Stho002's behavior. Do you think a block is appropriate? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:17, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, I'm going to keep an eye on this to see if any admins/bureaucrats would vote in the poll below and then close the same poll that they voted in while claiming they were impartial and weren't involved, just saying. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:28, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Support

1. Yes, since numerous warnings has not led to a change in Stho002s attitude, and theres a need to radically decrease Wikispecies tolerance for aggressive behaviour between users in order to secure a better working environment, I think a block is appropriate. Dan Koehl (talk) 00:47, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Warnings about what? You fail to accuse me of anything specific which could possibly justify a block! If there are specific issues, such as the ones I have raised regarding other people's editing, then shouldn't we be discussing those issues (e.g. the appropriateness or otherwise of Fagus's "endemic template"), instead of going straight into a blocking vote? Or is that your idea of bureaucracy?? Stho002 (talk) 01:05, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

2. As stated above. Sto002 is driving away other editors and is unwilling to be cooperative on even the most basic level. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:51, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Cooperation is a two way street, and I have had nothing from you except for aggressive lobbying and rhetoric against me Stho002 (talk) 00:53, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Again: why? It's because of your belligerence. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:55, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

So you think that two wrongs make a right do you? Fight injustice with injustice? Is that what you think? You could try actually discussing the issues, instead of constantly spewing forth rhetoric Stho002 (talk) 01:00, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Nope. What injustice have I done? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:03, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

You really don't know? By the way, please don't move my comments. If I did subsequently remove a comment of yours, it was an accidental consequence of reverting your move of my comment. Stho002 (talk) 01:20, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: No, I don't and yes, you did. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:21, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Then I apologise for the accidental comment removal. The injustice that you are guilty of is not taking into account all sides and failing to properly address the actual issues. Instead you just embark on a campaign to have me blocked. You have made no attempt to discuss the actual issues with me, or even to consider the issues as far as I can tell. You are just being a bully. So, what do you actually think about contributors here adding whatever content they like to taxon pages? Do you think that the endemic template that Fagus invented was a good idea? Why should we allow it? Do you even know anything about the subject matter here? Stho002 (talk) 01:32, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: We're not going to go down this road because it's not productive. Although I am not a taxonomic authority, I know how consensus and community discussions work. I'm bowing out of this for now and letting anyone else discuss whether or not they think your actions warrant an enforced break. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:39, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Not productive for whom? I'm sure it is "convenient" for you to quit while you are ahead at this point (Are you ahead? Well, no, but you probably think that you are). I also know how consensus and community discussions work, and I sure as heck know that we should have had one about the endemic template BEFORE Fagus started implementing it on hundreds of main taxon pages. As I said, you appear to be forgetting the two-way nature of discussions, and nobody has discussed any issue with me, they have just whinged and whined. Stho002 (talk) 01:58, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

3. As I've said before: No user has the right to act as Stho002 did and not face the consequences. If Stho002 is permitted to walk away unpunished, then WS is heading for a grim future. How can anyone witness such a conduct as Stho002 practiced towards Fagus an not feel revulsion and repugnance? The situation here got to a point where Stho002 forces me to work offline and then to dump my completed work hastily at inconvenient hours when he isn't present online. Only by this way can I avoid his constant harassment. Is this a normal situation? Mariusm (talk) 08:39, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

4. I support the block on User:Stho002 for a period of 48 hours, for three reasons. Firstly, because his protestations on this page/section has changed a vote into a bunfight; secondly because I did not join WS to spend so much of my time following edit wars between insensitive editors, and one party to all these different wars is User:Stho002; thirdly, to give User:Fagus the chance to respond to my question about the common-sense behind the Endemic template. Accassidy (talk) 08:37, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

My goal has always been to "get the job done" and I am fairly uninterested in the power struggle that seems to be the case on many of these issues with Stho002. From my point of view there is not "right path" to reach our goal here, and I admit that Stho002 actions seems a little elitistic and without respect for variation. A wiki, in me view, is not straight path and should not follow what I (as an individual) think is the prefect way. I am among those who often think it is time to leave the Wikispecies and put my energy elsewhere, as WS might be a lost case. In this case, yes maybe it is time to block Stho002 as he get in the focus of disputes time and time again. Uleli (talk) 19:07, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

6. This is a wiki and so is a collaborative enterprise. Respect, tolerance and consideration for other contributors are paramount, (including Stho002). However, in this respect, Stho002's behavior has been counter-wiki too many times. WS must regain its lost wiki nature. Andyboorman (talk) 20:26, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Oppose

1. No, because the insistence of contributors to add their own content to main taxon pages has always been against the rules, and you can't block me for trying to uphold the basic rules. A better working environment is not gained by giving contributors free reign over content on main taxon pages. There has to be some level of control over such content, and the current crats are not doing the job. Stho002 (talk) 00:52, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

No, this is a thread where Fagus spat the dummy and threatened to resign because he couldn't do things his way, things he had not discussed before doing. See my comments in the thread below. His actions were in disregard of the fundamental rule that you can't just add new kinds of information to main taxon pages on a whim. His "endemic" template was poorly thought through and makes little sense. If he really wanted to do this, he should have used categories. That would have been the proper way. As it was, I had to stop him before he continued on and made the problem bigger. Stho002 (talk) 23:33, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

From my point of view both Fagus and Stho002 are guilty of misconduct in this matter. Fagus is free to do pretty much what he wants with his user page, but blanking a user's talk page (diffs here and here) is a big no-no and probably also a breach of Wikimedia policy, even if it happens to be his own talk page. At the very least it should have been properly archived first. Even after asking for a "courtesy vanishing" or call for the right to vanish, the user's talk page is very seldom deleted. Most often the username is altered instead, i.e. the old information is still there, but cannot be easily traced back to the "vanished" user. Since Fagus used to be an admin on the Turkish Wikipedia, I think he should know that.

In light of this, a reaction from Stho002 (or any other user) is not at all wrong. However, the best practice is probably to undo Fagus deletion of the talk page, and instead add a new section to it informing the user (in this case Fagus) why it shouldn't be deleted. Instead he simply wrote the single word "Retired" on both the user page and talk page (diffs here and here), which personally I find rather rude. Then again maybe I'm too sensitive about it... In any case the whole situation almost developed into an edit war, which of course is not a good thing. And it would have been easy to avoid: simply don't do it.

To finish off slightly off topic, perhaps some of the situations like these could be handled smother if Wikispecies had a {{Retire}} template, much like the ones used at Wikipedia^[1] and Meta.^[2] The templates clearly state that a user is no longer active, nor will be in the future – and they do so without deleting any user data or talk page history. –Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 01:38, 9 January 2015 (UTC).

Thank you for the information Tommy. I was unaware of the protocols appropriate for dealing with what Fagus did, so I used my initiative in an attempt to at least improve the situation. If I failed in that attempt, I apologise. Stho002 (talk) 02:01, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

As far as I can see, Stho002 is not refering to this correctly. Please see the history: User:Dantherocker67 is abusing User:Fagus user page, as well as other users user pages, and gets blocked for this 25 march 2011.

7 januari 2015 22.43 Stho002 mark the file Template:Endemic, created by Fagus in 2012, with speed delete. 22.47 Fagus change back. Without discussing on the files talk page, 23.02 Stho002 starts edit war, once again marking the file with speed delete.

Fagus writes on Stho002s user talk page: Why are you deleting endemic template. but It is necessary. --Fagus (talk) 23:06, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

Fagus writes on Stho002s user talk page: Wikispecies not your monopoly. You are deleting all of my work. Thank you. I will not contribute. --Fagus (talk) 23:16, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

After this conflict with Stho002 Fagus 23.17‎ 2015 replaces the content on his user page with {{delete}}, which he has all right to do. Ten minutes later, 23.27‎ Stho002 replaces the content on User:Fagus user page with the text Retired, something which he has no right to do. Two minutes later, 23.29‎, Fagus blanks his user page, which he has right to do. 5 minutes later, 23.34‎, Stho002 is undoing revision 2092217 by Fagus, something that Stho002 has no right to do. 2 minutes later, Fagus writes on Stho002s user talk page You can not write my user page to retired. --Fagus (talk) 23:36, 7 January 2015 (UTC).

Stho002 has a history of playing around with oher users user pages before, as well as abusing his admin rights, by locking pages, and even blocking other users. The template retired was created for users to mark their user pages, NOT for other users to mark other users pages. Abusing other users pages is a no-no, especially during a conflict with another user, and after delete marking the users producation on Wikispecies.

Abusing other users user pages is considered Vandalsim on Wikipedia.

Dan Koehl (talk) 10:08, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Dan, you really must try to present an unbiased summary of events, and stick to what is relevant. Any alleged history of abusing my admin rights, and/or blocking other users is now entirely irrelevant, as I am not an admin. Again, you fail to quote my initial message to Fagus on the subject of his endemic template, and again you fail to ask me (or anyone) if the endemic template is a good idea, and/or whether Fagus had the right to create and use it without prior discussion. Stho002 (talk) 22:16, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

PS: You are also making procedural errors (as indicated by OhanaUnited, below). The vote itself needs to have a specified duration, and a vote for a block has to specify a block length, as some voters vote will depend on the length of the block. Please do try to do your duty correctly Dan, and set a good example, without having to have OhanaUnited point out to you what you are doing wrong Stho002 (talk) 23:01, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl: Procedural question. Your proposal calls for a block but you didn't specify a length. That's too vague and too open-ended that can be interpreted with a lot of liberty in both directions. Could you amend that? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:31, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

He also doesn't specify a reason! Blocks are preventative measures against vandalism or other rule breaking. This block was prompted by me trying to prevent Fagus from breaking the rules by way of him adding radically new and poorly thought through content to hundreds of main taxon pages, without any prior discussion. And still nobody has addressed that issue, except for Accassidy stating that he has some reservations about what Fagus was doing. Funny that ... Stho002 (talk) 06:04, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

I'd hoped to stay out of this as 'the new kid on the block' Admin, but with being asked for input, guess I'd better do so. It's a tricky case, as Stho002 does add a lot of legitimate taxonomic info to the project, but also a lot that isn't (e.g., the use of categories to compile a list of New Zealand's cultivated plants is well outside the project scope), and has very clearly put off a large number of other users from contributing — Fagus's despair is far from the first case. I believe that re-establishing a wider contributor base is more important than the contributions, however numerous, of a single user. Worth adding that Stho002 has earned an indefinite block on en:wiki for similar reasons of personal attacks / harassment. So, overall, I agree with Mariusm and Dan Koehl that action needs to be taken, perhaps a fairly lengthy block, in the interests of the project and its contributors as a whole. - MPF (talk) 13:48, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Conclusion

I interprete from the voting and discussions above, that there's a consensus within Wikispecies community that User:Stho002 should be blocked, and I have therefore blocked User:Stho002 for a week. Should User:Stho002 appear in other type of identity during this week, those IP-addresses and user names will be blocked as well. Dan Koehl (talk) 00:09, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Seriously? I asked you to describe how long your suggested block length should be and you completely ignored it. @Accassidy: was the only one that mentioned a specific block duration (48 hours) and others didn't mention it. The duration is totally arbitrary and prescribed according to you. Could you explain how you're impartial and uninvolved in this matter? Might I also add that you took administrative action less than 24 hours after it was opened by you? What is the rush? While consensus may be clear in your direction, you have to avoid something call conflict of interest! This is the third time in three months that you have engaged in self-serving administrative action. I have even anticipated that this was going to happen. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:11, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: Serving the community, by blocking User:Stho002, I have done what I regard as community consensus, what I believe is best for Wikispecies, and also the best for User:Stho002, who needs to change his attitude. I know that you have other opinions, and a history of defending this user, but I have to ask you to respect the wish within the community. I will also prepare some questions for User:Stho002 to answer, among other things if he intend to follow the Wikispecies policy, and if he doesnt promise to do so, I believe his block may be extended. Dan Koehl (talk) 13:18, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

Here we can see the previous Special:Block/Stho002 with start 28 November 2008. Unfortunately it doesnt seems like they changed User:Stho002 attitude much. After my block, User:Accassidy changed my block from a week, to 48 hours. I am not arguing with another admin about the time of block, but would like to focus on something more important, that in order to get unblocked, we should demand that User:Stho002 follow some conditions, like a promise to follow the Wikispecies:Policy and meet the conditions of the community. I would welcome the opinions from the community regarding this issue. Dan Koehl (talk) 15:00, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree that User:Stho002 must promise without conditions to follow the Wikispecies:Policy, before this current one is lifted, as previous blocks have not changed his ability to get along with the community. If this is not forthcoming then the block should be extended until the promise is in place. User:Accassidy ought to reflect on what happened when he tried to moderate the recent disputes and how quickly this broke down. However, if he does promise, but then goes back on this then we need to consider what further action needs to be taken. As has been stated before a Wiki is about community, as much as, if not more than, content. Andyboorman (talk) 16:19, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't have time to dedicate myself debating with you, at least not until after April (have Ph.D proposal to complete, being parachuted into the senior TA role and having to teach an extra tutorial on top of my contract due to unexpectedly high enrolment numbers in the course). I'm not justifying Stho002's actions here. I just want to point out to the community that your process of "crusade to right the wrong" broke rules in the process. Two wrongs don't make one right. And certainly now that you are a bureaucrat and Stho002 is no longer an admin, the power imbalance swings even more in your favour. You're an admin. Just because others have broken rules doesn't mean that you can legitimatize yourself to break rules yourself while enforcing rules. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 23:37, 10 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: Can you please specify exactly which rule Dan Koehl broke? Mariusm (talk) 07:01, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited:, I would also like to know what rule you claim I should have broken? (It seems you do have some time spend, according to your activities on the the english wiki, so I believe its possible for you to take some time to answer this question even if you wrote above that you are very busy) Dan Koehl (talk) 16:05, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Even though I was the one to first raise this issue with a bureaucrat (in this case Dan Koehl), I feel I mainly have to go with OhanaUnited in this matter. Perhaps not because of the fact that a user was blocked – that happens all the time, and for good reasons – but definitely on procedural grounds, i.e. how it was done. For instance, there should be at least 24 hours from starting a poll to closing it and setting the decision into action. The reasons for this are many. To name a few, users might need to read up on talk page diffs, and reflect over the facts before making up there minds. Also, Wikispecies editors live all over the world, in all time-zones, hence are online at very different hours. There are many more, but these reasons are enough – as said above: what's the hurry? – and whether the issue relates specifically to Stho002's actions or any other user's is irrelevant. Furthermore and for future discussions, it is always "important to remember that blocks are preventative, rather than punitive" (quoted from MediaWikis Manual: Block and unblock). Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 23:44, 10 January 2015 (UTC).

Dear User:OhanaUnited and User:Tommy Kronkvist, it feels appropriate to answer you on the very same day as people will march against terrorism. There was to my knowledge never a poll, Wikispecies, to my knowledge, doesnt have polls for the purpose of blocking vandals. OhanaUnited labelled it a poll above, I cant read that anyone else did, when User:koavf asked if a block is appropriate. If User talk:OhanaUnited now, for the second time, wants to accuse me for breaking rules, I would sincerely prefer if this is done in an official way where he gives the community the possibility to judge if I did, and not just accuse me inside a discussion or on my discussion page. Unless Im getting accused in a appropriate, official way, I will futurevise regard similair accusations as personal attacks and harrassment.

Back to User:Stho002, please see the previous blocks of Stho002 with start 28 November 2008. As you can see he was blocked without previous discussions, polls, 48 hours waiting due to time-zones, or whatever, he was just blocked. I chose to wait at least 36 hours to see if anyone came to his defence, which you both didnt, although you were participating in the discussions. So, I can not see that your criticism is valid, or that my block was done in haste or whatever. But I would like to focus on something which I find more important, that in order to get unblocked, we demand that User:Stho002 follow some conditions, like a promise to follow the Wikispecies:Policy and meet the conditions of the community. Or at least that such demands are presented on his talk page.

After making users on Wikispecies leave, keeping the entire last year of Village pump repeatedley occupied with users issues with him, and being permanently blocked on english Wikipedia, and now blocked for the sixth time on Wikispecies, I find it appropriate that he promis to follow the rules on this project.

I can give several examples when User:Stho002 has been breaking the Wikispecies:Policy before, and I ask you, shall we demand from User:Stho002 anything different, than we demand from any user, to respect the Wikispecies:Policy and treat other users with normal respect?

Do you want Wikispecies to have increased and special tolerance for anyone who doesnt tolerate Wikispecies Wikispecies:Policy?

