Regarding the al-Iṣfahānī article, I went through it once, made some very minor corrections. Note that while I can read Arabic, I don't understand most of it. I haven't yet gone through the entire books list yet; regarding the rest:
Are the AH and CE dates from the sources? They don't appear to correlate to each other. They have only minor differences, don't know if it matters.
Are all mentions of Adab al-ghurabāʾ supposed to be in italics, because only some of them are?
Apparently incomplete Ref-notes: C, F, R, AD, AG.
In references, for the book titles wouldn't it be better to use the official titles given on worldcat.org?
@AhmadF.Cheema: Thank you so much for this. It's exactly the additional proofread I needed. I'll look into the points you raised this week. I'm much more used to editing science articles which tend to have very simple citation systems (mainly just {{cite journal}}). Thank again. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk23:12, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
Sorry about the duplicate threads!
Hey there. I didn't mean to decentralize the discussion for your proposal; I didn't see your response before posting it. I asked others to comment in your thread at WP:Bot requests instead of the sub-section at WT:MOLBIO. Sorry about the mix-up.
Anyway, I'd already coded WikiProject Gene Wiki as a task force in {{WPMOLBIO}} before seeing your post. I mainly did it because there's a lot of articles with that template banner and it's a task-force of WP:WikiProject Genetics. If you want me to recode Template:WPMOLBIO so that it just adds Category:Gene Wiki articles when |genewiki=yes, I could do that instead. Just let me know which you prefer.
@Seppi333: I think your addition of the Gene Wiki taskforce to the template is very sensible. The only change might be to omit the taskforce-specific importance rating for the genewiki taskforce, since it doesn't really make sense in that context. Thanks for adding the metabolism and signalling parameters. The only outlier is the RNA tqaskforce, which was pretty short lived and tagging all the pages within Category:RNA is probably or questionable current value. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk02:57, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Ah. I'd meant to to code the category parameters last night but got sidetracked. Will do it later tonight or tmrw morning at the latest. Currently a bit busy until then. RNA probably isn't necessary to include. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 22:39, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Please assist!! Help category is up for deletion
Hi. the first section on the main page for Wikipedia:WikiProject Help reads as follows. I would like to help the problem stated below.
As one option, I have created a new category, below. this is designed to help new editors to find, as stated below, an "oasis of order amidst the chaos," namely a central category that can enable and assist others in finding helpful pages more easily.
However, this category is in danger of being DELETED.
could you please go to this category, click the link for the deletion discussion, and then add your thoughts there? we greatly need a wider amount of input. We appreciate any input that you could please provide. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 17:23, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
This WikiProject provides an oasis of order amidst the chaos - a place where editors can meet up, share opinions, and support each other with the mammoth task of help cleanup. Many of the help pages have few, if any regular maintainers, so having a place to record ideas can ensure that good ideas endure.
Thanks for the tutorial details. I'll watch them soon. I tried the link to firefox extension but it was a dead and when I searched firefox there were a lot of options but I couldn't see one that sounded like what you had in mind. Also I don't understand what should happen with the authority control - it just came up as another box with Orcid like i already have...
I will get on to mapping the open access publishing pages shortly. AmandaL (talk) 09:44, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
I have been off WP for some weeks due to ill heath. I recd a notification when I logged in regarding an email you sent. My apologies that I didn't receive it or response. Anything I can do for you now? AshLin (talk) 06:57, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
@AshLin: Hey, no problem. Hope you're feeling butter. I was contacting since I noticed you'd written a few GAs. If you'd be interested in getting feedback from an external academic peer review process, WikiJournal of Science (www.wikijsci.org) might be suitable avenue: WP:WikiJournal_article_nominations.
For existing Wikipedia articles, the page is put through scholarly peer-reviewed and the reviewed version published as a citable document, with updated info integrated back into Wikipedia. This improves the scientific accuracy of the encyclopedia, generates citable, indexed publications. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk09:56, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
In a major milestone for the automated taxobox system, more taxa articles now use automatic taxoboxes than manual ones. Particularly robust groups for automatic taxoboxes are turtles, primates, birds, rodents, amphibians and reptiles, sharks, and bivalves, with each project adopting automatic taxoboxes at rates greater than 95%. Only the fungi, arthropods, and microbiology projects had automatic taxobox adoption rates less than 25%. Read more in the 1 January update.
Thanks to user Trappist the monk, all citations to the IUCN using Template:Cite web or Template:Cite journal have now been swapped to Template:Cite iucn. This will prevent a recurrence of massive link failure should the IUCN change its URL format again. That does not address the 14.5k articles that cite the IUCN without the use of templates. For more background discussion, see here and here.
Vital Articles
The vital articles project on English Wikipedia began in 2004 when an editor transferred a list from Meta-Wiki: List of articles every Wikipedia should have. The first incarnation of the list became what is now level 3. As of 2019, there are 5 levels of vital articles:
Level 1: the 10 most vital articles (2009)
Level 2: the 100 most vital articles (2009)
Level 3: the 1,000 most vital articles (2004)
Level 4: the 10,000 most vital articles (2006)
Level 5: the 50,000 most vital articles (2017)
Each level is inclusive of all previous levels, meaning that the 1,000 Level 3 articles include those listed on Levels 2 and 1. Below is an overview of the distribution of vital articles, and the quality of the articles. While the ultimate goal of the vital articles project is to have Featured-class articles, I also considered Good Articles to be "complete" for the purposes of this list.
Animals (1,148 designated out of projected 2,400)
Cnidarians (5/8): 62.5% complete
Echinoderms (3/6): 50% complete
Insects (30/70): 42.9% complete
Invertebrates + others (10/27): 37% complete
Other arthropods (3/10): 30% complete
Reptiles (25/85): 29.4% complete
Amphibians (6/22): 27.3% complete
Porifera (1/4): 25% complete
Mammals (68/319): 21.3% complete
Mollusks (2/19): 21.1% complete
Arachnids (3/17): 17.6% complete
Birds (33/187): 17.6% complete
Animal breeds and hybrids (19/112): 17% complete
Crustaceans (3/25): 12% complete
Fishes (11/134): 8.2% complete
Agnatha (0/4): 0% complete
Plants, fungi, and other organisms (510 designated out of projected 1,200)
Fungi (4/33): 12.1% complete
Other organisms—Archaea, Bacteria, Eukarya (5/62): 8.1% complete
Vegetables (6/96): 6.7% complete
Monocots (2/35): 5.7% complete
Edible fruits (5/95): 5.3% complete
Non-flowering plants (1/30): 3.3% complete
Edible seeds, grains, nuts (1/69): 1.4% complete
Non-monocots (1/88): 1.1% complete
Carnivorous plants (0/2): 0% complete
Many articles have yet to be designated for Tree of Life taxonomic groups, with 1,942 outstanding articles to be added. Anyone can add vital articles to the list! Restructuring may be necessary, as the only viruses included as of yet are under the category "Health". The majority of vital articles needing improvement are level 5, but here are some outstanding articles from the other levels:
... that the extinct giant thresher sharkAlopias palatasi is the only one of its kind to possess serrated teeth (pictured)? (1 January)
... that Dogor, an 18,000-year-old canine puppy, may represent a common ancestor of the dog and the wolf? (2 January)
... that the Caton Oak in Lancashire, England, was reputed to be a site of worship by druids? (4 January)
... that the LuEsther T. Mertz Library(pictured), one of the world's largest botanical libraries, had 6.5 million plant specimens and 75 percent of the world's systematic botany literature in 2002? (4 January)
... that Australian biologist Lee Berger identified Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis as being responsible for the decline and extinction of hundreds of amphibian species? (5 January)
... that the beetle Zaitzevia thermae has a total habitat of less than 35 square metres (380 sq ft) around one hot spring in Montana? (6 January)
... that the Anatolian frog is exported from Turkey to France, Italy and Switzerland for food, and is considered by the IUCN to be a near-threatened species? (6 January)
... that the stems and leaves of the endangered Holloway's crystalwort look as if they are covered in sugar crystals? (8 January)
