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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Michael D. Lawrence (talk | contribs) at 07:01, 22 September 2019 (→Pronunciations: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Parent parameter in speciesbox template

Yes, your edit to Acer rousei is the way forward. Although |parent= has been available since I added it in February 2017, and it's in the documentation for the template, it's not been "advertised" and hence is only rarely used.

My ultimate idea is that there would be a single 'autotaxobox' template, combining at least {{Speciesbox}}, {{Subspeciesbox}}, {{Infraspeciesbox}} and {{Automatic taxobox}}. You would specify (a) an entry point into the taxonomic hierarchy encoded in the taxonomy templates (b) some lower-level taxa that would be added by the taxobox template itself. One issue is what to call the 'entry point' parameter, since "parent" isn't right; it's consistently used in taxoboxes to mean the rank above the target of the taxobox, e.g. for a subspecies, the parent is the species.

Any ideas? Peter coxhead (talk) 08:46, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Merge the taxonomic backbone into Wikidata, use QIDs, call them all {{Taxobox}}, and rename current taxobox to {{Manual taxobox}}. Easy? :)
Sorry, I don't fully have a handle on what's possible or how complex it is...make parent and grandparent work equally? Hypericum ascyron subsp. pyramidatum --> |grandparent=Hypericum sect. Roscyna |taxon=Hypericum ascyron subsp. pyramidatum ? —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 18:59, 9 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Re Wikidata, no, this absolutely would not work, for many reasons. One is that we have different classifications coded in the taxonomy templates via "variant" versions (e.g. the birds and dinosaur editors have different views on what has the rank of class). Another is that there are many more editors here than at Wikidata, so our taxonomy is much better curated. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:16, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The Catalan Wikipedia is using taxoboxes that pull from Wikidata. ca:Tyrannosaurus is in class Reptilia, and there's no way to get to dinosaur via the taxobox. ca:Butomus umbellatus has Wikidata items linked for the monotypic genus and family. I'm not entirely sure how their system works, but I think they're at the mercy of Wikidata editors in terms of having all the sitelinks on one Wikidata item, which might not be the right one for the taxobox they want (actually, maybe Catalan taxoboxes are a good argument to stop putting all the sitelinks on a single item). Plantdrew (talk) 19:52, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Plantdrew: I refuse to put all the sitelinks on a single item. It's a thoroughly bad practice. A minor, but significant point, is that it messes up taxonbars. More importantly, if the genus X is split up, and some wikis accept that the former species X y is now Z y and some do not, the articles about X y and Z y are not about exactly the same topic, since they should discuss the move differently. The right way to connect articles on synonymous taxa is to put the sitelinks on the Wikidata item at the name used in the article, and then pick up connections between articles via the "taxonomic synonym" and "basionym" properties. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:07, 11 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The Hebrew one also, iirc. I think the original code for this resides in Module:Taxobox. It makes a lot of sense for smaller language Wikipedias, and in an ideal world for all, but the number of editors here is a compelling argument. Wikidata also allows multiple paths so has to take one. A while back, someone posted a link to a site creating networks based on Wikidata taxonomy (possibly Andy Mabbett suggesting it for use on taxonbar?).   Jts1882 | talk  20:32, 10 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