Dan Koehl (talk) 01:59, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

@Tommy Kronkvist:, @Dan Koehl: I agree with Dan Koehl that a block doesn't require a poll. Dan could have legitimately blocked Stho002 without asking for permission or conducting a poll. Any admin or crat has the right to block an offender whenever he thinks a person deserves it. This over-discussing and over-cautiousness only harms WS in that it lets offenders conduct a sort of a public trial where a lot of bad feeling are expressed and unnecessary rivalries are made. The bottom line is this: do we trust an admin/crat to make a reasonable decision on his own, blocking an offender, or not. If not than the admin/crat should be desysoped. If yes, his decision should be respected without the need of any poll. Mariusm (talk) 05:25, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

@Mariusm: I clearly said "I'm not justifying Stho002's actions here". By continuing to support Dan, Mariusm you're enabling Dan's administrative rule-breaking to continue. @Dan Koehl:, the "discussion" (or as I call it a poll) started with headings like "support" and "oppose", which is no different than RfA. And no you didn't leave it open for 36 hours. You voted support at 00:47, 9 January 2015 (UTC) and concluded it at 00:09, 10 January 2015 (UTC). That's less than 24 hours. In case you haven't read this, please read what constitutes as an "involved" admin and why it's never a good idea to use your tools when you are both a judge and a jury. I asked you a procedural question in terms of how long the block should be because your proposal didn't list out any. You ignored it and continued your discussion/poll anyway. I even predicted that this was going to happen (without naming names at that time but pretty much anyone in the community who have been following along knew that it's about your insufficiency in being impartial). I'm glad that stewards have taken notice to this type of procedural issue. (And no, it wasn't me who contacted @Billinghurst: so someone else must have felt the same way and contacted him.) OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 00:55, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: what your'e saying above doesn't amount to much. Your arguments certainly don't prove that Dan Koehl have broken any rule. You are trying to compare a blockage to a trial, mentioning judge, executor, jury (poll) etc., while a wiki doesn't work at all like this. If Dan Koehl reached the conclusion that Stho002 deserves to be blocked, than he is entitled to exercise his power to block the offender. No poll is needed, no jury and no judge. In fact Dan Koehl went out of his way to ensure fairness and to explain his reasons and the offenses which were made. Please don't try to bring accusations where none are appropriate, just because of your affiliation with an offensive user. Mariusm (talk) 06:20, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: I wonder if User:Mariusm is also going to try to tell you, a steward, that you are wrong and he is completely right, since you said largely the same as User:OhanaUnited in your exchange with user:Dan Koehl. Why is it, do you think, that User:Mariusm knows so much more than a steward about how a Wiki works? Or maybe he doesn't ... Stho002 (talk) 06:28, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited:, @Stho002:, I advise you to read carefully the Wikispecies Policy before making any false accusations. I wonder also who brought false accusations to the attention of Billinghurst, what these accusation really consisted of and whom asked for his intervention. Mariusm (talk) 07:01, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I wrote the following at Dan Koehl's talk page: "@Billinghurst: with all due respect it is exceptionally unfair on your part to drop the above accusations when you're not familiar with the exact situation here at Wikispecies. I'm an admin here, and I would like to know who exactly made these accusations against Dan Koehl. It would be helpful if you didn't pay attention to accusations which an offender is making, and instead help the community in establishing order and in respecting the rules. The offender, who is probably the person who contacted you, is disrupting this wiki for a very long time, and you must not come in his support without thorough investigation." Mariusm (talk) 08:21, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I would like to see a link to the rules, which I am supposed to have broke, according to @OhanaUnited:. As far as I know, any admin could block anyone who disrupt Wikispecies without a poll, where are those new rules located? And why, @OhanaUnited: all this aggressivness? It seems to me, that you have been supporting User:Stho002 since he came her after his block on the english Wiki, although he has a on numerous occasions broke policy rules. When I as the sixth admin, who has blocked him, do so, you choose to start a fight about this, although you are "retired" on your user page, and dont seem to be active in other ways on Wikispecies. Why is this user so important for you, that you neglect that he i constantly breaking the rules, and making the community upset? And why do you treat me like an enemy? Why dont you jin me and other admins in defence of Wikispecies, instead of defending User:Stho002? Dan Koehl (talk) 09:38, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: All you demonstrate here is the inability to know when to stop talking. When you are in a hole the advice is usually to 'stop digging'. I would suggest that you use more wisdom, and less words. I would even strongly suggest contemplative reflections of your words and actions.
>A couple of people have interpreted what I wrote on that page as an accusation or a criticism, which it is not, what is written is some thoughts on how an admin can demonstrate a consensus of a community especially while being part of a community making a decision, something in which stewards have experience. I am not and would not look to draw myself into a fight, as I have far better things to do with my day. Billinghurst (talk) 10:42, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: Please don't make misleading statements. What you wrote was, self-evidently, and by definition, a criticism of the procedure being adopted by User:Dan Koehl, whereby he was [quote]judge, jury and executioner[unquote] in a dispute in which he was himself involved. Stho002 (talk) 19:26, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Stho002, clutch at whichever straws you see. I think I know what I was trying to say, so that is somewhat audacious for you to infer otherwise. I made no negative criticism of DK on his talk page. Billinghurst (talk) 12:11, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: well, thank you very much for your clarification. The problem is that the offender interpreted your comments as a criticism against Dan Koehl and as a support for his own arguments and therefore as a license to continue with his disruptive behavior. Now that you've clarified your position, it only shows more clearly that Stho002 and OhanaUnited were categorically wrong in their accusations. Mariusm (talk) 11:29, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

If you think that my statements say that participants on one side of the argument are categorically wrong, then you have misread my statement, I have taken no sides. Personal narrative is just that. Billinghurst (talk) 12:11, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Wow Dan Koehl, what's with your rudeness? Almost all of the diffs I provided were quotes from other people. If you interpret opposition to your views as "aggressive", then you're sadly mistaken. Please don't lump other people's words and mischaracterize it as my own statement (although I do share their views that I quoted). All debates have two sides (just like it takes two to dance). Discussion like this are in the best interest of the entire project, not just you, Mariusm, or Stho002. I wanted to voice these concerns before I head off. Otherwise people will brush it off as stale. Anyways, I'm done here. Starting from coming Wednesday until end of April, I have better things to do (conducting tutorials) with my time and the job will actually pay me to do what I enjoy to do instead of taking verbal abuse while volunteering my time here. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 01:48, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited:, I note you never specified which rules I should have broken, and I just see some sort of emotional campaign against my person, which the Village pump was not intended for. For those more personal issues you want to have me, its OK if it makes you happy, but please, futurvise use my talk page for this, and not the Village pump. Village pump is intended for issues of public interest for the community. Dan Koehl (talk) 07:44, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes I did, 3 days ago. But just in case you don't like reading long text, here is the link once again. And this is the right place considering that multiple members have voted on your proposal AND that you acted based on your evaluation of community consensus per your own words not oncebut twice. It would do them a disservice if it's moved to your user talk page by brushing it off as personal issues. Why did you all of a sudden consider this as private matter? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 18:39, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I think we all appreciate what Billinghurst was pointing out - the inherent dangers of acting as judge, jury participant and executioner even when following consensus. However, he did not criticise Dan Koehl directly "I made no negative criticism of DK on his talk page". The difficulty for the WS community is that it is difficult to find active admins or crats who are unaffected by "discussions" with Stho002. Therefore a unilateral block, as is the right of admins and crats is untenable. Clearly we will need to be careful how block polls are conducted in the future, but that will need a new section and discussion. Andyboorman (talk) 20:32, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Content on main taxon pages

@Accassidy: @Dan Koehl: Look, I am just trying to uphold the single most fundamental rule of WS (and indeed all Wikimedia sites), namely, that contributors cannot, without consensus support, add new kinds of information to main taxon pages. The kinds of information allowed on main taxon pages are classification, name details (inluding types and type localities), and references, links and categories only. Anything else needs careful consideration/discussion before it can be added to main taxon pages. There is however, almost unlimited scope for adding new information by way of categories. The category links simply sit neatly at the bottom of main taxon pages and don't distract or overcomplicate. The default response to someone who goes ahead and adds unagreed upon new kinds of content to main taxon pages must be to remove that content and stop them, pending discussion/consideration of the issue. The default response cannot be to let them continue adding such content pending discussion/consideration, as this could take some time, and the potential problem will only get bigger if they continue adding stuff that then needs to be removed ... Stho002 (talk) 20:47, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: How can you talk about rules when you have broken every possible rule here? When you practically make your own rules and then enforce them upon everyone else? You decide single-handedly what is right and what is wrong, without discussing or paying attention to other opinions. In fact the majority here opposes your formatting and your methods, yet you've silenced any opposition with brutal force. Mariusm (talk) 09:02, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Disputed or contradictory taxonomies

Hi all, we've been recently editing on the Italian WP many pages on cnidarians, and I wanted to mirror part of the work we've done here. I started to do some edits, but I got stuck when some taxonomy is disputed between the two main sources cited on Wikispecies for the phylum Cnidaria, i.e. WoRMS and ITIS. How do you behave in such case? On the Italian wiki, after discussion, we decided to use WoRMS as primary source for classification, and just mention ITIS when it disagrees.

Here's an example of the difficulty I have:

• From the genus Chiropsalmus, the C. quadrigatus has been moved to the genus Chiropsoides as C. quadrigatus for WoRMS, but ITIS doesn't consider this change. So how would you list the species in Chiropsalmus and how would the Taxonav appear in Chiropsalmus quadrigatus ' page?

Thank you, --Ruthven (talk) 10:24, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I think you should stick with WoRMS, which is updated regularly and is more authoritative on cnidarians, while ITIS tends to be outdated. Mariusm (talk) 11:09, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it's the same conclusion we reached on WP. So if there's no problem in sticking to only one source, I'll update the taxons following WoRMS. Thanks! --Ruthven (talk) 13:09, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

By all means; go ahead and do it. Mariusm (talk) 15:35, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Couple of IP numbers

Could someone check the location of these IP numbers, please: 189.235.84.205 and 187.172.110.212. Thanks! - MPF (talk) 20:48, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Couldn't check out IP number, but genus and species are valid. I noticed that too. Neferkheperre (talk) 21:42, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! I eventually found an IP-checking site; they're both in Monterrey, Mexico. I was just a bit suspicious of two IP numbers editing the same pages at the same time, and despite being new, showing understanding of wiki editing. Nice that they're good edits; maybe a regular anon who works from a roving IP. - MPF (talk) 21:55, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

I keep GoogleScholar up on my toolbar. It is great for looking up these species, and can give good reference citations. Was good idea to wonder on Nosferatu, as that is strange name. But strange names are quite common. Bruce Runnegar of Australia named Hunkydoria back in '80s. Possibly this editor is one of our regulars on vacation. If I go on my other computer, it may not prompt me to log in, I forget, and I come off as anon. Neferkheperre (talk) 01:00, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

User:LaytheKat

I am back. I have been down some days with stomach virus, and will commenting above topics soon today. Meanwhile, check out this link: Zolapin. This is apparent steroidal spammer who just showed up here. As @Roswell UFO:, it created itself, then created @Laythekat:, and added picture of Amru Darya. Then quickly, some bot installed link above. Seems this one is globally blocked on all Wikis. There are listed over 100 aliases, mostly variants on Laythekat, and science fiction. I deleted Laythekat, but couldn't delete RoswellUFO because it does not officially exist yet. We need to keep our eyes out. Neferkheperre (talk) 21:03, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Matters arising from my recent block

@Accassidy:@Dan Koehl:@OhanaUnited:@Tommy Kronkvist:@MKOliver:@Neferkheperre:@MPF: As you all know, I was recently blocked by User:Dan Koehl, allegedly for "abusive behaviour/harrassment" (Eh?!), and initially for 1 week. He also blocked me from editing my own talk page, and yet posted messages for me there, with the implication that the block would not be lifted (or not stay lifted) if I didn't reply in the manner that he demanded. Of course, it was impossible to reply at all, as I could not edit my own talk page! I note that Koehl dismissed outright criticisms of his procedural decisions posted by another crat (User:OhanaUnited) and a fellow admin (User:Tommy Kronkvist), and has even gone so far as to argue against similar concerns raised by stewards! I'll leave this matter up to you all to ponder, but it seems well out of order to me. Anyway, one of the more serious matters to arise during my block is this edit, made by User:MPF, while I was blocked, and without mandate from any prior discussion. I would request him/her to revert his/her own edit voluntarily. Just about the whole of recent discussions (above) has been based on the premise that contributors have much more freedom to put whatever content they wish (within reason, of course) on category pages, as opposed to our core taxon pages. Yet MPF has removed useful content from a CATEGORY page, for no apparent reason. He/she may try to argue that lists of cultivated plants are not useful, but that is incorrect, and even if it were correct, it does not excuse his/her edit, while I was blocked, and without a mandate from prior discussion. Removing useful content from pages has a term: it is called vandalism. It may be noted that cultivated plants grow outdoors and often have host specific insects on them (accidentally introduced from the country of origin of the plant). The insects are "in the wild", even if the plant they are on is in cultivation. What sense is there in having the insects on the list of species for the country, but not their host plants? Additionally, botanists here do a fair bit of identifying and documenting cultivated plants. They might therefore find this information useful. Given that the information might be useful, and that it is doing no harm on a category page, I once again request MPF to revert his edit, and also to restore any removed category links to that category page. Thank you, Stho002 (talk) 01:07, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Stho002 you amaze me: as soon as you came out of your blockage you are again trying to inflame agitation and controversy among the community. The Category issue was never discussed or agreed upon and certainly wasn't established as a consensus. Imagine for example a plant which spans 100 countries. Is it reasonable to open 100 categories on it's page? Certainly this is not the way to do it. On top of this you're creating a huge imbalance for New-Zealand when you're flooding WS with thousands of categories for this specific country. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mariusm (talk • contribs) 05:25, 12 January 2015 (UTC.

This is your view, and it makes little sense. What is wrong with 100 categories? It is not compulsory to add them all, but each one provides useful extra information. Maybe not useful to you, but there are other people in the world, you know? Stho002 (talk) 05:29, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Your attitude is not constructive, and is largely disputed by the majority here. Mariusm (talk) 05:58, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

My attitude is largely disputed??? I don't see any meaning to your words Stho002 (talk) 06:03, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

More importantly: would you please answer the question which Dan Koehl posed you on your talk page, namely, are you willing to comply with WS policy as specified in the WS policy page. We all would like very much to get a straight answer to this simple question. Mariusm (talk) 05:24, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

This is not important at all Stho002 (talk) 05:29, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Your refusal to answer the question speaks volumes about your unwillingness to cooperate with this community. Mariusm (talk) 05:58, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Your endless rhetoric speaks even louder volumes. Anyway, even if you don't care about others here, I do, so to spare them the boredom from this endless ranting, what I am now writing is the very last time I am going to answer you or speak to you in any way. Stho002 (talk) 06:03, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@Mariusm:@Stho002:@MPF: You are both getting close to ritual abuse in this argument and you are getting nowhere, so please stop. I have put a question for on the discussion page concerned. Please refrain from using the Pump to further this argument while a response from User:MPF is awaited. Let us all please get back to constructive editing. Accassidy (talk) 12:17, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

The section I removed from Category:Agathis (New Zealand) was horticultural content wholly out of Wikispecies scope, devoid of any taxonomic content or significance; only about plants cultivated in New Zealand gardens and more suited to a horticultural site like Hortipedia. Its placement in a category does not exempt it from standard Wikispecies policy on acceptable content. - MPF (talk) 12:23, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@Accassidy: What MPF has stated is 100% incorrect. Wikispecies scope includes any useful information related to species (show me the relevant policy prohibiting content on cultivated plants, particularly when it isn't on core taxon pages - and indeed exactly the same argument could be levelled at distributional information plastered all over core taxon pages like some people here are trying to do!) The information was doing no harm. It was out of the way on category pages. Why does MPF want to remove it altogether?? As I said, this iformation links in with distributional information (and a lot of contributors here do want distributional information, in one form or another). Cultivated plants may have host specific insects on them. Where is the sense in having N.Z. listed in the distribution of the insect, but not listed in the distribution of the host plant?? Given that MPF has removed useful content from a page for reasons which only make sense to him, I am going now to revert his edit(s). If anyone objects, then we must have a consensus discussion over whether or not to remove the information again. But he cannot remove the information first, and require consensus discussion in order to reverse the removal. The information is not spam or vandalism. Stho002 (talk) 18:59, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