... that a severe infestation of the palm weevil borer can kill its host palm? (9 January)
... that a mandarin duck(pictured) that appeared in New York City's Central Park became an international celebrity, with followers whom the Associated Press called "quackarazzi"? (10 January)
... that the female Savannah darter lays clutches of sticky eggs that she buries in gravel or sand? (12 January)
... that the Malayan banded pitta is threatened by the destruction of its forest habitat and by being targeted for the illegal trade in birds? (12 January)
... that in 2007, a rescued European bison calf dubbed Pubal grew so attached to humans in southeastern Poland that he could not be successfully reintegrated back into the wild? (13 January)
... that evolutionary biologist Rebecca Kilner has found that mites can give burying beetles a competitive advantage? (13 January)
... that jellyfish blooms can clog coastal power plants, causing losses of tens of thousands of US dollars per day? (14 January)
... that Anisocentropus krampus was described in the same paper as other insects with monstrous names like Ganonema dracula and Anisocentropus golem? (16 January)
... that in France, the beetle Aepus marinus is restricted to a narrow strip of the beach near the high-water mark? (17 January)
... that the palm scale was first found on an endemic species of palm on the island of Réunion, but now infests plants in at least 78 families around the world? (17 January)
... that artist Salvador Dalí claimed that his pet ocelot(both pictured) was an ordinary domestic cat that he had "painted over in an op art design"? (18 January)
... that a whale found in western Vermont has presented further evidence of glaciation in New England? (19 January)
... that hosts of the passionvine bug(example pictured) include coffee, citrus, mung bean, squash, and mango? (21 January)
... that the lizard goby holds on to rocks in fast-flowing water by means of a "sucker" formed from two fins? (21 January)
... that the egg sacs of the newly discovered Phinda button spider are made of bright purple silk that fades to grey when it dries? (22 January)
... that with a stretched length of up to 20 cm (8 in), Pontobdella muricata is one of the largest marine leeches? (28 January)
... that not only does Couma utilis have edible fruit, its latex is used as a base for chewing gum, caulking boats, and whitewashing houses? (29 January)
... that the doubleband surgeonfish(example pictured) can turn a dark brown shade flushed with red or violet when stressed? (30 January)
Do you think there is any chance you could return to this nomination, where you assisted earlier, to answer the reviewer's further questions. Thanks for whatever you can do. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:27, 16 February 2020 (UTC)
Hi, I have edited most of the article Dioxins and dioxin-like compounds. I am still not completely happy with Sources and Dioxins and sugarcane which are a bit incoherent. If you have time, screen it and comment! Viinamakelainen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Viinamakelainen (talk • contribs) 19:09, 19 February 2020 (UTC)
Discussion at the village pump about streamlining the welcome template and having it link to Help:Introduction instead of WP:Introduction
Looks like this edit (and at least one of the similar recent edits I looked at) didn't quite work; now if one clicks on the icon at top right, you get taken to "example.com". Presumably a problem somewhere in Wikidata? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:00, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your edit, but it gives an error message (when the script to show harv errors is installed) "Harv warning: There is no link pointing to this citation. The anchor is named CITEREFDudley_Milesx2018". Dudley Miles (talk) 18:11, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
New Page Patrol is currently struggling to keep up with the influx of new articles. We could use a few extra hands on deck if you think you can help.
Reviewing/patrolling a page doesn't take much time but it requires a good understanding of Wikipedia policies and guidelines; Wikipedia needs experienced users to perform this task and there are precious few with the appropriate skills. Even a couple reviews a day can make a huge difference.
Hi;. I agree with your idea that you posted at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#possible_collaborative_resources, on ways to perhaps provide a unified or consolidated talk page that could encompass multiple wikiprojects that are related in topics. would you like to talk about some different ways that perhaps we might make this happen? I have been thinking of some possible ideas on this topic. Please feel free to ping me when you reply. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 14:41, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
The Great Britain and Ireland Destubathon began on 1 March and runs for the entire month. Expansion of any stubs related to Great Britain and Ireland is welcome, inclusive of taxa. There are also monetary prizes for winners of specific categories in the form of Amazon gift cards. PetScan could be useful here to find the intersection of Stub-class articles and other categories: Biota of Ireland; Biota of Great Britain; Biota of the Isle of Man
Immunofluorescence staining of a mouse intestine, "Microscopy" (Australia)
Bat scientist Lauri Lutsar determining the age of a bat, "People In Science" (Estonia)
Close-up view of a bioluminescent beetle Elateroidea, "Wildlife and Nature" (France)
Coral fluorescence, "General Category" (Russia)
Paleoanthropologist at work, "People in Science" (Italy)
Ammonite fossil from Morocco, "General Category" (Spain)
Yellow orange-tip male (Ixias pyrene), "Wildlife and Nature" (India)
The spread of coronavirus across Wikipedia
With the outbreak of a novel coronavirus dominating news coverage, Wikipedia content related to the virus has seen much higher interest. Tree of Life content of particular interest to readers has included viruses, bats, pangolins, and masked palm civets. Viruses saw the most dramatic growth in readership: Coronavirus, which was the 105th most popular virus article in December 2019 with about 400 views per day, averaged over a quarter million views each day of January 2020. Total monthly viewership of the top-10 virus articles ballooned from about 1.5 million to nearly 20 million.
From October 2019 – December 2019, the top ten most popular bat articles fluctuated among 16 different articles, with the December viewership of those 10 articles at 209,280. For January 2020, three articles broke into the top-10 that were not among the 16 articles of the prior three months: Bat as food, Horseshoe bat, and Bat-borne virus. Viewership of the top-10 bat articles spiked nearly 300% to 617,067 in January.
While bats have been implicated as a possible natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, an intermediate host may be the bridge between bats and humans. Pangolins have been hypothesized as the intermediate host for the virus, causing a large spike in typical page views of 2-3k each day up to more than 60k in a day. Masked palm civets, the intermediate host of SARS, saw a modest yet noticeable spike in page views as well, from 100 to 300 views per day to as many as 5k views per day.
With an increase in viewers came an increase in editors. In an interview, longtime virus editor Awkwafaba identified the influx of editors as the biggest challenge in editing content related to the coronavirus. They noted that these newcomers include "novices who make honest mistakes and get tossed about a bit in the mad activity" as well as "experienced editors who know nothing about viruses and are good researchers, yet aren't familiar with the policies of WP:ToL or WP:Viruses." Disruption also increased, with extended confirmed protection (also known as the 30/500 rule, which prevents editors with fewer than 30 days tenure and 500 edits from making edits and is typically used on a very small subset of Wikipedia articles) temporarily applied to Coronavirus and still active on Template:2019–20 coronavirus outbreak data. New editors apparently seeking to correct misinformation continuously edited the article Bat as food to remove content related to China: Videos of Chinese people eating bat soup were misrepresented to be current or filmed in China, when at least one such video was several years old and filmed in Palau. However, reliable sources confirm that bats are eaten in China, especially Southern China, so these well-meaning edits were mostly removed.
Another level of complexity was added by the fluctuating terminology of the virus. Over a dozen moves and merges were requested within WikiProject Viruses. To give you an idea of the musical chairs happening with article titles, here are the move histories of two articles:
Awkwafaba noted that "the main authorities, WHO and ICTV, don't really have a process for speedily naming a virus or disease." Additionally, they have different criteria for naming. They said, "I remember in a move discussion from the article then called Wuhan coronavirus that a virus name cannot have a geographical location in it, but this is a WHO disease naming guideline, and not an ICTV virus naming rule. ICTV may have renamed Four Corners virus to Sin Nombre orthohantavirus but there are still plenty of official virus species names that don't abide by WHO guidelines."