in an ideal world for all – well, the world of Wikidata would have to be very different in relation to taxonomy to persuade me. Firstly, the very long discussion at wikidata:Property talk:P1420#Changing this to a string property led to the conclusion that no-one knows how to model variant views of taxa in Wikidata. (The key example there is Araceae/Lemnaceae/Lemnoideae. "Lemnaceae" and "Lemnoideae" are two different names at different ranks for the same taxon, if "taxon" is defined as a group of organisms with a particular circumscription. But "Araceae" is the name at the same rank for two different taxa, only one of which is the parent of Lemnoideae. No-one has been able to explain how this can be represented in Wikidata, or indeed in any kind of regular relational database.) Secondly, Wikidata's taxonomic entries are overwhelmingly created by scraping databases – and have to be because there isn't enough editor time to work any other way. We saw very vividly what problems this causes with the almost defunct The Plant List database – its automated scraping of entries from Tropicos, for example, was frequently completely wrong. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:33, 11 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I can tell the Catalan taxobox gets the taxonomy by following the parent taxon parameter (P171), but only shows when the rank (P105) is standard linnean (family, order, class, etc). It does seem a major limitation that this means the dinosaur taxa don't show Dinosaur. But you can understand why they use Wikidata as we must have orders of magnitude more editors.
One use of Wikidata that I thought might be useful here is when there is no taxonomy template. When the create taxonomy page is created, Wikidata could be used to suggest a parent.   Jts1882 | talk  16:21, 11 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Jts1882: it's interesting that if you go to ca:Saurisquis (saurischian), the taxobox shows Class Reptilia. But if you click on the Reptilia link, the Catalan article has no taxobox, and the taxonomy section has a quite different classification. We all face the problem that there's no taxonomic consensus among biologists who work on different groups. Wikidata tends to create the illusion that there is.
In an ideal world, editors would always fill in |refs= in taxonomy templates, and the parent would be taken from the reference. I have been thinking about issuing a warning when a taxonomy template is created without any reference. I worry that editors would treat Wikidata as a source, if it were used to make suggestions. But it's an idea. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:14, 11 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There are two opposing goals. One is using reliable sources as the basis for change, the other is facilitating use of automatic taxoboxes. A category for taxonomy templates without references would be one approach, but I suspect the numbers might be daunting. As for people accepting wikidata as the parent source, is that worse than people giving up on the automatic taxobox? Maybe only use wikidata parents when they have a reference (unfortunately rare). It's just an idea. Wikidata has information that could be useful in the absence of alternatives. The questions is can it be policed in a useful way.   Jts1882 | talk  20:59, 11 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Categories fail to show properly

