User talk:Peter coxhead/Archive 3

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Hi, Peter. Thanks for answering my question on montane forests and contributing to the article.

It looks to me like "montane" has (at least) two meanings. One is "anything in the mountains", and the other is the

I agree entirely that the term "montane" as used in "montane forest" doesn't have a very precise meaning. The only clear boundary which seems to be agreed on in the sources I found is the tree line at the upper end. The other boundary, between "lowland" and "montane" is very unclear. All of what is called "montane" in Scotland and Scandinavia is very low altitude compared to many tropical regions. The problem is to find sources which compare different schemes; there are plenty which describe one particular scheme for a restricted geographical area or habitat type.

Actually, in the first draft of my small addition I gave the sequence as "lowland, montane, alpine" and then went on to say that finer subdivisions could be used such as "submontane" or "subalpine". However, I found I couldn't source this simpler sequence, so I changed it to a sequence I could source. I would be inclined to do exactly what you say, i.e. treat "montane forest" as all forest except "lowland forest", and then explain, with references, that some sources use finer divisions.

It's far from any of my areas of expertise but it seemed a topic worth expanding. I'm not sure I can add any more. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:13, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I thought I was watching your talk page, but I wasn't.

As you've probably noticed, someone has merged "montane forest" with "montane zone".

I've found some references for "lowland, montane, alpine", and that's something that really has to apply everywhere–the borders are where altitude starts to make a strong difference, and where the forest stops. Or am I wrong? I'll have some time this week, so I think I can put "montane forest" back. Since I know less about this than you, I'll be grateful if you can keep an eye on it. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 04:59, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually I hadn't noticed the merge (I've been working on Cactus quite heavily). It was rather naughty of User:Hike395 to carry out this merge without any attempt to discuss it first, and I support reverting it prior to discussion. (See my comment to him at User_talk:Hike395#Merge_of_Montane_forest.) As we've noted before "montane" is used rather vaguely, but "montane zone" and "montane forest" don't seem to use the same definitions. Further Hike395 has made what look like global edit changes replacing "montane forest" by "montane zone", so sentences like "A cloud forest is a particular example of a montane zone" don't make sense and are not supported by the reference given. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:06, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I am not being naughty --- I am following

WP:BRD. Please feel free to revert my changes. I won't be offended. —hike395 (talk

) 10:24, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

I just went ahead and self-revert. let's discuss at Talk:Montane forest. —hike395 (talk) 10:30, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

See [1]. I did better on the trichomes (hairs) than I thought. 512bits (talk) 02:19, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter. I just want to apologize for letting my irritation with the other editor there spill over in my discussion with you. I still feel the same on the meaning of nomenclature, but I regret my tone and impolite words in speaking to you. You are one of my favorite editors on Wikipedia and believe it or not I really do respect your opinion; so sorry! --Tom Hulse (talk) 03:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't think that you were noticeably impolite. I think that discussions on talk pages don't work well for complex issues – for a single point, like the meaning of "trivial name", they are fine, but for more complex matters it's hard to remember the full discussion when you add a bit every day or so, and it's too easy to end up simply repeating the same position, which is what I think you and I were doing. (There are massive examples of this in Wikipedia; look at any of the 'discussions' about capitalization of the English names of species.) The article certainly needs more work; there's unfinished business; but I prefer to put it on one side for the present and try to get Cactus finished. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:00, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi!

I know you are busy with the cactus, but I hope you can help me out. On the Norwegian Wikipedia, we have since the beginning used a taxobox without ranks. This has been due to early influence from a single editor, which has since gone unchallenged until a year ago or so. Now, we finally have the consensus to change over to a ranked system, the only problem is that there seem to be no-one capable (or willing) of doing the coding of something as complex as a taxo-box. The bio-editors over at Norwegian WP are just just a handful of people, all of which seem to be as techically inclined as yours truly.

So, I had the bright idea to import and translate the old (non-auto) taxobox from English. I don't know anything about coding, but since the ranks are in latin, I suppose it should be possible to understand what bits need translation. The only problem is, I don't know how to find the code. Do you have access to it? If so, would it be possible for you to post the code on this test page? Petter Bøckman (talk) 20:17, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Um.. It's a good idea, but a lot of work. If you go to

Taxobox color}}, {{Taxobox name}}, etc. And some of these use other templates. So you would need to (a) find all the templates – I don't know if there is a list and (b) copy them all to the Norwegian WP. If you always copied them as "Mal:" plus the same name as the English WP then you shouldn't need to change the content to get them to work as in the English WP. However, after that you would have to do some template coding to fix them for Norwegian. It's a pretty major task, I'm afraid. I'll draw this exchange to the attention of User:Bob_the_Wikipedian and User:Smith609 who are more expert in editing the taxobox templates; there might be tools which could help. Peter coxhead (talk