February DYKs
Thistle broomrape
Painting of the Shelton Oak
Female A. diabolicum flowers with curled stigmas
... that juvenile ornate surgeonfish are quite different in colouring from the adult fish? (1 February)
... that Quarry Moor is one of the few locations in England where the rare parasitic plant thistle broomrape(example pictured) grows? (2 February)
... that the hollow Shelton Oak(pictured) near Shrewsbury was so big that a party of eight could dance a quadrille inside it? (3 February)
... that growth in the brown seaweed Zanardinia typus occurs at the base of the hairs that grow around the edge of the frond? (4 February)
... that entomologist Karim Vahed led the team that found a cricket species in which the testes accounted for 14 percent of the insect's body mass? (4 February)
... that although the bird of paradise fly was first described from an Angophora tree, it is quite likely that this is not the insect's host plant? (11 February)
On behalf of the team and community of WikiLoop Battlefield and as Wikipedians, we like to appreciate your contributions, and look forward for more in the future. Also don't forget to bring your Wikipedian friends who you think are also passionate of keeping Wikipedia protected.
Cheers, xinbenlvTalk, Remember to "ping" me04:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
On behalf of the team and community of WikiLoop Battlefield and as Wikipedians, we like to appreciate your contributions, and look forward for more in the future. Also don't forget to bring your Wikipedian friends who you think are also passionate of keeping Wikipedia protected.
Cheers, xinbenlvTalk, Remember to "ping" me04:58, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
You can use this user right to perform maintenance, answer edit requests, and make any other simple and generally uncontroversial edits to templates, modules, and edinotices. You can also use it to enact more complex or controversial edits, after those edits are first made to a test sandbox, and their technical reliability as well as their consensus among other informed editors has been established. If you are willing to process edit requests on templates and modules, keep in mind that you are taking responsibility to ensure the edits have consensus and are technically sound.
This user right gives you access to some of Wikipedia's most important templates and modules; it is critical that you edit them wisely and that you only make edits that are backed up by consensus. It is also very important that no one else be allowed to access your account, so you should consider taking a few moments to secure your password.
If you do not want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time.
If you were granted the permission on a temporary basis you will need to re-apply for the permission a few days before it expires including in your request a permalink to the discussion where it was granted and a {{ping}} for the administrator who granted the permission. You can find the permalink in your rights log.
{{Admin help}} - Frequently requests is this category don't necessarily require help from administrators just a template editor.... Category:Wikipedians looking for help from administrators.....both of these are part of the Wikipedia:IRC chat system and generally get looked after pretty quick........also seen at the dashboard.
{{Wikipedia:Dashboard/Wikipedians looking for help}}
0 page(s) currently transcluding the {{Admin help}} template. Note: Frequently requests is this category don't necessarily require help from administrators, but simply an experienced editor.
On behalf of the team and community of WikiLoop Battlefield and as Wikipedians, we like to appreciate your contributions, and look forward for more in the future. Also don't forget to bring your Wikipedian friends who you think are also passionate of keeping Wikipedia protected.
By the way, we currently have no different barnstar image for different level (weekly / monthly / annual) champion, if you are interested in help designing, please help us. Thank you!
Cheers, xinbenlvTalk, Remember to "ping" me20:13, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hina Baig 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. Störm(talk)08:08, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
On behalf of the team and community of WikiLoop Battlefield and as Wikipedians, we like to appreciate your contributions, and look forward for more in the future. Also don't forget to bring your Wikipedian friends who you think are also passionate of keeping Wikipedia protected.
By the way, we currently have no different barnstar image for different level (weekly / monthly / annual) champion, if you are interested in help designing, please help us. Thank you!
Cheers, xinbenlvTalk, Remember to "ping" me17:06, 23 March 2020 (UTC)
WikiJournal of Science/Virtual colony count in Russian Wikiversity
A year of the Tree of Life Newsletter: Thank you to all the subscribers who have been with us from the beginning or have joined along the way, and to those who have contributed their time to producing this newsletter. I've really valued your ideas, copyediting, and willingness to be interviewed. Onwards and upwards!
April marks the start of the GAN Backlog Drive, which continues through the end of May. The goal of this backlog elimination drive is to cut the number of outstanding GANs, in particular those which have been in the queue 90 days or more. All hands welcome, new and old.
The finalists of the US Wiki Science Competition have been announced. Illustrating Wikipedia articles can be challenging, so these new images represent a chance to find suitable media for our articles. For all images uploaded in the Wiki Science Competition, see here and click "all images" in the upper right corner.
Fly's mouth and tongue (Microscopy)
Killer whales hunting a crabeater seal (Wildlife)
Fossilized tooth of a Squalicorax shark (Microscopy)
This interview has been edited for length. Find the full interview here.
Number of participants of WikiProject Covid-19
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
Please describe how you went about creating WikiProject COVID-19. What made you think a project was needed?
I've been following the outbreak and editing related Wikipedia articles since January. I'm not particularly interested in infectious diseases or viruses, but I've been to China a few times and wanted to monitor the outbreak's impact on society as well as the government's response. For a while, I was casually tracking updates to the first couple pages about the outbreak. Then a pattern began to emerge as February saw the creation of separate articles about outbreaks in Iran, Italy, and South Korea. New Wikipedia articles continued being created in early March, and the outbreak was recognized as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11. Knowing there would many more articles, lists, templates, illustrations, and other pages on Wikipedia, I created WikiProject COVID-19 on March 15. My goal was simply to create a temporary or permanent space for editors to collaborate, communicate, and focus specifically on content related to this ongoing pandemic. I'm a member of many WikiProjects and have created several before, but this one definitely felt more necessary and urgent. Most WikiProjects unite editors with similar interests, which is fine and serves a purpose, but I felt this project could have a much bigger real life impact. I don't think I was alone in my thinking; the project had 80 members by March 20 and 100 members by March 26.
Who or what was invaluable to getting off the ground?
If I'm being honest, getting this project off the ground required little work on my part. All I did was create the space and post invitations to existing talk pages related to the outbreak. Editors joined the project very quickly; 30 members joined on the same day I started the project, and there were more than 50 participants one day later. I've been a daily Wikipedia editor for more than 12 years, and I've never seen so much interest in a project or content added to Wikipedia about a specific topic in such a short period of time. WikiProject members worked expeditiously to build a framework and hang a barnstar, tagging related pages, assessing content, and starting talk page discussions about the project's goals and scope. I'm thankful to the many editors who pitched in to get the project established, and I look forward to seeing how editors collaborate in this space as we move forward.
What are the short-term goals of the project?
No specific goals have been posted to the project page yet, but I'd like to think members share a collective desire to ensure Wikipedia has accurate and reliable information about the disease and pandemic. Disinformation and misinformation seem rampant these days, so we're working to give readers around the globe access to accurate, objective, and possibly even life-saving information. Unlike some WikiProjects which may take a more historical approach to documenting certain topics, WikiProject COVID-19 members have the ability to mitigate the disease's spread in real time by arming communities with facts about outbreaks in their region as well as information about prevention, testing, vaccine research, societal impact, etc.Viewership of WikiProject Medicine, WikiProject Viruses, and WikiProject COVID-19 in the month of March 2020
What are the long-term goals? English Wikipedia has many of 'lumpers' who think there are too many projects already. The project has also inspired the creation of two portals, which I imagine caused some raised eyebrows in this trend of portal deletionism. What will come of the WP after the current outbreak subsides?