PS: I also note that MPF stated just "format" in the summary field of his unjustified edit. How is removal of content "format"??? And he made the edit not only without any prior discussion with the editor (me) who contributed the information, but also while I was blocked! Stho002 (talk) 19:01, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@Accassidy:@Dan Koehl: MPF has deleted several category pages and at least one reference that I had created, which are relevant to the same issue as above. All these need to be restored. This requires an admin to do so. Stho002 (talk) 19:09, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@Accassidy: please be reasonable! Your'e entirely missing the point! The battle here is not around this wretched category, it's about the future of wikispecies! The fact that you lump me together with Stho on saying "You are both getting close to ritual abuse" is a gross mistake. Don't you have nothing to say on Stho's refusing to respect the WS POLICY? Don't you have nothing to say on false accusations? Don't you have nothing to say on asking a steward to intervene and "rescue" an offender? Don't you have nothing to say on the forceful autocracy which Stho exercises? Don't you have nothing to say on Stho's forcing me to work offline? In my humble opinion you made a fatal mistake in shortening Stho's blockage. I'm sure we'll see the dire consequences in the days and weeks to come. As you can see nothing has changed. Stho didn't alter his act and his conduct is only worsening, is only aggravating. Mariusm (talk) 15:07, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Help:General Wikispecies#Scope of Wikispecies: Wikispecies is describing nomenclature and taxonomy. Contributing to Wikispecies means you are familiar with these topics. Topics not related to nomenclature or taxonomy do not belong on Wikispecies, and body-length pieces of text should be included on Wikipedia [my emphasis]. Horticulture is NOT related to nomenclature or taxonomy. Nor is the presence of non-native insects on non-native plants in New Zealand. And that exclusion applies to category pages, just as much as to template pages, or taxon pages. It may be useful information for New Zealand horticulturalists, but its place is on Hortipedia, not Wikispecies. - MPF (talk) 21:03, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

This is incorrect! Horticulture is RELATED to taxonomy and nomenclature [my emphasis]! Anything relating to species is so related. By your argument, nobody can add distributional information to WS either! Faunistics and floristics are related to taxonomy and nomenclature, and to distribution, and certainly do include non-native species. As are ecology, biodiversity informatics, etc. Where does anything state what can or cannot be included on category pages? Or did you just make that up? Stho002 (talk) 21:09, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

A proposal for a solution

@Dan Koehl: @Accassidy: I am (and have always been) willing and eager to find a solution to the above conflicts, but as yet I have had no indication from anybody else that they are willing to work together with me on finding and implementing a solution. The main problem here, as I see it is contributors insisting on doing things their way. I wish to reiterate that, as far as I am concerned, contributors have a great deal of scope to do things their way, subject to only to the caveat that nonstandard content ibe included by way of categories, rather than as templates splattered all over core taxon pages. Within reason (i.e. no spam, etc.), contributors are free to include whatever content they wish using categories, and nobody (I'm looking at you MPF) has the right to remove such content (at least not without a VERY good reason). So, if we were to all (or almost all) agree to this, then I suggest that we would all be able to go about our editing largely unchallenged and in a constructive and fruitful manner. It looks to me like this ongoing conflict has become ad hominem, and has lost sight of the actual issues involved, which I suggest are quite simple and easily solved. So, that is my proposal for the greater good of the project. Who is with me on this? Stho002 (talk) 20:09, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

There's no difference between categories splattered all over core taxon pages, and templates splattered all over core taxon pages. And no, contributors are NOT free to include whatever content they wish using categories; categories are part of Wikispecies and therefore subject to the same restrictions. - MPF (talk) 21:07, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

No, this is incorrect at all levels. Firstly, there is a major difference. Categories sit quietly and inoffensively at the bottom of core taxon pages, and don't jump out at the reader with bright colours or overly complex formats that only mean anything to their creator. I actually agree with you that information on WS should be kept clear and concise, but ON CORE TAXON PAGES. Other pages are a different story. Are biographical tidbits, or lists of publications allowed on author pages? They are not strictly taxonomy/nomenclature. Different kinds of pages have different rules. And why are you picking on me? Why aren't you going through and reverting all the edits of Fagus, Orchi, etc. who have splattered core taxon pages with overly elaborate distributional templates? Your "argument" is clearly no more than a personal crusade, probably aimed more at me, in ad hominem fashion, and therefore lacks any rational basis. Clearly, some sort of compromise has to be found, but you are, equally clearly, demonstrating a complete refusal to budge from your unnecessarily hard line viewpoint. This is not helpful to the project. Stho002 (talk) 21:22, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

If you'd restricted your categories to New Zealand natives, I wouldn't have done anything about them. Natural distributions do affect taxonomy; human introductions don't. But you have splattered them all over the place, on taxa which effectively have nothing to do with New Zealand at all; Fagus and Orchi have not done so. The way you have added {{NZ}} to taxa represented by just one or two specimens in one or two specialist botanical gardens leads to the logical conclusion that if other countries were treated similarly, a lot of species would end up with close to 200 categories. Which makes a complete mockery of your claim that they "sit quietly and inoffensively". - MPF (talk) 21:58, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Again, you make the "rules" up as you go along, without justification, and again you miss the point about cultivated plants. Repeating myself (yet again!), cultivated plants may have host specific insects on them. These insects are not "human introductions". They can establish themselves in a country at any time. Some of these are invasive species, which are of very high importance. If you are going to have the insect on a country distribution list, then you also need to have the host plant. Some species of organisms are naturally cosmopolitan, i.e. native to all countries. These would require all 200 or so categories anyway. But that is OK, because it is just a longish list of categories at the bottom of a core taxon page. IT DOES NO HARM. Stho002 (talk) 22:11, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

PS: To say that [quote]Natural distributions do affect taxonomy[unquote] lacks any meaning. How can a distribution affect taxonomy? You are not making sense Stho002 (talk) 22:13, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

PS2: None of this is actually relevant to the main point, i.e. your abuse of admin powers by deleting pages in a dispute in which you are yourself involved. You should have asked an uninvolved admin to do it. Stho002 (talk) 22:16, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl: @Stho002: @Mariusm: @MPF: The scope of WikiSpecies is limited with the specific intention that it does not become an alternative to Wikipedia but complementary to it. Thus taxon pages should be strictly limited without any specific distributional information. The policy at Help:General_Wikispecies#Scope_of_Wikispecies is specific that distributional information should be on discussion/talk pages. So, if a South American plant happens to be cultivated in New Zealand, the proper place to note this is on the talk page for that species, not in a Category of all plants cultivated in New Zealand. It is pointless to include such data here as people will simply not look for it here. For Stho002 to create a mini-wikipedia for New Zealand on WikiSpecies is inappropriate. However, I, for one, have no time to go through all those edits and enforce a policy convention in this regard. It is my firm opinion, however, that Stho002 is deviating in many such respects from the aims of WikiSpecies. Whether this actually does any harm is a different question. It probably does not. Similarly, any significant distribution data for plants, insects and so on, erected by other users, should also be put on talk pages not on main taxon pages. So it is probable that a number of editors could and should work in marginally different ways, using talk pages more and keeping main taxon pages free from significant notation about distribution, either as "wild" organisms or as "cultivated" ones. I urge all of you to bear this in mind and to concentrate on page creation and less on elaboration. I do not agree with Stho002 in his assertion that the category system present editors with a free hand to add any non-taxonomic information at their leisure ("contributors are free to include whatever content they wish using categories"). This is not the purpose of WikiSpecies, which is not here to present such peripheral information, although I understand that this might appear an attractive alternative to someone blocked from editing Wikipedia. So, my proposal for a solution is to keep taxon pages free from distribution but also from excessive lists of categories; to put distributional data on talk pages and nowhere else; if you have the time to create a category page for "Butterflies native to South America bred in captivity in New Zealand as food for birds in Tasmanian zoological gardens" or something similar, then just keep the data on your own computer and don't bother us with it here. Now its my bedtime. Accassidy (talk) 22:56, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl: @Stho002: @Mariusm: @MPF: @Accassidy: I have read Accassidy's opinion, and wish to make just a few comments:

(1) Firstly, my assertion that contributors can do whatever they want (within reason) on category pages was intended, at least in part, to be a compromise solution with Orchi, AndyBoorman, Fagus, etc., who are launching continual attacks at me, for trying to convince them of the very thing that Accassidy is now saying, namely, that distributional information is not appropriate on core taxon pages. Therefore, if Accassidy's opinion is to be enforced, it must be enforced equally with regard to these other contributors, not just me. This actually makes Accassidy's opinion far harder on them than mine was, because I was happy to let them do what they wanted to do, but on category pages. Talk pages are actually for talk, i.e. discussion, rather than for the presentation of additional information. I don't think that anyone is going to be very happy with having to hide useful information on talk pages, where hardly anyone will bother to look. Stho002 (talk) 23:06, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

(2) Wikipedia scope already includes everything that is also in the scope of Wikispecies, so our only chance of being "an alternative" is to do things differently to them, and my approach achieves that, whereas the approach expounded above by Accassidy simply makes WS a redundant subset of enWP. Stho002 (talk) 23:10, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

(3) There is no policy mandate against "excessive lists of categories", nor any definition of "excessive". It is unlikely that full lists of categories will ever be completed, but each one provides useful information in its own right Stho002 (talk) 23:12, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

(4) >Whether this actually does any harm is a different question. It probably does not< This should be the primary question. Why do people so vehemently want to stop others here from adding useful information which does no harm?? It makes NO SENSE! Are they going to spend hours deleting all "offending" content? Don't they have anything better to do?? Stho002 (talk) 23:15, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

(5) >"Butterflies native to South America bred in captivity in New Zealand as food for birds in Tasmanian zoological gardens"< This example is ridiculously exaggerated! The only categories I am adding relate to which species can be encountered in N.Z., etc., and how they are interacting with other species (insect herbivores on plants, etc.) Plants in cultivation are a part of the environment. Animals in captivity less so, and I don't include these. Stho002 (talk) 23:17, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Taking stock

So, we appear to have a complete lack of consensus over distributional information: @Accassidy: admits that it does no harm, but wants to relegate it all into talk pages. @MPF: has no problem with categories for "native" (presumably he means naturalised) species, but fears the harm done by information on cultivated species so much that he has already set about deleting such content, abusing his admin powers in the process. Then we have the likes of @Orchi:, @Fagus:, etc., who want to plaster distributional templates all over core taxon pages. Finally, we have myself and presumably @Neferkheperre:, who are happy to let users use categories for this purpose and have no problem with cultivated plants. We can call this last one the compromise solution. So, what to do??? Stho002 (talk) 00:38, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

No, by native, I mean native. Not naturalised. And no, your view is not the compromise solution, it is just one viewpoint very different from other viewpoints. And you are completely misrepresenting my views. - MPF (talk) 00:50, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, you are the only one here with your views (whatever the detail). So why are you abusing your admin tools to force your views on the rest of us?? Stho002 (talk) 00:56, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

IMO we have no compromise, but we do have an offer from a third party Ruthven below, I suggest we take this up and give it a go. Andyboorman (talk) 16:33, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Give what a go? Ruthven's "offer" is confused and confusing. Stho002 (talk) 20:12, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I must add that I do not use distribution data or categories, but understand those who do. I can see little difference in distribution data being hidden in categories or collapsible templates, if it is to appear on the main page. However, my main concern is for those editors who have spent time and effort producing the information, whether as categories or templates. Unilateral deletes without discussion and consensus are contrary to the spirit of a wiki. Whatever is decided, if it involves change, we must give time for those concerned to migrate the data to talk pages, WP or whatever. Perhaps I am just a boring purist at heart just wanting to fill red links and so on! Andyboorman (talk) 19:51, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Tell that to MPF! Also, your hypocrisy astounds me, as you have just reverted my reverts to MPFs unjustified removal of my categories to some Agathis species! You may be boring, but there is nothing "purist" about you. Stho002 (talk) 20:16, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: @Billinghurst: My comments above were across the board. Also I think you need to check before you write, as I think you have made a mistake during a heated argument by accusing me of hypocrisy in reverting your Agathis reverts! Recent changes indicate it was @Mariusm:. No need for apologies. Andyboorman (talk) 20:52, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

@Andyboorman:I agree that there is no need for apologies. Actually, I did think before I wrote, and I figured that if I accused Mariusm directly of this he would just deny/twist it, and nobody would bother to even check to confirm my accusations. Thank you, for bothering to check and confirm that those edits were indeed made, regardless of which particular unjustified editor was responsible for making them (Mariusm in this case) Stho002 (talk) 20:59, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Bizarre, surreal, devious....speechless even! Made me chuckle though. Andyboorman (talk) 21:11, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Actually, more devious than you think, as it was in fact a simple mistake! :) So, yes, I do apologise for not getting things exactly right, for once. Let me set a good example, by admitting my mistakes, and not trying to cover them up. It is just so hard to keep track of who is who among my numerous enemies around here ... Stho002 (talk) 21:16, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002:, @Andyboorman:, @MPF: Any country-category which belongs to a species which isn't native to that particular country will be removed and that is the consensus right now at WS! Mariusm (talk) 05:18, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl: @OhanaUnited: @Billinghurst: No it is NOT! It is vandalism and abuse of admin powers. Stho002 (talk) 05:31, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl:, @Andyboorman:, @MPF:, @Stho002: I must stress again that we have to enforce the consensus that country-categories which belong to non-native species should be deleted! Mariusm (talk) 06:30, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl: @OhanaUnited: @Mariusm: I must stress again that you are in danger of being declared a rogue admin, abusing your admin powers and unilaterally declaring a "consensus" which doesn't exist in a dispute in which you are yourself the main antagonist. Any misuse of your admin powers will result in an emergency request to stewards to have you desysoped. As @Andyboorman: has eloquently stated, we do not delete (which only admins have the power to do, not me) hard work that others have done. Stho002 (talk) 06:35, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Please provide links and diffs to the crimes you accuse the three persons above for, including being a rogue admin, abusing my admin powers and being the main antagonist. Dan Koehl (talk) 23:43, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Clearly, I was talking about Mariusm (I'm hardly likely to be accusing OhanaUnited of anything, am I, since he was the perfect model for objectivity/fairness). As for evidence against Mariusm, it is right there under your nose. Just read his last few posts above (where he lies about there being a consensus "right" now, and threatens to delete (something which requires admin powers) on that false basis Stho002 (talk) 00:24, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002:, I can not agree with you that MPF has vandalized the project and abused admin powers. I also want to inform you that you are closing up to abuse the Wikispecies:Policy again. Like everyone else you have the right to discuss, argue for your opinion, but please be reaasonable in your arguments, treat fellow wikipedians polite and with normal respect, and if the community doesnt agree with you, respect that. Dan Koehl (talk) 06:34, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@Dan Koehl: @Billinghurst: Seriously Dan! MPF used his admin powers to delete a perfectly fine reference template, while engaged in a dispute with me, and did it while I was blocked. It seems that you still fail to understand the concept of INVOLVEMENT in a dispute. This is a clear case of admin power abuse if there ever was one. I have tried to discuss and argue for my opinion, but nobody has responded. Discussion is a two-way activity. Stho002 (talk) 06:39, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

And stop pinging me every time you don't like the solution; I am not a certified-member of this community, my editing is at best casual. Stho002, you have to accept that sometimes your opinion, whilst strong, is not the opinion of your community no matter how many times you yell the loudest. We are all entitled to an opinion, it is just that sometimes some of know to when to stop expressing it. Billinghurst (talk) 13:40, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Categories

Hi all, just my grain of salt on this polemic as I'm the last arrived in this community. Part of what Stho002 wrote above is correct: Wikispecies doesn't have to overlap the other projects (that's the reason why images should be limited in the taxon pages, for example). To understand what's going on, I checked Category:Sagola sulcator (New Zealand) (tell me if it's a wrong example). It seems to me that this is not a correct use of categories, even if it makes no harm at all (it's just a way to keep information). IMHO the reasons are:

1. Categories are there to make lists. Having a Category Sagola sulcator (New Zealand) doesn't make sense because it's a singleton. Better is achieved in that direction from Category:Sagola_(New_Zealand). However, it includes a localism (New Zealand) that might have nothing to do with this particular project. What's wrong with using simply the Category:Sagola?
2. Categories include information that should be in a page, a Wikipedia page in particular. I understood that information about taxons are relegated here in the Discussion/Talk page (which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but anyways...). So why not to write this information in a page on Wikipedia and then link it to the one on WS? So all the information would be available on the other project and would be reachable within a click (it's easier than to go to the hidden category page!). On WP there is a serious lack of such informed articles on taxons and the information included by Stho002 (and other users) would by itself help a lot to fix this lacuna. --Ruthven (talk) 13:15, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