) 20:37, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll do what I can! I'm not up on the Norse tongue, so I'll need assistance with the actual translation. Also, I imagine the Norse folks use different color schemes et cetera, so there'll be some calls for (perhaps major) tweaking once we get it all imported. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:48, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Actually, we prefer a simplified scheme with one colour for all. Here's what we ideally would like the taxobox to look like: no:Bruker:Petter_Bøckman/Sandkasse#Taxobox_test

Any actual translation of is something I could do, if someone could point me to what parts to translate. Ideally, I would like for it to be similar enough to be able to copy most, if not all, of an English taxobox into the Norwegian Wiki and gat a passable result. Not that the English WP have switched to the automated system, this is no longer relevant, but I guess I only have to translate the files that dictate the output, so that "ordo" comes out as Orden rather than Order and so forth. Petter Bøckman (talk) 21:44, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Any actual translation of is something I could do, if someone could point me to what parts to translate. Ideally, I would like for it to be similar enough to be able to copy most, if not all, of an English taxobox into the Norwegian Wiki and gat a passable result. Not that the English WP have switched to the automated system, this is no longer relevant, but I guess I only have to translate the files that dictate the output, so that "ordo" comes out as Orden rather than Order and so forth. Petter Bøckman (talk) 21:44, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

The code is all transferred over now, and the no:Bruker:Petter Bøckman/Taxobox is fully functional (except that the output is in English!). If you'll go ahead and start translating no:Bruker:Petter Bøckman/anglicise rank, that'd be a great start. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:50, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! Petter Bøckman (talk) 21:14, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

I have translated all the text, with exception of the one with "microformat", which I'm afraid I don't know what is (and thus how to translate appropriately). Petter Bøckman (talk) 18:51, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter, thanks for finding my spelling error, that's been in Endnote for ages! What a crazy business those orchid pages are, but at least that short one is hugely improved. Best wishes, Nadiatalent (talk) 18:20, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'm pleased to have had my attention drawn to Ophrys and its species, because the articles I've seen so far are terrible, which means yet more on my ever-growing "to-do" list... :-) Peter coxhead (talk) 18:31, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Can't find a sympathy keyboard emoticon, so here's a puppy-dog instead <(-'.'-)> Nadiatalent (talk) 19:10, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Oh, here's an appropriate one, said to mean crying :`-( Nadiatalent (talk) 19:17, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Yikes, Ophrys seems to have grabbed you like the Devils' Snare in Harry Potter! (Hint: don't look that up, or you might be captured by Datura stramonium too.) Nadiatalent (talk) 12:34, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Harry Potter I know almost nothing about (I don't have anyone of the right age in my family at present); on the other hand, bee orchids are my all-time favourite plants. I had deliberately avoided them in Wikipedia, because I have strong views about the idiotic over-division into species, particularly by Delforge. This isn't likely to make me good at producing articles which obey

WP:NPOV

.

Actually, here is a serious question for you. How can Wikipedia remain neutral when the approach to defining species varies so extremely, as it does in Ophrys? The World Checklist of Selected Plant Families uses broad circumscriptions as per Pedersen & Faurholdt's book – but that's not surprising since both come from Kew – and gets 34 species. On the other hand Delforge (2001, the second French edition of his work) has 252 species (I haven't cited this in the article because I haven't read the book, only reviews of it). There's no real way of matching these two systems up; it's not just a question of nomenclature but of a totally different approach to defining what a species is. So it seems to me that as editors we have to choose one system as the basis for constructing articles, while acknowledging the others. Or is there any other way of doing it?

Anyway, I need to finish off Cactus, whose taxonomy is bad enough... Peter coxhead (talk) 12:55, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Harry Potter has some interesting aspects, particularly in the later books, because she is delivering the message that knowledge is valuable, particularly knowledge from old books. All the book-devourers around here read them, regardless of age.

It's a very serious problem. I was planning to finish today going through all the old discussion about a synonyms policy (I've been hung up on the other taxobox parameters, like "type species"). If we can get all the synonyms for each lumped species listed in the taxobox, and other invalid names and the like described in a text section, that would be a huge advance. It looks as if the World Checklist has at least a lot of synonymy that could be cited, does it have enough of what you need? Of course, it will always be a problem to defend the pages from people who see mention of a species and add it without understanding synonymy. From what I've seen, the problem might lessen with time: as a species page grows it can acquire discussion of alternative taxonomies that might satisfy fans of the split taxonomies. A bit of that sort of thing is present at Cedrus libani (though that page is not very polished). Nadiatalent (talk) 13:37, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Provided that it's accepted that you have to choose one system rather than another, and that this simply can't be done in a neutral way with a genus like Ophrys (and this does bother me but I can't see any way round it), then I agree that full synonym lists (plus redirects as appropriate) are needed. It's a pity that the WCSP doesn't allow a download in an easily machine processable form. You can get a checklist but it's just text, whereas what I'd like would be say a spreadsheet which mapped every synonym to its accepted name. This would make it much easier to prepare synonym lists. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:48, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it bothers me to. Taxonomic revisers must have to make that decision all the time.