After creating WikiProject COVID-19, a couple editors said I should have created a task force instead of a standalone WikiProject. I wasn't bothered. The number of 'thank you' notifications I received for creating the page vastly outweighed these critical comments. I knew the page I created was much needed, and I would be fine if editors decide to call the page by another name. I understand some editors think there are too many WikiProjects. No one's required to join WikiProject COVID-19, but the 100+ of us who have already joined invite you to help with our efforts, if you're interested. As for the project's future, I would be fine if editors decided to convert the WikiProject into a task force, or even put the project into retirement if the time comes. Given the level of interest and impact the pandemic has already had on a global scale, I have a feeling the WikiProject will be active for a long time.
Another criticism of the project is its narrow focus. It is focused on only one strain of virus, and the disease it causes. Even WikiProject AIDS is about two species of virus. Is the scope of the project too small? What would an expanded scope look like? Why would including another virus strain in the same species, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus which causes SARS, not be wanted? or is it wanted?
Narrow focus? I disagree. The project may focus on a single virus and disease, but the pandemic has resulted in the creation of hundreds of Wikipedia articles documenting outbreaks in most countries and territories. There are pages covering the pandemic's impact on aviation, cinema, education, politics, religion, sports, and television, not to mention others related to the resulting economic turmoil. Additionally, there are hundreds of templates, charts, and other graphics. Who knows how many thousands of images and other media will be uploaded at Wikimedia Commons by the time this pandemic subsides? There's also COVID-19 WikiProject COVID-19 at Wikidata, and I wouldn't be surprised if similar spaces are created for other Wikimedia projects soon. Even if the focus is narrow, there's plenty of content for Wikimedians to improve and protect.
In your opinion, what should be the guidelines for creating a new project, as opposed to creating a task force or working under an existing WikiProject?
I don't feel strongly about new project creation guidelines, or the differences between WikiProjects and task forces. Project members should decide what structure works for them and call themselves whatever name they prefer. I understand project construction requires maintenance and can come at an administrative cost, but we should be careful about discouraging editors from proposing new projects.
Ideally, editors would only create a new WikiProject if at least a few others were committed to joining. I created WikiProject COVID-19 without conferring with others because I assumed the interest would be there. I encourage people to be bold and create project pages, but maybe ask a few other editors for feedback first. I'll let other editors worry about the guidelines.
What tools (templates, bots, etc.) are essential, or even just really helpful, for organizing and maintaining a successful project? What is something every WP should do, that maybe isn't doing now?
I don't have any sort of medical background, and I'm more interested in the pandemic's impact than details about the disease or virus. Most surprising to me has been the lack of preparedness for combating outbreaks by governments around the world, including here in the United States. I don't know how COVID-19's spread compares to other infectious diseases, but as I've watched the outbreak develop I've continually wondered why governments did not start preparing earlier. What was happening in China, Iran, Italy, and South Korea should have prompted action sooner.
What important things about 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic do you think folks should know and maybe have missed in the deluge of information coming at people?
1. Know the most common symptoms: cough, fever, and difficulty breathing.
2. Learn what behavioral adjustments you should make to protect yourself and reduce transmission, and remember to wash your hands.
3. Get your information from reputable sources. I'd like to think Wikipedia editors are pretty good at this last bit of advice.
Hi Thomas! I noticed that, on the Help:Introduction menu, the boxes in the middle have some nice padding, whereas the ones at the top and bottom are more squished together. I can't figure out where on Template:Intro to single/styles.css or elsewhere the middle section padding is located, so I can't apply it to the top and bottom. Can you help? {{u|Sdkb}}talk18:43, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
@Sdkb: Thanks for re-pining me on this. My mind has been a bit scattered recently. It looks like it was something to do with the {{-}} template when I first put it together. Using the |style= parameter of the buttons themselves within the page should allow for much more consistent control of the vertical spacing. Great work for everything you've done with all of these. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk11:43, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Looks mostly good, but there's now an equally mystifying gap between the MOS button and the conclusion button. It seems to always exist between the last button and the second-to-last button, no matter which changes I try to preview. Any idea what's causing that? {{u|Sdkb}}talk17:25, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
Trouble with SVG images
Hi Thomas,
Thanks very much for your suggestion to upload images as SVGs. I tried doing this, but I had a lot of trouble with text getting mis-rendered, even after I switched to the Wikipedia-compatible font Liberation Sans. I'm attaching the file below. Do you have any tips for this?
The team is planning some upcoming changes. Please review the proposed design and share your thoughts on the talk page. The team will test features such as:
an easy way to mention another editor ("pinging"),
a rich-text visual editing option, and
other features identified through user testing or recommended by editors.
WikiProject Birds gained a new task force. A discussion determined that WikiProject Poultry might be more successful as a task force, with the move completed 15 April.
Round 2 of the WikiCup wrapped up this month. Several editors moved on to Round 3 by scoring points in biodiversity-related areas, including Sainsf, Casliber, Dunkleosteus77, CaptainEek, Guettarda, and Enwebb. Dunkleosteus77 finished at the top of the Tree of Life pack with 608 points, finishing 9th overall in the round.
After a relatively quiet February and March, with only 11 total articles nominated for GA and none for FAC, April brought a shower of nominations. In total, 5 articles were nominated for FAC, 1 for FLC, and 11 for GA.
Tree of Life's growing featured content
Inspired by a March 2020 post at WikiProject Medicine detailing the growth of Featured Articles over time, we decided to reproduce that table here, adding a second table showing the growth of Good Articles. Tree of Life articles are placed in the "Biology" category for FAs, which has seen a growth of 381% since 2008. Only two other subjects had a greater growth than Biology: Business, economics, and finance; and Warfare.
Percentage Growth in FA Categories, 2008–2019, Legend: Considerably above average, Above average, AverageBelow average , Considerably below average, Poor
Note A: Total is off by one; not worth looking for the error.
Note B Three food biographies moved [1] per discussion at WT:FAC
Note: The very odd dates used in earlier years result from pulling old data from the talk page at WP:FAS.
Good Article Category as of
Feb 23, 2008
Sep 16, 2008
Sep 16, 2010
Dec 1, 2011
Jan 1, 2015
Jan 1, 2020
Pct chg Feb 2008 to 2011
Pct chg Feb 2008 to 2020
Agriculture, food and drink
27
34
37
55
113
226
104%
737%
Art and architecture
134
188
321
450
683
1022
236%
663%
Engineering and technology
256
396
882
1198
1828
2407
368%
840%
Geography and places
191
248
424
523
716
1052
174%
451%
History
261
312
651
825
1219
1894
216%
626%
Language and literature
173
215
377
462
686
982
167%
468%
Mathematics
19
22
27
30
36
67
58%
253%
Media and drama
403
658
1352
1300
3070
3961
223%
883%
Music
357
527
997
1437
2532
3892
303%
990%
Natural sciences
544
686
1275
1717
2404
3426
216%
530%
Philosophy and religion
134
174
244
294
365
557
119%
316%
Social sciences and society
468
549
790
998
1430
1854
113%
296%
Sports and recreation
384
546
1074
1402
2350
3802
265%
890%
Video games
168
220
373
443
684
1349
164%
703%
Warfare
155
241
989
1654
2544
3996
967%
2478%
Total
3674
5016
9813
12788
20660
30487
248%
730%
Organisms*
119
130
402
528
685
1017
344%
755%
*subset of natural sciences
Unsurprisingly, the number of GAs has increased more rapidly than the number of FAs. Organisms, which is a subcategory of Natural sciences, has seen a GA growth of 755% since 2008, besting the Natural sciences overall growth of 530%. While Warfare had far and away the most significant growth of GAs, it's a clear outlier relative to other categories.
