This is an archive of past discussions with User:Deuterostome. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Welcome to Wikipedia, Deuterostome! Thank you for your contributions. I am France3470 and have been editing Wikipedia for quite some time, so if you have any questions feel free to leave me a message on my talk page. You can also check out Wikipedia:Questions or type {{helpme}} at the bottom of this page. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
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Hello. I just wanted to say great work on the really interesting and well researched articles you have created. I just wanted to point you towards WP:CITE, WP:CITET and WP:CITETOOL, which may help you your with the formatting of the referencing. There is nothing wrong with how things are at the moment (I certainly don't want to discourage you), it just seems like it could be time consuming writing it out by hand. Good luck with your further Wikipedia endeavors. I'm always around if you have any questions, France3470(talk)22:33, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
Welcome
I'm delighted to find a new editor with a shared interest in protists. This is a much neglected area and all contributions are appreciated.DrMicro (talk) 23:26, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
I could not agree with you more. I do maintain the Plasmodium and related pages - at least as far as I am permitted to. I do also work on the other genera of Apicomplexia - there are ~5000 species recognised in the literature. *Many* are not properly described; more than a few are in the older literature which can be a nightmare to locate. Myself I would love to have this group in some sort of order on WP - at least in part because of its medical importance. As you know too well I suspect working on the fringes of WP can get a bit lonely and it would be just great to have someone else working on this. Whether or not that would interest you as a project I have no idea. There are MORE than enough protists to go around. If you have an opinion on this one way or the other I would be most grateful if you could drop me a note on my talk page.DrMicro (talk) 11:56, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
Nice response! I saw your contributions, and it is good to say that those edits were not only a reason for you to do research here at Wikipedia, but also a reason for others to do research here. Keep on contributing, for Wikipedia is a place where articles are written by contributors like you! Thanks! Jedd Raynier (talk) 10:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
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[[slime mold]]s. Both the plasmodial slime molds, currently classified in the taxon [[Myxogastria]]), and the cellular slime molds of the groups [[Acrasida]] and [[Dictyosteliida]]), use amoeboid movement in their feeding stage. The cells of the former form a giant [[
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I accept the reversion of my edits, the text is really somewhat confusing. You may put them in the Talk Page for discussion. Thanks, Zorahia (talk) 14:54, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
Ok. I only think that the article should have both type of informations, more detailed, for specialists, and more general, for non-specialist. What you think? Zorahia (talk) 14:19, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
Well, in relation to Pugachev informal classification of Radiolaria and Heliozoa, I added it to the Wikispecies page of Heliozoa. I'm searching for a old but formal classification of Heliozoa, similar to that of Rhizopoda by Page. Maybe Siemensma (1991) will serve, but I think that it doesn't include Pedinellida, Taxopodida and Rotosphaerida as heliozoans. Thanks, Zorahia (talk) 01:00, 28 February 2015 (UTC)
Good work in the article! I would just add some remarks:
I think that the article title should be un-italicized.
In the introduction ("Amoeboid cells occur not only among the protozoa, but also fungi, algae and animals"): Similar to what is said about flagellated cells in Flagellum, I would rather say: "Amoeboid cells occurs in many eukaryotic groups, as a relatively perennial condition (either as a level of organization, in many protozoans, or as specialized cells, as leukocytes in animals), or as amoeboid life cycle stages."
In the section "Amoebae in multicellular organisms: animals and slime molds": I would like to change the title to something more general like: "Amoebae as specialized cells and life cycle stages". I also would add the comment: "Other organisms may also present amoeboid life-cycle stages, e.g., the gametes of some green algae (Zygnematophyceae), of pennate diatoms, of some foraminiferans, or the spores of some Mesomycetozoea."
In the section "Classification": Similar to the organization of the article Flagellate, the title of the section "Classification" could be "Sarcodina" or "Classification of the Sarcodina". A comment in this section could explain that "the Sarcodina dealed mainly with eukaryotes with an 'amoeboid level of organization', but also with some forms that were considered evolutively related to them, e.g., the slime molds, which have amoeboid cells only in some stages of their life cycles." Zorahia (talk) 15:27, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. I included the foraminiferans, with a reference. And I have also another suggestion to the title of the "Classification" section: "Amoebae as Organisms", or "Amoebae as Organisms: the Sarcodina" Zorahia (talk) 19:17, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
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I am not sure where I should post reply, but doing it here since you will get the notification for this.
My aim is to simplify lede not get into edit war
the source for the summary I provided is Kingdom_(biology)#Summary. I am not biased towards any single external source
I note that the concept of Kingdoms is not as relevant today as Clades (since the re-organisation of Protista)
from an encyclopedia point of view the nice thing about Cavalier-Smith’s re-organisation is he provides an equivalent Kingdom-type classification without impinging on modern clade style classification
If you consider Cavalier-Smith’s classification is not representative, then I think, you will have to mention 2 things clearly in the lede
1) specify, what is the current usage of protist - if not relevant then state the last used meaning & till when it was used
2) how modern clade based systems view protist/proctista/protozoa and where do they fit in it etc
you can provide the above information in lieu of the 1st paragraph I have created and retain the rest, which was aready present. I just re-arranged the sentences to make the flow of information read better
J mareeswaran (talk) 14:00, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
there is no cladistic equivalent to the taxon Protista, a group which spans the entire eukaryotic tree of life. Indeed, the nearest cladistic equivalent would be Eukaryota itself! In cladistic classification, the contents of Protista are distributed among various supergroups (SAR, Archaeplastida, Opisthokonta, etc.) and neither "protists" nor "protozoa" are mentioned at all.
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Hi thanks very much for your comments and guidance. The source for some of the clades was by Gao et al. 2016.[1]
Also you in reverting the edits you removed some of the new clades from the Dinoflagellata and other early diverging Myzozoa that I created. The references for those new clades are Ruggiero et al. 2015[2] and Silar 2016[3].