You make some good points, but Stho002 has a WP ban. Andyboorman (talk) 15:41, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I was creating WP articles in tandem with my work on WS. They started crying I was too technical. Also, their required format does not permit reference templates, so all sources have to be entered separately on each page. I brought this up on their discussion boards, no useful result. Bleh. Neferkheperre (talk) 21:28, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I'm laughing quietly to myself that people here seem to think they can just go over to enWP and dump whatever they like there! Dreaming!! Stho002 (talk) 21:37, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

In any case, the matter here is to decide a policy about how to write extra information about taxons (distribution, papers, etc.) because not all the users agree with the way it is done. The question is quickly fixed by listing all the propositions, vote, and then enforce the newly decided rules (by the mean of rollbacks, banning, protecting pages, etc.); the users will follow them. Ciao! --Ruthven (talk) 13:15, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, probably because of the acrimony in current and past debates, we are unlikely to get enough editors, admins and crats discussing and voting to make the process meaningful. But please do not let my cynicism stop you from giving it a go! Andyboorman (talk) 15:41, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I was giving a try because I'm new and not involved in past edit wars. Wikipedia project is not a democracy, so no majority needed to establish some reasonable rules (now it's me looking cynical!). I don't think that proposing possible solutions to find a consensus is a dead end (unless we stop making implementable propositions and prefer to fight). I suggested to direct the effort on WP, using categories for other purposes. I am open in enriching the articles on WS with more info, but it seems that it's not the way the majority wants. Maybe someone wants to add his solution, and whenever the ban ends, Stho002 will be able to propose his own compromise (BTW: he wrote a proposal upper). --Ruthven (talk) 16:16, 13 January 2015 (UTC) playing the ingénue on purpose :)

Please explain how we are to understand "consensus" if "no majority [is] needed"? In other words, what is the actual difference between "democracy" and "consensus"?? Stho002 (talk) 20:06, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

As for the other "points" above, a category is a list, yes, but a list can be of any length, including length=1. I am beginning to suspect that we are being infiltrated by some people loyal to enWP, who are trying to prevent WS from being a better rival Stho002 (talk) 20:10, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I have in last 3-4 months, been doing a good bit of category creations, and creating important (to me) supporting taxonomic systems. See CAS. This was discussed here and generally approved as replacement for Holotype page, which is unwieldy and effectively unusable. This consists of namepage using general acronym, pertinent information on location, associated publications, and collections databases. All repository pages list into Category:Repositories, and attached are listed subcategories also based on acronym. Is very simple to use on taxon namepages. When citing type numbers, put acronym in square brackets to link to its dedicated page. In that page's category section, simply enter Category:acronym to enter that species into that repository's register. Since getting effective go-ahead for this project, @Mariusm: has entered 3, but doesn't appear to be using it any more. I have created about 40 repository pages.
At top of this section, just under Happy New Year, I proposed highly integrated system to compile maximum information on biological expeditions. Nobody ever commented. To me, repository pages, expedition pages, and categories, when properly crafted, will provide powerful supporting information for main taxon pages. I shall be expanding.
Incidentally, I would much rather we stay out of endemism discussions. Way too subjective, and much endemism can be demonstrated to result from reliction, as well as original native ranges. Neferkheperre (talk) 21:28, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Seems to me a good initiative @Neferkheperre: When I used the Holotype to mark a Repository, the link seemed to me very blurry (a section in a page that can be edited): in this way it's clear and the category with the repository automatically lists all the elements that use it. Happy 2015 to you too!

PS: @Stho002: I like you're humour :) But to be crystal clear, I meant this Consensus.--Ruthven (talk) 21:46, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

You are still not making sense. This still contradicts what you said (i.e. "no majority [is] needed"). Also, policies from enWP have no direct relevance here, as we are a different site (albeit under the same Wikimedia umbrella, but with different policies) Stho002 (talk) 22:00, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I applaud the initiative of Neferkheperre on Categories for Museums, Type Collections etc, and Ruthven for pointing out the consensus page on WP which should be studied closely by all who have been exchanging views above. I am still hoping that we can create a better working environment here by more use of discussion pages rather than reverting and concentrating on taxonomy rather than ecology or biogeography. Accassidy (talk) 10:10, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Multilingualism I'd like to reiterate that if categories are kept for navigation, they should be internationalized by using ISO codes, not English names. There are times when it's necessary to use English as a lingua franca (sad but true) but this is not one of them. Especially when it's virtually machine-readable content. Use something like "marsupials (au)" and have a map of Australia on the category page so someone who doesn't even understand that can piece it together from context clues. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 07:32, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@Koavf: I couldn't agree with you more, but right now we are unable to reach any agreement at WS due to - as Andyboorman put it nicely above - "because of the acrimony in current and past debates" (i.e. because of "Stho002 reactions"). It is sad, but this is the situation here right now. Mariusm (talk) 08:19, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@Mariusm: Also agreed. The solution is to either a.) talk about it first and see what the community thinks or b.) go ahead and do something and then say, "Hey, community: I have a working prototype of something much larger that I have planned: what do you think?" and then have that discussion. Doing your own thing in a non-standard way for several years and then butting heads with others about it doesn't work well. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:23, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@Koavf: (a) in the present environment it is practically impossible to conduct a calm and fruitful discussion I'm afraid and, (b) I wouldn't want to make a considerable investment of my time (in maps etc.) only to be refuted in the end by the customary reverts and deletes, if you know what I mean by cutomary... Mariusm (talk) 08:43, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Actually the idea is that it the community thinks that an idea is worth trying, the effort is common and there will no be deletes, nor reverts :)

For the maps is possible to coordinate with the many image labs around the project, and ask to a graphic designer to prepare a model for species distribution. I am explicipty thinking about the sister project Commons, that hosts all the images and graphics... People working here on categories can ask for help in Common's Graphic Lab. --Ruthven (talk) 12:46, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Using ISO codes presupposes that distribution categories are political rather than biogeographic. Biogeographic units are more relevant to Wikispecies, but political units are certainly easier to use (since political boundaries are precisely defined). New Zealand is unusual in having a political unit overlap very closely with a biogeographic unit. However, it appears that the existing New Zealand category is a biogeographic unit that doesn't correspond to ISO NZ. Category:Biota (New Zealand) seems to cover the 3 largest islands and those immediately offshore. If you go to Category:Biota by region, other island groups that are politically part of New Zealand have their own category trees.

Either way (political or biogeographic), there's no reason the categories should be limited to the highest levels (e.g. countries for political units). There could be dozens of distributional categories on each taxon page. I was going to suggest Category:Turdus migratorius (Central Park, New York City, USA) and Category:Loasaceae (Alluvial fans of the western Mojave desert) as reductio ab aburdum examples of how finely grained political/biogeographic categories could get, but then I saw the existing categories Category:Checklist of the beetles of Lynfield, New Zealand‎ and Category:New Zealand gravel beaches. Is there any consensus for how far down distribution categories should go? Plantdrew (talk) 21:21, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Any category is acceptable that someone may find interesting or useful, even if it is just the creator of the category. However, the 2 examples that you point to were just experiments by me, and I have now tagged them for deletion, as they are no longer relevant. Stho002 (talk) 21:29, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Rival infiltrating

Hello. I'm infiltrating from enWP. There's not much for me to do to keep WS from being a better rival when you are already sabotaging yourselves so effectively (through "acrimony in current and past debates"). I don't really understand why you need to view other Wikimedia projects as rivals, rather than as complementary efforts, but if you're looking for rivals, look beyond enWP. The Waray, Cebuano, and Swedish wikipedias each cover around 1.2 million organisms, far beyond Wikispecies 400k. A random organism which is covered by ANY Wikimedia project is probably NOT covered by WS or enWP. That's a real lost opportunity for WS. The aforementioned projects have achieved their coverage through bots. WS has had some bot activity, but doesn't currently. It saddens me to see in this exchange (User talk:Koumz/Archive 2#Restarting User:KoumzBot task) that acrimony in debates has ended any effort to use bots on WS. Here's a link for a random article on Waray Wikipedia (and click the 5th link in the sidebar, "Bisan ano nga pakli" for another random article). Plantdrew (talk) 20:55, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello! You are obviously one of these people who value quantity over quality. Bots just create stubs. WS pages are potentially far better than that, if, as you perhaps rightly do point out, we can stop "sabotaging yourselves [ourselves] so effectively" ... Stho002 (talk) 21:25, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: Well I tried recruiting Betacommand (who has demonstrated to be able to take some flak and has the necessary programming skills) without success. And the original bot creator on en.wp who wrote massive amount of species articles with the bot didn't respond to my enquiry. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 08:19, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: Have you tried contacting anyone on sv.wp? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:20, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

You're asking the wrong person. I can't read Swedish. But Dan Koehl can and his userpage says he's a PHP programmer. I recall the script was written either in Python or PHP. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 08:23, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: Granted, but virtually all Swedes know English... —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:24, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Koav, well that's not my fault is it? And it's not like I didn't try to approach or recruit bot owners. Besides, I used to run an AWB bot (User:OhanaBot) that cleaned up pages. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 22:17, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: I'm confused: the point I was making was that if you want to reach out to sw.wp editors, they will almost certainly be able to help you in English. I think that's a good sign, actually. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:29, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

@Koavf: I'm showing that someone else who is already present in the community, has the technical know-how to do the job, and has the language skillset to engage the sw.wp community is a better candidate than I am. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 21:32, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Just a note regarding the ISO 639 alpha-2 language codes and site prefixes. For Swedish Wikipedia it should read "sv.wp". Instead using "sw.wp" would imply the Swahili language version of Wikipedia. Dan Koehl is a frequent visitor of Africa and might very well know some Swahili, but I certainly don't... :-) We're both fluent in Swedish though. Cheers, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 21:48, 18 January 2015 (UTC).

Oh come on Tommy, you know what I mean :P OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:25, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes I do Andrew, but I didn't mention it just to swing a stick at you. That's not who I am. Rather, it seems to be quite a common mistake. Both you and Justin made it in this thread, and before the Wikidata system was launched I frequently wrote [[sw:name_of_article]] instead of [[sv: … ]] when adding Swedish inter-wiki links to the English Wikipedia. Hence I simply wanted to spotlight the error, so that we might all be less prone to make it in the future – yours truly included! :-)

To get back to the real matter at hand, do you remember the user name of the original bot creator on enwp that you mentioned above? Perhaps I might be able to reach him. All the best, Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 16:34, 20 January 2015 (UTC).

@Tommy Kronkvist: I know. It's confusing when the ISO language code is sv but the website's country code is .se. Going back to the bot issue. After spending over 30 mins and many mouse clicks, I finally found it. The bot is called Polbot and it used to create species articles back in 2007 (scroll down to task #6, and yes, it was 8 years ago). This bot stopped editing 6 years ago and the bot owner, User:Quadell became inactive 9 months ago before completely stopped editing 3 months ago. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:36, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks!! I'll look in to it. Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 05:26, 21 January 2015 (UTC).

A bot, while being a great tool for adding numerous species effortlessly in a fly, hardly addresses the content issue. We do not want to have a lot of pages which merely include the taxon name, year and author name. Without true references, synonyms and holotypes, these will hardly be useful to anyone, and are prone to introduce lots of inaccuracies by way of synonyms, transferred names etc. Mariusm (talk) 06:20, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: As an aside, I just saw this article. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:50, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

@Koavf: You're a bit behind the times. I knew about this bot more than a year ago. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:31, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

An open alert to user Stho002

@Stho002: as you seem to be ignoring my message at your talk page, and as you seem to turn a blind eye to my advises, I have no choice but to resort to other measures. I will revert myself the Agathis pages again, where you've added information which is opposed-to by the WS majority wish and which is misleading and counter-productive, namely country-categories for non-endemic plants. If you choose to rewrite these categories back again then you'll be violating the rule Do not start an edit war, so I'll be obliged to exercise my power as an admin and to block you. [As a corollary, your polemics style unfortunately prevents us from conducting a sober poll on the category issue, yet three admins, namely myself, @Andyboorman: and @MPF: are unquestionably opposed to them, so this fulfills my requirement as a justification.] Mariusm (talk) 05:41, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: @OhanaUnited: @Dan Koehl: Will one of you kindly clarify, in terms of site policies and/or Wikimedia Foundation terms and conditions, whether or not Mariusm is allowed to claim as justification agreement between just 3 admins (while others have diverse views), of which he himself is one of those three, to constantly hound me and threaten me with use of his admin powers? If I can't get a straight answer from crats or stewards, I will be approaching WMF directly about this matter. Being constantly threatened by Mariusm with his admin powers unless I do things his way is surely a serious matter which cannot be ignored? Stho002 (talk) 06:23, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@Billinghurst: @OhanaUnited: @Dan Koehl: Specifically, Mariusm's post (above) could be considered to breach Civility – You support a civil environment and do not harass other users in WMF Terms and Conditions. I don't think that me putting New Zealand templates on a few plant pages can be construed as a breach of civility, but Mariusm's reaction to it (above) looks to me like a serious breach thereof ... Stho002 (talk) 06:39, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Also, by reverting my edits, hasn't Mariusm broken the rule Do not start an edit war - the very rule that anticipates (wrongly) that I am going to break?? Stho002 (talk) 06:49, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Just to show the superfluousness of Stho002 practices: The species Agathis macrophylla is endemic to the Solomon Islands, to Vanuatu and to Fiji, yet Mr. Stho002 inserted for this page a category for New-Zealand. Isn't this apt to mislead the casual reader? Isn't this against everything that WS strives for? What is the logic behind this practice to flood WS with these N.Z. categories? Every normal person will raise an eyebrow at such a perplexing practice. Mariusm (talk) 09:30, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

We are concerned that categories, as well as being confusing, can be used a dump for all sorts of information that the editor finds, but has minimal relevance to WS. In addition, IMO is hypocritical for you to criticise others for deleting/reverting/edit wars and being uncivil/harassing/high handed when the problem many of the community have with you is these exact behaviours. Andyboorman (talk) 11:10, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Concur with @Mariusm: and @Andyboorman:; these New Zealand categories for taxa not native to New Zealand are out of Wikispecies project scope, and highly misleading to readers (not just casual readers either, but any readers not intimately familiar with the taxon), or with the current misuse of Wikispecies as a personal website for storage of irrelevant New Zealand-related data.

Further to the above, note also the misuse of Wikispecies for lists of garden plants cultivated in parks in New Zealand, e.g. Category:Albert Park, Category:Paddington Reserve, Glen Innes, 3.3 ha, and for regions of New Zealand, e.g. Category:New Zealand AK.

Additionally, the reproduction of almost the entire Contents of the Auckland Botanical Society Journal here (example subpage with full verbatim reproduction of the contents of Vol. 69 here), New Zealand Journal of Zoology ISSN 0301-4223, and other journals. While citation of individual papers as references is of course permissible where relevant to the nomenclature or taxonomy of a particular taxon, reproduction of the entire contents pages represents breach of copyright of the journals concerned, and also misuse of Wikispecies as many of the papers listed are not directly related to nomenclature or taxonomy.

reproduction of the entire contents pages represents breach of copyright of the journals concerned < Absolute NONSENSE! Stho002 (talk) 20:18, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

It will be instructive to see the results of any approach to WMF. One can assume that WMF will investigate the case thoroughly, including noting Stho002's permanent block on en:wiki for personal attacks and harassment - attitudes which remain very obvious on this page - and use of sockpuppets. Given Stho002's past history of sockpuppet use on en:wiki, a check here appeared advisable; based on this, I would like to make a formal Checkuser request on the account User:Biota (Talk, Contributions). This account was opened and used during the brief period of Stho002's recent block, with - for a supposed 'newbie' - remarkable knowledge of Wikispecies formatting to the individualistic style of Stho002 (including use of templates, generally very unfamiliar to genuinely new users) with only fairly minimal pretence at unfamiliarity.

All in all, I find enough evidence here, in multiple aspects of harrassment of other contributors, misuse of Wikispecies as a personal website, breach of copyright, and possible sockpuppetry, to propose a formal permanent block for User:Stho002. - MPF (talk) 12:09, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Likewise, I see more than enough evidence for a permanent block for MPF. He has breached WMF terms and conditions (namely civility), he wrongly accuses me of "breach of copyright" (for which I am presently going to persue defamation against him), he is harrassing me, and "possible sockpuppetry" needs to be proved before it is a reason for any block, and the fact that I didn't edit under any other account while this one was blocked makes such proof "unlikely", to say the least Stho002 (talk) 21:06, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@MPF: UPDATE: I have just sent the following email to the relevant address:

Hello,

I am under siege from a mob of sysops at Wikispecies. They are all in breach of WMF terms and conditions (specifically "Civility"), and are constantly threatening me with sysop action even though they are not uninvolved in the dispute. More seriously, one of them has publicly accused me of a criminal offence, namely "breach of copyright". See the following diff:

https://species.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikispecies:Village_Pump&diff=prev&oldid=2098080

I think that you will easily be able to determine that the contents (in terms of mere citations of the contained articles) of a journal is not subject to copyright in any country in the world! I therefore request that these baseless accusations of wrongdoing are expunged from public view a.s.a.p., that the perpetrator be appropriately dealt with, and I strongly suggest that something needs to be done to stop this continual harassment of me by a mob of sysops.