... that although the alpine bartsia has a wide range in Europe and North America, it is known in the British Isles only from a few locations in northern England and the central Scottish Highlands? (19 April)
... that the orange-band surgeonfish(pictured) can change colour from dark to light almost instantaneously? (21 April)
Hi, I just saw your message on my talk page "Hi. Great work on the Tryptophan_7-halogenase article. Do you happen to know if the File:PrnA_Binding_Sites.jpg image is based on PDB:2AQJ? Thanks, T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 11:18, 3 September 2017 (UTC)" - forgive the very delayed reply. Yes, I believe it is 2AQJ. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Scheng23 (talk • contribs)
This month saw two Tree of Life editors gain the mop: CaptainEek (WikiProjects Birds and Plants) and Cwmhiraeth (familiar name at DYK, WikiProjects Plants, Animals, and Insects)
The April – May GAN backlog drive finished up, clearing the queue from nearly 700 outstanding nominations to about 350.
Interview with Jts1882
This month we're joined by Jts1882, who is active in depicting evolutionary relationship of taxa via cladograms. Part of this includes responding to cladogram requests, where interested editors can have cladograms made without using the templates themselves.
How did you come to be interested in systematics? Are you interested in systematics broadly, or is there a particular group you're most fond of?
As long as I can remember I’ve been interested in nature, starting with the animals and plants in the garden, school grounds, and local wood, and then more general wildlife worldwide. An interest in how things are classified grew from this. I like things to be organised and understanding the relationships between things and systems (not just living things) is a big part of that. Biology was always my favourite subject in school and took up a disproportionate part of my time. My interest in systematics is broad as I’d like to comprehend the whole tree of life, but the cat family is my favourite group.
What's the background behind cladogram requests? I see that it isn't a very old part of the Tree of Life
Well I can’t take any credit for the cladogram requests page, although I help out there sometimes. It was created by IJReid and there are several people who have helped there more than me. I think the motivation is that creating cladograms requires a knowledge of the templates that is daunting for many editors. It was one way of helping people who want to focus on content creation.
My main contribution to the cladograms is converting the {{clade}} template to use a Lua module. The template code was extremely difficult to follow and had to be repetitive (I can only admire the efforts of those who got the thing to work in the first place). The conversion to Lua made it more efficient, allowed larger and deeper cladograms, plus facilitating the introduction of new features. The cladogram request page was recently the venue for discussion on making time calibrated cladograms, which is now possible, if not particularly user friendly.
What advice do you have for an editor who wants to learn how to make cladograms?
The same advice I would give to someone facing any computer problem, just try it out. Start by taking existing code for a cladogram and make changes yourself. The main advice would be to format it properly so indents match the brackets vertically. Of course, not everyone wants to learn and if someone prefers to focus on article content there is the cladogram request page.
Examples of cladograms Jts1882 has created, showing different proposed clades for Neoaves
Do you have any personal projects or goals you're working towards on Wikipedia?
As I said I like organisation and systems. So I find efforts like the automated taxobox system and {{taxonbar}} appealing. I would like to see more reuse of the major phylogenetic trees on Wikipedia with more use of consensus trees on the higher taxa. Too often they get edited based on one recent report and/or without proper citation. Animals and bilateria are examples where this is a problem.
Towards this I have been working on a system of phylogeny templates that can be reused flexibly. The {{Clade transclude}} template allows selective transclusion, so the phylogenetic trees on one page can be reused with modifications, i.e. can be pruned and grafted, used with or without images, with or without collapsible elements, etc. I have an example for the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification (see {{Phylogeny/APG IV}}) and one for squamates that also includes collapsible elements (see {{Phylogeny/Squamata}}).
A second project is to have a modular reference system for taxonomic resources. I have made some progress along this lines with the {{BioRef}} template. This started off simply as a way of hardlinking to Catalog of Fishes pages and I’ve gradually expanded it to cover other groups (e..g. FishBase, AmphibiaWeb and Amphibian Species of the World, Reptile Database, the Mammalian Diversity Database). The modular nature is still rudimentary and needs a rewrite before it is ready for wider use.
What would surprise your fellow editors to learn about your life off-Wikipedia?
I don’t think there is anything particularly surprising or interesting about my life. I’ve had an academic career as a research scientist but I don't think anyone could guess the area from my Wikipedia edits. I prefer to work on areas where I am learning at the same time. This why I spend more time with neglected topics (e.g. mosses at the moment). I start reading and then find that I’m not getting the information I want.
Anything else you'd like us to know?
My interest in the classification of things goes beyond biology. I am fascinated by mediaeval attempts to classify knowledge, such as Bacon in his The Advancement of Learning and Diderot and d’Alembert in their Encyclopédie. They were trying to come up with a universal scheme of knowledge just as the printing press was allowing greater dissemination of knowledge.
With the internet we are seeing a new revolution in knowledge dissemination. Just look at how we could read research papers on the COVID virus within weeks of its discovery. With an open internet, everyone has access, not just those with the luxury of books at home or good libraries. Sites like the Biodiversity Heritage Library allow you to read old scientific works without having to visit dusty university library stack rooms, while the taxonomic and checklist databases provide instant information on millions of living species. In principle, the whole world can now find out about anything, even if Douglas Adams warned we might be disinclined to do so.
This is why I like Wikipedia, with all its warts, it’s a means of organising the knowledge on the internet. In just two decades it’s become a first stop for knowledge and hopefully a gateway to more specialised sources. Perhaps developing this latter aspect, beyond providing good sources for what we say, is the next challenge for Wikipedia.
... that Tetraponera penzigi is one of several species of ant that protect whistling thorn trees in East Africa from grazing giraffes and rhinoceroses? (3 May)
... that the Vietnam mouse-deer, which had been feared to have gone extinct nearly 30 years ago, was sighted again in 2019? (4 May)
... that most branchiobdellids use crayfish as hosts, living on their heads, carapaces, or claws, but in some instances inside their gill cavities? (5 May)
... that the northern plains gray langur monkey (example pictured) is killed in India for food and to prevent crop raiding, despite being considered sacred by Hindus? (12 May)
... that the leech Limnatis nilotica can affect humans and livestock, entering hosts through the mouth, nose, or other orifices? (12 May)
... that the tree Barteria fistulosa is associated with Tetraponera aethiops, an aggressive species of ant that lives in its hollow branches and twigs? (15 May)
... that Miller's langur, one of the rarest primates in Borneo, was feared to be extinct until a 2012 study rediscovered it in an area where it was previously unknown? (16 May)
... that most of the known Gigantopithecus fossils are of teeth because the other bones are likely to have been eaten by porcupines? (17 May)
... that Tetraponera tessmanni, a very aggressive ant, is able to establish dominance over the whole of the liana in which it lives, which may be 50 m (164 ft) long? (17 May)
... that the Arizona dampwood termite exclusively colonizes dead parts of standing trees? (22 May)
... that Megaceroides algericus is one of only two deer species known to have been native to Africa, alongside the Barbary stag? (23 May)
... that besides eating ants and termites, the waved woodpecker feeds on fruits, berries, and seeds? (24 May)
... that populations of the Canada lynx(pictured) undergo cyclic rises and falls in line with those of the snowshoe hare? (25 May)
... that despite being known as the Mexican hydrangea, Clerodendrum bungei is neither from Mexico nor a species of hydrangea? (25 May)
... that meerkats(examples pictured) use alarm calls that can identify the type of predator posing the risk, the level of danger, and the caller itself? (27 May)
... that the frog Boophis fayi can be identified by its unusual green-and-turquoise eyes? (30 May)
... that members of the fly family Apystomyiidae(example depicted) have been found in Late Jurassic sediments in Kazakhstan? (30 May)
... that the sun bear(pictured) is the smallest of all bear species? (31 May)
Many (many) months ago, you approached me about the possibility of writing something for WikiJournal of Science. It turns out that a pandemic can have unexpected positive effects, and one of them is that I finally put something together; you can see it at User:Joel_B._Lewis/Affine_symmetric_group. Since this was created at en.wp but is not actually a wp article, it was a bit unclear to me which method of submission I should use; I assume that copying the source over verbatim to the WJS preprint server will break lots of things (but maybe that's wrong?). Your suggestions are welcome.
