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Please add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions, so be sure to sign each answer. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them.
What motivated you to join WikiProject Turtles? Do you have any experience studying or caring for turtles? Have you contributed to any of the project's Featured Articles, Lists, or Media?
As a professional turtle taxonomist I felt I could not only contribute to these pages but also lend a hand a ensuring good and accurate information and assist it sourcing the literature for other editors. Faendalimas talk 16:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Started in 2011, WikiProject Turtles is a fairly young project. How difficult was it to build the project's pages, resources, and membership to its current state? What are the greatest challenges facing new projects?
The major difficulty has been getting numbers, turtles are a speciaised area. Second is getting consistent and good information being used. With a small number of editors and a fairly large number of pages to deal with the workload is high and diverse. This coupled with otherwise busy lives makes keeping pace and maintaining the pages difficult. Faendalimas talk 16:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Are turtles from some geographic areas better covered by Wikipedia than others? What can be done to fill holes in coverage?
Definitely, the USA and Australia are relatively well covered but Asia and South America are poorly done, Africa and Europe are not well covered either and the fossil record is very patchy. Faendalimas talk 16:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
How difficult is it to acquire images for articles about turtles? Which are more valuable for turtle articles: illustrations or photographs?
Getting good images that are free of issues for publication on wiki can be difficult. We are looking at some 270 species across the majority of the world (tropics down to temperate) some editors just don't have access to original photo's of some of these species. I think photo's are very important but some images also, there are details for identification that are easier to highlight in a drawing than in a photo. Faendalimas talk 16:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Who maintains the project's range maps? Where is this information typically derived from? Does it require a lot of skill in mapping or image manipulation?
For species I work on I use my own maps from my own research hence I have access to detailed cartographic software that as its based on my research from my published work I can authorise their use, however for other species this is not so easy and for many species such maps may not even exist. This is a very difficult area across the whole project. Faendalimas talk 16:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Is there much overlap in the membership and goals of WikiProject Turtles and its parent WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles? Does WikiProject Turtles collaborate with any other projects?
Yes there is, obviously all turtles are reptiles and most workers in this area are herpetologists, meaning they work on reptiles, just choose to specialise in turtles. Also much of the basic biology is true of other reptiles as it is for turtles. Many of the members of this project, myself included, are also members of the Reptile project. Faendalimas talk 16:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
What are the project's most urgent needs? How can a new contributor help today?
Members, but including members from areas where we lack coverage, ie Africa, South America, Asia. This would be the biggest improvement in our potential we could make right now. Faendalimas talk 16:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Anything else you'd like to add?
I think this is an important project for numerous reasons, turtles are often the "forgotten" reptile and many people interested in reptiles are interested in snakes and crocodiles as an example. By making this a unique project we can ensure the adequate coverage of these very unusual animals. Faendalimas talk 16:09, 18 October 2012 (UTC)