Hi Hyperik, perhaps you or one of your followers could have a look at Felicia amelloides. The categories at the bottom of the page do not show properly. The code look alright to me.

Perhaps I could also ask to have a look at the quality rating, as I have extended this article quite substantially. Thanks in advance! Dwergenpaartje (talk) 18:35, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Just a little thing—the categories still had the colons ( : ) at the beginning of the links, maybe from it, or a template article, being in draft space. It looks like a solid "C" so far to me, possibly B but I couldn't say without knowing more about the plant beyond what you have in the article. Such a cheery little flower. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 18:50, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again!, Dwergenpaartje (talk) 18:58, 12 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Invasive species de-categorization

Hi. Can you offer an explanation/justification for the removal of over a hundred different invasive animal species from the various categories of invasive animals? Just for example, there are dozens of insects that are invasive, yet the category now contains only 2 species. Are you planning to create a new category (or categories) for all of the invasive taxa you've de-categorized? Dyanega (talk) 23:12, 14 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Did I miss adding an edit summary somewhere? Sorry about that, I thought included them on each change. I was following the guidelines in the various category descriptions (e.g. see Category:Invasive species, Category:Invasive animal species, Category:Invasive mammal species, Category:Invasive animal species in Australia), which each say something to the effect that these types of categories are "for articles and lists dealing specifically with the introduction of species by man. Please do not add to this category [to] general articles about single organisms, unless they are concerned specifically with the species' introductions." —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 23:24, 14 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This particular definition is completely at odds with every other definition appearing in Wikipedia, because whoever edited that category definition at Category:Invasive_species has confused it with the term "Introduced Species" (they even link to a discussion of this entirely different category!), and in effect swapped the terms around so instead of talking about introduced species, they refer to species introductions - and the resulting re-categorization is pretty disastrous if it can't be undone. All the articles and categories that deal with invasive species, e.g. Invasive species, which states "An invasive species is a species that is not native to a specific location (an introduced species), and that has a tendency to spread to a degree believed to cause damage to the environment, human economy or human health." and Lists of invasive species, which states "A species is regarded as invasive if it has been introduced by human action to a location, area, or region where it did not previously occur naturally (i.e., is not a native species), becomes capable of establishing a breeding population in the new location without further intervention by humans, and becomes a pest in the new location, threatening agriculture and/or the local biodiversity." ALL of the articles you've re-categorized refer to invasive species by these standard definitions. I'm going to go ahead and change the definition so it refers to invasive species and not species introductions; if there's a way to revert your edits, that would be extremely helpful. Thanks. Dyanega (talk) 01:38, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
After examining a lot of the category hierarchy, only a few category pages seemed to NOT have the baffling boilerplate with the prohibition against listing articles about invasive taxa unless the article was about the introduction of the species. However, some were fine - see Category:Invasive_species_in_New_Zealand for an example of a properly-phrased prohibition that allows the category to still be useful. Dyanega (talk) 02:17, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Definitions of "invasive" vs. "introduced by humans" vs. "non-native" vs. "naturalized" aside, the intention in the category descriptions was to not include articles about a species generally, only articles specifically focusing on a species's invasiveness. Looks like you removed that from the category descriptions though.
For example, we definitely would not call Sarracenia purpurea invasive here in the lower Midwestern United States (where it's rare and highly conservative), but one might in Ireland, so an article about Sarracenia purpurea in Ireland or one called List of invasive flora of Ireland might be classified under some sort of invasive species category, but Sarracenia purpurea itself shouldn't be.
See also:
I'm sure others following this talk page have thoughts to add. They often seem to so far... :) —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 02:51, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The boiler plate seems to have been copied down from Category:Introduced species, which has been a parent of Category:Invasive species longer than the boiler plate has been around. The boiler plate was, from what I observe, poorly addressing a real issue with the Invasive/Introduced categories. Invasive is meaningless without a geographic context. Category:Invasive species has one immediate subcategory that goes into geography, and three subcategories based on taxonomy (plant/animal/fungus), which are further subdivided taxonomically. Prior to Hyperik's work today there were a lot of articles in the "invasive by taxonomy" categories that weren't in any "invasive by geography" category (and after Hyperik's work today, these aren't in any invasive category at all). There are some articles that are "invasive by taxonomy/geography" intersections (e.g. Category:Invasive animal species in western North America); there's probably a place for doing some basic taxonomy subcategories intersections (plant/animal/fungus at least) in a well developed tree of "invasive by geography" categories. But Wikipedia is a long way from a well developed "invasive by geography" system.
Some invasive by geography information was lost today. A glance at Hyperik's edits shows Sphinx ligustri being removed from Category:Invasive animal species in Australia. Nothing in the article supports that categorization (although I don't necessarily doubt it). Maybe it should have gone into Category:Invasive species in Australia instead, but really, "invasive" is something that should be sourced anyway. Waif/accidental/persisting/escape/introduced/naturalized/weedy/invasive isn't an objective continuum anyway. Designation as "invasive" particularly should be possible to ascribe to a source prior to being categorized as "invasive". Plantdrew (talk)