Thank you for your comments. I have reviewed the literature on Kakabekia. There is one paper that reports that this organisms lacks a nucleus. The other papers are silent on what group of organisms it belongs to.
It is a strict anaerobe which is suggestive of a prokaryotic origin but there is no DNA or other taxonomic study to suggest group it belongs to.
Megalytrum is probably a cyanobacterium. Its coccoid appearance is sugestive of some of the algae so I am not sure about that one either. However this is a minor point and I think I will remove this one from the list also.Virion123 (talk) 17:05, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
Chromalveolata colour
The reason the colour doesn't show automatically is that the unranked_regnum is not either "Chromalveolata" or "[[Chromalveolata]]", but is bolded and has a long comment after it. The taxobox code isn't intelligent enough to figure this out, even if it does heal itself... Peter coxhead (talk) 17:28, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead:Ha! :D I should have thought of inserting | color = {{Taxobox colour|Chromalveolata}}. I have some free time this aft, and am purging the greenyellows from Alveolata. Heterokonts next. Deuterostome (Talk)17:38, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
I would hold off yet on any taxa falling into the Eukayota but not into a currently recognized taxon which has a colour defined in {{Taxobox colour}}. We can't, I think, define different colours for all the subgroups of Eukayota: there are more than there are suitable distinguishable colours. So I intend to set up a colour which will serve as a default for eukaryotes with no other colour defined. However, this needs some changes to {{Taxobox}} and some other templates. Plantdrew has been helping me with the tests, and so far so good, but I need a bit more time. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:07, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
@Peter coxhead: OK, I'll leave any orphan taxa alone. A default Eukaryote colour is a great idea for groups like the breviates that are no longer really incertae sedis, but don't fall within the better-known supergroups. Deuterostome (Talk)22:46, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
Yes, another example is Apusozoa. Given the classification in the taxobox, it's not incertae sedis, since it's known to be a eukaryote. A real incertae sedis is Charnia, and I think only such cases should have the incertae sedis colour. Peter coxhead (talk)
@Peter coxhead:The edits were based on a fairly recent revision of the genus Pythium (Uzuhashi et al, 2010), and I didn't find any more recent work that repudiates the removal of this species to Globisporangium. The high-level classification is valid, too, though inconsistent with the use of SAR on most Wikipedia pages...and, of course, Kingdom Chromista has no colour! If you're OK with it, I'll create a page for Globisporangium sylvaticum, move the article contents there and put a redirect at Pythium sylvaticum. I'll put it under SAR in the taxobox, though, since that's where we have all the other "water moulds." Deuterostome (Talk)12:58, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
Seems sensible to me; my only concern was that it was appearing in the category for invalid taxobox colours (as you say, because "Chromista" has no colour). Peter coxhead (talk) 15:19, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
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Hi. I have reverted your change. Taxa are normally in aphabetical order and that was the only reason for putting them in this order. I make and have made no comment on the validity of Varisulca taxon as this is a very very messy area. I'm fairly good on the Apicomplexia - I know that there is a BIG revision needed here as the gregarines have been shown to be an incorrect grouping - but I am no expert on the taxa currently grouped under Varisulca.
The re ordering was not meant to confuse but merely to bring the ordering into the usual format for taxa: extant before extinct then alphabetical. I don't think any reasonable person could object to that. It does make life a little easier looking for taxa. Hope you will agree that this is OK. Virion123 (talk) 19:02, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
@Anomalocaris: Thanks for the reminder, and sorry for the delay (I was traveling when you posted the first notification, and forgot to make the change when I returned home). Deuterostome (Talk) : Deuterostome (Talk) 13:47, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Great, thanks! But it looks like you copied both the markup and the signature as plain text into the signature field; I expected you to copy just the markup. I don't think you want the extra : Deuterostome (Talk) at the end of your signature, do you? —Anomalocaris (talk) 17:56, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Hi Deuterostome! We communicated once before about the Axodine page and my efforts for consistency throughout it and others, so I'm reaching out again now for a second opinion. As I've been working to clean up these pages, I've just gotten more and more weirded out by this particular group. The Axodines aren't acknowledged in Algaebase or the NCBI taxonomy, and each of the orders that it claims are classified elsewhere in those databases. I'm wondering whether we even need this page, or if it should be renamed to Dictyochophyceae per Algaebase, or ???
We should also figure out the sensu stricto vs sensu lato thing- it's quite confusing, and there should at least be a note within the text about it. Daemyth (talk) 17:03, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
@Daemyth:I sympathize with your "weirded-outness." What a mess! To be clear...I don't normally edit stramenopiles, and don't have a solid understanding of the groups that have been proposed, over the years. As far as I can tell, axodines (a morphologically defined group, proposed by David Patterson in '94) is very seldom used. A search in Google Scholar turns up a grand total of 47 occurrences (mostly in papers not directly concerned with phylogeny and classification). Actinochrysophyceae (the authority for which should be Cavalier-Smith et al, 1996, and not Mikrjukov & Patterson, 2001, as it appears in the axodine taxobox)appears to have the same composition as Actinochrysea (=Actinochrysia). However, as far as I can see, that group (made up of pedinellids + dictyochids) excludes raphidophytes (such as actinophryids, included here in "axodines"). In short, this page seems to be a genuine hairball of partially-overlapping and variously-defined groups. The hairball extends to other articles (some of which include makeshift, synthetic phylogenetic trees, courtesy of certain editors who are addicted to building these), and to the stramenopiles template. To sort it all out would be a lot of work, I think, but it should be done. It is certainly awkward that the little-used grouping "axodines" has such prominence on Wikipedia, and if you can figure out a good plan for eliminating the page, redirecting appropriately and rewriting any taxoboxes that link to it, that would be great. The safest route might be just to follow a widely-used classification, such as Adl et al., 2012 or Ruggiero et al., 2015 (neither of which attempts to clump actinophryids with dictyochophytes). Deuterostome (Talk)12:57, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
@Deuterostome: I'm glad you agree! I guess I know what I'll be doing this weekend. I'll try to keep tabs on all the changes on the Axodine talk page so that you or anyone who ends up caring can check in whenever. Daemyth (talk) 19:38, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
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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.
