User talk:Peter coxhead/Archive 9

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Hi Peter. I've started going through USDA Plants common names (User:Plantdrew/USDACommonName), creating redirects and tagging existing redirects with "R to scientific name|plant". I was wondering if you could help with coding for auto ed to append "R to scientific name|plant" to redirects. Right now, I still have auto ed set up with your code for appending "|plant" to redirects tagged with just "R to scientific name". Plantdrew (talk) 18:53, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually I have this action set up at User:Peter_coxhead/autoedit.js. So just copy this file and it should work. (I've taken a temporary break from working through the BSBI plant names to do some work on Cistus species, but I do intend to finish off the list. USDA Plant common names – wow, that's a big task!) Peter coxhead (talk) 08:52, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that works. I may have bitten off more than I can chew; so far (after 4 days of work) I'm about 40 pages into a 610 page list of USDA common names. Plantdrew (talk) 18:07, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Slow and steady is my philosophy with such tasks; I work on something more interesting and then come back to it. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:49, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: depending on what you want to do with the USDA common names, you might find User:Peter coxhead/Test/T5 useful. It's a template that suppresses output if there's no page at the common name (1st parameter) and creates a link directly to the talk page of the common name, which serves to check that it exists. Thus:

* {{User:Peter coxhead/Test/T5|wild celery|Apium graveolens}}
* {{User:Peter coxhead/Test/T5|European marshwort|Apium nodiflorum}}
* {{User:Peter coxhead/Test/T5|spreading dogbane|Apocynum androsaemifolium}}

generates

• Apium graveolens – Talk:wild celery
• European marshwort –
  Apium nodiflorum – Talk:European marshwort
• spreading dogbane – Apocynum androsaemifolium – Talk:spreading dogbane

If you want to check existing common names, this makes it a bit easier. I decided that creating all the missing common name redirects for the BSBI list was too much work for a first pass. I may go back to this task.

(By the way,

I'm mostly interested now in creating missing common name redirects for the USDA list (about an order of magnitude more species than BSBI deals with, so maybe I'm insanely ambitious), but I also want to check existing redirects of USDA names for missing redirect categorization or possible conversion to SIAs. I might play with your T5 template; I think it'll be helpful for my purposes if redlinks in both of the first two parameters suppress the the entry. I haven't been tagging talk pages of common names as WP:PLANTS redirects; it seems like a bot could invoked once the redirects are categorized, but your T5 certainly makes it easier to get to the talk pages for manual tagging.

Splitting

Apium graveolens and celery has been on my radar for a while; we've already got Celeriac split from the binomial. Previous discussion was pretty negative on splitting. Sorting out geranium and pelargonium is another ancient split/move discussion I'd like to revisit if I find the energy. Plantdrew (talk

) 05:10, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

I really don't know if you'll find this interesting, but as a template guy you may find a use for it: A new template {{Sqc}} (square capitals) created by Erutuon.

[Here is an example] of it being used.

The full discussion that led to its creation can be found here:

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Latin#Small caps (or query the page for "{{Sqc}}" to find the heart of it, as the section is rather long).

All the best, Hamamelis (talk) 15:14, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Interesting. Although not of direct use to me, it does raise similar presentation issues as the problem of how to style selling names, as per {{

tdes}}. Peter coxhead (talk

) 17:01, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

• Leeds on 12th April 2015
• Manchester on 26th April 2015
• Liverpool on 24th May 2015

If you can make them, please sign up on the relevant wikimeet page!

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Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:55, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

You recently participated in a move request discussion at Talk:Mandrake (plant). I have posted a follow-up request at Talk:Mandragora officinarum if you are interested in participating. —  AjaxSmack  00:23, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the research and work on Mandrake, Peter. Soon enough The Cabal will initiate you to the rank of apprentice sorcerer, and you will be able to use its magical powers to your advantage. With these skills you can win all the content disputes on Wikipedia. Regards,

No such user (talk

) 20:44, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

I wish! Seriously, the more I look into the scientific literature on Mandragora, the more uncertain I become as to the best approach in Wikipedia. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:58, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