Can you get WCSP to download as text? I couldn't see how, but if that could be achieved, it should be possible to import it to Excel (at least in the Mac version that I'm using), telling it that the source is delimited by those equals signs, followed by some deletion to get rid of statements about things other than synonymy. Nadiatalent (talk) 17:59, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Copy and paste was the way to pick up the text. This downloadable spreadsheet was then manipulated with excel. It is still enormous. Nadiatalent (talk) 21:36, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, the trouble with conversations via talk pages is that I never know how much to explain. I do manipulate the text with Excel myself (that's how I made the species list at Ophrys – it's better to start by using the 'create a checklist' option in my experience). I paste copied text into quite a complex Excel spreadsheet with various formulae to extract relevant information. But the problem is that you still have to do a significant amount of manual editing, because some things are very difficult to extract manually. E.g. I want to extract the authority so that it can be enclosed in <small>...</small>. I've found this impossible to do completely automatically; often it's just the text left over after you've taken off the the genus, specific epithet and possibly connecting form + infraspecific epithet, but then there are hybrids and all kinds of special cases... I assume they must have the information in a proper database with lots of separate fields, including one for the authority. It's this format which it would be useful to be able to access.

I must try to document the spreadsheet I'm using because I think others would perhaps find it useful. There are some clever things you can do with Excel macros; e.g. creating a column which contains "true" for all the lines which are in bold, which are the accepted names. However, it's still a "work in progress"; I'd never before tried to extract accepted subspecies as I did for Ophrys. I got it wrong at first because I forgot that the nominate subspecies don't have an author. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:10, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to have goaded you into writing all of that. I'll leave you in peace to work (or to take the break that you deserve!). Nadiatalent (talk) 13:32, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

For being an allround good chap and a voice of reason in a world chaos (and saving my bacon whenever my spelling is sub-pari). Petter Bøckman (talk) 18:06, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much – how did you know that I drink my tea black?! Peter coxhead (talk) 22:10, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

I thought you would always be able to ad milk and a lump or two if you wanted to ;-) Happy Easter btw! Petter Bøckman (talk) 08:19, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Hidden categories don't count; if an article doesn't have at least one visible content category on it, then it shows up on the uncategorized articles list — and it can't just be left there as a "special case". I don't know what other options there are, either, but one has to be found somehow, because the list cannot be left with any permanently uncategorizable pages sitting on it. Bearcat (talk) 16:32, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok, well if some visible category is needed, the lowest taxonomic rank for which there is a category and which includes both genera seems to be Category:Core eudicots, so I've categorized it there. It's a bit odd, but the best I can think of. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:06, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks like the best solution possible under the circumstances, yeah — but come to think of it, I know a set index isn't exactly the same thing as a disambiguation page, but their role within Wikipedia's overall structure is similar enough that I don't really understand why one set of categories should be visible and the other one hidden. (But maybe that's just me.) Thanks again, anyway. Bearcat (talk) 17:10, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

No, I think you've made a valid point. I certainly don't see why they should be treated differently; indeed I didn't know that they were before this. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:43, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Hiya,

I noticed that you changed the assessment of

Apologies for the confusion and thanks for pointing this one out to me. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:39, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Ah, now that makes sense. Some days I'm a little more easily confused than others. :-) Waitak (talk) 15:54, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Botany#Where_to_go_now. Thank you. 512bits (talk) 15:57, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter, you might want to take a look here so that you'll be aware of something that you might encounter on orchid pages. Unfortunately, this is a far bigger jumble than I can foresee being able to clean up in any reasonable amount of time. Nadiatalent (talk) 22:14, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

From my brief forays, the orchid articles seem even more of a mess than those in other areas. Part of the problem is that people see a name in some book or other and create an article for it, not understanding how names change, not understanding that there are different and incompatible systems of classification, and not checking a reliable up-to-date source. It's a mess, and I'm not convinced that it will get better for a very long time, if ever. I was looking at

Wikipedia:Plants#Assessment. If you take articles alone, as of today, 86% are rated as stubs, 12% as Start-Class and 2.5% as C or above, which is probably an accurate but not very impressive indication of quality. (This is better than the statistics for the same date in 2008, the first year for which statistics are available for a full year. Then 10% were assessed as Start-Class and 1.7% C or above. At this rate, in about 150-200 years time all the plant articles should be better than stubs... ;-) ) Peter coxhead (talk

) 10:07, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

They say that lifespans are increasing, so it might be us who are still working on the articles then (like the Monty Python sketch about hair-cutting school).

Yes, it's a terrible mess. I tend to concentrate on sorting out the identities, and hope that someone else will add to the pages once they exist. Of course, it's unmeasurable how many of the stubs are poor-quality stubs, even based on misidentification. Over in Commons, I think the problem is reducing, not so long ago I despaired about photos, but lately most of those I look at are plausibly correctly identified, and there seems to be an increase in the number that aren't just out-of-focus and taken at a distance, as if wikipedia may be helping to raise awareness of plants.