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April DYKs
* ... that Dippy is the most famous dinosaur skeleton in the world? (1 April)
... that Hubbard's angel insects groom themselves and each other, perhaps in order to avoid the fungal diseases that kill many zorapterans? (6 April)
... that the polychaete worm Poecilochaetus serpens digs a burrow with its head and lines it with particles of clay or mud cemented with mucus? (8 April)
... that Promachocrinus is unusual among crinoids in having ten pairs of arms? (9 April)
... that the weevil species Sicoderus bautistai, described as resembling "black, shiny ants", is named after professional baseball player José Bautista? (18 April)
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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.
Within the Tree of Life and its many subprojects, there is an abundance of stubs. Welcome to Wikipedia, what's new, right? However, based on all wikiprojects listed (just over two thousand), the Tree of Life project is worse off in average article quality than most. Based on the concept of relative WikiWork (the average number of "steps" needed to have a project consisting of all featured articles (FAs), where stub status → FA consists of six steps), only seven projects within the ToL have an average rating of "start class" or better. Many projects, particularly those involving invertebrates, hover at an average article quality slightly better than a stub. With relative WikiWorks of 5.98 each, WikiProject Lepidoptera and WikiProject Beetles have the highest relative WikiWork of any project. Given that invertebrates are incredibly speciose, it may not surprise you that many articles about them are lower quality. WikiProject Beetles, for example, has over 20 times more articles than WikiProject Cats. Wikipedia will always be incomplete, so we should take our relatively low WikiWork as motivation to write more articles that are also better in quality.
1) Enwebb: How did you come to edit articles about organisms and taxonomic groups?
Nessie: The main force, then and now, driving me to create or edit articles is thinking "Why isn't there an article on that on Wikipedia?" Either I'll read about some rarely-sighted creature in the deep sea or find something new on iNaturalist and want to learn more. First stop (surprise!) is Wikipedia, and many times there is just a stub or no page at all. Sometimes I just add the source that got me to the article, not sometimes I go deep and try to get everything from the library or online journals and put it all in an article. The nice thing about taxa is the strong precedent that all accepted extant taxa are notable, so one does not need to really worry about doing a ton of research and having the page get removed. I was super worried about this as a new editor: I still really dislike conflict so if I can avoid it I do. Anyway, the most important part is stitching an article in to the rest of Wikipedia: Linking all the jargon, taxonomers, pollinators, etc., adding categories, and putting in the correct WikiProjects. Recently I have been doing more of the stitching-in stuff with extant articles. The last deep-dive article I made was Karuka at the end of last year, which is a bit of a break for me. I guess it's easier to do all the other stuff on my tablet while watching TV.
2) Enwebb: Many editors in the ToL are highly specialized on a group of taxa. A look at your recently created articles includes much diversity, though, with viruses, bacteria, algae, and cnidarians all represented—are there any commonalities for the articles you work on? Would you say you're particularly interested in certain groups?
Nessie: I was a nerd from a time when that would get you beat up, so I like odd things and underdogs. I also avoid butting heads, so not only do I find siphonophores and seaweeds fascinating I don't have to worry about stepping on anyone's toes. I go down rabbitholes where I start writing an article like Mastocarpus papillatus because I found some growing on some rocks, then in my research I see it is parasitized by Pythium porphyrae, which has no article, and how can that be for an oomycete that oddly lives in the ocean and also attacks my tasty nori. So then I wrote that article and that got me blowing off the dust on other Oomycota articles, encouraged by the pull of propagating automatic taxoboxes. Once you've done the taxonomy template for the genus, well then you might as well do all the species now that the template is taken care of for them too. and so on until I get sucked in somewhere else. I think it's good to advocate for some of these 'oddball' taxa as it makes it easier for editors to expand their range from say plants to the pathogenic microorganisms of their favorite plant.
My favorite clades though, It's hard to pick for a dilettante like me. I like working on virus taxonomy, but I can't think of a specific virus species that I am awed by. Maybe Tulip breaking virus for teaching us economics or Variola virus for having so many smallpox deities, one of which was popularly sung about by Desi Arnaz and then inspired the name of a cartoon character who was then misremembered and then turned into a nickname for Howard Stern's producer Gary Dell'Abate. Sorry, really had to share that chain, but for a species that's not a staple food it probably has the most deities. But anyway, for having the most species that wow me, I love a good fungus or algae, but that often is led by my stomach. Also why I seem to research so many plant articles. You can't eat siphonophores, at least I don't, but they are fascinating with their federalist colonies of zooids. Bats are all amazing, but the task force seems to have done so much I feel the oomycetes and slime moulds need more love. Same thing with dinosaurs (I'm team Therizinosaurus though). But honestly, every species has that one moment in the research where you just go, wow, that's so interesting. For instance, I loved discovering that the picture-winged fly (Delphinia picta) has a mating dance that involves blowing bubbles. Now I keep expecting them to show me when they land on my arm, but no such luck yet.
3) Enwebb: I noticed that many of your recent edits utilize the script Rater, which aids in quickly reassessing the quality and importance of an article. Why is it important to update talk page assessments of articles? I also noticed that the quality rating you assign often aligns with ORES, a script that uses machine-learning to predict article quality. Coincidence?