Minor semantic note—nothing has been "lost". Any of the various changes listed in my contributions from today can be reversed if need be.
But I would personally prefer referenced lists in article space than the more difficult-to-maintain category system for "invasives by geography". Invasiveness can definitely be a touchy subject and it's really commonly confused with just anything non-native. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 04:05, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion shows one of the many problems with categorization, namely that there's no requirement for (or indeed possibility of) explicit sourcing, which is mandated for information in articles. So the best that can be done is to insist that a category is not added unless there is explicit sourced support in the article. However, this isn't the norm.
Another major problem with categorization is maintaining the consistency of the category. We have enough problems with "described in YEAR" categories for organisms, where the ICZN and ICNafp at least offer a body of rules. Something like "invasive" is too subjective. Only something like "Category:Classified as invasive by X" would work in my view.
So I support Hyperik's actions. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:32, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"Only something like 'Category:Classified as invasive by X' would work" Maybe something global in scope, like the Global Invasive Species Database or GRIIS, though I'm not really familiar with those or if they're well-maintained. Category:Invasive species with evidence of impacts in the Global Register of Introduced and Invasive Species is a bit of a mouthful. :)
Regional government designations like Category:Noxious weeds of Illinois, Category:Invasive plant species regulated by the Illinois Exotic Weed Act, Category:Potentially invasive, banned plants of Connecticut, etc... I don't think those would be defining enough and would be really cluttery. Some species would have dozens of categories. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 18:06, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try to keep this to the point: I see no reason that species which are widely known to be invasives, commonly categorized as invasives, and with citable sources stating them to be invasives, can appear in Wikipedia in Lists of Invasive Species but CANNOT be placed in any category that indicates they are invasive. That seems to be an incredibly counterintuitive and counterproductive policy. Consider just one example: at List_of_invasive_species_in_North_America there are roughly 100 insects listed as invasives. Most of them that were not redlinks USED to be in an "invasive" category, now, after Hyperik's edits, NONE of them are categorized as invasive. If these species are invasives, then there needs to be a category that they can all be placed in. Requiring that the article has to be strictly ABOUT their introduction, and not about the species itself, is not constructive at all, and removes an important tool - the use of categories - that would help people navigate Wikipedia content. Again, if we can have lists of invasive species, how is it sensible to prohibit people from using categories that reflect those lists? Dyanega (talk) 18:50, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you think "there needs to be a category that they can all be placed in"? (as well as the list) I fully support H's edits. DexDor (talk) 19:31, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"Listify" is a common argument when discussing deletion of categories. The existence of a list of articles with a shared characteristic doesn't mandate a category for that characteristic. Now I'm not saying that invasive species CANNOT be so categorized, or that we should prohibit people from using said categories. But most the current tree of invasive categories is a poorly thought out mess, and geographic categorization of non-plant organisms on Wikipedia still lacks clear standards. Category:Invasive animal species in North America‎ is a parent of Category:Invasive animal species in the United States‎ which is a parent of Category:Invasive animal species of Guam‎. Guam is in North America now? Russia spans two continents; France includes portions of five continents. I'm not sure it makes much sense to categorize invasive species on a continental level; none really occupy the entirety of any content, and there are at least a few species that are native and invasive in the same continent. Building an invasive category system from the bottom up (stating with much smaller political units) would be a lot of work, and fauna by country categories routinely come up for deletion. Plantdrew (talk) 20:26, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
How about this, then: for articles about invasive species introductions AS EVENTS, we have a category called "Category: Species Introductions". For articles about invasive species AS SPECIES, we use the "Category: Invasive Species" categories? While I definitely see your point about a confusing hierarchy, I would argue that removing all the species articles under these categories only accomplishes the proverbial throwing out of numerous babies with the bathwater. "Introduced Species" and "Species Introductions" are NOT synonymous concepts or terms, and I still don't see why the categorization of the former has to be conflated with the categorization of the latter. Dyanega (talk) 20:44, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still real leery of categorizing species as invasive without specifying where they are invasive; and appropriate categories for the "where" will take some thought (it may be worth looking at Category:Endemism and it's subcategories for guidance). For articles that discuss species introductions as events, the "where" is usually part of the article title, so I don't feel it's imperative that the category itself specify where. (if we had a Category: Species Introductions that wasn't explicitly limited to events, I'd be inclined to include American Acclimatization Society there). Plantdrew (talk) 21:49, 15 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
FYI: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2019 January 17#Category:Invasive plant species, started this for one of the bigger categories (currently 622 articles). A better venue for this discussion than my talk page probably. :) —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 17:16, 17 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Mairia coriacea