Sorry, in the end I decided I was being dense and this was the correct thing to do; please let me know if that's wrong! Thanks, JBL (talk) 23:08, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
Great to hear! And no worries about not finding WP:FAN earlier. Working out how to make use information on how to submit is both clear and not overwhelming (and makes sense to wikipedians and non-wikipedians) is a work-in-progress! I've added a note on your talkpage on subsequent steps. The reason WP:JAN is useful in these cases is that special:import also transfers over the edit history, and we can also import over any templates needed and convert the wikilinks to point back to en.wp. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk03:49, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks! Yes, I was hesitant to copy it over because of the cross-wiki linking issue. (I see it still does cause some problems with respect to the links in the citation templates, but I presume that can be sorted out separately/later.) Looking forward to the process. All the best, JBL (talk) 14:15, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
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Research on the use of talk pages: The Editing team worked with the Wikimedia research team to study how talk pages help editors improve articles. We learned that new editors who use talk pages make more edits to the main namespace than new editors who don't use talk pages.
Thank you for your interest and contributions to WikiLoop Battlefield.
We are holding a voting for proposed new name. We would like to invite you to this voting. The voting
is held at m:WikiProject_WikiLoop/New_name_vote and ends on July 13th 00:00 UTC.
Hi Thomas, in Help talk:Citation Style 1#Red link ISBN resulting from cite book you were mentioned as the one who rolled out the latest version of our citation templates at Wikiversity. That's great, however, there's one more thing that needs to be done to make it functional. Links to identifiers are now all routed through special "symbolic-identifier-name (identifier)" redirects instead of directly pointing to the target page in order to reduce the clutter at "What links here" and improve reverse lookup facilities. So far, these redirects do not exist at Wikiversity causing the links to show up as red links after the update. What needs to be done to fix this is to create the following special redirects for all identifiers supported by citation templates over there as well (there are many more such redirects, but only these are supported by the cite templates at present, so only these need to be created now):
I would do this myself, but my global account does not log in there for unknown reasons. So, before I spend time to sort this out it is probably easier for you to create these redirects over there. (At Wikipedia, these identifier redirects all carry a special "Rcat from citation identifier" to put them into a special category for maintenance - don't know if a similar concept exists at Wikiversity - in either case, this is not essential to the function.) Thanks and greetings. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 01:34, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #3
On 16 March 2020, the 50 millionth edit was made using the visual editor on desktop.
Seven years ago this week, the Editing team made the visual editor available by default to all logged-in editors using the desktop site at the English Wikipedia. Here's what happened since its introduction:
The 50 millionth edit using the visual editor on desktop was made this year. More than 10 million edits have been made here at the English Wikipedia.
More than 2 million new articles have been created in the visual editor. More than 600,000 of these new articles were created during 2019.
Almost 5 million edits on the mobile site have been made with the visual editor. Most of these edits have been made since the Editing team started improving the mobile visual editor in 2018.
The proportion of all edits made using the visual editor has been increasing every year.
Editors have made more than 7 million edits in the 2017 wikitext editor, including starting 600,000 new articles in it. The 2017 wikitext editor is VisualEditor's built-in wikitext mode. You can enable it in your preferences.
In 2019, 35% of the edits by newcomers, and half of their first edits, were made using the visual editor. This percentage has been increasing every year since the tool became available.
Just wanted to let you know that I have reverted all the edits I made earlier saying Reeves was fired and have restored the previous version. TV Line has retracted the source article, saying it was published due to "technical error" and she has not been fired. It looks like it was one of those 'potential' articles that sites write up in case something happens and they had it ready when she was being publicly criticized, but it never came to pass and wasn't supposed to be posted. Lilipo25 (talk) 11:59, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
Question on Associate Editor Application to the Wikijournal
@Natematic: Thanks for pinging me about this. I've prompted the other editors to vote (we have a 5 vote quorum to be able to implement, but people often miss new posts to that page). T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk10:39, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
This issue is a double issue, but the plan is to return to monthly henceforth.
A discussion at WikiProject Palaeontology about internal peer review processes led to the creation of a peer review space. In contrast to the more formal Peer Review, PalaeoPR focuses on short "fact checks", emphasizing content over style. Reviews are meant to be low commitment, with "drive-by reviews" encouraged. Since its inception on 8 July, seven articles have been submitted to PalaeoPR.
After a highly competitive third round, two Tree of Life editors advanced to the fourth round of the WikiCup: Dunkleosteus77 and Sainsf
A February 2020 paper published in PLOS noted that Mammalian Species is one of the most over-cited journals on Wikipedia relative to how frequently it is cited in other academic works.
Categorizing life with DexDor
DexDor is a WikiGnome with a particular interest in article categorization, including how organisms are categorized.
How did you become interested in editing biodiversity topics on Wikipedia?
I'm a wikignome who tries to remove unnecessary complexity and confusion in Wikipedia. I specialise in categorization. I've worked on categorization of several topic areas (e.g. military equipment) - anywhere where I see things like category tags on articles that the category text doesn't support. Categorization of organisms is one area I'm currently looking at (my essay on this).
You seem to be particularly interested in geographic categorization of organisms. What are some issues in this area?
One issue is that there are several possible relationships between an organism and a region (i.e. what the "of" in a "Xs of Y" means) - the organism may be found throughout the region, somewhere in the region, only in the region (i.e. endemic to that region) - there are categories for each of these (and others) and some categories have been unclear about their exact meaning. Then there's introductions by man, locally extinct species, occasional visitors...
Another issue is that some editors have thought it's appropriate to create categories for very small areas ("Spiders of Vatican City" is only a slight exaggeration) and put a few articles in them, thus creating a category that is both massively incomplete and non-defining for the articles in it.
There have been several (now blocked) editors who have been disruptive in this area, but a confusing and sprawling categorization scheme is also partly due to editors from a particular background categorizing a particular article in a way that appears to make sense, but doesn't really make sense in the wider categorization scheme - for example, if an article mentions the countries at the extremes of an animal's distribution, the animal is categorized just for those countries.
What potential solutions do you see for categorizing organisms by geography? How can other editors help address this issue, or at least, not make it worse?
We should have some guidelines that tell editors how to categorize any article about an organism (including any geographical categorization). I've started drafting guidelines at User:DexDor/BioCat. The guidelines are also a good way to ensure that the categorization of articles about organisms is aligned with categorization of other articles and may help us to identify where there are problems, inconsistencies etc in the categorization. I welcome suggestions for improvement of the guidelines (which should at some point be moved into WP:TOL).
Regarding geographical categorization of animals the main advice for editors would be to not create categories for any new areas and to only create a new category if you intend to populate it.
What have you learned from being a Wikipedia editor?
That lots of people (from varied backgrounds) each making (mostly) small improvements (like ants in an ants nest?) and only understanding some parts of Wikipedia can produce such a wonderful resource. But also, how that tends to result in ever-increasing complexity which negatively affects editors and readers.
Is there anything about your life outside Wikipedia that would surprise us?