Nessie: I initially started focusing on WikiProject talk page templates because they seem to be the key to data collecting and maintenance for articles, much more so than categories. This is where you note of an article needs an image, or audio, or a range map. It's how the cleanup listing bot sorts articles, and how Plantdrew does his automated taxobox usage stats. The latter inspired me to look for articles on organisms that are not assigned to any ToL WikiProjects which initially was in the thousands. I got it down to zero with just copypasta so you can imagine I was excited when I saw the rater tool. Back then I rated everything stub/low because it was faster: I couldn't check every article for the items on the B-class checklists. Plus each project has their own nuances to rating scales and I thought the editors in the individual projects would take it from there. I also thought all species were important, so how can I choose a favorite? Now it is much easier with the rater tool and the apparent consensus with Abductive's method of rating by the pageviews (0-9 views/day is low, 10-99 is med, 100-999 is high...). For the quality I generally go by the ORES rating, you caught me. It sometimes is thrown off by a long list of species or something, but it's generally good for stub to C: above that needs formal investigation and procedures I am still learning about. It seems that in the ToL projects we don't focus so much on getting articles to GA/FA so it's been harder to pick up. It was a little culture shock when I went on the Discord server and it seemed everyone was obsessed with getting articles up in quality. I think ToL is focusing on all the missing taxa and (re)organizing it all, which when you already have articles on every anime series or whatever you can focus on bulking the articles up more. In any event, on my growing to-do list is trying to get an article up to FA or GA and learn the process that way so I can better do the quality ratings and not just kick the can down the road.
4) Enwebb: What, if anything, can ToL and its subprojects do to better support collaboration and coordination among editors? How can we improve?
Nessie: I mentioned earlier that the projects are the main way maintenance is done. And it is good that we have a bunch of subprojects that let those tasks get broken up into manageable pieces. Frankly I'm amazed anything gets done with WikiProject Plants with how huge its scope is. Yet this not only parcels out the work but the discussion as well. A few editors like Peter coxhead and Plantdrew keep an eye on many of the subprojects and spread the word, but it's still easy for newer editors to get a little lost. There should be balance between the lumping and splitting. The newsletter helps by crossing over all the WikiProjects, and if the discord channel picked up that would help too. Possibly the big Enwiki talk page changes will help as well.
5) Enwebb: What would surprise the ToL community to learn about your life off-Wikipedia?
Nessie: I'm not sure anything would be surprising. I focus on nature offline too, foraging for mushrooms or wild plants and trying to avoid ticks and mosquitos. I have started going magnet fishing lately, more to help clean up the environment than in the hopes of finding anything valuable. But it would be fun to find a weapon and help solve a cold case or something.
... that despite a genus name referring to its dull leaves, Astilbe chinensis was celebrated as the most important new hardy perennial by the Royal Horticultural Society in 1902? (2 June)
... that the marine worm Themiste pyroides is unusual in that it forms swarms when breeding? (20 June)
... that cut branches of the small tree Erythrina berteroana are used to make living fence posts? (26 June)
... that the ripe seed pods of Brachystegia eurycoma burst explosively and throw out the large disc-shaped seeds? (28 June)
... that Swedish entomologist Carl H. Lindroth suggested that more than 40 species of North American ground beetle were inadvertently transported from Europe in ship's ballast? (29 June)
... that the sea hedgehog is a cannibal? (29 June)
The WikiCup, an annual editing competition, is now in its fourth round. Casliber, consistent participant since 2010 and winner in 2016, is currently dominating Group A with 601 points. Largely responsible is the successful Featured Article nomination of Masked booby. The other remaining Tree of Life participant, Enwebb, is participating in her first ever WikiCup. In this round, she has a grand total of...5 points. But with the recent Featured Article nomination of Megabat, she stands to gain 600 points if successful. As it stands, though, it appears that at least one ToL editor is headed to the fifth and final round of 8 contestants, which begins September 1.
Thus far, all participants in the WikiCup have generated 17 Featured Articles, 116 Good Articles, 16 Featured Lists, and 57 Featured Pictures. The Good Article Nominations backlog has been reduced as well, with 286 Good Article Reviews.
Editor spotlight: Photographing the tree of life
For this month's editor spotlight we're joined by Charlesjsharp, a longtime contributor to Wikimedia Commons with a plethora of featured pictures on English Wikipedia.
1) Starsandwhales: How long have you been editing Wikipedia, and how did you get interested? How did you begin your journey of photographing wildlife?
Charlesjsharp: I uploaded my first pictures to Wikipedia twelve years ago for fun, to show my kids how it works. The pictures of my daughter (static trapeze), my son (Revell), my dog (Border Terrier) and my parents’ home (Tealing) are all still in the articles! I then started to upload wildlife images.
I’d got my first camera aged eight and went on my first safari in the Kruger Park, South Africa in 1970. I was hooked. I switched to digital in 2004, but didn’t buy any high-end lenses till 2014. Such a shame that hundreds of great photos I took before then look so dreadful by today’s quality standards. My 100-400mm lens transformed mammal and bird photography opportunities and when I got my 100mm macro lens in 2016, the whole new world of insects was open for business.
Pied kingfisher eating a chick, photographed by Charlesjsharp
2) S&W: Over the years, you've taken photos of many different organisms from birds to insects to big cats; you have an extensive list of favorite images. Which animals have been the most exciting for you to photograph?
Charlesjsharp: The trophy animals the hunters used to shoot are the ones I like to shoot too: it was lion, elephant and baboon in 1970. More recently, hunting for tiger by jeep in Kanha National Park in India was exciting and so was searching for jaguar by boat in the rivers of the Pantanal in Brazil. Our encounters with the mountain gorillas in Rwanda and Uganda was amazing, but the actual photography was no challenge.