I thought it best to refrain from what I was about to write on the other thread. Please. An editor will read a statement like "No, you don't agree with me" and interpret "No, you don't agree with me". In a recent discussion I perhaps unwisely used the example, despite a plethora of others that could have been used, of Arnold Schwarzenegger as a perhaps over famous example of a person who is afforded long title description in Britannica and absurd scaremongering exaggerations ensued in that thread. Here I say, in effect, that recognisability is a foundational principle of article titling and I get hauled over the coals for it by a variety of editors. WTF. GregKaye 19:07, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Looking at your contributions to Wikipedia, I see that you've participated in a number of move/titling discussions. So you're undoubtedly aware that people have strong, even passionate, views about titles, and that we all come to this particular table with history. One problem with recognizability and naturalness is that there can be ENGVAR issues – see e.g. Talk:Maize, noting the number of RMs. I edit mostly plant pages, and there are constant problems with editors from one country assuming that the English name they use is recognizable and natural to everyone. So I'm primed to insist on full consideration of all five principles, on a case by case basis. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:30, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate what you say and, if anything, I think that I would prefer precision to be foremost amongst the fundamental issues that we stick by. In that discussion you told me curtly "No, you don't agree with me". There was no disagreement. I should not have refrained but should have confronted this at the talk page. Now I am being told that I seem formalistic. What I am doing is expressing the importance, as I see it, of issues such as recognisability and true precision (not just as a front for the dissection of disambiguation) in title choice. We should have accurate content. We are unnecessarily failing. No one seems to care. GregKaye 19:15, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I think you are unnecessarily pessimistic. We should have accurate content – titling and content are different issues. In electronic media, a unique title is needed to unambiguously identify an item. Wikipedia could have used numbers and still had perfectly accurate articles, whose lead sentence and section identified the topic. No one seems to care – to the contrary in my view, in relation to titles: editors care too much about titles. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:33, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

	The natural history illumination barnstar with extra prongs
	Thank you for your wonderful work on Mandragora! You have carefully put together so many components that they illuminate a popular subject that was previously quite hopelessly muddled. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:35, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

@Sminthopsis84: Thanks! I particularly appreciate the extra prongs! Peter coxhead (talk) 14:17, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Noticing your barnstar above, I had a look at the article at Mandragora (genus), which is, of course, excellent. I realise, however, that either that article or the disambiguation page currently at Mandragora (disambiguation) should really be at the plain title Mandragora (in place of the current redirect). Can you advise me which page ought to be moved? It hinges on whether the genus is the primary meaning of the word "Mandragora". If you're not sure, I'll happily let it go, but the current situation looks a little untidy to my eye. --Stemonitis (talk) 20:17, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I think that "mandragora" doesn't have a clear primary meaning. A Google search shows a wide variety of uses, usually at least vaguely connected with its mythological or magical aspects, although not always obviously so. So I personally would move Mandragora (disambiguation) to Mandragora, and leave Mandragora (genus) as it is (in spite of my bias in favour of the plant genus).

A different but related issue is what to do about Mandrake and Mandrake (disambiguation). I will raise this again at Talk:Mandragora officinarum. Peter coxhead (talk) 21:22, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I see it had already been re-raised. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:02, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm also inclined to move Mandragora (disambiguation) to the the base title. I was prepared to object to having the genus at the "(genus)" title when the first round of moves took place, but once I googled "mandragora" I wasn't certain that the genus was primary. Plantdrew (talk) 22:26, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks both for your input. I have moved the disambiguation page to Mandragora and fixed all the incoming links. There certainly are some interesting uses of the word "mandragora". --Stemonitis (talk) 05:38, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Peter. I've come across a fair number of plants that occur in the British Isles (and in the part of the alphabet you worked on) that don't have common name redirects yet. The latest was

I've been working from the BSBI 2007 list, which isn't the latest, but which is available in Excel and from which I can easily prepare wiki-formatted lists. So it's possible that some names aren't in this older list. On the other hand,

Early Medick

is, so I'm not sure why I missed it. I supposedly completed to R in the 2007 list, and then got a bit bored. I'll get back to checking S onwards sometime, I guess!

