Talk:Plants of the Sierra de Manantlán Biosphere Reserve

Copy editing and style fixes

@Primacag: It is obvious that you had put a lot of work into the article and I wanted to let you know the reasons for all the changes I made. I made corrections based on Wikipedia's Manual of Style which mostly amount to putting species common names in lower case, italicizing scientific names, putting bullets before the species names and taking out duplicate links. If you think I did anything wrong, feel free to fix it or let me know and I can fix it. If you have any questions or would like any help on this article or others, please let me know. Thanks and keep up the good work.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  17:19, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike:....thanks for all the style edits...I am working for the Reserve at the moment and there will be many more names and pages for other types of organism. I will use your style settings for future work. No problem with the changes so far. What duplicate links were there? Is there a standard for acceptable species names? I have seen several authoritative source names, so it looks like its an open question. Avram Primack (talk) 19:13, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

@Primacag: Thanks for your work. Duplicate links are things like Melastomataceae and Melastomaceae which go to the same place. If a reader sees two things linked, they are likely to expect that they go to two different places, so generally I only link the first one when there are synonyms. Also, for example, cloud forest doesn't need to be linked each time it is used (guidelines at MOS:LINK).  SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:40, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

@Primacag: I went through the article again formatting for Wikipedia style etc. I hope I got everything right, but I may have missed some proper names which should have been capitalized. There were also places where I couldn't deduce what was intended but made my best guess. I also wonder if the list should be renamed to Plants of Sierra de Manantlán Biosphere Reserve to match the article Sierra de Manantlán Biosphere Reserve. That name seems more common in English sources. Thanks again for your work.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  04:45, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@SchreiberBike: The purpose of the double references is to make sure that users who use one name and not the other do not miss the link. Taxonomy is a tricky subject, especially since there appear to be several authorities operating in Wikipedia. The name could be changed, but since it is a reserve in Mexico I prefer to retain the name as it is used here. You could create a forward for your name to this name. If you rename the page as you suggest you will also have to rename the birds and reptile pages that have the same name, and make sure the existing links on these pages that refer to one another also work. You are probably having problems with the local names for the plants. They should remain in the form that they have if at all possible. Avram Primack (talk) 19:15, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

@Primacag: I'm happy to go back in every once in a while and clean things up, and if you'd like I could do that at Reptiles of the ... and Birds of the ... too. I don't want it to seem like I'm pestering you, but there are some standard things about formatting on Wikipedia that would make the articles better.

• Species common names in English or any other language are in lower case except where there's a proper noun. (See MOS:LIFE)
• Foreign words, Spanish words in this case, should be in italics, and it is best if they are in the form ''{{lang|es|arbusto}}''. (See MOS:FOREIGN)
• Abbreviations like "ssp." or "var." should not be in italics when part of a scientific name, so it should be in the format ''[[Toxicodendron radicans]]'' var. ''divaricatum''.
• Colons (:) are used in a lot of ways in English, but there isn't a need for them at the end of a species name if nothing is going to come after it. So it may make sense to say "Annona squamosa: tree – sugar apple", but at "Caesalpinia mexicana:" there's no reason for a colon.

I know little about biology and effectively nothing about the biology of Mexico, but I spend a lot of time with the English language and Wikipedia, so I know a fair bit about that. I think it is great if we can work together to make articles better. Keep up the good work.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  21:20, 10 March 2017 (UTC)