Sincerely,

Stephen

Again, absolute nonsense. Yes, User:Biota is me, but User:Biota made no edits during the period when I was blocked. Multiple accounts are allowed, except for the purposes of evading a block. Since User:Biota was not used to evade a block, there is no problem. Stho002 (talk) 20:21, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

The two accounts were created just after we began to discuss to block you, Stephen. User:BiodiverseCity was created 9 januari 2015 01.11 and User:Biota was created 9 januari 2015 01.13, this is 24 minutes after I agreed with User:koavf that you should be blocked, which I did 00:47, 9 January 2015 (diff). Dan Koehl (talk) 23:29, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Again you show lack of understanding of policy and procedure. The accounts were neither created nor used to evade a block (and the only relevant evidence otherwise would be edits made while blocked). End of story Stho002 (talk) 23:33, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Any legitimate use of a sockpuppet has to be agreed with administrator(s) or bureaucrat(s) beforehand. The use of edit summaries like "Creating my first reference template!", "Hey, this is fun!", "This way seems better", and "Enough for one day" (Biota: Contributions) all show an intention of pretence to be a new contributor, and therefore a clear attempt to deceive. This, together with the timings pointed out by Dan Koehl, are abundant evidence that the accounts were created with the intention of block evasion. - MPF (talk) 14:30, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree with a permanent block for User:Stho002 although I dont see this as a poll. Previous shorter blocks has led to nothing, why I see only a permanent block as a solution to the different problems that User:Stho002 create, scaring away new members (the latest 31st of December, see User talk:Ternarius) and creating a negative working environment as maybe the largest for Wikispecies. Should he later manage to convince the community that he has changed attitute, theres the possibility to unblock. I also agree with MPF that the possible sockpuppetry with User:Biota and User:BiodiverseCity should be analyzed, but I wrote a steward the 9th of January regarding this, and had the answer: You can request a CU on m:SRCU, but you will need to provide evidence. If the username creations and their timing is all you have to go on, that probably won’t be enough.. Dan Koehl (talk) 13:49, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I see also a stumbling block in the fact that we are unable to conduct a single normal discussion among us, to debate in low tones, with mutual agreements, with respect for each other, with a willing to fulfill the majority's will. Our debates always end with shouts, with hard feelings, with indecision, with rancor. I must say that the major cause for this difficult situation lies in the manner of Stho002's debate. I would advise him to lower his tones and to show more respect for different opinions. Mariusm (talk) 15:03, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, I have just alerted WMF of this nonsense and I await a reply Stho002 (talk) 20:17, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Could the WS community see a copy of this alert message? Thanks Andyboorman (talk) 20:38, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Not possible, it was an email on Metawiki to the first recently active user I could find with (Wmf) after their user name. All I wrote was that I desperately needed advice regarding this matter, and gave them a link to this page/section Stho002 (talk) 20:45, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Andyboorman (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

You are very welcome. Please note that the posts (above) in this section, by Mariusm, MPF and maybe Dan Koehl, are clear evidence of a breach in civility on their part, and express overt threats to use their sysop powers against me for reasons which are contentious to say the least, and which certainly aren't just a simple matter of vandalism, spam, or any breach of terms and conditions on my part. This is the core of my argument to WMF. Stho002 (talk) 21:11, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Furthermore, I would like to reiterate, yet again, that I am more than happy to rationally discuss any disputed issues relating to WS content/format, and try to arrive at a compromise solution. However, the only "response" I have had to date to this suggestion is you lot just keep coming at me with knives out, like the walking dead or something, just contantly banging your fists on the table to reaffirm your irrationally based opinions which seem totally resistant to reason. Stho002 (talk) 21:20, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Can everyone see how Stho002 used his admin powers against other users, when he could block at this link? Below is from EncycloPeteys talk page, before Stho002 blocked him for a week, 25th of October 2013.

That's just one of many problems you have created, including the fact that you have placed certain orders in a division and a phylum that are separate from each other. You are using an oudated and inherently inconsistent system. Everything was fine before your edits. --EncycloPetey (talk) 22:15, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I am trying to sort it out, and make several things consistent with each other, but it will take time to do so. Perhaps a week long block will teach you some patience? Stho002 (talk) 02:04, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Abuse of admin tools is not the way to sort out a problem. Why not figure out the solution with me before introducing your errors? --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:05, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I am not "introducing errors", you just don't understand what I'm trying to do, and you didn't ask what I was doing, and as soon as I start to fix something, you revert my edits! Stho002 (talk) 02:07, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

After Stho002 blocked EncycloPetey, he made three more edits, but EncycloPetey has left Wikispecies but wrote last year on the Village pump (diff):

I am silent becuase I too have quit Wikispecies. I long ago had enough of Stho002's beligerent harassment. In my case, I did try to talk to him about it, but he refused every argument I made. He is unwilling to concede that he does not know what he is talking about, and acts unilaterally as an unrestrained autocrat. His blockage on Wikipedia for using sock puppet accounts to back himself up in the face of opposition is direct evidence of his refusal to accept any consensus opinion that does not match his. --EncycloPetey (talk) 21:11, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

Dan Koehl (talk) 21:19, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

You just keep it coming, don't you Dan? The rhetoric I mean. I am the first to admit that I was unsuitable to be an admin, and I made some bad errors of judgement, which is why I resigned my sysop powers. Since I am no longer an admin, the problem is solved, and dragging things up from the past has no relevance to the current situation. You are threatening me (above) with an indefinite block, with no particular justification, and seem to be trying to justify it by dragging things up from the past. You can only block me for any breaches of policy that I make from now on (and must do so in an appropraiely measured fashion). You cannot block me for things I may have done in the past that have already been dealt with. Stho002 (talk) 21:24, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I dont agree that it is solved, since you scared away another contributor from the project, which may be considered as the worst vandalism someone can do. Encyclopetely is not back, so its not solved at all, and I think that the only possible way that the users you scared away from Wikispcies may return, as well as avoiding new, future contributors to be scared away from the project, is to block you permanently. Dan Koehl (talk) 21:49, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I give another example of another user who describe how he feels harassed by Stho002:

Finally, this uncommented revert by "the big boss" destroying the work of one full day has convinced me, that editing in WS is really a waste of time. My attempts to provide my reasons on this matter have proved to be useless, as these arguments simple have been ignored - see also here. By the way, the sentence above rather has to be read as "... unwillingness to obey orders ..." Maybe I overlooked something, but I did not find any reasons. However, I found false claims, insults and abuse of admin power. Someone might be also interested in the following statements: [3], [4]. After this, you may consider to rename Wikispecies to "Wikithorpea" or "Thorpispecies". Have fun! --Franz Xaver (talk) 14:09, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Dan Koehl (talk) 21:49, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Again, you keep coming and you keep missing the point. All the cases that you are dragging up from the past were at a time when I was a sysop. Without sysop powers, they would not have happened. I have subsequently resigned my sysop powers, so that problem IS SOLVED. After having made over 500K of unchallenged edits, it is not really surprising that I have got into a few spats. You are threatening me with an indefinite block for something that I cannot now do even if I wanted to. More significantly, as a crat you can assist anyone who does get into a dispute, using your sysop powers, in specific cases. But you are clearly completely out of touch with reality if you think that you can justifiably slap an indefinite block on me in anticipation that I will do bad things, things that I cannot in fact do without sysop powers anyway. And since I have only had two blocks recently (for 1 day and 2 days respectively), you are way out of line to be threatening to ramp it up to an indefinite block, especially since I haven't done anything more wrong! Yes, there are a group of editors here who hate me, largely because I correct their sloppy edits and insist on rational discussion on issues, and it seems that your only goal here is to win a "popularity competition" by siding unconditionally with them. When our only other recently active crat, OhanaUnited, tried to maintain proper objectivity, you accused him of being in a conspiracy with me! Just because someone doesn't agree with you on an issue doesn't mean that they aren't objective. Objectivity does not mean unconditional agreement with a vocal group of editors with chips on their shoulders. You should know all this to be a crat. Perhaps you should consider resignation? Stho002 (talk) 22:05, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: It is you that is missing the point. This time it is not about abusing admin tools - that's really done and over. It is about your continuous habit of harassing people that seem to contest your claimed position. I mean edits like the following one, that serve merely as an instrument of retaliation: Wikispecies:Village pump/Archive 26#@Franz Xaver:: Doing only half the job. --Franz Xaver (talk) 04:16, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Franz Xaver: At the time I made that comment, you had already put yourself in dispute with me by being unreasonable. Also, your use (not mine) of the term "retaliation" indicates that I had something to retaliate about. Stho002 (talk) 04:23, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Yes, of course, I had given you a "reason" for retaliation: I had corrected one of your mistakes, and obviousely that's something you hate. However you misrepresent some facts: I had not put myself in dispute with you. Actually, you stalked after me, vandalizing Ouratea I had edited before - see also User talk:Franz Xaver#Ouratea. Probably it was an unforgivable provocation that the same day I had dared to criticize you at the pump - see diff. --Franz Xaver (talk) 04:43, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Franz Xaver: I certainly do make the occasional mistake, yes, but you haven't given any supporting evidence for whatever "mistake" you are presently alluding to. I remind you of this diff, which you ignored and refused to budge from your own "infallible" opinion. Anyway, I was an admin then, now I am not. So why are we arguing about this now? Are you trying to back up your "mates"?? Stho002 (talk) 05:11, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Sorry, I should have remembered that it is not your strong point to understand, what someone is trying to tell you. The mistake I was alluding to, i.e. the one I had corrected, was this one: You added a reference on an Australian species to an unrelated European species without having checked the facts - for a more elaborate explanation see here.

@Franz Xaver: Blah, blah ... You should look at what you are writing from a detached perspective, and see just how much you resemble a pit bull gnawing at my leg. Technically it wasn't a mistake. The reference does have some relevance to the page on which I put it, in that it alerts the reader to the existence of the homonym. At any rate, it is an entirely trivial matter, however much you want to inflate it. Even if it was a mistake, I maintain that if you were genuinely trying to be helpful, instead of troublemaking, you would have moved the reference to the correct page, and not just deleted it without comment. Stho002 (talk) 06:06, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Anyway, the abuse of admin tools came later. At first place, you had stalked after me, editing in botany content where you obviously are clueless, imposing some inferior source (TPL), and fully ignoring my arguments I gave for my revert of this rubbish. Anyone can see that this behavior described in my last sentence does not need any admin tool.

I did not "stalk" you. I patrolled your edits, which is well within the mandate of an admin (which I was then). Please don't use loaded language to manufacture negative connations. Calling me clueless is getting awfully close to verbal abuse Stho002 (talk) 06:10, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Concerning the diff you gave now, I may have been guilty not having obeyed your order. However, it was you that then evaded discussing with regards to contents and quickly had move to procedural issues. --Franz Xaver (talk) 05:44, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

You interpret it as "an order". It was meant as a suggestion of how we might proceed in a constructive manner. But you quickly reduced it to a bun fight. Stho002 (talk) 06:12, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Franz Xaver: At any rate, if there was sufficient justification for sysop action against me at the present time it would have been done already. Instead I just get a constant barrage of personal attacks (in clear breach of WMF terms and conditions, namely "Civility") aimed at me by frustrated users, hoping to bait me into crossing some line. However, I am in no danger of crossing any lines. Unlike many here, I don't lose my temper. I keep rational and controlled. Stho002 (talk) 05:16, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Your use (not mine) of the term "frustrated users" indicates that they may have reason to be frustrated about you. Isn't it. --Franz Xaver (talk) 05:58, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I mean "frustrated" in the sense of "impotent". Frustrated by their own limitations to do good work here Stho002 (talk) 06:07, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

It took me a week of tempting on the Swedish wiki to make User:Ternarius to start contribute here on Wikispecies in December. User:Ternarius have written about bees for 8 years in Swedish (mainly) and English Wikipedia. It took Stho002 220 minutes to make User:Ternarius leave. This is just two weeks ago, see Ternarius talk page. There is numerous examples of when Stho002 are biting new users. The risk that this goes on futurevise , is obvious. Dan Koehl (talk) 22:24, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

So, you admit that you were involved in bringing User:Ternarius here, quite possibly with the intention of creating a conflict for you to use against me. You fail to mention that any disagreement between myself and User:Ternarius, was soundly based on my part, and they were in the wrong. If they weren't you presumably would have intervened using your sysop powers at the time, which you failed to do. Now you are trying to twist the facts to fit your agenda! Not the first time you have tried that. You appear to have no idea of correct procedure for dealing with minor skirmishes, and yet you are a crat! Need I say more? Stho002 (talk) 22:33, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I admit, that I now and then trying to bring more contributors here, and I thought that someone who has written about bees for 8 years in Swedish and English Wikipedia could contribute to the Wikispecies project. Regarding your various accusations against my person, please provide links and diffs which confirms the validity. If not, I will regard them as personal attacks. Dan Koehl (talk) 23:29, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Additionally, Koehl, you scared off User:OhanaUnited, your only rival crat, and, by persisting with these threats and attacks against me on the VP, you are also in danger of scaring away potential contributors, who will not want to come to a battlefield. Stho002 (talk) 22:44, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I dont agree with you that bureaucrats are rivals, contrary. Again, I ask you to provide links and diffs to your accusations against my person. Dan Koehl (talk) 00:46, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, for one example (there are MANY), here it is in OhanaUnited's own words... Stho002 (talk)

As for links and diffs for the dangers of you scaring away potential contributors, who will not want to come to a battlefield, my evidence is the constant barrage of rhetoric that you keep spewing forth in this section of this very page (Village Pump). If you keep on posting such lies and threats, I must keep on replying in order to defend myself against your completely unjustified and misguided personal attacks Stho002 (talk) 01:00, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I can not find one single link or diff, which indicates that I scared off User:OhanaUnited, or any other user on Wikispecies. Furthermore, I can not find any links or diffs, where I should have lied. The citations I have sunbitted above, have all clear diffs, where everyone can read, if my citation is correct , or not. Dan Koehl (talk) 01:48, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

This diff, as pointed to previously, clearly indicates (for all to see) that you and OhanaUnited were in dispute, and he clearly explains why you are in the wrong. He has now left us, so soon after your arrival, after several years of valuable and voluntary service. Note that "indication" isn't the same thing as proof. I am happy to let the reader (especially WMF) make up their own minds. It shouldn't be hard for them to find more relevant diffs in the history. I am happy to let them be the judge, instead of your approach as judge, jury and executioner in a dispute in which you are involved. Stho002 (talk) 01:56, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Although we are both engaged in a dispute with each other, you are the only one of us who is threatening the other with sysop action. I'm not. I don't have sysop powers. Either you already have sufficient justification to carry out your threats (in which case you would have already done so), or you don't, and in the latter case you should not be threatening to use your sysop powers when you lack sufficient justification for using them at the present time. Using sysop powers (or threat of their use) in order to gain advantage in a dispute in which you are involved is, as people have already told you numerous times, against the rules. I insist that you follow the rules. Stho002 (talk) 01:06, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I have now received a preliminary reply from the WMF person I emailed (copied below, name withheld), see below. Stho002 (talk) 21:39, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Hi Stephen,

Sorry to hear you're feeling under siege - that's never fun. I've forwarded your inquiry to our Community Advocacy department. Someone will have a look and be in touch with you in coming days.