There might be a more cheery message now in the link above, perhaps another worker has arrived; I hope so. Nadiatalent (talk) 00:45, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Convention would be to leave minor things be if you feel they are "not an improvement," rather than detrimental, for clearly someone thought it was. In this case, the occurences of "light" are close together and obvious. In the altered form "night" occurs at th extremities of the sentence and the repetition is not as pronounced. --Belg4mit (talk) 13:12, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I should have read the sentence more carefully; sorry. I've now removed the end of that sentence altogether as it was not needed and this avoids all repetition. I hope you think that this is better. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:26, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

You PRODed Pea bean whilst I was on a lengthy wikibreak in February of last year for some perfectly logical reasons. One effect was that there was no redirect left behind and nowhere to lodge any text about the Pea bean.I have just had the article Userfied and have re-worked it to try and ensure it fits with current understanding. My proposal is to insert the text into Phaseolus vulgaris as a section. Before doing so, I would appreciate your oversight of the proposed text at User:Velella/Pea bean. I wouldn't want to appear to be recreating an article by the back door. Regards  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   19:30, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I think it's certainly desirable to add a section on the pea bean under "Varieties", and the material is well-sourced. I've made a few copy-edits to your draft; do treat these purely as suggestions. Glad to see you back. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:44, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for your support.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   21:07, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm attempting to revive the Plant article COTM, and since you're a member of WikiProject Plants, you're being notified about this hopeful revival. Please feel free to propose articles for collaboration, and thanks for your consideration! Northamerica1000^(talk) 13:45, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

The current WikiProject Plants collaboration article is Carnivorous plant. Last month's collaboration was: (none). To propose future collaborations, please contribute here!

Apologies for the apparent tone of my recent edit summary at

I should probably have explained my motivation more carefully on the talk page. I was NOT in the slightest wishing to re-open the argument about capitalization or not of common names. There's no point in discussing this at present, in my view.

My motivation was different. There have been some problems about images in articles, where editors (including me) have reduced their number or removed them, citing

MOS:IMAGES in edit summaries. However, what we hadn't noticed was that another editor had sharply cut down the text in the main MOS, apparently on the grounds that it repeated too much of what was at the subpage Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Images. (You may have seen the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_128#Image_size

.) What happened to me was that I moved/removed some images to avoid bad sandwiching of text, and an editor complained that MOS:IMAGES which I'd quoted didn't authorize my action – which indeed it then didn't.

I have also tangled recently with an editor (who I won't name here) who goes round de-capitalizing common names in non-bird articles, but only does some of them, which to me is the worst possible end result.

Most editors don't follow discussions and changes at the MOS, so when it and its subpages don't convey the same message, problems result, as the images example shows. So my concern is that any section in the MOS itself should accurately summarize all relevant subpages. This is, of course, what you originally set out to do ("synchronizing"), but I thought, and still think, you did it wrongly; as you know, my view is that "synchronizing" should have meant not attempting to changing the meaning of the whole set of pages, the main MOS and its subpages.

I don't think that

MOS:LIFE does accurately summarize Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Animals, plants, and other organisms, WP:Naming conventions (fauna) and WP:Naming conventions (flora)

. The first of my objections I think we can agree on, the second doubtless not:

1. MOS:LIFE privileges birds in a way I find quite unacceptable; the subpages do not. If birds were the only group where there was a case for capitalization, then I would unhesitatingly support over-riding the birders.
2. MOS:LIFE gives the impression that there is agreement in all other WikiProjects and that their pages only capitalize common names in error; the subpages show that this is not the case. Regardless of whether any articles, bird or not, should continue to capitalize, there are, as I have said many times before, regional and national lists of capitalized common names which there is a rational case for following as well as a rational case for over-riding; as yet there is no consensus on which to do in such cases.

If you don't like my use of precisely the same words, I would suggest reducing the summary at MOS:LIFE. Perhaps something like:

Common (vernacular) names are given in lower case, except where proper names appear (zebras, mountain maple, gray wolf, but Przewalski's horse). (A different

local consensus exists within some WikiProjects: see WP:Naming conventions (fauna) and WP:Naming conventions (flora).) Use a consistent style for common names within an article. Create redirects

from alternative capitalization forms of article titles.

