User talk:Evolution and evolvability/Archive 2020
![]() | Do not edit this page. This is the archive of User talk:Evolution and evolvability for the year 2020. (Please direct any additional comments to the current talk page.) See the annual archives for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020. |
al-Iṣfahānī, the Author of the Kitāb al-Aghānī
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?
- For example: Akhbār Aṣbahān, Al-Fihrist, and Tārīkh Madīnat al-Salām.
— Regards, AhmadF.Cheema (talk) 09:15, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
- @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)talk 23:12, 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.
Either way, I'll recode {{WPMOLBIO}}
now to reflect the rest of your 4th list entry in Wikipedia:Bot requests#Consolidating multiple WikiProject templates into taskforces of template:WikiProject Molecular Biology. I.e., add the |signaling=
and |metabolism=
parameters to permit adding articles in the following categories:
- Category:WikiProject Cell signaling articles with
|signaling=yes
- Category:Metabolism with
|metabolism=yes
Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 02:38, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
One more thing: I went ahead and requested permanent template-protection at WP:RFPP#Template:WikiProject Molecular Biology since a template merger seems likely. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 02:40, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
- @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)talk 02:57, 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)
Excerpt:
Thanks for the tips Thomas but...
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)
- @AmandaSLawrence: No problem I got the link wrong! The correct link for firefox is this (I've corrected it on your talkpage so that you have it there too). The updated authority control should look the same, but is drawing the info from your wikidata item, so when others get added, it'll automatically find them (see the bottom of my userpage as an example). T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 10:28, 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)talk 09:56, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
January 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
- January 2020—Issue 010
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
Megarachne by Ichthyovenator |
Wolf by LittleJerry |
News at a Glance |
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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:
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)
Plants, fungi, and other organisms (510 designated out of projected 1,200)
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:
· Abiogenesis · Death · Cell · Human evolution · Organism · Zoology · Cattle · Dog · Reptile · Flower · Nut · Seed · Algae · Eukaryote · Biodiversity · Extinction · Photosynthesis
· Sexual dimorphism · Feather · Fur · Hair · Gill · Plant anatomy · Plant morphology · Berry · Leaf · Root · Stoma · Shrub · Plant stem · Bark · Trunk · Epidermis · Ground tissue · Meristem · Vascular tissue · Vascular cambium · Hypha · Mycelium |
January DYKs |
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PROD declined
I declined your proposed deletion of Draft:The 5-step rules for proteome or genome analysis, as only articles are eligible for proposed deletion. For drafts, WP:MFD is the right forum. Hog Farm (talk) 21:18, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
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
As creator of much of Help:Introduction, you are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#Proposal_to_streamline_the_welcome_template. Sdkb (talk) 23:50, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
Recent edits
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)
- @Mike Christie: Ah, Thanks. Will fix tomorrow. Should be possible to use the DOI from wikidata for the link, but I hadn't put the invoke:wikidataIB call in the template! Thank you for spotting it. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 12:15, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
- @Mike Christie: I think it should all be fixed now and understand the wikidata item enough to pull all the needed info from it! Let me know if you ever spot any new problem with it. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 05:43, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
- Will do. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:11, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
Æthelfæd
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)
- @Dudley Miles: Ah, interesting. so it's spotting that the
{{Cite_Q}}
template has defined an ancor, but that it has not been reffed in the text. I'll look into what'd be the best way to fix that. Thanks! T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 23:41, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
Sorry for bothering you, but...
- New Page Patrol needs experienced volunteers
- 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.
- If you would like to join the project and help out, please see the granting conditions and review our instructions page. You can apply for the user-right HERE. — Insertcleverphrasehere (or here)(click me!) 20:58, 1 March 2020 (UTC)
note re your idea
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)
February 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
- February 2020—Issue 011
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
Segnosaurus by FunkMonk |
Danuvius guggenmosi by Dunkleosteus77 |
News at a Glance |
|
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: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
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 |
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The WikiLoop Battlefield weekly barnstar
The WikiLoop Battlefield Barnstar | ||
Congratulations, Evolution and evolvability
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The WikiLoop Battlefield monthly barnstar
The WikiLoop Battlefield Barnstar | ||
Congratulations, Evolution and evolvability
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DYK nomination of Nucleoid
Hello! Your submission of Nucleoid at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! BlueMoonset (talk) 01:22, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
Message
Check your email.--Moxy 🍁 01:48, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
A shirt nomination for you
I thought that you deserved something a bit extra for all of the amazing work you've done for the project.
I've nominated you for a gift from the Wikimedia Foundation! |
Template editor granted
Your account has been granted the "templateeditor" user permission, allowing you to edit templates and modules that have been protected with template protection. It also allows you to bypass the title blacklist, giving you the ability to create and edit editnotices. Before you use this user right, please read Wikipedia:Template editor and make sure you understand its contents. In particular, you should read the section on wise template editing and the criteria for revocation.