Best wishes,

XXXX

This could be a double edged sword! I await CA involvement with more than academic interest - I trust and assume that they will be even handed and look at all the evidence. Andyboorman (talk) 09:25, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't require a WMF specialist or a high court judge for that matter to perceive the damage Stho002 is causing to WS. This is a very straightforward case. Mariusm (talk) 15:25, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

User:Mariusm continues to abuse his admin powers by making threats based on gross misrepresentations of the facts, while being himself heavily involved in dispute with me Stho002 (talk) 21:27, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

What? This is ridiculous. Stephen, you really need to stop and take a minute. I'd suggest that you recuse yourself for a wiki-break of a few days to get your thoughts together: this conversation is getting increasingly unproductive and I don't see anyone coming to your defense or anything working out how you want or expect. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:35, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Again, meaningless rhetoric from someone heavily involved in dispute. Stho002 (talk) 22:42, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Neither meaningless nor rhetoric. I'm trying to help and you seem dead-set on alienating everyone and getting blocked here permanently. No one is on your side about anything you're saying because you're being so belligerent and abrasive as to push them away. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:11, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Why did you make this edit? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:13, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

@Koavf: Why do you ask? It is a bog standard edit, for goodness sake! Desperately searching for things to accuse me of is harrassment, I'm warning you. User:Tommy Kronkvist was overseeing the edits made by User:Biota, and had no criticisms of any of the edits. Feel free to confirm that with him, and get off my back Stho002 (talk) 21:26, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: I don't know what a "bog standard" is. What it looks like is that you created an alt account immediately after being blocked and then made it appear like it was a new editor through deception. I'm not desperately searching for anything as it was brought up earlier and even if I were that does not constitute harassment. If you honestly think the WMF are going to get involved at all, you're mistaken but if you think that them having eyes on your behavior here will work out in your favor you are sorely mistaken. Alerting others to your actions on this wiki will not help you in any regard. The best thing that you can do is to make good edits here (which you frequently do), not edit-war with anyone, and stop hyper-defensively posting here trying to justify your actions and be conspiratorial and paranoiac about your interlocutors. Just edit the wiki. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:29, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

@Koavf: Then just stop making covert gross misrepresentations of the facts! How, please do explain, if you would be so kind, could it possibly "look like I created an alt account immediately after being blocked", when, if you bothered to check the logs (i.e. bothered to get your facts right before making false accusations), you would find that I created the account before being blocked, and made no edits during the duration of my block. Those are the facts. I suggest that you "Just edit the wiki" ... Stho002 (talk) 06:34, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

@Koavf: And I would also like to know which definition you are using of paranoia? It is self-evident that everyone [here] is out to get me. You said it yourself (i.e., 'I don't see anyone coming to your defense')! So, please don't babble rhetoric by stringing negatively loaded words together in the form of entirely meaningless sentences. Stho002 (talk) 06:52, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

---

@Stho002: you're dragging all of us to unwanted territories. Thank heavens we're on a virtual medium or else I suppose I would have nursed a bloody nose by now. I'm calling to everyone: lets stop these fruitless squabbles with Stho and lets wait for what the WMF official has to say. Mariusm (talk) 07:50, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

Indeed it's uncharted territories because both sides have dug in and reached an impasse. If both sides (too lazy to spam tag 10-20 people's usernames) don't clean up their acts and behave, WMF might just force Wikispecies to be absorbed and integrated into Wikidata. And this idea has been bounced around in 2013 and in 2014. Is this what everyone here wants? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 08:50, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

If WMF uses the fact that one editor is in dispute with a large section of the community as an excuse to get rid of WS then it is up to them, but we need not just roll over surely? However, for now, I guess we then need to concentrate on filling redlinks, tidying up and adding essential detail to existing pages and forget about the non-taxon material! Above all lets us stop annoying each other. Andyboorman (talk) 20:41, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

WMF will be examining all underlying factors (which includes me and you plus other participants) if they choose to take action. But I already gathered enough evidence to present my case when that day comes. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 22:11, 17 January 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest start a discussion, and let it be an extended discussion. Look to what you agree (and that is what you agree is in, and what you agree is out). I believe that you will find that you agree on many points, and many many more than on which you disgree.. Then work towards the middle on additional aspects. Agree that for the while that you will only add to the main ns what is agreed will be added, and then record on talk pages what extra information that you would like to see added and the justification for that. This is the purpose of talk pages.
You lot need to stop bickering, need to learn to look to consensus, though I would also add that some need to understand that 4 elected admins is a strong view towards a consensus, and that cases of IDONTLIKEIT are just that, an opinion, and sometimes you have to give in to the masses whether you like it or not, a consensus is a consensus. Billinghurst (talk) 13:36, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I think we are way past the point where people agree on certain points based on its merit and not based on the person proposing it, which leads to why we have this prolonged arguing between 2 sides and have to ask WMF for intervention. You can clearly see the "party line" drawn across the project. One side is stubborn and won't give ground despite consensus. The other side is trying to make the editor budge and accept consensus but in the process of doing violated rules on procedural grounds and when presented with evidence of such violations the party simply DIDNOTHEARIT. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:24, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: Just to clarify: I will accept any consensus which is rationally based on the merits of the proposal. My "stubborness" is entirely directed at sham "consensus", based on feelings, preferences, falsehoods and ad hominem arguments Stho002 (talk) 04:33, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I don't want to fuel an already heated discussion, especially considering the request for a break, but I would very much like to ask Stho002 what he means with the comment to Dan: "So, you admit that you were involved in bringing User:Ternarius here, quite possibly with the intention of creating a conflict for you to use against me". Does he really mean that I only was somebody Dan used as a tool to annoy Stho002? I admit I'm a layman when it comes to taxonomy, I am not (as Stho002 very clearly indeed state he is) a professional in that area, but my intentions when I first started contributing to this part of the Wikipedia sphere were earnest and serious. I therefore find that accusation insulting, and would very much like an clarification by Stho002. / Ternarius (talk) 10:03, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Break

Apart from the wrong focus of the discussion above, which I shall try to duly ignore, I could discern two issues here.

1. "the reproduction of almost the entire Contents of the Auckland Botanical Society Journal here (example subpage with full verbatim reproduction of the contents of Vol. 69 here), New Zealand Journal of Zoology ISSN 0301-4223, and other journals. While citation of individual papers as references is of course permissible where relevant to the nomenclature or taxonomy of a particular taxon, reproduction of the entire contents pages represents breach of copyright of the journals concerned, and also misuse of Wikispecies as many of the papers listed are not directly related to nomenclature or taxonomy."
2. Addition of categories about habitat where the plant is not endemic to the area.

Before I read relevant documentation, articles, edits, and re-read the discussion, could someone please -- as briefly as possible -- verify that my understanding is correct. Gryllida (talk) 00:09, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

@Gryllida: For what it's worth, I think that your understanding of the problem is the same as mine. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:22, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

@Gryllida: Those are two issues, yes, among others. I am currently in discussion with WMF, and others, regarding the copyright/defamation issue. Either MPF is right, and I am guilty of (inadvertent) breach of copyright, or I am right and MPF is guilty of defamation/libel. If the former, then I want to know, and will, of course, agree to the deletion of the offending pages, no contest. However, it would have been "more civil", to say the least, if MPF had approached me privately about this matter in the first instance, rather than hitting me over the head with it as part of a vicious personal attack against me. I note that he does not cite any source to back up his accusations, and little can be found on the web relating to it. He appears to be just making it up to fit his agenda. What little that there is on the web suggests that it is at worst a gray area, untested legally. Note also that what I have done is not a "full verbatim reproduction of the contents of Vol. 69" (like a photocopy), as contents pages typically include other editorial material and different formats. As for the second point, it is far too trivial to be used as a weapon in a push to have me blocked from this site. There are no rules restricting categories, other than that they must have some relevance to Wikispecies scope, and anything relating to species (as opposed to say, astronomy) has relevance to Wikispecies scope. BTW, who are you, and why should we not think that you are a sock puppet?? Stho002 (talk) 00:53, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: A sockpuppet of whom? And to what end? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:57, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I have no idea! I just want to know who it is and why they are suddenly choosing to involve themselves in this discussion. Seems a bit odd, don't you think, or do you know something I don't??? Stho002 (talk) 00:59, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: I know this account was registered six years ago and has made over 12,000 edits on 57 WMF projects with extra users rights on seven of them... —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 01:02, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I would just like to hear from them why they have come here now to get involved in this matter? How did they learn of the issue? They don't edit here much at all. Did someone ask them to come along and support them? Stho002 (talk) 01:05, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Stho002: stop taking it out on people. I start reading and adding to my reading list is not helping. Gryllida (talk) 01:34, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

For reference, it's only the contents (not the table of contents, but actual contents) reproducing that matters (and in this context, the word ‘verbatim’ has close to nothing to do with the format.) Gryllida (talk) 01:46, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I expect that MPF has read this, or something like it, and decided that it fits his agenda to claim that the issue is in fact clear cut, when it isn't. My main concern here is having been publicly accused of what is in effect theft of intellectual property, by someone who doesn't know what they are talking about, and in the context of a vicious personal attack against my character. For a real life example of the possible consequences of such defamation (involving Twitter), see: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-17512027 Stho002 (talk) 01:58, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I will read through the journal and articles in the next few days. I advise everybody to stop adding to the [5] pile; absolutely nothing will be damaged by calming down and revisiting the topic in a few days. Thanks. Gryllida (talk) 01:34, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I have no problem with MPF (or anyone else) being "wrong". I do have a problem with them being wrong and using it against me in a vicious and defamatory personal attack. I don't understand what is to be gained from "reading through the journal and articles"?? The issue is a general one relating to copyright law. If MPF is going to accuse me, publicly, of breaking a law, then he needs to learn to get sound legal advice beforehand ... Stho002 (talk) 01:51, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I, for one, apart from piping it to your talk page instead of here, see nothing he could have done better about raising his concern. The mistake of piping it here instead of piping it to your talk page is a correct observation; discussion of it belongs to his talk page - let's not repeat the same mistake.

What I gain is an understanding whether the material you added should remain there or not. (I'm not sufficiently psychic to know what you did, and what copyright law involves, before reading them both.) Gryllida (talk) 02:05, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Unless you happen to be a copyright lawyer already, or plan to become one for the present purpose, I suggest we leave it to WMF's legal team to sort out. But you don't have to be "psychic" to see, at a glance, what I did here. It is just the citations for the contained articles, arranged by volume/issue! In a true database (and indeed on ZooBank!), one would be able to do that using a search function anyway! Stho002 (talk) 02:18, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. Gryllida (talk) 02:21, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Legal advice on the copyright issue

@MPF: @OhanaUnited: I have just received the following reply from Dr. Donat Agosti:

Dear Stephen

This is the answer from our legal department

………………..

This is another absurd copyright pretention without any legal base! The main points are as follows:

1° Titles of publications are in 99,99% no copyrightable works as they lack individual character. Where there are no works, there cannot be any breach of copyright.

2° Even in the very rare case, where the title of a publication is so original that it could qualify as work, the reference list does nothing else than cite that title and indicate the journal where it can be found. "Citation" is free and constitutes no breach of copyright. In US-terminology, you would probably speak of "fair use".

In copyright, you can rarely say, that something is clear. In this special case, it is absolutely clear: no copyright breach at all.

May be, you should read our BMC-paper and or study the Blue List in order to give some more background information.

…………….

In case you have any more questions, please let me know

Donat

— The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stho002 (talk • contribs) 20:59, 20 January 2015.

Categories: what is or isn't allowed?

I'm being roasted for adding "horticultural" categories, and yet nobody is even mentioning other editors who are presently working on other categories like this one. Both my "horticultural" categories, and the category just pointed to are on a par in terms of relevance to species/taxonomy/nomenclature. Indeed, both have relevance. It is a gross abuse of proper procedure to be picking on me, when there isn't a policy which defines "relevance". Stho002 (talk) 00:29, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Not sure, if Neferkheperre is happy about this attempt to drag him into your affair? --Franz Xaver (talk) 06:08, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

He probably isn't, but it is a fair comparison/comment relating to the complete lack of any policy or even consensus on this matter, leaving it wide open to abuse by people who wish to attack others with nonexistent rules relating to category relevance Stho002 (talk) 06:14, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Neferkheperre: Do you have anything to add? Stho002 (talk) 06:15, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Lets suppose for a moment that horticultural categories are perfectly acceptable. Can you please tell us what is the logic behind adding the horticultural category before the far more important endemic categories are present? It's really like telling the doctor at the emergency room that you have an itch on your leg before telling him that you just had a heart attack. Mariusm (talk) 08:41, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Mariusm: Let me override your question with a far more important one: why are you using a discussion about a trivial matter as part of a campaign to have me blocked from WS? Stho002 (talk) 21:00, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

The term "endemic" does not tell anything, unless you do not refer it to a certain geographical area. So, a species can be endemic to the area of a certain country (e.g. Singapore, Russia), to an island (e.g. Norfolk Is., Madagascar), to a mountain range, or even to a continent, but it is not endemic per se. In my opinion, using categories for distribution data is no good solution. --Franz Xaver (talk) 11:36, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

@Franz Xaver: Would you care to reword that (or better retract that), for it makes little or no sense, and is highly unclear who you are even talking to. I have never, ever, labelled any species as being "endemic" simpliciter. I have a much more sophisticated system in place. Stho002 (talk) 21:00, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I know that. I was referring to the format Category: <species> (Country) where the species is endemic to the country as opposed to the case where the country holds only the species' horticulturs. I agree that this format is inadequate for distribution data. Mariusm (talk) 15:07, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Neferkheperre's category relates to, as stated therein, original biological research; it is directly relevant to the discovery and naming of new taxa found on those expeditions, and therefore relevant to Wikispecies. What plants are cultivated in gardens in New Zealand has no relevance to Wikispecies whatsoever. - MPF (talk) 13:24, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

This is pure rhetoric with no defined meaning. Also, cultivated plants are not just grown in "gardens", and even when they are, they are part of a complex ecosystem involving insects, birds, etc. in the wild, interacting with the plants. Ecological systems have species as their elements, and are therefore relevant to a site which concerns itself with information about species. More importantly, why are you using a discussion about a trivial matter as part of a campaign to have me blocked from WS? Stho002 (talk) 21:00, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

• Great can of worms here. How deeply do we wish to deal with many peripheral topics? We must above all focus on taxonomy/nomenclature with minimal cluttering. Close support areas (Repository pages, scientific expedition pages), are extremely important. I am attempting to create highly integrated interrelated link-based information systems using taxon mainpages as central cores. These combine pages and categories. I am presently playing with developing category systems based on geography, ecology, and symbioses. I believe it important to build these systems so other workers can smoothly attach their own contributions into systems.
• I have already stated above my objections to dealing with endemism. Species under cultivation are still species with taxon names. Perhaps there should be short notations that these species are cultivated, and then provide links to Hortipedia or wherever for more extensive information on distribution and cultivars. We like links here. @Stho002: is right that introduced cultivated species interact with their environment. Neferkheperre (talk) 02:05, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

@Neferkheperre: So, would you agree that we should keep peripheral information (including distribution) off core taxon pages, except by way of category links at the bottom of the page, but there is little or no reason to ban "peripheral" information from category pages? Stho002 (talk) 02:30, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

It is highly "inefficient" to use categories for distribution data as I repeatedly stressed Ad nauseam. (You don't want to add 70 different categories for a plant spanning 70 countries). Nevertheless, if one decides to proceed with this witlessness and to introduces country-categories, than at least one has to handle first and foremost the countries where the species is endemic, and only when this is thoroughly done, then probably the countries where the plant is cultivated can be added next. Mariusm (talk) 05:25, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, that is POV, but we don't set priorities here. Anyone can set their own priorities. Otherwise, a species of Amarygmus is much lower priority than a species of mammal or bird, or an insect pest, or however you want to think about subjective priorities. As I tried to explain, you don't have to add all the country categories. Each one is a bonus. It is not misleading, because [[Category:Species (Country)]] only implies that the species is present in that country, and I always specify (or link to another source which specifies) on the category page the biostatus of the species in that country (e.g. endemic, or exotic, wild, cultivated, etc.) It is just extra information that may be useful. As well as being a contributor to WS, I am also a user of WS information, and I find the distribution categories to be useful. I'm sure I'm not the only one ... Stho002 (talk) 05:34, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

But it is indeed MISLEADING and any rhetoric, oratory or eloquent language you may use wouldn't change this fact. Mariusm (talk) 05:45, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

{{!}}

Template:! Should be deleted since now a magic word is used for this purpose. --Gerardduenas (talk) 13:32, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

What does it do? Neferkheperre (talk) 14:21, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

@Neferkheperre: It inserts a pipe ( | ) in places where it otherwise can't be inserted due to how templates work in MediaWiki. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:13, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Categories

Why don't we have a category:Hemipterists? PeterR (talk) 16:32, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Because it is is covered by entomologists. We don't need a category for everything. But you can create one if you really want to Stho002 (talk) 20:28, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. PeterR (talk) 14:49, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Abuse of admin powers by User:Andyboorman