This seems to me more accurate and less likely to cause time-wasting edit wars. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:15, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I've just spotted "

An interesting question. The RHS Database lists it here (you have to scroll down a bit) as Clematis 'Jackmanii'. There's an article in The Plantsman New Series 2(2), p. 106 which discusses the Register and Checklist of Clematis and mentions "the famous historical cultivars such as 'Jackmanii' ...". So I think it's clear that there is a commercially distributed clone which has the cultivar name 'Jackmanii'. However, the RHS Plant Finder also says that 'Jackmanii' is C. lanuginosa × C. viticella. The IPNI gives Clematis × jackmanii T.Moore as the oldest name for this cross. So I suspect that the commercially distributed plant could be called C. × jackmanii 'Jackmanii'. There are other cultivar names in the RHS Database, such as 'Jackmanii Alba', which are presumably different clones/cultivars of the same cross. The definitive answer should be obtainable from the International Registration Authority for Clematis. However, their checklist is not online, it seems: [2]. I would be strongly inclined to treat this as Clematis 'Jackmanii'; even if it were C. × jackmanii 'Jackmanii', it's always permissible according to the ICNCP to omit the species name. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:49, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I've moved the article and given it an infobox. I'm much happier about it now. --Stemonitis (talk) 13:26, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Science lovers wanted!
	Hi! I'm serving as the wikipedian-in-residence at the Sarah (talk ) 01:53, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter, you might want to take a quick look at Talk:Theaceae since being forewarned might save you from spending time cleaning this sort of thing up; it is a bit reminiscent of the material that was added to orchid pages. Nadiatalent (talk) 13:31, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

I've come across quite a few odd additions recently; not the usual idiotic vandalism, but chunks of material which seem to have been sourced from elsewhere. Thanks for the note. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:04, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

		The Original Barnstar
		For your work in creating Melanthieae and dismantling the old circumscription of Zigadenus elegantly and accurately. Choess (talk) 23:48, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, but it was a team effort, even if I finished it off. (I'm waiting for the "disambiguation page purists" to notice Deathcamas; they don't seem to like the kind of explanation I added to the start of it, but where else can common names like "Hog Potato" redirect to?) Peter coxhead (talk) 09:11, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter coxhead, I saw your message. You have made great edits really, so thanks a lot! Well, you have made a good guess of my Indian origin :). Well, as far as I see, the article needs only a few changes now. Actually I could not understand clearly what you told about the lead section. Would you explain a bit?--Sainsf <^> (talk) 09:24, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

1. The lead says "An adult male is 1.63 metres (5.3 ft) tall at the shoulder (females are 20 centimetres (7.9 in) shorter) and weighs an average of 500–600 kilograms (1,100–1,300 lb, 340–445 kilograms (750–980 lb) for females)."
2. The Physical description section says "Females weigh 300–600 kg (660–1,300 lb), measure 200–280 cm (79–110 in) from the snout to the base of the tail and stand 125–153 cm (49–60 in) at the shoulder. Bulls weigh 400–942 kg (880–2,080 lb), are 240–345 cm (94–136 in) from the snout to the base of the tail and stand 150–183 cm (59–72 in) at the shoulder. The tail adds a further 50–90 cm (20–35 in)."

• It looks odd to give ranges in the lead for weight but single figures for heights. If you have a source for heights being averages you could say something like "An adult male is around 1.6 metres .." – not 1.63 which implies an accuracy of 1 cm when later you give a range of 105 cm!
• The ranges in the lead and in the Physical description are different, which is confusing. What is the reason? I would make them the same. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:00, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, when I reverted your edit at

No worries. Not an uncommon thing on Wikipedia : ) - jc37 04:01, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Is Benzingia an

According to the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families here, Ackermania is actually Benzingia. As there were actually two articles, one under each name, I have merged them (rather badly at first because I mis-typed "Bezingia"). But your image was right as far as I can tell. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:47, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Hello, How are you? I need your help. I ask you if you could enlarge Dipterocarpaceae making better known this group of trees in Wikipedia, adding links to "Dipterocarpaceae" and information about "Dipterocarpaceae" existence on topics as trees articles in tropical articles or botanical or biodiversity articles. Do you know people that could be interested about Dipterocarpaceae article? They are welcome too. Thank you very much. Curritocurrito (talk) 11:17, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Peter, I just got a message on my talk page asking if it was necessary to keep cactus protected. I wonder what you think since you've put a lot of work into the article recently. I'm leaning toward removing the protection as a trial to see if our ENGVAR IP friend returns. I already watch the article and know that you're also on it. Any thoughts before I remove the protection? Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 23:49, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that the protection can be removed. There's been no attempt at that kind of editing for quite a time now. (The only problems come from very occasional good faith edits by cactus hobbyists who like to add growing instructions, etc., but these can be dealt with.)

Here's a suggestion. Crustacean has a "page notice": when you open it for editing you get a message about the use of British English (I think Stemonitis put it there). I would like to see a page notice on Cactus saying that it uses American English. (I'd really like to be able to create and remove such page notices myself; I think they can be very useful in dealing with moderately good intentioned edits. E.g. if a page gets a lot of attempts to add inappropriate growing instructions, advise reading WP:NOTHOW; if a page gets a lot of attempts to add inappropriate "folk medicine" information, advise reading WP:MEDRS, etc.) Peter coxhead (talk) 07:36, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Good idea. Protection removed, then, and I added the edit notice with {{American English}}. If there are excessive how-to insertions, we could add a note about that to the edit notice. I'll continue to watch the page. Also, excellent job on the expansion and improvement of the article - it looks great! Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 14:18, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks (for the edit notice and the comments on Cactus). I've nominated it for GA; we'll see what emerges. It's popular enough, I think, to be worth trying to get to FA at some point.