But photographing animal behaviour is the most exciting and challenging. There’s usually movement and it all happens so fast, like when a bird captures its prey. Every now and then you snap something really unusual – like the cannibal kingfisher
3) S&W: Many articles under ToL have requests for people to add images that can go unanswered. What can the community do to improve the coverage of different organisms on Wikipedia, especially when it comes to images?
Charlesjsharp: It’s a very time consuming process because the Wikipedia code is cumbersome (*see below). It take an age to upload to Commons: to describe, categorize, geocode. Many of the categories don’t exist so have to be created. If the image is of a subspecies, then all the images have to be checked before you can nominate an image for VI. It’s also takes ages to nominate images for VI and QI on Commons. May be some users use sophisticated tools to lighten the load, but I don’t know if they exist. In other words, Wikipedia is OK, but Commons is a nightmare. Hundreds of really poor quality photos clog up the system and some users are too lazy to filter and edit their nominations.
Recently, some thoughtless editor added a ‘caption’ box to Commons. A waste of time. The image title should act as the caption.
I applied for a grant to attend Wikimania, but was unsuccessful. Not much can happen without some funding to kickstart and then drive improvements forward. Here was my response to the question: "How can we increase the quality and diversity of images being uploaded and, in particular, improve the Featured Picture, Quality Image and Valued Image projects?"
Panther chameleon male, photographed by Charlesjsharp
1. Work together on pre-defined projects to develop a team spirit that will help us develop a set of shared values
2. Through brainstorming, Identify what we need to do to improve the quality and diversity of images being uploaded and, in particular, identify what we need to do to improve the credibility of the Featured Picture, Quality Image and Valued Image projects
3. By sharing our photographic skills, find ways to share skills with the community. Knowledge transfer is time-consuming and we need to set limited objectives and realistic time frames. This will require compromise as individuals have to listen and find ways to agree. This is going to be much easier through face-to-face meetings
3. Identify what we need to do to improve the quality and diversity of images being uploaded (diversity of contributor and diversity in subject) and, in particular, identify what we need to do to improve the credibility of the Featured Picture, Quality Image and Valued Image projects
4. Spend more time talking about values and knowledge transfer than sharing photography tips amongst delegates, then getting all delegates to agree to DO SOMETHING WHEN THEY GET HOME to take things forward.
4) S&W: What advice would you give to people new to photographing wildlife?
Charlesjsharp: An impossible question unless you know what someone’s objective is. So you’re on your first safari? Borrow or rent a decent camera and a quality 300mm lens. Then read a few of the dozens of free advice pages on the internet. Then when you’re out and about, take the lens cap off and set the camera to fully automatic sports mode. Be ready. If you’ve time, get in the right place (sunlight/background). Watch the animal’s behaviour. Point and shoot. Glance at the screen. If OK, repeat. Only then start playing with the settings to optimise shutter speed, F number and ISO.
5) S&W: What would the Tree of Life community be surprised to learn about your life off-wiki?
Charlesjsharp: I used to be a high-end stamp collector (early USA). My photography is a sort of collecting. And I’m a keen bridge player.
* An example of cumbersome code: getting the layout of my responses to your questions. So dated, and no online spellchecker.
The Tree of Life WikiProject and its sprawling phylogeny of daughter projects is one of the largest and most active communities in Wikipedia. It encompasses approximately 570 Featured Articles and well over a thousand Good Articles (second only to military history). The WikiJournal of Science (one of three current journals in the user group) has a few aims that may closely align with the interests of the ToL community.
Review of existing articles
Firstly, WikiJSci can be a complementary system for FA review (getting external review, input, and validity). When an Wikipedia article is nominated (via WP:JAN), journal editors go out to non-Wikipedian academics and researchers who have published on the subject on the last five years and invite them to give feedback comments (e.g. Peripatric speciation and Baryonyx). The resulting changes can then be integrated back into the Wikipedia article.
Attracting new articles and contributors
Getting more editors involved in Wikipedia is always a high priority. WikiJSci can also be a way to encourage new people to contribute articles (especially on missing/stub/start topics). An example of an article that was written from scratch by a group of non-Wikipedians is Teladorsagia circumcincta. This not only resulted in a new Wikipedia page on an underdeveloped topic, but introduced the idea of Wikimedia contribution to a group of people who had previously never considered it.
Images, videos, sound and galleries
The journal can be a way to get multimedia content reviewed or encourage contribution. The same approach could be easily adapted to sounds (e.g. frog mating calls) or videos (e.g. starfish feet motion). It also allows for tracking of those images in new articles via Altmetric (this example has >200, which is bananas). There aren't any biology examples in WikiJSci yet, but the sister medical journal has published a few summary diagrams, photography, and image galleries. Examples include this gallery by Blausen Medical or the diagram of cell disassembly during apoptosis.
Other projects
For those interested in other Wikimedia sister projects, there's also broad scope for interactions with the WikiJournals. Perhaps peer reviewed teaching resources could be useful to sit alongside sets of Wikipedia articles and be integrated into Wikiversity courses (like this or this)? Can sections of Wikidata & Wikispecies be peer reviewed? What are the potential avenues for integration with WikiCite, WikiFactMine, Scholia, etc.? Currently, WikiJSci is aiming to be very flexible and try out different formats so long as they can be externally peer reviewed.
1) Enwebb: You're very prolific with DYKs, with over 2,000 nominations credited (in fact, I'll highlight which DYK nominations this month were yours below). What made you become so involved in this part of Wikipedia? Why should Tree of Life editors nominate articles for DYK?