@OhanaUnited: @Billinghurst: User:Andyboorman has reverted my edit, and protected the page! My edit had added a reference template, added a link to BHL, and removed a reference that is not relevant at the family level. To revert such an edit and protect the page is clearly an unjustified use of admin powers to gain advantage in a dispute! Stho002 (talk) 20:34, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: I don't see any posts on Talk:Myricaceae or User talk:Andyboorman: did you discuss this with him anywhere? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:50, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Edits that are self-evidently improvements do not require discussion beforehand. If we had to wait for the thumbs up to edit every single article here, progress would slow to a crawl. The onus is on Boorman to either convince the community that my edits on that article were counterproductive, or else he must let the edits stand. Protecting the page so that only admins can edit it is not the appropriate solution, whichever way you look at it. Stho002 (talk) 20:53, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: @Billinghurst: Can either of you please clarify policy/correct procedure in these circumstances?? Stho002 (talk) 20:56, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

@Sto002: Right. I didn't claim that. I asked a yes or no question. So the answer is no? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:55, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Not sure why your only "contributions" on WS are to ask me questions and then answer them for me? Stho002 (talk) 20:58, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: They aren't. I've made several hundred edits here. That's beside the point as I'm watching the Pump now and trying to mediate. Do you want help or not? —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:59, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

"Several hundred" eh? WOW. So, "mediation" eh? OK. Let's go. Have you looked at all the relevant diffs? Do you have a sufficient grasp of what is going on to be able to evaluate whether my edit needed prior discussion? Do you have a suffucient grasp of policy/correct procedure to be able to see that Boorman's reaction was inappropriate even if my edit had been counterproductive? And, why would you think that I would interpret your involvement here as "mediation", when you and I have very recently been engaged in dispute? Stho002 (talk) 21:04, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Mocking me isn't a good start. You claimed that I only edit here to challenge you, which isn't true. To answer your questions, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes except I would change "that" to "if". The important thing is not an understanding of taxonomy but of how wikis and communities operate. One way they don't is by belligerence and degradation. (Edit conflict: if you're looking for users here with whom you haven't had a dispute, then good luck.) —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:08, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

@Koavf: I agree with you that belligerence and degradation are not the way to go. So tell that to Boorman, who made no attempt to discuss the issues with me before invoking his admin powers, and is clearly trying to overinflate a small issue. That is not how wikis are supposed to operate either. Stho002 (talk) 21:26, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: I don't see either of those things from him and as he pointed out below and in his edit summary, he protected the pages in order to bring others into the conversation. This seems like a mountain out of a molehill. Just make your case for your preferred version and I don't think there's any need to cry foul on his admin actions. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:28, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

I have not protected the pages to gain advantage in a dispute, but primarily to take the format differences to the pump for discussion and so had to halt editing for a week. If that is wrong, then so be it. I re-added the templates with its BHL link back before protecting the page and any other useful information that User:Stho002 added. I also informed User:Stho002 before doing the protection and also logged this as a reason for protection. I am not happy about the editor's removal of Parra-O, C. (2002) from Myricaceae, yes on the face of it, it seems to have no relevance at the family level, but reading the paper is apparent that this is one of the first studies that gives evidence for the resurrection of Morella and hence helps justifies this genus's inclusion on the family page and I did state this, but if I am wrong then let me know..

Review the protected page histories here Myricaceae Myrica and I invite the community's comments. Thanks Andyboorman (talk) 21:09, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Despite you bare faced lie, i.e. "I have not protected the pages to gain advantage in a dispute", that is self-evidently and by very definition exactly what you have done! You have also gone about things in a totally inappropriate and covert manner, i.e. reverting and protecting, and subsequently adding back the bits of my edit which you are not confident of being able to show to be counterproductive! And you haven't actually restored my BHL link to the page of description. In effect, you have reverted and protected merely for my removal of the Parra (2002) reference, which you yourself admit is of no relevance on the face of it, and which you fail to provide a convincing counter reason. Stho002 (talk) 21:29, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

BHL is back, apologies for this oversight. Parra (2002) is highly relevant to the WS family circumscription, even the abstract indicates this. There are three sources that circumscribe to three genera for Myricaceae and only Parra (2002) that favours four. Indeed this paper was the first to split Myrica and resurrect Morella. Andyboorman (talk) 12:14, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

@Andyboorman:Parra (2002) is not relevant to the family circumscription. It merely splits one genus into two, without having any effect on the family circumscription Stho002 (talk) 20:01, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

@Andyboorman: Given that my admin status was vigorously challenged by you and others here for the main stated reason that I was using my admin powers to gain advantage in disputes, in breach of policy, I find your revert/protect actions above to be an alarming case of sickening hypocrisy Stho002 (talk) 21:33, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Not my community, not sure why I should know about your community's rules. No point pinging me about this stuff, it is your community's right to set its style guide. You do have an interesting way to make friends and to try and steer the middle ground, or to gain support. One wonders at what point you will see that a harangue will do nothing but stiffen resolve. <shrug> Billinghurst (talk) 12:20, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

---

Lets analyze the situation we have on our hands: On one corner is Andyboorman who specializes or is seriously immersed in the nomenclature of Myricaceae - a shrub family. On the other corner we have Mr. Stho002 who may know a thing or two about insecta yet is a complete layman in the field of botany. All that interests him in Myricaceae is his unstoppable desire to add to this page a category for his native country, namely for New Zealand. Stho002 can't be persuaded by any means that this category isn't appropriate for N.Z. so he persists in inserting it again and again, while Boorman is trying desperately to keep it out. To be able to edit his page in peace and quiet, Boorman had no other option but either to protect the page or to block Stho002, otherwise it was impossible for him to proceed with his edits uninterrupted. Not only has Stho002 the nerve to insist on editing a topic he doesn't understand, not only has Stho002 the nerve to add to it wrong and misleading categories, but he also jumps ahead with false accusations towards the very person who tries to keep this species page as updated and as matter of fact as possible. This conduct has no other name but unforgivable and this community is doing itself a disservice in not punishing the culprit. Mariusm (talk) 13:39, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Apologies I seem to have opened a can of worms, but see below for my reasons for the action. I had to protect the pages to freeze them for discussion, which I had already mentioned on Stho002's talk page prior to the action. Andyboorman (talk) 15:49, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

The Reference Section

We surely all agree with these quotes from Help "The reference section should provide evidence for the information given on the page. Without this evidence information becomes useless." and "....and if it is available give the original publication always first." The page edit Wikispecies tools has just ==References==. I tend to keep to these simple concepts on the pages I create or edit and the majority of pages seem to follow this as well. I always intend to only reference sources used to construct the page and see no need to distinguish between types of sources used to help develop the pages. Of course others differ and separate Links out as a sub-list. In addition, there are many pages on WS that title the Reference Section(s) with "non-standard" titles, for example; Primary and Secondary References, Selected References and External Links. See Potamocypris fulva, Haliclystus monstrosus and of course the edit histories for Myricaceae and Myrica. It would be interesting to hear what others think of the content and format of this important section of the taxon page. Andyboorman (talk) 17:26, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

In my understanding, links to reliable websites are references as well as papers in scientific journals, when parts of the content of a WS taxon page can be referred on one or the other. So, when a distinction is made between "selected references" and "links", this suggests that the content is based on these "selected references" (but maybe some of the content is based on references that have not been selected for listing) and the "links" probably are only included in order to link to some additional information. Maybe, a native speaker of English has a different understanding of the meaning of these words, but you need not expect that only native speakers will visit WS. I would not object, if under a general header "references" sub-headers "papers" and "links" were used to separate the two types of sources. --Franz Xaver (talk) 18:40, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I tend to use the "References" section for the main reference only, in rare cases supplemented with a reference to information regarding synonymy, if there would otherwise be a risk of confusing the synonyms with other taxa. After the "References" section I frequently add a new section (i.e. not a subsection) called "Links". Here I add references to online databases (for instance FishBase or CoL, the Catalogue of Life), since the actual papers mentioned in the main reference might not be readily available to all Wikispecies users. In other words, I use the "Links" section in much the same way as the "See also" section in Wikipedia, though only for external links. Another way of doing this would be to add the links to the talk page, for instance using the {{global}} template.
–Tommy Kronkvist (talk), 19:06, 20 January 2015 (UTC).

I have thoroughly thought through these issues over the years, and have already tried to explain the best approach. Some of my earlier experiments are still on pages, but they do no harm, and will be modified in due course. Anyway, the best approach is as follows: we need to distinguish between sources, nomenclatural references, selected references and links to other websites. The old "references" section should be replaced by "Selected references". These are important references which give useful information about the species. They are typically not sources for other information on the page. Sources should be explicitly stated in Justification boxes, when necessary. Many references are relevant for merely nomenclatural technicalities. Many, but not all, original descriptions are in this category. For example, Linnaeus (1758) does not tell us anything useful about Homo sapiens, so it should not be listed as a (selected) reference. The reference template should just be hyperlinked in the name section, like so: Homo sapiens Linnaeus, 1758 ... Stho002 (talk) 19:56, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Unless they are used explicitly as sources, links to other websites are generally of little importance Stho002 (talk) 19:57, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I think its rather more simple than this. Any taxon name on a species page (original descriptions, new combinations, synonyms/homonyms and so on) should be shown with an author and date. A single References section should cite the publications containing these author/date combinations. Authors should be listed alphabetically. The reader should use his own judgement to determine which of the listed references are more important, or which he wishes to "select" for some purpose. This is the way it is done in all the many taxonomic publications I have written or read over the years. Here is as good an example of a Reference List as any. It should be no more sophisticated than this, surely. Accassidy (talk) 00:01, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. I suggest that references on a WS page are not the same thing as in a published article. It would be a huge mistake to overload the references section with non-useful/unimportant references, such as many original descriptions, etc. One of the few ways WS can outshine alternative websites is to highlight for the user the most significant references. Stho002 (talk) 00:12, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002:When I understand some of your former postings correctly, you agree that every bit of information given on a WS page has to be sourced? And now you insist that the reference section must include only the most important references and therefore has to be named "selected references". So, that's really illogical. This argumentation seems to serve merely as a justification for these "justification" boxes, which you apparently are proud of. Unfounded I think, because these boxes are very unwieldy to use. In Chascolytrum you have added such a "justification box" for the species list. OK, TPL may serve to source the first version of the list, but you made some changes to the original list of accepted and unresolved names from TPL. Some names have been moved to the box, telling they have to be checked, and you have removed C. trilobum as being dubious. So, you simply have used the box as a log, missing any source/reference for your decisions. There is no reference that makes it traceable, why some names have to be checked and some others have not. And probably it is your own expert opinion which has identified C. trilobum as a dubious name? As far as I see, this justification box does not source anything - it's only a log for unsourced decisions. Anyway, I cannot imagine how to use such a "justification box" in order to source a list with dozens or even several hundreds of names. How would you source every name, i.e. connect it to a reference that does show the name to belong to an accepted species? In order to source information, footnotes as are used in Wikipedias are the much better tool - much more flexible to use and easier to connect a certain bit of information to its source. An example how to source a species list can be seen in de:Luehea. You maybe will notice, that also there are some main references separated from these the rest that is used to source some particular bits of information. ---Franz Xaver (talk) 01:40, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@Franz Xaver: No, it isn't in the slightest bit "illogical"! What I said was these we should distinguish between sources, on the one hand, and selected references, on the other hand, and treat them differently. We can use justification boxes (or some other format like footnotes) for sources, but we should reserve the selected references section for substantially informative references relevant to the taxon. Where is the "illogic"??? Stho002 (talk) 01:52, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

To be able to conduct a fruitful discussion on this subject, let us see what reference-types are available to us. I will list these types in descending importance:

1. ref. for the taxon's original description.
2. refs. for mentions of the particular taxon. Those can be separated into two groups (A) those for synonyms/new combinations (B) those for lists, distribution, redescriptions etc. where the taxon is mentioned.
3. General refs. which don't particularly mention the taxon name.
4. Links to external sources.
   

In my opinion this importance order should be maintained in the ref. section. We can divide it into 4 sub-sections designated by === ===: (1) ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION, (2) MENTIONS, (3) GENERAL REFERENCES (4) LINKS Mariusm (talk) 05:47, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

How "unexpected" that Mariusm puts as first importance what is more often of last importance. If anyone thinks that Linnaeus (1758) is the most important reference for Homo sapiens, then they just baffle me! It is a mere technicality that Linnaeus (1758) has any relevance at all for Homo sapiens. However, because of this technicality, we should hyperlink the reference to the name (in the name section), but to cite Linnaeus (1758) in full under references is, quite frankly, baffling! Stho002 (talk) 06:03, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: this is YOUR opinion which can be contested. Don't give me Homo sapiens as an example of a typical taxon. The most important ref. for 99% of the species is no other but their original description. Mariusm (talk) 06:28, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@Mariusm: You may have misunderstood my opinion slightly? You gave a general schema (above), in which the most important reference is always the original description. I would say that in about 50% of cases, the original description is the least important. But in the other 50%, the original description is indeed the most important. So, in both cases we hyperlink the name to the original description, and only in the latter case do we also cite the reference in full under selected references. Stho002 (talk) 06:34, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Again you turn a deaf ear to other views, and won't budge an inch from your fixed opinions. This is no way to conduct a discussion. Mariusm (talk) 06:48, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

A quick summary. It seems that just User:Stho002 wants to fundamentally rewrite the WS Reference Section policy and guidelines, as found in the Help pages. He particularly wants to rid the Reference Section of the taxon's original description and most of the sources required to construct the taxon page. Other contributors to the discussion User:Franz Xaver, User:Tommy Kronkvist, User:Accassidy and User:Mariusm argue more for the status quo, but with variations. These are diametrically different views, but compromise is unlikely at the moment. Have I got this summary right? It would be interesting to hear the views of those editors who have yet to participate in this discussion. Andyboorman (talk) 17:19, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: Your opinion concerning the importance of the reference citation of the original description of a taxon is clearly a minority position. Yet you have removed such direct citations from pages that have been stable for a long time, or added a convoluted, less informative. hidden link to the reference citation in the author's name. This is not in agreement with WS conventions. Your "Nomen" collapsing box is not a WikiSpecies agreed standard, yet you continue to deploy it without consensus. I am asking that you cease using collapsing formats for page elements other than Taxonavigation. which has been accepted by consensus. Any references that are put on a taxon page are, by that very action, "selected", so titling the section "Selected References" is meaningless. For these reasons of community consensus I am asking that you refrain for making such edits in future. If you continue to make such edits to previously existing pages without prior consultation, I will consider that your actions are anti-community and I will take action to prevent them. I urge you to restrict your edits to the addition of new information and to refrain from these non-standard formatting ideas. Clearly you think them superior and, clearly, you have made a lot of instances of each of them, but this does not mean that they are an agreed WS policy. @Mariusm: I think that splitting the references section into 4 elements of "decreasing importance" is also a bit cumbersome and un-necessary. Accassidy (talk) 18:45, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

I support, to retain the headline "References" as specified in Help pages and the Wiki markups. Orchi (talk) 12:28, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

The previous debate on copyright and templates has been relocated (see below) in order to enable the continuation of this discussion without a separate issue cluttering this section of the Pump. Andyboorman (talk) 08:26, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

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To recapitulate this discussion's results I would mention the following points:

1. Only a minority of the WS participants consider this topic important enough to comment on, although the references section is a crucial component of WS.
2. Stho002 refuses to respect the community's wish not to remove the original-description reference which he considers unworthy to be included in the respective page.
3. All participants excluding Stho002 stressed the importance they are attributing to the original-description reference, so as to be indispensable.
4. I will therefore consider the removal of the mentioned type of reference by Stho002 as a vandalism. Mariusm (talk) 09:18, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
   

To be fair the removal of the original-description reference by anybody must be assumed to be vandalism. Andyboorman (talk) 14:58, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

I have never removed an original description reference, nor suggested anything of that nature! Hyperlinking it to the name is not removal. It is still there, just with less emphasis when it is less informative. This makes perfect sense Stho002 (talk) 20:56, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Hyperlinking to the name is removing it from the reference section. It may make perfect sense to you, but not to others and does not conform to the current WS policy for the Reference Section, which is quote...and if it is available give the original publication always first unquote. Not a good idea to pick a fight over this. Andyboorman (talk) 21:08, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

you are wrong, and you should not be criticising me for breaches of policy, when sysops around here are violating policy/terms and conditions all over the show, and backing each other up Stho002 (talk) 21:26, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