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.
- Useful links
- All template-protected pages
- User:AnomieBOT/TPERTable – outstanding template-protected edit requests (bot-generated)
- Request fully-protected templates or modules be downgraded to template protection
Happy template editing! Primefac (talk) 21:40, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
- ☺👍--Moxy 🍁 22:48, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
- ☺👍 - Sdkb (talk) 00:47, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
Requested
Edit request that use temps like Template:Edit fully-protected can be seen at User:AnomieBOT/TPERTable (as transcluded bellow)...that is transcluded at the WP:Dashboard for easy viewing..... definitely one on the list below that can use your attention 😎
23 template-protected edit requests | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Updated as needed. Last updated: 17:44, 4 September 2024 (UTC) |
- {{helpme}} is used on wiki for general help.. ....many use this to make template edit request.....from Category:Wikipedians looking for help.....as seen below.
- {{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}}
Wikipedians looking for help (0 requests) | ||
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Wikipedians looking for help from administrators (1 requests) |
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1 page(s) currently transcluding the {{Admin help}} template. |
....good luck....any questions just ask or consult Wikipedia:Template editor#When to seek discussion for template changes.--Moxy 🍁 01:46, 9 March 2020 (UTC)
The WikiLoop Battlefield weekly barnstar
The WikiLoop Battlefield Barnstar | ||
Congratulations, Evolution and evolvability
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Nomination of Hina Baig for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Hina Baig is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/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)
The WikiLoop Battlefield weekly barnstar
The WikiLoop Battlefield Barnstar | ||
Congratulations, Evolution and evolvability
|
WikiJournal of Science/Virtual colony count in Russian Wikiversity
Hello! I moved the article to this page: ru:v:User:Evolution and evolvability/WikiJournal of Science/Virtual colony count. I am afraid that automatically translated text are not suitable for the Russian Wikiversity. And I have not enough knowledge in this topic to improve this translation. --Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 08:25, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
- @AKA MBG: Ah, thank you. It was translated by the author (Bryan Ericksen) who I thought spoke Russian. Are there grammatical problems? T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 08:46, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
- Does the phrase "96-well" means 96 holes in something?
- This phrase is strange for me:
Тестирование чувствительности к антимикробным препаратам (AST) можно проводить на 96-луночных планшетах...
I could translate it as:
Antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) can be done on 96-well notebooks (or tablets)... --Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 09:02, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
- @AKA MBG: Yes, it's one of these, but that apparently translates to 96-ячеек Микротитрационный планшет from checking the ru wikipedia page I'll check again with the original author. Thank you again for checking than language. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 22:31, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
- Thank you for information. I did not know about this plate. This is very interesting. --Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 07:57, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
- @AKA MBG: Yes, it's one of these, but that apparently translates to 96-ячеек Микротитрационный планшет from checking the ru wikipedia page I'll check again with the original author. Thank you again for checking than language. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 22:31, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
Copyright problem on Hepatitis D
Content you added to the above article appears to have been copied from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4484953/, which is not released under a compatible license. Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, the content had to be removed. Please leave a message on my talk page if you have any questions. — Diannaa (talk) 12:39, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
- @Diannaa: Arg, thank you for letting me know! I'll contact Mario. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 08:47, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
Precious anniversary
Four years! |
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March 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
- March 2020—Issue 012
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
Argentinosaurus by Slate Weasel and Jens Lallensack |
Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations by Britishfinance |
News at a glance |
|
A new WikiProject responding to the pandemic | ||
The newest Tree of Life WikiProject is about a taxon that is dominating the headlines, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, and its many effects. We interviewed Another Believer, the founder of WikiProject COVID-19. This interview has been edited for length. Find the full interview here.
Number of participants of WikiProject Covid-19
Thank you to Another Believer for your time, both in this interview and in this project. Interested readers can join WikiProject COVID-19. And please stay safe and healthy out there. --Awkwafaba |
March DYKs |
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Styling tech question
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}} talk 18:43, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
- I just tried figuring this out again; it's still a mystery to me haha. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:47, 3 May 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)talk 11:43, 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}} talk 17:25, 6 May 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
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?
Thanks,
Rob Hurt (talk) 23:43, 7 April 2020 (UTC)
- @Rob Hurt: I've seen something a like that before. The people at Commons:Graphic_Lab/Illustration_workshop were able to fix it for me when it happened. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 12:19, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
- Just submitted a request--thanks Thomas. Rob Hurt (talk) 18:16, 9 April 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #1 – Discussion tools
Read this in another language • Subscription list
The Editing team has been working on the talk pages project. The goal of the talk pages project is to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. This project is the result of the Talk pages consultation 2019.