Cwmhiraeth: I became aware of the WikiCup in 2012 and entered the contest. The scoring structure seemed to me to favour DYKs, and I went to considerable trouble to identify short stubs that could be expanded into qualifying start class articles with multiple bonus points. Casliber introduced me to preparing articles for FAC and Sasata helped me with my first solo FA. I won the WikiCup that year, and repeated that success the following year, after which the Cup got a bit more competitive. By that time, nominating articles for DYK was an ingrained habit, and I have continued doing so ever since, but at a rather slower rate. I do more work behind the scenes at DYK now, reviewing other people's nominations in excess of my QPQ requirement, and building prep sets ready to go on the main page, and I retired from competing in the WikiCup and became a judge instead. I would encourage ToL editors to nominate suitable articles for DYK because it gives great satisfaction to know that hundreds or even thousands of people have appreciated your work, and it provides a foil for the biographies and historical articles that predominate there.
2) Enwebb: I noticed that your DYK nominations reflect a diverse array of flora and fauna, from trees, marine invertebrates, birds, fishes, and mammals. How do you decide what to work on?
Cwmhiraeth: As I look around different articles I keep a note of things I might work on, red links, stub articles that need expanding or places in articles where I would like to add a wikilink but no suitable target page exists. So I have this list, but more often than not I choose a new article to work on based on a Google book that I have been using in a previous article. I like Google books; some of them are really useful for species articles, the main annoyance being when certain pages are permanently unavailable, although I am quite good at tricking the books into revealing pages that they were trying to prevent me from viewing. Eventually I get bored with African rodents, or whatever my present topic is, and move on. I am particularly interested in organisms living in extreme habitats, endangered species, invasive species, pest species, parasites or creatures with interesting behavioural traits.
3) Enwebb: Which of your Wikipedia accomplishments are you most proud of?
Cwmhiraeth: Well, Sea really. Again that was inspired by the WikiCup, and working in collaboration with Chiswick Chap, we took it from virtually nothing, little more than a list of seas, through DYK and GA, culminating in a really tough FA. That was very satisfying (as were the 1000 odd points it gained me at the WikiCup). In complete contrast was the article Tree. I completely rewrote it in a sandbox as an entry for the "Core contest". The previous version had been quite short with a section on "Record breaking trees" which I hived off into a separate article. My new version was immediately challenged and an edit war would have erupted had I not decided to retire from the fray. My version had some serious flaws, I had never studied botany and I had used a book source which misled me. However, after corrections, my version largely remained in place and I later joined Chiswick Chap in bringing the article to GA status.
4) Enwebb: What motivates you to keep contributing? What's your 10,000 ft view (pardon the non-SI) of the community and Tree of Life?
Cwmhiraeth: I think Wikipedia is a really great project. The idea of Wikipedia as a pool of knowledge contributed to by thousands of individuals in hundreds of countries is inspiring. It would be nice if we had no vandalism and everyone co-operated with everyone else in an amicable spirit, but as we are all human, it does not quite work out like that. I like to think of my efforts as a legacy that will continue in existence after I am gone.
6) Enwebb: How did you first become interested in natural history?
Cwmhiraeth: When I was young I had an elderly aunt who used to come to stay and who would take me for walks in the countryside, during which we would watch birds and identify wild flowers. She would take me out at weekends from my girls-only boarding school and we would search for orchids on the Wiltshire Downs. My school was not geared up for science, we just did general science for O-levels, and when it came to A-levels, I was the only pupil in my year to do zoology and chemistry, and one of only two to do physics, for which we had to cycle off to the grammar school on the other side of town. I wanted to be a vet, but was discouraged by my father, obtained a BSc in biochemistry and ended up in an unrelated job. If I were to live my life again, things might work out differently, but then I dare say we could all say that!
August DYKs
Weebill
Nanhaipotamon macau
P. lutzii (yeast phase)
Cannonball mangrove
Ruspolia nitidula male
Female kob and calf
... that falguera, a plant known from only one valley in Spain, is threatened by rock climbers and by road maintenance? (1 August)
... that Dioscorea chouardii is known from a single crag in the Pyrenees and has been monitored using scaffolding and telescopes? (3 August)
... that the densely-populated territory of Macau is home to a recently discovered, endemic species of freshwater crab of the genus Nanhaipotamon(pictured)? (17 August)
... that the crimson seedcracker has two morphs, large-billed and small-billed, but this trait is not related to sex, age, body size, or location? (18 August)
... that the sea anemone Anemonia sulcata is known as ortiguilla in southern Spain, where it is a popular seafood? (19 August)
... that the Sorana bean is grown in such small quantities and is in such demand that it commands prices six to ten times higher than those of other cannellini beans? (19 August)
... that antelope grass can recover quickly after wildfires even in the middle of the dry season? (19 August)
... that the Namib brush-tailed gerbil uses ultrasonic whistles and foot drumming to communicate? (20 August)
... that strips of bark from the West African copal are used to make beehives, while the flowers are attractive to bees? (24 August)
... that the swamp musk shrew scrambles around among aquatic vegetation in the dark? (25 August)
... that the rock parrot often nests in the old burrows of seabirds? (26 August)
... that the bush cricket Ruspolia nitidula(pictured) is commonly eaten in Uganda, where the price per unit weight is periodically higher than that of beef? (26 August)
... that despite its reported disappearance from Britain and other European countries, the fountain spleenwort is still considered to have a stable population trend? (27 August)
The 2019 WikiCup is in its fifth and final round, with two of the eight remaining contestants from the ToL community. The 2016 winner Casliber is in first place as of 1 October, and Enwebbb is in seventh place.
Getting spooky for Halloween
It's the most wonderful time of the year...Halloween, that is. With articles on skeleton frogs, ghost bats, and Satanic nightjars, Wikipedia has more spooky taxa than a graveyard has ghosts. In the new Spooky Species Contest, Tree of Life editors are turning Wikipedia into Spookypedia, working from a crowd-sourced list of taxa. There's still time to sign up! How can you let an article like Draculoides bramstokeri pass you by?