... that despite being a member of the cat family, the jaguarundi has several features in common with mustelids such as otters and weasels? (2 June)
... that scientists were unsure whether the blue calamintha bee(pictured) still existed until it was observed again in March 2020? (2 June)
... that many of the animals regarded as pests have co-evolved with humans, adapting to the warm, sheltered conditions that a building provides? (3 June)
... that the banteng is the second endangered species to be successfully cloned, and the first clone to survive beyond infancy? (5 June)
... that cattle and deer sometimes stand under trees where southern plains gray langurs are feeding in order to consume the edible pieces that the monkeys drop? (10 June)
... that when boiled in milk, black coral(example pictured) emits a faint scent of myrrh? (21 June)
... that one of the factors affecting the future of the Huanchaca mouse is the increased cultivation of biofuels? (22 June)
... that the Strawberries and Cream Tree(pictured) is noted for producing pink blossoms on one side of the tree and white on the other, when it blooms every spring? (23 June)
... that the Chilean seaside cinclodes bobs its tail while it walks and flares its wings while it sings? (24 June)
... that Boie's frog(pictured) and the Banhado frog both resemble dead leaves on the floor of the forest? (25 June)
... that Markham's storm petrel, which nests in Peru and northern Chile, has been described as "one of the least known seabirds in the world"? (7 July)
... that the frog Corythomantis greeningi retreats into a hole, blocks the entrance with its spiny head, and injects venom into anything that tries to dislodge it? (18 July)
... that the reef box crab uses its powerful pincers to break open the shells of snails? (21 July)
... that the genus Pterodactylus(species depicted), the scientific name for a pterodactyl, had been considered a "wastebasket taxon" as many species were assigned to it and later reassigned? (23 July)
... that the sea urchin Abatus cordatus broods its young for nine months in pockets on its upper surface? (24 July)
... that Harold Clyde Bingham trailed a troop of gorillas for 100 hours in 1929? (25 July)
More than 300 editors used the Reply tool at these four Wikipedias. They posted more than 7,400 replies during the study period.
Of the people who posted a comment with the Reply tool, about 70% of them used the tool multiple times. About 60% of them used it on multiple days.
Comments from Wikipedia editors are positive. One said, أعتقد أن الأداة تقدم فائدة ملحوظة؛ فهي تختصر الوقت لتقديم رد بدلًا من التنقل بالفأرة إلى وصلة تعديل القسم أو الصفحة، التي تكون بعيدة عن التعليق الأخير في الغالب، ويصل المساهم لصندوق التعديل بسرعة باستخدام الأداة. ("I think the tool has a significant impact; it saves time to reply while the classic way is to move with a mouse to the Edit link to edit the section or the page which is generally far away from the comment. And the user reaches to the edit box so quickly to use the Reply tool.")[2]
The Editing team released the Reply tool as a Beta Feature at eight other Wikipedias in early August. Those Wikipedias are in the Chinese, Czech, Georgian, Serbian, Sorani Kurdish, Swedish, Catalan, and Korean languages. If you would like to use the Reply tool at your wiki, please tell User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF).
The Reply tool is still in active development. Per request from the Dutch Wikipedia and other editors, you will be able to customize the edit summary. (The default edit summary is "Reply".) A "ping" feature is available in the Reply tool's visual editing mode. This feature searches for usernames. Per request from the Arabic Wikipedia, each wiki will be able to set its own preferred symbol for pinging editors. Per request from editors at the Japanese and Hungarian Wikipedias, each wiki can define a preferred signature prefix in the page MediaWiki:Discussiontools-signature-prefix. For example, some languages omit spaces before signatures. Other communities want to add a dash or a non-breaking space.
New requirements for user signatures
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Next: New discussion tool
Next, the team will be working on a tool for quickly and easily starting a new discussion section to a talk page. To follow the development of this new tool, please put the New Discussion Tool project page on your watchlist.
On August 7, WikiProject Palaeontology member Rextron discovered a suspicious taxon article, Mustelodon, which was created in November 2005. The article lacked references and the subsequent discussion on WikiProject Palaeontology found that the alleged type locality (where the fossil was first discovered) of Lago Nandarajo "near the northern border of Panama" was nonexistent. In fact, Panama does not even really have a northern border, as it is bounded along the north by the Caribbean Sea. No other publications or databases mentioned Mustelodon, save a fleeting mention in a 2019 book that presumably followed Wikipedia, Felines of the World.
The article also appeared in four other languages, Catalan, Spanish, Dutch, and Serbian. In Serbian Wikipedia, a note at the bottom of the page warned: "It is important to note here that there is no data on this genus in the official scientific literature, and all attached data on the genus Mustelodon on this page are taken from the English Wikipedia and are the only known data on this genus of mammals, so the validity of this genus is questionable."
Editors took action to alert our counterparts on other projects, and these versions were removed also. As the editor who reached out to Spanish and Catalan Wikipedia, it was somewhat challenging to navigate these mostly foreign languages (I have a limited grasp of Spanish). I doubted that the article had very many watchers, so I knew I had to find some WikiProjects where I could post a machine translation advising of the hoax, and asking that users follow local protocols to remove the article. I was surprised to find, however, that Catalan Wikipedia does not tag articles for WikiProjects on talk pages, meaning I had to fumble around to find what I needed (turns out that WikiProjects are Viquiprojectes in Catalan!) Mustelodon remains on Wikidata, where its "instance of" property was swapped from "taxon" to "fictional taxon".
How did this article have such a long lifespan? Early intervention is critical for removing hoaxes. A 2016 report found that a hoax article that survives its first day has an 18% chance of lasting a year.[1] Additionally, hoax articles tend to have longer lifespans if they are in inconspicuous parts of Wikipedia, where they do not receive many views. Mustelodon was only viewed a couple times a day, on average.
Mustelodon survived a brush with death three years into its lifespan. The article was proposed for deletion in September 2008, with a deletion rationale of "No references given; cannot find any evidence in peer-reviewed journals that this alleged genus actually exists". Unfortunately, the proposed deletion was contested and the template removed, though the declining editor did not give a rationale. Upon its rediscovery in August 2020, Mustelodon was tagged for speedy deletion under CSD G3 as a "blatant hoax". This was challenged, and an Articles for Deletion discussion followed. On 12 August, the AfD was closed as a SNOW delete. WikiProject Palaeontology members ensured that any trace of it was scrubbed from legitimate articles. The fictional mammal was finally, truly extinct.
At the ripe old age of 14 years, 9 months, this is the longest-lived documented hoax on Wikipedia, topping the previous documented record of 14 years, 5 months, set by The Gates of Saturn, a fictitious television show, which was incidentally also discovered in August 2020. How do we discover other hoax taxa? Could we use Wikidata to discover taxa are not linked to databases like ITIS, Fossilworks, and others?
Apororhynchus hemignathi, a spiny-headed worm with the distinction of being one of the first named animal taxa when organized alphabetically
This month's spotlight is with Mattximus, author of two Featured Articles and 29 Featured Lists at current count.
How did you become involved with editing biodiversity articles?
I think I have a compulsion to make lists, it doesn't show up in my real life, but online I secretly get a lot of satisfaction making orderly lists and tables. It's a bit of a secret of mine, because it doesn't manifest in any other part of my life. My background is in biology, so this was a natural (haha) fit.
You have an impressive number of FAs under your belt. Two of your more recent ones, Apororhynchus and Gigantorhynchus, are part of what you referred to as an "experiment". How did you choose these articles, and what's next for you in this experiment?
This experiment was just to see if I could get any random article to FA status, so I picked the very first alphabetical animal species according to the taxonomy and made that attempt. Technically, there isn't enough information for a species page so I just merged the species into a genus and went from there. It was a fun exercise, but doing it alone is not the most fun so it's probably on pause for the foreseeable future.
Note: Aporhynchus is the first alphabetical taxon as follows: Animalia, Acanthocephala, Archiacanthocephala, Apororhynchida, Apororhynchidae, Apororhynchus
What advice would you give to someone who wants to nominate their first FAC?
I would recommend getting a good article nominated, then a featured list up before tackling the FA. Lists are a bit more forgiving but give you a taste of what standards to expect from FA. The most time consuming thing is proper citations so make sure that is in order before starting either.