The team is building a new tool for replying to comments now. This early version can sign and indent comments automatically. Please test the new Reply tool.
- On 31 March 2020, the new reply tool was offered as a Beta Feature editors at four Wikipedias: Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian. If your community also wants early access to the new tool, contact User:Whatamidoing (WMF).
- 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.
To hear more about Editing Team updates, please add your name to the "Get involved" section of the project page. You can also watch these pages: the main project page, Updates, Replying, and User testing.
– PPelberg (WMF) (talk) & Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:45, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
April 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
- April 2020—Issue 013
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
Danuvius guggenmosi by Dunkleosteus77, reviewed by J Milburn |
Lythronax by FunkMonk, Lythronaxargestes and IJReid |
News at a glance |
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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, Average Below average , Considerably below average, Poor
*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. |
April DYKs |
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:40, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
Welcome template
Tryptophan 7-halogenase
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)
- @Scheng23: no problem I know how messages can get missed! Thanks for the info. I've noted it in the figure legend. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 04:48, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
May 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
- May 2020—Issue 014
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
Gigantorhynchus by Mattximus |
News at a glance |
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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. |
May DYKs |
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Enwebb (talk) 19:40, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
WJS submission
Hi Thomas,
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.
All the best, JBL (talk) 17:29, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
- 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)talk 03:49, 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)
Editing news 2020 #2 – Quick updates
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This edition of the Editing newsletter includes information the Wikipedia:Talk pages project, an effort to help contributors communicate on wiki more easily. The central project page is on MediaWiki.org.
- Reply tool: This is available as a Beta Feature at the four partner wikis (Arabic, Dutch, French, and Hungarian Wikipedias). The Beta Feature will get new features soon. The new features include writing comments in a new visual editing mode and pinging other users by typing
@
. You can test the new features on the Beta Cluster. Some other wikis will have a chance to try the Beta Feature in the coming months. - New requirements for user signatures: Soon, users will not be able to save invalid custom signatures in Special:Preferences. This will reduce signature spoofing, prevent page corruption, and make new talk page tools more reliable. Most editors will not be affected.
- New discussion tool: The Editing team is beginning work on a simpler process for starting new discussions. You can see the initial design on the project page.
- 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.
WikiLoop Battlefield new name vote
Dear Evolution and evolvability,
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.
xinbenlv Talk, Remember to "ping" me 05:13, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
Rolling out cite templates at Wikiversity
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):
- ArXiv (identifier)
- ASIN (identifier)
- Bibcode (identifier)
- BioRxiv (identifier)
- CiteSeerX (identifier)
- doi (identifier)
- eISSN (identifier)
- hdl (identifier)
- ISBN (identifier)
- ISMN (identifier)
- ISSN (identifier)
- JFM (identifier)
- JSTOR (identifier)
- LCCN (identifier)
- MR (identifier)
- OCLC (identifier)
- OL (identifier)
- OSTI (identifier)
- PMC (identifier)
- PMID (identifier)
- RFC (identifier)
- S2CID (identifier)
- SBN (identifier)
- SSRN (identifier)
- Zbl (identifier)
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
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.
- On 17 November 2019, the first edit from outer space was made in the mobile visual editor.
- 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.
Melissa Reeves
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
Thanks for your vote on my application in June. I was wondering when can I expect to know the outcome. Natematic (talk) 17:02, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
- @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)talk 10:39, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
June/July 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
- June and July 2020—Issue 015
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
Canada lynx by Sainsf |
News at a glance |
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Categorizing life with DexDor |
DexDor is a WikiGnome with a particular interest in article categorization, including how organisms are categorized.
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June DYKs |
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July DYKs |
Life reconstruction of Pterodactylus antiquus
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You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
Delivered on behalf of Enwebb (talk) 16:33, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
Join the RfC to define trust levels for WikiLoop DoubleCheck
Hi Evolution and evolvability/Archive 2020,
you are receiving this message because you are an active user of WikiLoop DoubleCheck. We are currently holding a Request for Comments to define trust levels for users of this tool. If you can spare a few minutes, please consider leaving your feedback on the RfC page.
Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts. Your opinion matters greatly!
María Cruz
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:59, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
If you would like to modify your subscription to these messages you can do so here.
Nomination for deletion of Template:Intcurrent
Template:Intcurrent has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. * Pppery * it has begun... 17:57, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
Editing news 2020 #4
Read this in another language • Subscription list for this newsletter
Reply tool
The Reply tool has been available as a Beta Feature at the Arabic, Dutch, French and Hungarian Wikipedias since 31 March 2020. The first analysis showed positive results.