Can you tell me some others in the A-R range without common name redirects? Peter coxhead (talk) 20:51, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

I can't remember the others I've come across, but keeping it in Medicago A-R,

Button Medick (M. orbicularis) are red-links as I write this. I'll let you know when I come across some more. Plantdrew (talk

) 21:12, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Ah, right, I understand now. Given a BSBI English name and the corresponding scientific name, and assuming the standard case that the BSBI English name should be a redirect to the scientific name, these are the cases and what I was initially trying to do:

1. Neither the scientific name nor the BSBI English name are the titles of WP articles – ignore
2. The scientific name exists, but the BSBI English name redirect doesn't – create the redirect and go to (4)
3. The BSBI English name redirect exists, but the corresponding scientific name doesn't – make a note to be sorted out later
4. Both exist – ensure that the redirect is labelled as a plant redirect; ensure that the article contains the BSBI name with a source.

I have only systematically carried out case (4) up to R; I have not created all the missing redirects required by case (2). I've now created a list of the missing ones at User:Peter_coxhead/Sandbox2#Missing redirects if you want some work to do!! Peter coxhead (talk) 06:38, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

I'll work on it, but you might end up getting to it first. I'm looking at another 2-3 months of work to get through the USDA PLANTS common names. Then there's the common names from state threatened/endangered lists that I can also download from PLANTS (shouldn't be too many of these though). I think I might tackle the BSBI names after that.

I have been much sloppier than your step 4 for my PLANTS work. I've only been adding a source when I need to add the common name itself to the page. If it's already there and uncited I just do the redirect and move on (bad, I know). And I don't usually add the exact PLANTS common name if a close permutation is already on the page ("narrowleaf foowort" vs. "narrow-leaved foo wort"), though I do create the redirect. I really ought to download a clipboard manager so I can easily switch between pasting PLANTS as a reference and pasting redirect markup.

Once PLANTS and BSBI are done, I'll see what other downloadable sources of common names I can find. I've got California's Jepson Manual to start with (User:Plantdrew/JepsonCommonName); proportion of blue-links for species is really impressive, Wikipedia basically has California plants covered. 17:04, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I'm still in the learning process of adding

If I happen to run across one or more clinical studies, would I be able to run it by you beforehand, as a preemptive 'peer review'? [posted by User:Chango369w)

Well, I'm not by any means an expert on this topic. If you haven't done so, you need to read

WP:MEDRS

; personally I think that the way it's interpreted by some editors is sometimes unnecessarily strong, but it is the standard to be followed. The two key points seem to me to be:

• We are always free to, and inded should, report established ethnobotanical uses for plants, whatever those uses are, including uses in traditional medicine.
• Research related to use in traditional medicine should only be reported if it meets the standards of MEDRS, i.e. there are reliable reviews. It's not appropriate to report "research in progress" or "investigations proceeding", nor to report in vitro or animal studies.

By all means ask if you think I can help.

WT:MED

is where the real experts hang out!

By the way, don't forget to sign your posts with ~~~~. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:03, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure that we can include anything about ethnopharmacology on Wikipedia under MEDRS. By definition, the field is at the intersection between ethnobotany and clinical medicine. There's this quip, "what do you call alternative medicine that works?" : "Medicine". Ethnopharmacology is about (potentially) validating ethnobotanical use clinically, but it's the phase in the process where the research is mostly in vitro or in animal models. When you search Google scholar for the vast majority of plant species, the results are taxonomic and ecological studies. For a handful of plant species, the literature is dominated by ethnopharmacological studies, and it ought to be possible to mention that somehow, but it is tricky to do while complying with MEDRS. It would help if Wikipedia had an article on ethnopharmacology (there was a stub that was merged into ethnomedicine, but it's certainly a topic deserving of it's own article). Plantdrew (talk) 18:59, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: It's tricky, I agree. Some thoughts:

• We can say that the plant has an ethnobotanical use, including traditional medicine, and what this use is.
• Under phytochemistry, we can say what compounds it contains that are known to be biologically active in animals, and what their effects are.
• If the plant is in any of the reputable pharmacopeias, we can say this and what it's listed for. There are traditional preparations in the British Pharmacopeia (I don't know about the US equivalent); the first such I found in the index was "Acanthopanax Bark". We would need to be careful not to imply efficacy unless there is WP:MEDRS-compliant evidence.
• The difficult issue is reporting that active research is going on.
  WP:MEDANIMAL
  doesn't forbid altogether reporting animal and in vitro studies. If there are many studies – ideally with a substantial review – then they can be mentioned, so long as it's made clear that they don't provide any evidence to support use in humans.