The new article Mairia coriacea has two issues I find difficult to resolve. First issue is the hight. The review says it is 180 cm. This is very likely a typo and 18 cm was intended (flower stems are up to 17 cm, leaves up to 23 cm long, but at an angle). An other source says 12 cm, which is too low, but I took this hight for the moment. The other is the flowering time. Three sources give different periods. I suspect that the species will flower any time of the year as long as this is 11⁄2 to 2 months after a fire, but wildfires mostly occur during the summer. I now noted that sources differ and give the full span. How do you think these two issues could be solved? Thanks in advance, Dwergenpaartje (talk) 11:40, 25 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination of List of edible invasive species for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article List of edible invasive species is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of edible invasive species until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Rathfelder (talk) 10:04, 14 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Spaces in taxobox parameters

Hi, welcome back Hyperik. While the formatting of taxobox parameters isn't especially consistent across Wikipedia, the most common format has spaces; e.g. "| taxon = Foo"; somewhat less frequently, the space between the pipe and the parameter name is omitted ("|taxon = Foo"). Full justification (extra spaces after parameter name to make all parameter values start in the same column) and omission of all spaces are pretty rare. I don't know what your motivation for removing spaces is, but I don't think it's worth the effort. Visual Editor is currently configured to produce the most common format, although that could be changed, and not many people use Visual Editor anyway. Plantdrew (talk) 18:31, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have much to say beyond that I prefer it that way visually, so it's generally part of my ingrained workflow. I guess it also reduces character count inflation? At the same time, I prefer citation templates with parameters not on separate lines like taxoboxes are, so they're not particularly consistent preferences. I don't make edits that only affect taxobox spacing or citation parameter condensing though. I agree that'd def be a waste of time. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 21:08, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No big deal either way. Character count is the one advantage I could think of, but it's a pretty minor one (the HTML document has many more bytes than the raw Wiki-markup anyway). I also prefer citation templates on a single line, and usually omit spaces around parameters in citations. I just thought there is a not insignificant amount of work involved in moving the cursor around in order to eliminate spaces in taxobox parameters. Plantdrew (talk) 21:29, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Ooh, nooo, not much for mouse/cursorwork. I just use find " = ", then replace all with "=". —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 21:37, 18 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Tree of Life Newsletter

April 2019—Issue 001


Tree of Life


Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Tree of Life newsletter!
Newly recognized content

Sturgeon nominated by Atsme, reviewed by Chiswick Chap
Eastern brown snake nominated by Casliber, reviewed by Opabinia regalis
Cactus wren nominated by CaptainEek, reviewed by Sainsf
Bidni nominated by PolluxWorld, reviewed by DepressedPer
Crinoid nominated by Cwmhiraeth, reviewed by Chiswick Chap

Newly nominated FAs

Cretoxyrhina nominated by Macrophyseter
Eastern brown snake nominated by Casliber



WikiCup heating up

Tree of Life editors are making a respectable showing in this year's WikiCup, with three regular editors advancing to the third round. Overall winner from 2016, Casliber, topped the scoreboard in points for round 2, getting a nice bonus for bringing Black mamba to FA. Enwebb continues to favor things remotely related to bats, bringing Stellaluna to GA. Plants editor Guettarda also advanced to round 3 with several plant-related DYKs.

Wikipedia page views track animal migrations, flowers blooming

A March 2019 paper in PLOS Biology found that Wikipedia page views vary seasonally for species. With a dataset of 31,751 articles about species, the authors found that roughly a quarter of all articles had significant seasonal variations in page views on at least one language version of Wikipedia. They examined 245 language versions. Page views also peaked with cultural events, such as views of the Great white shark article during Shark Week or Turkey during Thanksgiving.

Seasonal variation in page views among nine bird species
Did you know ... that Tree of Life editors bring content to the front page nearly every day?

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:24, 7 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Deletion +tag

Hi, I removed your +tag as it is not setup correctly and it is frivolous. Aquataste (talk) 21:19, 20 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

May 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter

May 2019—Issue 002


Tree of Life


Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
Newly recognized content

Cretoxyrhina by Macrophyseter
Bramble Cay melomys by The lorax/Vanamonde93, reviewed by Jens Lallensack
Chimpanzee by LittleJerry/Chiswick Chap, reviewed by Tim riley
Spinophorosaurus by FunkMonk/Jens Lallensack, reviewed by Enwebb
Trachodon mummy by Jens Lallensack, reviewed by Gog the Mild
Megabat by Enwebb, reviewed by Jens Lallensack

Newly nominated FAs

Spinophorosaurus by FunkMonk/Jens Lallensack
Trachodon mummy by Jens Lallensack




Fundamental changes being discussed at WikiProject Biology

On 23 May, user Prometheus720 created a talk page post, "Revamp of Wikiproject Biology--Who is In?". In the days since, WP:BIOL has been bustling with activity, with over a dozen editors weighing in on this discussion, as well as several others that have subsequently spawned. An undercurrent of thought is that WP:BIOL has too many subprojects, preventing editors from easily interacting and stopping a "critical mass" of collaboration and engagement. Many mergers and consolidations of subprojects have been tentatively listed, with a consolidation of WikiProjects Genetics + Molecular and Cell Biology + Computational Biology + Biophysics currently in discussion. Other ideas being aired include updating old participants lists, redesigning project pages to make them more user-friendly, and clearly identifying long- and short-term goals.