Is there anything that would surprise us to learn about your life off-Wikipedia?
My personality in real life does not match my wikipedia persona. I'm not a very organized, or orderly in real life, but the wikipedia pages I brought to FL or FA are all very organized. Maybe it's my outlet for a more free-flowing life as a scientist/teacher.
Anything else you'd like us to know?
The fact that wikipedia exists free of profit motive and free for everyone really is something special and I encourage everyone to donate a few dollars to the cause.
... that the flower buds of the woolly thistle(pictured) can be eaten in a similar way to artichokes? (8 August)
... that the French peanut is native to Brazil? (10 August)
... that the 800-year-old Minchenden Oak is one of the oldest trees in London? (14 August)
... that the forward-facing incisors of the extinct dolphin Ankylorhiza(restoration pictured) may have been used for ramming their prey, similar to a hunting method used by modern orcas? (16 August)
... that scientists accidentally created a hybrid of two endangered fish species, called the sturddlefish? (17 August)
... that despite having the widest distribution in the United States, the arid-land subterranean termite causes less structural damage than other members of its genus? (19 August)
... that in 2021, the dwarf periodical cicada(pictured) is due to emerge in parts of eastern North America, not having been seen for 17 years? (24 August)
On August 7, WikiProject Palaeontology member Rextron discovered a suspicious taxon article, Mustelodon, which was created in November 2005. The article lacked references and the subsequent discussion on WikiProject Palaeontology found that the alleged type locality (where the fossil was first discovered) of Lago Nandarajo "near the northern border of Panama" was nonexistent. In fact, Panama does not even really have a northern border, as it is bounded along the north by the Caribbean Sea. No other publications or databases mentioned Mustelodon, save a fleeting mention in a 2019 book that presumably followed Wikipedia, Felines of the World.
The article also appeared in four other languages, Catalan, Spanish, Dutch, and Serbian. In Serbian Wikipedia, a note at the bottom of the page warned: "It is important to note here that there is no data on this genus in the official scientific literature, and all attached data on the genus Mustelodon on this page are taken from the English Wikipedia and are the only known data on this genus of mammals, so the validity of this genus is questionable."
Editors took action to alert our counterparts on other projects, and these versions were removed also. As the editor who reached out to Spanish and Catalan Wikipedia, it was somewhat challenging to navigate these mostly foreign languages (I have a limited grasp of Spanish). I doubted that the article had very many watchers, so I knew I had to find some WikiProjects where I could post a machine translation advising of the hoax, and asking that users follow local protocols to remove the article. I was surprised to find, however, that Catalan Wikipedia does not tag articles for WikiProjects on talk pages, meaning I had to fumble around to find what I needed (turns out that WikiProjects are Viquiprojectes in Catalan!) Mustelodon remains on Wikidata, where its "instance of" property was swapped from "taxon" to "fictional taxon".
How did this article have such a long lifespan? Early intervention is critical for removing hoaxes. A 2016 report found that a hoax article that survives its first day has an 18% chance of lasting a year.[1] Additionally, hoax articles tend to have longer lifespans if they are in inconspicuous parts of Wikipedia, where they do not receive many views. Mustelodon was only viewed a couple times a day, on average.
Mustelodon survived a brush with death three years into its lifespan. The article was proposed for deletion in September 2008, with a deletion rationale of "No references given; cannot find any evidence in peer-reviewed journals that this alleged genus actually exists". Unfortunately, the proposed deletion was contested and the template removed, though the declining editor did not give a rationale. Upon its rediscovery in August 2020, Mustelodon was tagged for speedy deletion under CSD G3 as a "blatant hoax". This was challenged, and an Articles for Deletion discussion followed. On 12 August, the AfD was closed as a SNOW delete. WikiProject Palaeontology members ensured that any trace of it was scrubbed from legitimate articles. The fictional mammal was finally, truly extinct.
At the ripe old age of 14 years, 9 months, this is the longest-lived documented hoax on Wikipedia, topping the previous documented record of 14 years, 5 months, set by The Gates of Saturn, a fictitious television show, which was incidentally also discovered in August 2020. How do we discover other hoax taxa? Could we use Wikidata to discover taxa are not linked to databases like ITIS, Fossilworks, and others?
Apororhynchus hemignathi, a spiny-headed worm with the distinction of being one of the first named animal taxa when organized alphabetically
This month's spotlight is with Mattximus, author of two Featured Articles and 29 Featured Lists at current count.
How did you become involved with editing biodiversity articles?
I think I have a compulsion to make lists, it doesn't show up in my real life, but online I secretly get a lot of satisfaction making orderly lists and tables. It's a bit of a secret of mine, because it doesn't manifest in any other part of my life. My background is in biology, so this was a natural (haha) fit.
You have an impressive number of FAs under your belt. Two of your more recent ones, Apororhynchus and Gigantorhynchus, are part of what you referred to as an "experiment". How did you choose these articles, and what's next for you in this experiment?
This experiment was just to see if I could get any random article to FA status, so I picked the very first alphabetical animal species according to the taxonomy and made that attempt. Technically, there isn't enough information for a species page so I just merged the species into a genus and went from there. It was a fun exercise, but doing it alone is not the most fun so it's probably on pause for the foreseeable future.
Note: Aporhynchus is the first alphabetical taxon as follows: Animalia, Acanthocephala, Archiacanthocephala, Apororhynchida, Apororhynchidae, Apororhynchus
What advice would you give to someone who wants to nominate their first FAC?
I would recommend getting a good article nominated, then a featured list up before tackling the FA. Lists are a bit more forgiving but give you a taste of what standards to expect from FA. The most time consuming thing is proper citations so make sure that is in order before starting either.
Is there anything that would surprise us to learn about your life off-Wikipedia?
My personality in real life does not match my wikipedia persona. I'm not a very organized, or orderly in real life, but the wikipedia pages I brought to FL or FA are all very organized. Maybe it's my outlet for a more free-flowing life as a scientist/teacher.
Anything else you'd like us to know?
The fact that wikipedia exists free of profit motive and free for everyone really is something special and I encourage everyone to donate a few dollars to the cause.
... that the flower buds of the woolly thistle(pictured) can be eaten in a similar way to artichokes? (8 August)
... that the French peanut is native to Brazil? (10 August)
... that the 800-year-old Minchenden Oak is one of the oldest trees in London? (14 August)
... that the forward-facing incisors of the extinct dolphin Ankylorhiza(restoration pictured) may have been used for ramming their prey, similar to a hunting method used by modern orcas? (16 August)
... that scientists accidentally created a hybrid of two endangered fish species, called the sturddlefish? (17 August)
... that despite having the widest distribution in the United States, the arid-land subterranean termite causes less structural damage than other members of its genus? (19 August)
... that in 2021, the dwarf periodical cicada(pictured) is due to emerge in parts of eastern North America, not having been seen for 17 years? (24 August)
The number of possible 300 amino acid proteins is approximately 10^390, and not 10^325 like it says in the image (which is the approximate number of all 250 amino acid proteins). Also, for clarity, it might be better to write ≈ instead of = for the powers of 10, as they are only approximate.
@Leergier: Thank you for both spotting this error and letting me know! And I agree, approx equals signs would be more appropriate. I've updated the image and acso uploaded the svg version so that it's more editable/adaptable in future. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk02:40, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
@Pigsonthewing: I'm happy to merge in, but the current {{Cite Q}} doesn't quite have the needed functionality yet. Ideally, for articles adapted from a Wikipedia page (so has additional contributors), the |display-authors= should draw from the {{GetEtAl}} template. Also, the |editor=unset seems to have stopped functioning. Example:
New, simpler RfC to define trust levels for WikiLoop DoubleCheck
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Hi Evolution and evolvability, I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year,
Thanks for all you do--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:56, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
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