If I can seek a little clarity here. You might well think that other people are going around killing innocent civilians, but this does not bestow upon you the right to do the same thing. The same applies to breaches of policy. Doing this yourself, just because you think someone else has done it, will lead rapidly to anarchy. So by all means state your case when you think others have breached policy, but do not think that this gives you license to break policy yourself. I make this point to all users reading this, not just to one individual. Retaining the citation of an original description in the References section certainly seems, to me, to be in agreement with Policy. Making a quasi-hidden link from the Name section is a substitute, but in my view a less preferable one, as it inevitably contains less explicit information on the taxon page. My strong recommendation would be to leave details of original descriptions in the References section. If you add some sort of hyperlink from the Name section, make this in addition to, rather than instead of, the reference citation. I use this kind of duplication regularly as I include links, where available, to papers in the reference citation and to specific pages within the paper to the Synonym section, or even in the name section where no Synonymy exists. All such links are useful to visitors who want quickly to investigate sources. They take up very little space, so I can see no strong argument for taking any of them away. Accassidy (talk) 22:57, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

@Accassidy:WTF are you going on about?? I am talking about policy violations based on unjustified use of sysop tools. I cannot now be guilty of that, because I am not an admin. The fact that I might have been guilty of that, when I was an admin, doesn't give others the right to do it now. That is MY argument! Please don't try to twist it back at me! Just get on with editing, and stop trying to dictate everything ... Stho002 (talk) 23:15, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

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This fruitful and interesting discussion seems to be coming to a close, but I would like to ask a simple question. Should the section only be named References as seen in Help? There are a number of variations the most common being Selected references sometimes followed by Links and the other Primary and Secondary References. I would suggest that all these variations are redundant or meaningless given the discussion above. What do others think. I am off line until the end of next week so over to you! Andyboorman (talk) 19:18, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

To any rational mind, the primary guiding principle should be to highlight what is important, and "de-highlight" what is not important. Many sites, like GBIF for example, just list every single reference for a species that they can, many of which just mention the species in passing. That is the last thing we need ... Stho002 (talk) 20:52, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Our task here is to provide information to the reader, not to make judgements for him/her about what is important. This lack of judgementalism is fundamental to the Wiki concept. Detail that is important in one context may be less important in another, but that is for the reader to decide. Any reference cited here has clearly been "selected" to appear on the page by the editor, so a heading References is sufficient and easily understood. The "KISS" principle applies. Accassidy (talk) 21:49, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree about "KISS", but disagree about everything else you just said. It is the responsibility of the editor to present the information to the reader in such a way as to highlight what is important. This is the measure of a good editor. If I look up a species, the last thing I want, as a reader, is a huge list of refs. to wade through, 99% of which are useless ... Stho002 (talk)

Clearly we disagree, that is stating the obvious. A "publication" generally has only one editor, but can have many contributors. So let us call ourselves "contributors" instead of editors. Our task, after all, is to contribute data in a manner that is conformal with WS policy. No single person can possibly responsible for all the content, so the title "editor" is something of a misnomer. Accassidy (talk) 22:04, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Use whatever terminology you like, it doesn't change the facts. Selecting references and sources is fully within WS policy, or else we would have to cite everything of any small relevance. Why do you have an irrational desire to cite references which aren't of any use to anybody? It just doesn't make sense! Stho002 (talk) 22:12, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

I cite references that I have found useful in researching my contribution. My work is not irrational, nor are my desires. So I will ask again that you refrain from insults. My logic is just that, for the very reason that you state, all references cited here, as in any research project, are "selected" by the contributor. Therefore using the heading "Selected References" is tautological and pointless. Not only that, the heading "Selected References" is not in accord with Help:Reference section nor have I ever seen it in a taxonomic publication wherein references are, as here, selected by the contributor. I do not expect you to agree with my approach, but to continue to do as you wish, tautological or otherwise. But now, surely, you must understand better and will avoid misrepresenting my view in future. Accassidy (talk) 22:55, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

Alan, you give the impression that you know better, but please try to consider that you may not be 100% correct in your thinking here. We are not writing scientific papers on WS. The references section on WS is not the same as in a scientific paper. The main aim of WS is to present useful information to the user. Some references allow the reader to identify a species and tell us a lot about that species. Other references simply mention the name. Many ODs are based on mixed species and/or are insufficient to recognise the species and/or do not represent the modern cocept of that species. It is crucial to highlight the most important references. You claim that all the references are "selected" by the contributor is a confusion. I would often not select the OD, for example, at all, but you and others here are forcing my selection. Therefore I still need to highlight the most important refs., using the heading "Selected" It is far from being tautological or pointless. But now, surely, you must understand better and will avoid misrepresenting my view in future... Stho002 (talk) 20:16, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: your manner angers and dismays everyone who is unfortunate enough to conduct a discussion with you, so I would advise you not to exaggerate with your edit wars and with your disrespectful behavior. Now that we know that no WMF investigation is taking place, we the admins are feeling free to exercise the necessary measures to enforce this wiki's policy and this wiki's rules. Mind, this IS NOT a threat, not an intimidation but also it is not a bluff. Mariusm (talk) 15:47, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

I suggest you take you own advice. I also remind you that OhanaUnited is still a WS crat, and I am confident that he will ensure that nobody gets too trigger happy with sysop tools Stho002 (talk) 20:22, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

@Mariusm: I believe you misunderstood the powers of admin. Admins are granted with technical capabilities to help administer the project. Nowhere on the admin page says that admins represent the community as a whole. You and I don't represent for the entire project or all of its members (and nobody does, unless you're Jimbo Wales). There's no "board of admins" or "admin council" and you're not the spokesperson for the entire community. Each admin act on their own, using their best judgment. While you can certainly represent yourself, please refrain from using "we the admins" or similar phrases in the future. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:48, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: [redacted as incivil and not needed]. Stho002 (talk) 05:17, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm an environmentalist and not a biologist so I'm not in a good position (or the best person) to judge if they're competent or not. But you certainly got the "lowest common denominator" part right. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:24, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: I'm not speaking only for myself really, because I see every day how badly everyone else "suffers" from Stho's conduct and how many admins desperately try to straighten the damage he's doing, (even by resorting to locking pages); how he causes newcomers to abandon WS and how much energy everyone here expands just to deal with his reverts, his unjustified edits etc. It is my duty to see to it that such a disruptive conduct will be met by appropriate response. The quantity of edits he makes doesn't justify edit wars and doesn't justify harassment. Instead of protecting Stho, I expect you to join me and try to help the community in protecting those who actually need this protection. Mariusm (talk) 05:40, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

@Mariusm: You're characterizing yourself as someone who received community approval to speak for the entire community, when you don't have that authority to do so. Admins are not spokespersons. They are regular members of the community with additional technical permissions given to facilitate the administration aspect of the project. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:16, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

@OhanaUnited: I never said I represent the community nor did I say I got approval to speak for anyone. What I said was that I've witnessed the distress and the difficulty of the community in its dealing with Stho, a distress which my duty as an admin was to take care of. Mariusm (talk) 05:12, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Stho002 cripples my contributions

I want to raise the community's awareness to the extent to which Stho002 is waging a war against my contributions, crippling and impairing them beyond recognition. The following was my original contribution for Gasteruption sinicola: Gasteruption sinicola #1, which Stho002 transformed into this: Gasteruption sinicola #2. As you can see much of the original information including the primary reference, holotype, type locality and synonymy are gone. This vandalizing is done primly as a revenge against raising my voice to alert his inappropriate practices. Mariusm (talk) 07:41, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Marius, I think that Stho002 have his reason to do this. I think he can explain it to you like he did to me when he delete my contribution. (he didn't). PeterR (talk) 12:45, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

We are having a discussion on the Reference Section and then these appear overnight GMT! Platostoma, Kozlovia, Scandiceae, Scandicinae, Daucinae‎ and Torilidinae, forget the template edit! Anybody else been "hit"? Andyboorman (talk) 10:01, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it's very sad to watch our editing efforts being ruthlessly mutilated like this. Mariusm (talk) 12:40, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

User:Mariusm fails to mention the serious error and other misleading information in his original version, which I fixed in my subsequent edits. See if you can figure it out ... Stho002 (talk) 19:45, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: the fact that I've forgotten the parentheses doesn't mean you're entitled to erase the primary reference, holotype, type locality and synonymy. When one expends the collapsible Nomenclature section you made one gets nothing meaningful. Mariusm (talk) 07:04, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

It was more than just that. Your version wasn't meaningful. It didn't make sense. It was misleading and confused Stho002 (talk) 21:04, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Template and Copyright Discussions

I have moved this discussion off the Reference Section debate, as it is a diversion and will allow others to contribute more effectively. I have done this with the best of intentions. Andyboorman (talk) 08:20, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

@Accassidy: I will not cooperate unless you treat everyone here by the same standard. Check the recent edits of User:MPF. He has made trivial format changes to many of my references templates, and protected the templates for 1 month! This is serious abuse of admin powers on his part (coming hot on the heels of absurd allegations of copyright breaches that he has made against me, amounting to defamation/libel). If you want me to cooperate, unprotect and revert those templates. Stho002 (talk) 19:59, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

The reference templates I had corrected (citing the reference correctly, with all the authors, and/or the correct capitalisation of the journals cited) had been subjected to repeated edit-warring and vandalism (deletion of the authors, etc.) about which the relevant editor had been warned repeatedly about edit-warring, so protection was unfortunately necessary. - MPF (talk) 20:47, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@Accassidy: Protecting pages for a month, over trivial formatting issues, is a clear abuse of admin powers Stho002 (talk) 20:57, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@Stho002: If anyone else behaves like you I will treat them the same. The more worrying thing here is that you refer to "my reference templates" - they are not yours, they belong to the community - and complain about an editor making trivial edits to them when that is exactly what you have been doing with your commas to templates originally created by me. If the templates concerned are protected for a month, that is probably an attempt to avoid the start of another edit war. The month will expire and then you can waste more of your time reverting edits that you say are trivial formatting. Or you can make more useful original contributions. Accassidy (talk) 22:13, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@Accassidy: "My reference templates", in this context, clearly means ones that I created, with my format preferences. For MPF to change those preferences and protect the changes is an abuse of his admin powers. The serious issue is not the editing to change preferences, but the protection. This I cannot be guilty of now, because I am not an admin. Even if I was guilty of it as an admin, two wrongs don't make a right. You are the hypocrit for allowing MPF to do the very same things that you criticise me for having done. As, I stated, cooperation is a two way street, and I don't see one shred of it coming the other way Stho002 (talk) 22:19, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

The default option was 'indefinite' (i.e., permanent unless rescinded). Obviously, the protection can be lifted earlier if the editor concerned guarantees a cessation to the edit-warring (or extended, if it continues). - MPF (talk) 21:25, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

As to the copyright on the contents pages; "amounting to defamation/libel" is a grossly over-the-top exaggeration (but sadly, very typical of what I have come to expect from this source). I wrote to Editors of one of the journals concerned, and have received a reply confirming that the material is indeed their copyright, but that they did not consider it to be significant enough to pursue as a serious breach of their rights. In that sense, I see no harm in its being left in place, though checking this was very important. However, the material is not under a Creative Commons or GNU license, so the WMF investigation may well feel that its inclusion here contravenes Wiki rules; I will leave that for the WMF investigators to decide. - MPF (talk) 20:47, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Nonsense. As Donat Agosti's legal department has verified (above), your accusations were [quote] absurd [unquote]. Journal editors are not necessarily experts in copyright. You are just soooo naive! There isn't gonna be a "WMF investigation". All they said to me was (effectively) "do nothing and it will blow over". Stho002 (talk) 20:56, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

The journal editors are owners of the material, so have every right to have an interest in and be consulted over the use of their copyrighted text, regardless of their legal expertise. Yes, good advice there, "do nothing and it will blow over" - do nothing more on Wikispecies and it will blow over. But it won't blow over as long as edit wars and interference with other editors continues ;-) MPF (talk) 21:25, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps, for the sake of being completely certain about the facts, you would be so good as to tell us who you contacted exactly, so that I can verify that your reporting of their response is accurate? I have already just now contacted Ewen Cameron (who I have known for over 10 years), and this was his reply viz. Auckland Botanical Society journal: [quote] This seems very odd Stephen - to my knowledge (as president and part of the editorial committee) in recent years no one has asked Ak Bot Soc about any copyright issues [unquote]. He has no problem with the journal citations on Wikispecies, which are to the journal's benefit, if anything. Stho002 (talk) 21:37, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@MPF:@Stho002: It is pointless you both arguing about legal matters when such things are always matters of opinion until tested in a court. You can ask a dozen lawyers and get a dozen different answers, just like economists. Please get off each others' backs. I agree that endless templates about distributional or ecological issues to do with New Zealand have no relevance to this project, but I consider them as one user's scratchpads and will not waste my time searching and deleting them. Please let this subject drop. Accassidy (talk) 22:13, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@MPF:@Accassidy: I have just received the following preliminary legal advice (from a University Law professor, who I won't name at this stage): [Quote] I can say that an allegation of copyright breaches, particularly against an academic, is capable of being defamatory under NZ law and that of similar common law countries. [unquote] Stho002 (talk) 22:23, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

@MPF:@Accassidy: Alan, you are now making unqualified assertions of a legal nature! I remind you of the reply (above) from Donat Agosti's legal department [quote]In copyright, you can rarely say, that something is clear. In this special case, it is absolutely clear: no copyright breach at all.[unquote, my bold] ... Stho002 (talk) 22:26, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

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This discussion doesn't involve the most important question that has to be asked: why on earth should be a complete botanic-journal table-of-contents be included in WS. I don't see any reason for this type of information to be incorporated in a wiki which is basically a species-directory and not a journal-directory. Perhaps Stho002 would be good enough to explain this conundrum to us please? Mariusm (talk) 09:35, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Request

Hallo I'm a german pupil and I want to know some Details about the endophytal fungi Pestalotiopsis microspora,because I'm working on a sience project at out School .I hope anybody can help me

See Pestalotiopsis microspora. Accassidy (talk) 22:47, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

Stho002 intentionally vandalized edits

Stho002 intentionally vandalized 90 pages, so I had to block him. He apparently resigned WS with hard feelings, and then proceeded to vandalize multiple pages. Mariusm (talk) 07:24, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

@Mariusm: Why only one month? Thanks, by the way. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 08:07, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree, this final act of vandalism qualifies for an indefinite block. --Franz Xaver (talk) 08:51, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

@Mariusm: I agree that a month is probably insufficient time for this User to reflect, take counselling and change his approach. So I would agree with a longer period initially. I never give up hope and one day it might be appropriate to let him back in, but this will only be after he has a major change of attitude and is able to be constant in his rehabilitation. Accassidy (talk) 18:11, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

@Mariusm:. Have you block Sthoner for a month? What to do with Zootaxa? Add we the bulletins with Zt or with author names? PeterR (talk) 13:52, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

@PeterR: In my opinion, to be consistent, it is better to add the templates always by the author's name rather than by Zt. (Although Stho added already thousands of Zt templates - one of his many strange decisions). Mariusm (talk) 14:49, 28 January 2015 (UTC).

@Mariusm: I agree with you. So I make the author templates all on the same way. I shall do it for all Zootaxa. PeterR (talk) 17:58, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

I agree that a month is too short, I stick with my previous opinion for a permanent block, which can be removed, should Stephen Thorpe one day be able to convince the community that he has changed attitude. Dan Koehl (talk) 20:25, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Agree with a permanent block too, given the vandalism and multiple examples of serious harassment of other users. As Dan says, a permanent block can always be removed, though I suspect Sus scrofa volans will be added to wikispecies - with a verified holotype - before its removal. - MPF (talk) 21:39, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Stho has been editing here since 2008 several hours a day, 7 days a week, 50 weeks a year without any interruption, and I respect this devotion. I would give him a chance to reflect for a month. Maybe he'll come up with a solution that will accommodate both himself, but also the rest of the WS community. Mariusm (talk) 05:22, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Been off line for a few days and imagine my surprise to note the developments! I support the blocking of Stho unreservedly on the grounds of multiple vandalism. However, to see his "retirement" and redacted defamatory remarks are not a good sign. A couple of points, firstly, a retirement is not for life and secondly it is his 6th block. However, a month may be long enough in order to await further developments. One positive is there are already some signs that contributors are re-engaging. Andyboorman (talk) 19:35, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Template link to WS from the German Wikipedia

I have noticed that 2 Wikispecies templates were deleted on the German Wikipedia was deleted in 2005, with the motivation that Wikispecies was of less importantce and quality, please see Deleted files. Hence theres no available templates, where and when theres a wish to put a link from a species article on the German Wiki to Wikispecies.

Today I made a requests for undeletion of those files.

If you want to take part of any discussions there (in German) please see Deletion_review. Dan Koehl (talk) 03:42, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

The discussion about a template for linking articles from German Wikipedia to Wikispecies was moved here. Dan Koehl (talk) 20:22, 31 January 2015 (UTC)