I'm not quite sure how exactly I got seduced away from paleobotanical topics onto cacti! Peter coxhead (talk) 14:29, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I've had to undo the promotion of Cactus - the review was not done properly. There have been complaints about this reviewer's reviews at

WT:GAN. It has been re-added to the queue, so it should be reviewed soon. --Rschen7754

19:57, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

I am from Spain and my mother language is not English language. Many country side areas, and Natural areas and Living beings are in Countries where population cannot collaborate with Wikipedia, but their Natural World and its highly economically valuable species are very important too in the human knowledge and developtment of the mankind. People should have information because these matters are important, not just a curiosity only. This unknow world is from Poles to ecuator, in unoccupied oceanic areas closely to Europe, in Deserts as Sahara, or whatever. But to me the main aim is to gather the abundant information disperse about living communities and living beings that have existed for millions of years because they are disappearing and in 20 years they will are not longer exist. Curritocurrito (talk) 12:02, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your thorough and detailed GA review. It is very useful to have such constructive criticism to put to use in other articles. With regard to over-technical terms, I find them in scientific papers and use them in articles because I don't know precisely what they mean myself. This is lazy I suppose, but I tried and failed to find out what a D-shape larva was when writing the article so I used the term and only found out it was another term for the better known veliger larva when you stimulated me to do so. What you said in your footnote about species/genus features is true. Sometimes the hardest part of writing the article is a good description of the species, the most important part from the point of view of the reader. Thanks again. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:20, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the thanks! Peter coxhead (talk) 08:17, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter, er, the rv you referred to was to the petal article, right? I wouldn't like you to think I reverted it from the sepal article just out of officiousness! As I read your summary, it sounded as though you thought I had zapped it because of the lack of citation. (Just asking, not kicking...) JonRichfield (talk) 12:58, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I was initially confused by your comment but I understand now, I think. My edit summary for the last edit I made to Sepal was "added back some info just removed by reversion, this time with a reference". The "reversion" here was my reversion of the anonymous editor who had added some incorrect information as well as a bit about polysepalous/gamosepalous which was useful but in the wrong place. So I reverted all his/her changes and then added back the useful bit. It was quite independent of your reversions of his/her changes to Petal, which I hadn't noticed. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:23, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Peter. In this edit to Cladistics, I challenge the attribution to James and Pourtless 2009 of the claim that " A decision as to whether a particular character is a synapomorphy or not may be challenged as involving subjective judgements," saying "Specified pages in the cited monograph contain no material relevant to the claim." The pages specified are 21 ff. Preparing to delete the material, I notice that you added it here. Perhaps you would like to reword your statement as well as modifying the reference? Other material in the paper certainly is relevant, though I don't see that it supports the claim adequately. Peter M. Brown (talk) 16:02, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Gosh, that was a long time ago. I need time to study the whole series of edits; the one you identify is part of a series, whose purpose isn't entirely clear to me now. However, I think the point I was trying to make relates to the statement at the bottom of p.25 of the reference (and this page no. appears in earlier edits), namely that there can be subjective judgements leading to circular reasoning: "Synapomorphies are invoked to defend the hypothesis; the hypothesis is invoked to defend the synapomorphies." In cladistics analyses based on morphological characters a decision has to be made as to which characters to include and this can be subjective. I'll add more here as soon as I can. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:42, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

In arguing that there is inadequate evidence for the thesis that birds are maniraptoran theropods, the article sees as circular a particular argument for particular synapomorphies. I see no claim connecting synapomorphies with subjectivity; certainly none to the effect that inappropriate subjectivity underlies this particular circularity. For an article with many watchers—143 in this case—I generally assume that a challenge isn't going to be met if it there is no response in a week; as you indicate that you'll pursue the matter, however, I'll not make that assumption. Take your time. As far as your penultimate sentence goes, do not all important decisions in science involve some degree of subjectivity, some hunches? Hunches that pan out are the lifeblood of science. Cheers, Peter M. Brown (talk) 00:37, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok, several points.

• If you look at the article before I carried out a series of edits in 2010, apart from some errors, it did not have a NPOV; it was "pro-cladistics". So part of my intention was to include some criticisms – from the literature, regardless of whether I think they are valid or not.
• The use of James & Pourtless p.25 in the body of the article is ok, in my view.
• The material in the lead concerning the lively debates around the supposedly "objective" nature of cladistics (largely in the context of morphological characters) is correct – there are many papers on this from the 1980s and 1990s, but I agree entirely that the reference is wrong. I think I must just have made an error and meant to use p.21ff from elsewhere, because this isn't a coherent section in James & Pourtless.
• Looking quickly through the electronic part of the large collection of papers I have on this subject, I think that [3] (bottom of page 56, top of page 57) offers a quick summary with sources of the argument and will do for now. I'll change the reference and check the sentence again.