Editor Spotlight: These editors want you to write about dinosaurs

Editors FunkMonk and Jens Lallensack had a very fruitful month, collaborating to bring two dinosaur articles to GA and then nominating them both for FA. They graciously decided to answer some questions for the first ToL Editor Spotlight, giving insight to their successful collaborations, explaining why you should collaborate with them, and also sharing some tidbits about their lives off-Wikipedia.

1) Enwebb: How long have you two been collaborating on articles?

  • Jens Lallensack: I started in the German Wikipedia in 2005 but switched to the English Wikipedia because of its very active dinosaur project. My first major collaboration with FunkMonk was on Heterodontosaurus in 2015.
  • FunkMonk: Yeah, we had interacted already on talk pages and through reviewing each other's articles, and at some point I was thinking of expanding Heterodontosaurus, and realised Jens had already written the German Wikipedia version, so it seemed natural to work together on the English one. Our latest collaboration was Spinophorosaurus, where by another coincidence, I had wanted to work on that article for the WP:Four Award, and it turned out that Jens had a German book about the expedition that found the dinosaur, which I wouldn't have been able to utilise with my meagre German skills. Between those, we also worked on Brachiosaurus, a wider Dinosaur Project collaboration between several editors.

2) Enwebb: Why dinosaurs?

  • JL: Because of the huge public interest in them. But dinosaurs are also highly interesting from a scientific point of view: key evolutionary innovations emerged within this group, such as warm-bloodedness, gigantism, and flight. Dinosaur research is, together with the study of fossil human remains, the most active field in paleontology. New scientific techniques and approaches tend to get developed within this field. Dinosaur research became increasingly interdisciplinary, and now does not only rely on various fields of biology and geology, but also on chemistry and physics, among others. Dinosaurs are therefore ideal to convey scientific methodology to the general public.
  • FM: As outlined above, dinosaurs have been described as a "gateway to science"; if you learn about dinosaurs, you will most likely also learn about a lot of scientific fields you would not necessarily be exposed to otherwise. On a more personal level, having grown up with and being influenced by various dinosaur media, it feels pretty cool to help spread knowledge about these animals, closest we can get to keeping them alive.

3) Enwebb: Why should other editors join you in writing articles related to paleontology? Are you looking to attract new editors, or draw in experienced editors from other areas of Wikipedia?

  • JL: Because we are a small but active and helpful community. Our Dinosaur collaboration, one of the very few active open collaborations in Wikipedia, makes high-level writing on important articles easier and more fun. Our collaboration is especially open to editors without prior experience in high-level writing. But we do not only write articles: several WikiProject Dinosaur participants are artists who do a great job illustrating the articles, and maintain an extensive and very active image review system. In fact, a number of later authors started with contributing images.
  • FM: Anyone who is interested in palaeontology is welcome to try writing articles, and we would be more than willing to help. I find that the more people that work on articles simultaneously with me, the more motivation I get to write myself. I am also one of those editors who started out contributing dinosaur illustrations and making minor edits, and only began writing after some years. But when I got to it, it wasn't as intimidating as I had feared, and I've learned a lot in the process. For example anatomy; if you know dinosaur anatomy, you have a very good framework for understanding the anatomy of other tetrapod animals, including humans.

4) Enwebb: Between the two of you, you have over 300 GA reviews. FunkMonk, you have over 250 of those. What keeps you coming back to review more articles?