Welcoming WikiProject Diptera and Project Creation Trends
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Tree of Life subprojects and task forces by start year and whether currently considered active or not
This month saw a vanishingly rare occurrence for the Tree of Life: a new WikiProject joined the fold. WikiProject Diptera, however, is also unusual in being a classroom project. Whether or not this project will stay active once the semester ends remains to be seen. It does not bode well, however, that WP:WikiProject Vespidae—a creation from the same instructor at St. Louis University—faded to obscurity shortly after the fall semester concluded in 2014. WikiProject Vespidae is defunct and now redirects to the Hymenoptera task force of WikiProject Insects.
Since 2014, the Tree of Life has seen a string of years where one or zero projects or task forces were created. The only projects and task forces created since then are WikiProject Animal anatomy (2014), Hymenoptera task force (2016), Bats task force (2017), WikiProject Hypericaceae (2018), and now WikiProject Diptera (2019). The year 2006 saw the greatest creation of WikiProjects and task forces, with fourteen still active and the remaining six as "semiactive", "inactive", or "defunct".
September DYKs
Enischnomyia fossil in Dominican amber
Lebombo wattle in the sand forest
Betula leopoldaeleaf fossil
Pholiota squarrosoides
Lady Burton's rope squirrel
A child picks chili peppers in an Indonesian home garden.
... that the Ethiopian epauletted fruit bat uses its hind feet to comb its fur and its tongue to wash its face, wing membranes, and genital region? (3 September)
... that the scaly ground roller mostly eats earthworms and centipedes, but has been known to also eat frogs, lizards, and shrews? (4 September)
The first Spooky Species Contest wrapped up this week. Two articles were promoted to Good Article as a result (Halloween darter and Deathwatch beetle) and three Did You Know hooks on Halloween were related to the contest (Halloween darter, skeleton frog, and Coffin Cave mold beetle. Two new articles were created, including Longan witches broom-associated virus and Boophis popi, the skeleton frog species that appeared at DYK.
The 2020 Community Wishlist Survey is live (focusing on non-Wikipedia content projects), with two proposals so far for WikiSpecies. The Wikimedia Foundation will prioritize the top 5 proposals across all sister projects.
The 2019 WikiCup has finally concluded, with Casliber taking home the bronze. The bulk of their points this round came from two Featured Articles: rock parrot and western yellow robin.
Alphabet Soup: Explaining DYK, GA, FA, and More
By request from another editor, this month I wrote an overview of ways that content is featured on Wikipedia. Below I have outlined some of the processes for getting content featured:
Did You Know (DYK)
What is it: A way for articles to appear on the main page of Wikipedia. A short hook in the format of "Did you know...that ___" presents unusual and interesting facts to the reader, hopefully making the reader want to click through to the article
How it works: The DYK process has fairly low barriers for participation. The eligibility criteria are few and relatively easy to meet. Some important guidelines:
To be eligible, article is either new (newly created or moved to mainspace), a 5x expansion, or passed a GA review. Its creation, expansion, or promotion to GA must have been in the past 7 days.
Article must be long enough, with more than 1,500 characters of prose (this doesn't include embedded lists)
The process for creating the nomination is somewhat tedious. Instructions can be found here (official instructions) and here ("quick and nice" guide to DYK). Experience is the best teacher here, so don't be afraid to try and fail a few times. The last few DYK nominations I've done, however, have been with the help of SD0001's DYK-helper script, which makes the process a bit more streamlined (you create the template from a popup box on the article; created template is automatically transcluded to nominations page and article talk page)
Once your nomination is created and transcluded, it will need to be reviewed. The reviewer will check that the article meets the eligibility criteria, that the hook is short enough, cited, and interesting, and that other requirements are met, such as for images. If you've been credited with more than 5 DYKs, the reviewer will also check that you've reviewed someone else's nomination for each article that you nominate. This is called QPQ (quid pro quo). You can check how many credited DYKs you've had here to see if QPQ is required for you to nominate an article for DYK.
Good Article (GA)
What it is: A peer review process to determine that an article meets a set of criteria. This adds a symbol to the top of the article. About 1 in 200 articles on Wikipedia is a GA.
How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Anyone can nominate an article—you don't have to be a major contributor, though it is considered polite to inform the major contributors that you are nominating the article. The article is added to a queue to await a review. In the ToL, it seems that reviews happen pretty quickly, thanks to our dedicated members. Once the review begins, the reviewer will offer suggestions to help the article meet the 6 GA criteria. Upon addressing all concerns, the reviewer will pass the article, and voilà! Good Article!
Advice to a first-time nominator: Look at other Good Articles in related areas before nominating. If you're unsure about nominating, consider posting to the talk page of your project to see what other editors think. You can also have a more experienced editor co-nominate the article with you.
Featured Article (FA)
What it is: An exhaustive peer review to determine that an articles meets the criteria. This adds a to the top of the article. About 1 in 1,000 articles on Wikipedia is a FA.
How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Nominated articles are usually GAs already. Uninvolved editors can nominate, though the article's regular editors should be consulted first. Several editors will come by offering feedback, eventually supporting or opposing promotion to FA. A coordinator will determine if there is consensus to promote the article to FA. For an editor's first FA, spot checks to verify that the sources support the text are conducted.
Advice to a first-time nominator: The Featured Article Candidate (FAC) process is a bit intimidating, but several steps can make your first one easier (speaking as someone who has exactly one). If you also did the GA nomination of the article, you can ask the reviewer for "extra" feedback beyond the GA criteria. You can also formally request a peer review and/or a copy edit from the Guild of Copy Editors to check for content and mechanics. First-time nominators are encouraged to seek the help of a mentor for a higher likelihood of passing their first FAC.
Good and Featured Topics (GT and FT)
What it is: It took me a while to realize we even had GT and FT on Wikipedia, as they are not very common relative to GA and FA. Both GT and FT are collections of related articles of high quality (all articles at GA or FA, all lists at Featured List). GT/FT have to be at least 3 articles with no obvious gaps in coverage of the topic, along with other criteria. For GT, all articles have to be GA quality and all lists must be FL. For FT, at least half the articles must be FA or FL, with the remaining articles at GA.