Well-spotted! Peter coxhead (talk) 07:25, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

	The Original Barnstar
	Thanks! Mrken777 (talk) 14:08, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Peter I am new here and trying to get acquainted.. I am unsure on everything. Can you tell me what other references I would need for my important information and edits to be approved? Thanks? Have a great day! Mrken777 (talk) 14:06, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi, I put a "welcome" message on your talk page (at User talk:Mrken777) which links to some useful starting points.

I guess you mean the edit you made to Opuntia ficus-indica which I reverted. Actually, for very good reasons, adding information which has medical implications is required by Wikipedia to meet very high standards. I'm sure your intentions were good, but you can, I'm sure, understand that people whose intentions are not or who have products to sell could easily put up misleading or even dangerous information.

There's an explanation of what is required on this page:

WP:MEDRS. You need to find up-to-date, secondary sources (i.e. an impartial review rather than something written by the person making the claims) in scientific journals or similar publications. The stronger the claim the better the references you need, again for obvious reasons. If you can find such sources and don't know how to put them into an article, I'll be very happy to help. Peter coxhead (talk

) 15:15, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, I didn't see that you had re-added the material with some refs. I've removed it again, pending a re-write. Because of cross-posting and hence multiple replies, I've now replied at User talk:Mrken777#Query about addition to Opuntia ficus-indica. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:00, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

You write,

I think it's becoming a mainstream view as of 2012 that neither Hexapoda nor Crustacea as traditionally defined are monophyletic. . . .There seems to be a consensus view that the main hexapod groups, e.g. insects s.s., collembolans and diplurans, are probably separately nested inside the crustaceans as traditionally defined.

Since I think that there would be no consensus if a Nature article from a couple of years ago contradicted a substantial body of opinion, I am trying to interpret your statement in light of this cladogram. It uses the term "Hexapoda" for a clade that includes Insecta, Collembola and Diplura as subclades. Is "Hexapoda as traditionally defined" something else? And what does "separately nested" mean in this context? I also do not know how to interpret the abbreviation "s. s." Thanks, Peter M. Brown (talk) 18:49, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, my brief "aside" comment wasn't as clear as it should be. What I mean was that, based on my reading:

1. It's becoming a mainstream view that Hexapoda isn't monophyletic, i.e. this isn't a minority, limited point of view, but one with a significant number of papers supporting it; probably the majority published in the last two or three years, so a view which NPOV demands is represented in Wikipedia. However, as with the Nature paper, there are contrary findings. It all depends on the precise molecules used (mitochondrial genes, nuclear genes, amino acids, etc.) and on the taxon sampling. (The Nature paper you quote from actually has a rather limited taxon sample, since it looks at a wide range of arthropods.)
2. Within the paraphyletic Hexapoda view, the only consensus is that the insects, collembolans, etc. are separately nested inside the crustaceans; different workers present slightly different trees – there doesn't seem to be a cross-paper consensus tree that I can see.

(I'm old enough to have studied invertebrate zoology when "insect" and "hexapod" were often used synonymously, so all I meant by "insect sensu stricto" was the modern sense.)

The Hexapoda article can only at present report that research has been published which both supports and rejects the monophyly of the group. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:04, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your help Peter .... I'm not a botanist! (as you can tell) Victuallers (talk) 22:34, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Given that both are leafless succulents, the genera Echinopsis and Echidnopsis are set up for confusion! Peter coxhead (talk) 09:20, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter, could you cast an eye at Eria if you have time, using your extensive understanding of how to set up a table of contents? It had a tiny section about species that have been moved to the genus Pinalia, but a proper "formerly placed here" section would be much larger and I think that would normally come after the main species list. Right now there is no table of contents that shows that section, and I don't know why. Thanks. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:17, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

The template family that sets up the "alphabet" table of contents suppresses the main table of contents. For good reason, because otherwise the latter would have the main sections plus the alphabet headings. So it seems to me that the compact alphabet ToCs are only suitable for articles that are almost entirely lists, with at most a lead and the standard ending sections such as References.

For Eria, either the list needs to be separated off into a separate article or the letter headings reduced to a lower level and tolerated in the main ToC or the letter headings removed. I would probably go for the last of these and set the species list in multiple columns without subheadings. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:19, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Peter, that sounds like a good approach. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:27, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

	Archetype of the original barnstar
	To recognize the fundamental wisdom about wikipedia that you have so willingly shared; may it propagate and leave much descendant wisdom. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:50, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Um... Thanks! Peter coxhead (talk) 09:24, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

It's fossilized, you're not! Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:56, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter,

I've just read your most recent comment on the auxiliary verb talk page. I wanted to leave you a message because this is one of the fields of research I work with. You are of course correct that especially English has a great versatility in usage of words and constructions with often entirely different functions and meanings seemingly represented by the same things.