  • FM: One of the main reasons I review GANs is to learn more about subjects that seem interesting (or which I would perhaps not come across otherwise). There are of course also more practical reasons, such as helping an article on its way towards FAC, to reduce the GAN backlog, and to "pay back" when I have a nomination up myself. It feels like a win-win situation where I can be entertained by interesting info, while also helping other editors get their nominations in shape, and we'll end up with an article that hopefully serves to educate a lot of people (the greater good).
  • JL: Because I enjoy reading Wikipedia articles and like to learn new things. In addition, reviews give me the opportunity to have direct contact with the authors, and help them to make their articles even better. This is quite rewarding for me personally. But I also review because I consider our GA and FA system to be of fundamental importance for Wikipedia. When I started editing Wikipedia (the German version), the article promotion reviews motivated me and improved my writing skills a lot. Submitting an article for review requires one to get serious and take additional steps to bring the article to the best quality possible. GAs and FAs are also a good starting point for readers, and may motivate them to become authors themselves.

5) Enwebb: What are your editing preferences? Any scripts or gadgets you find invaluable?

  • FM: One script that everyone should know about is the duplink highlight tool. It will show duplinks within the intro and body of a given article separately, and it seems a lot of people still don't know about it, though they are happy when introduced to it. I really liked the citationbot too (since citation consistency is a boring chore to me), but it seems to be blocked at the moment due to some technical issues.
  • JL: I often review using the Wikipedia Beta app on my smartphone, as it allows me to read without needing to sit in front of the PC. For writing, I find the reference management software Zotero invaluable, as it generates citation templates automatically, saving a lot of time.
    • Editor's note: I downloaded Zotero and tried it for the first time and think it is a very useful tool. More here.

6) Enwebb: What would surprise the ToL community to learn about your life off-wiki?

  • FM: Perhaps that I have no background in natural history/science, but work with animation and games. But fascination with and knowledge of nature and animals is actually very helpful when designing and animating characters and creatures, so it isn't that far off, and I can actually use some of the things I learn while writing here for my work (when I wrote the Dromaeosauroides article, it was partially to learn more about the animal for a design-school project).
  • JL: That I am actually doing research on dinosaurs. Though I avoid writing about topics I publish research on, my Wikipedia work helps me to keep a good general overview over the field, and quite regularly I can use what I learned while writing for Wikipedia for my research.

Get in touch with these editors regarding collaboration at WikiProject Dinosaurs!

Marine life continues to dominate ToL DYKs

Discuss this issue

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Sent by DannyS712 (talk) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 03:44, 4 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I added duplicate external links that were already in the taxonbar on a bunch of spider genera pages. Thanks for helping me catch and fix this mistake. A (probably complete) list of all the pages that I worked on while adding an "External links" section is here, so you don't have to go through every single one of them. Sesamehoneytart 16:03, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Ok cool! And thanks for all your work on spider pages. :) —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 16:27, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of spaces in template calls

When you change all the occurrences of " |" to "|" in template calls, as you have been doing recently, this causes problems when anyone tries to edit pages you've changed on a device with a small screen (e.g. an iPad or worse still an iPhone), because the software may not then be able to break up the line with the template call in it. The initial behaviour is often to make all the editable text smaller to fit in the window width, or if the text size is increased, make it necessary scroll horizontally as well as vertically. Please don't make these changes. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:48, 10 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think I ever (or at least intend to) change " |" to "|". I do sometimes change "|" to " |" or "| " to "|" for sure. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 13:51, 10 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
There's a long series of edits by you in my watchlist like this one. They all have "remove links already in references and/or taxonbar" as the edit summary if you look back over your contributions. Maybe you didn't intend to remove the spaces, but you did. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pigeon Mountain Salamander

Can you explain why you removed the category "Amphibians of North America" from Pigeon Mountain salamander? 50.68.172.46 (talk) 17:35, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It hasn't been removed from Category:Amphibians of North America. It's already in that category by way of being in the subcategory Category:Amphibians of the United States. —Hyperik ⌜talk⌟ 18:57, 30 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Pronunciations

'It's not worthwhile adding pronunciations'. I like that. I was changing English pronunciations to Classical Latin until the amateur ruling class of the project had me stop. Please continue to remove them. Michael D. Lawrence (talk) 07:01, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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