How it works: Follow the nomination procedures for creating a new topic or adding an article to an existing topic. Other editors weigh in to support or oppose the proposal. Coordinators determine if there is consensus to promote to GT/FT.
Advice to a first-time nominator: There are very few GT/FT in Tree of Life (5 GT and 11 FT). Most of the legwork appears to be improving a cohesive set of articles to GA/FA.
October DYKs
Female apple maggot
... that the silk made by webspinners is produced from glands on their forelegs? (1 October)
... that falguera, a plant known from only one valley in Spain, is threatened by rock climbers and by road maintenance? (1 October)
... that larvae of the drain fly can be found in trickling filter systems used to process sewage? (6 October)
... that the correct spelling of "liliifolia" in the name of the orchidLiparis liliifolia has been debated for decades? (7 October)
... that Polish entomologist Sergiusz Toll amassed a collection of about 8,000 bird eggs and 12,000 butterflies and moths while in Bydgoszcz? (10 October)
... that the female garden symphylan stores sperm in its mouth? (11 October)
... that adult apple maggot flies (example pictured) use their wing patterns defensively to mimic spiders? (15 October)
... that structural biologist Erica Ollmann Saphire traveled to Africa to observe rodents in the field in order to study how viruses like Ebola are spread? (31 October)
... that the common name of the Halloween darter refers to the orange and black coloration that individuals develop during the breeding season? (31 October)
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The Wiki Science Competition has begun on Wikimedia Commons. Several flora and fauna images have already been uploaded (the image at left is my current favorite).
Several copepod species
Red deer
Teucrium polium
Ants cross chasm via body bridge
Sarus crane duet
NessieVL created a Decemberween contest to improve taxa related to winter holidays. Loopy30 is out to an early lead, but with the bonus system for page views, there's still time for GA writers to hit a couple of home runs on some of the bigger articles like reindeer and mistletoe.
Though it didn't make it onto the main page in time for Halloween, Satanic nightjar made a splash nevertheless, cracking the list of non-lead DYK hooks with at least 15,000 views. The article was viewed nearly 17,000 times while on the main page (a typical day for the article is 10-15 views).
Class is in Session in the Tree of Life
In an interesting turn of events, this month's guest column is by my alter-ego, Elysia (Wiki Ed):
*Puts on Wiki Education hat* Hi everyone, I'm Elysia and I work for Wiki Education. You may know me as Enwebb. I got a request last month to let you know how Wiki Education is intersecting with the Tree of Life subprojects. As one of Wiki Education's major goals is to improve topics related to the sciences, leading to our Communicating Science initiative, we end up supporting quite a few in the biological sciences. Here are the TOL-related courses active this term:
What is the impact of student editors in Tree of Life?
A Wiki Education resource for students editing species articles
Altogether, these 16 courses have 347 student participants. As the end of the semester hasn't come yet, these numbers are still growing, but these students have:
And while long-term participation from students is low, there's always the chance that we'll discover a Wikipedian. I had never edited before my Wikipedia assignment in 2017 and I'm still here nearly 20,000 edits later! After I poked around in the beginning of the semester, I had the realization that not many people write Wikipedia, and very few of those have a special interest in bats. If I didn't stick around to write the content, there was no guarantee that it would ever get done.
Why are species articles suitable for students?
Writing about taxonomic groups is a great fit for students, as it keeps them away from areas where new editors traditionally struggle. The notability policy is generous towards taxa, and there is little danger of a student's work getting removed for lack of notability; this is to be expected when students write biographies. Students may struggle with encyclopedic tone for biographies and stray towards promotional writing, but this is much less common when writing about a shrew or algae!
Additionally, we're never going to run out of species to write about. Students have a bounty of stubs and redlinks to pick from. Creating a new article or expanding an existing one also takes a fairly predictable structure, with plenty of articles that students can model after.
Don't students just create messes for volunteers to clean up?
Our sincere hope is that, no, they don't, and we take several steps to try to minimize the burden on volunteer labor. With automatic plagiarism detection, alerts when students edit a Good or Featured Article, and notifications when students edit an article subject to discretionary sanctions, we try to stay ahead of problems as much as possible. We also review all student work at the end of each term. Ian, Shalor, and I are always happy to receive pings alerting us to student issues that need to be addressed.
November DYKs
Brants's whistling rat
Female black-capped tanager
... that Brants's whistling rat(illustration shown) seldom ventures more than 30 cm (12 in) from one of the many entrances to its burrow? (4 November)
... that poison devil's-pepper has been used both as rat poison and as a traditional medicine for humans? (6 November)
... that the lamenting grasshopper seems to be expanding its range northwards in Italy, possibly as a result of climate change? (10 November)
... that each Xyloterinus politus larva has its own individual cradle? (12 November)
... that the assassin bug Rhynocoris marginatus injects venomous saliva into its prey to paralyse it? (13 November)
... that botanist George R. Proctor collected more than 55,000 specimens, had 31 species named after him, and was convicted of a conspiracy to murder his wife? (14 November)
... that the bark of Guibourtia tessmannii is much esteemed in traditional medicine and is often removed from living trees? (15 November)
... that the female black-capped tanager(pictured) moulds her nest by vibrating in it? (18 November)
... that the Satanic nightjar can make a growling noise when disturbed? (21 November)
... that infestations of Leptoconops torrens biting flies have halted construction and farming projects in California? (22 November)
... that the male of the hoverfly species Syritta pipiens darts sharply in flight to facilitate mating? (23 November)
... that the tree Drypetes gerrardii was named after William Gerrard, who collected plants in southern Africa in the 1860s? (25 November)
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