If you're interested, I may be able to provide some pointers on some directions you could go in to rectify some of the challenge this presents. The primary root of why this seems so difficult within computational systems lies not in how English operates, but rather in the fact that most established theoretical frameworks either have missed or chosen to ignore major attributes of English grammar and syntax. For example, regarding auxiliaries, they do very little in English by themselves. In fact, tense, aspect, mood, etc -- all the functions normally attributed to auxiliaries -- require not just an auxiliary, but that auxiliary in a certain position subordinating the verb it modifies in a very specific way.

For a computational system to be able to figure out the proper meaning/function of a given word or group of words in any English construction, it has to be made to recognize this combination of attributes. Otherwise, the best it could do is narrow the choices down to the most likely.

It's entirely possible to build an accurate parser for English and if you get it to look for the right things, it should be very easy. But, it's can't be done if you limit its abilities to any of the "standard" frameworks that are out there.Drew.ward (talk) 18:30, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Drew, thanks for your post here. However, I have retired from full-time academic work, so I'm not involved in this stuff now. It's certainly true from my past experience that none of the "standard" frameworks are adequate. For what it's worth, my view now is that approaches to natural language processing by computer which relied on formal grammar (inspired by linguists' concentration on competence rather than performance), have proved (sadly) to be a blind alley. Statistical approaches are the current orthodoxy, with little or no explicit grammar.

What we have called "grammars" are probably no more than the smoothed averages of a very variable human communication system. But this last sentence is a personal view, not for a Wikipedia article! Peter coxhead (talk) 10:20, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Peter, Is there a version of this template that allows say a hundred or so images, automatically breaks them into rows and permits the later insertion of one or more images without having to reshuffle the whole lot? cheers Paul venter (talk) 09:57, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

No. I think that breaking them into rows would be somewhat difficult to program, given that in each row each image is scaled to a common height but not a common width, and the results might not look good. When I've had to arrange several rows using {{

Auto images

}}, I've had to re-order the images until they looked "right". You want the row heights to be roughly the same, which means that e.g. you don't want all portrait images in one row and then all landscape images in the next.

The only way I know to display a large number of images, breaking them automatically into rows, is to use the <gallery> tag, which scales all images to fit a single sized "cell".

Why/where do you want to display a hundred or so images? Peter coxhead (talk) 10:19, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Looks like a more complex problem than I first thought.... I'm working on a

Ah, ok. Watch out for over-zealous editors quoting

WP:IG

(particularly "Wikipedia is not an image repository") and removing images (I've encountered a few such editors; personally I rather like a reasonable number of images).

What I have seen (but can't find an example of just now) is a table with names in the left-hand cells and images (where available) in the corresponding right-hand cells. This might be a suitable format for

List of Johannesburg garden birds. Peter coxhead (talk

) 11:41, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Found one: see Lilium#Taxonomy, though I would swap the images and names. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:25, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

That looks good - its only drawback is the amount of scrolling. Would it lend itself to being arranged in 2 or 3 columns, with descriptions below instead of beside? Paul venter (talk) 07:50, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, you can arrange things flexibly in a table, so you could certainly do this, but (a) the arrangement into columns wouldn't be automatic, you'd have to do it yourself (b) the cells in a row in a table have to be the same height so a row would look odd if some species in the row had images and some not. If a single column table is going to be too long, it can be broken up into sections, each with its own subheading (e.g. A-G, H-M, etc.) Peter coxhead (talk) 09:08, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

It would take a lot of trial and error for me to arrive at something that works. Would you feel terribly put out if I asked you to set up a small practical example of what you think might work? It would be much appreciated. Paul venter (talk) 07:46, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Really sorry, but I'm already devoting more time to Wikipedia than I should! Have a look at Lilium#Taxonomy as another example. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:19, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Peter,

Do you think those changes were vandalism? They don't seem to make any sense to me either.Drew.ward (talk) 15:58, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Your comment at WT:MOS was measured and reasonable. Could you look at the actual RfC and comment there? --Enric Naval (talk) 11:51, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Why not?

I agree that it would be useful to explain that "kingdom" can be combined with various prefixes ("superkingdom" seems possible too). As the article is currently structured it's not quite clear where to do this, but I thought not in a section on a particular set of kingdoms. Let's see if we can find a way of doing it (but I don't see that terms like "branch" or "superphylum" belong here). I should have given a better explanation on the talk page of why I reverted your good faith edits; apologies. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:15, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

No problem. I suggest to group together all the kingdom systems cited (as subsections) in a section "Systems of classification", preceded by a section "Definition and associated terms" in which the relative position of the rank kingdom is considered. --Iossif63 (talk) 17:52, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that seems a good idea to me. Peter coxhead (talk) 18:58, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

I modified the article. As English is not my mother-tongue (I don't know how obvious it may be), your proofreading could certainly help clarify the phrasing. --Iossif63 (talk) 19:50, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Ok, will do. Peter coxhead (talk) 10:20, 3 October 2012 (UTC)