- 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
- The new requirements for custom user signatures began on 6 July 2020. If you try to create a custom signature that does not meet the requirements, you will get an error message.
- Existing custom signatures that do not meet the new requirements will be unaffected temporarily. Eventually, all custom signatures will need to meet the new requirements. You can check your signature and see lists of active editors whose custom signatures need to be corrected. Volunteers have been contacting editors who need to change their custom signatures. If you need to change your custom signature, then please read the help page.
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.
August 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
- September 2021—Issue 016
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
Horseshoe bat by Enwebb |
Black-and-red broadbill by AryKun |
Hoax taxon sniffed out after nearly fifteen years |
Cross posted from the Signpost 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?
|
Spotlight with Mattximus |
This month's spotlight is with Mattximus, author of two Featured Articles and 29 Featured Lists at current count.
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.
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
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.
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.
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. |
August DYKs |
|
You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
Delivered on behalf of Enwebb (talk) 17:10, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
August 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
- September 2021—Issue 016
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
Horseshoe bat by Enwebb |
Black-and-red broadbill by AryKun |
Hoax taxon sniffed out after nearly fifteen years |
Cross posted from the Signpost 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?
|
Spotlight with Mattximus |
This month's spotlight is with Mattximus, author of two Featured Articles and 29 Featured Lists at current count.
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.
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
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.
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.
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. |
August DYKs |
|
You are receiving this because you added your name to the subscribers list of the WikiProject Tree of Life. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.
Delivered on behalf of Enwebb (talk) 22:52, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
Error in image
Hi,
I just wanted to notify you about an error I happened to find in the following image:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Protein_Sequence_space.png
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.
Kind regards,
Leergier (talk) 18:45, 25 September 2020 (UTC)
- @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)talk 02:40, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
Template:Cite Q EtAl
{{Cite Q}} now handles "et al" by default, and the number displayed can be configured through the use of |display-auathors=
; please will you orphan {{Cite Q EtAl}} so that it can be redirected or deleted? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:49, 8 November 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:- Ignacio L. B. Munguira (17 August 2019). "Lysenin" (PDF). WikiJournal of Science. 2 (1): 6. doi:10.15347/WJS/2019.006. ISSN 2470-6345. Wikidata Q76846397.
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
- Ignacio L. B. Munguira (17 August 2019). "Lysenin" (PDF). WikiJournal of Science. 2 (1): 6. doi:10.15347/WJS/2019.006. ISSN 2470-6345. Wikidata Q76846397.
- Should display as:
Ignacio L. B. Munguira; et al. (17 August 2019). "Lysenin" (PDF). WikiJournal of Science. 2 (1): 6. doi:10.15347/WJS/2019.006. ISSN 2470-6345. Wikidata Q76846397.{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
Per the updated template documentation; {{Cite Q|Q76846397|editor=}}
, should work:
- Ignacio L. B. Munguira (17 August 2019). Thomas Shafee; Ian Alexander (eds.). "Lysenin" (PDF). WikiJournal of Science. 2 (1): 6. doi:10.15347/WJS/2019.006. ISSN 2470-6345. Wikidata Q76846397.
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
but does not; @RexxS: in case I've missed something.
I'm not clear what you think should be "drawn from the {{GetEtAl}}
template". I note that Q76846397 had one value for author (P50) and none for author name string (P2093); I've now added a second P50 value, et al. (Q311624), but as you can see, {{Citation}} does not like that. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:36, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
- @Pigsonthewing: Good idea with just adding et al. (Q311624) as an author to the item! Obvious in retrospect. The getetal template was just a bodge to basically estimate that, so I'll update the wikidata items so that it's not needed. I'll get on it today. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 23:04, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Question on Meta
Dear Thomas,
On Meta i just have entered a query for you, thanks, Hansmuller (talk) 11:10, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
New, simpler RfC to define trust levels for WikiLoop DoubleCheck
HI Evolution and evolvability/Archive 2020,
I'm writing to let you know we have simplified the RfC on trust levels for the tool WikiLoop DoubleCheck. Please join and share your thoughts about this feature! We made this change after hearing users' comments on the first RfC being too complicated. I hope that you can participate this time around, giving your feedback on this new feature for WikiLoop DoubleCheck users.
Thanks and see you around online,
María Cruz
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:05, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
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ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message
Help regarding Nucleoside-modified messenger RNA article
Hi, Evolution and evolvability can you help in providing an image for Nucleoside-modified messenger RNA (modRNA) so that it can be used for both for article and DYK. Thank you — Amkgp 💬 10:07, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
- @Amkgp: replied at WT:Molbio. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)talk 22:30, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas Evolution and evolvability!!
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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) |