Anything more? Peter coxhead (talk) 19:51, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Per the debate here, which is rapidly beginning to generate more heat than light, I'd be interested to know if you could point me to any third-party sources that verify that this is a valid concept. I respect your knowledge base and you seem to know the topic better than some of the other folks debating it. Montanabw^(talk) 08:39, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree about the "more heat than light". The discussion seems to me to be typical of those we have in Wikipedia when dealing with ill-defined concepts that have a core meaning but whose detailed meaning varies by context. "Race" in the context of the classification of organisms does seem to me to be worth an article, which would deal with (1) the broad historical use of the term for infraspecific classification (2) the current use, limited to some groups like fungi, otherwise now largely abandoned in favour of concepts like subspecies or clines. I'll have to think more about sources! Peter coxhead (talk) 13:33, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Your idea might be worth sandboxing. When full-fledged, perhaps could replace the existing version. Montanabw^(talk) 07:07, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Cross-posted form my "talk" page

You undid an edit I made to the cladogram page, saying that "this must be discussed first." You have not seen fit to start that conversation so I will. The section I wrote is based on what is stated - apparently unobjectionably - in the earlier part of the Cladogram article:

"a cladogram is a diagram used in cladistics which shows relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to descendants or how much they have changed; many evolutionary trees can be inferred from a single cladogram ..."

and

"Researchers must decide which character states are "ancestral" (plesiomorphies) and which are derived (synapomorphies), because only synapomorphic character states provide evidence of grouping.[10] "

Phenetic algorithms do not use outgroups, and neither they nor ML or Bayesian methods group by synapomorphy alone.. This is why the material in the "Selecting a cladogram" section is incorrect - particularly, the statement "Algorithms for cladograms include least squares, neighbor-joining, parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian inference." These things are not "cladistics" and do not, therefore, produce "cladograms." Abrower (talk) 12:26, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Apologies; I thought you would understand that the comments I made are on the talk page of the article. See Talk:Cladogram#What is and is not a cladogram. Please respond there so that others interested in this topic can join in. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:33, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello, Peter - I just reverted an edit to

@

CorinneSD: yes, I agree that the image wasn't the best. I created a lighter version of the rather dark one that used to be there; what do you think of that? Peter coxhead (talk

) 08:02, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

No-one has deleted an article, in my view; you basically moved material from existing articles to convert a redirect to an article, when there had already been extensive discussion about this topic. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:34, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

The

Well, Stace (2010), New Flora of the British Isles, p.509 says of Cornaceae "fruit a drupe with 1 2-celled stone". So I guess not. But it's not clear to me that all botanical sources use the 'fruit categorization' terms in precisely the same way. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:28, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Picking up my last comment, I see that the Flora of China here says "Fruit a drupaceous berry", so it seems that you can take your pick. I'll ask at

WT:PLANTS. Peter coxhead (talk

) 14:41, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Judd et al say the fruit is a drupe. Heywood etal agree, but use the word "drupaceous". Is there a word "berryaceous"? That would cut us some slack. Plantsurfer 17:04, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Wayne's Word uses "bacca" for some of the weirder "berries" (kiwi, avocado). It appears that Wayne's Word is attributing this usage to Spjut, but Spjut's "bacca" is the typical berries (see here). Plantsurfer 15:53, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

@Plantsurfer: by the way, in changing some Berry links to Berry (botany) I haven't been considering whether "berry" was correctly used in the first place, just what sense of "berry" was intended. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:34, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, me too. Plantsurfer 17:08, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

It's become clear that a fungal

Well, I'm definitely not a mycologist – although I lead "fungus forays" in the autumn, I only use field guides. My impression is that you're on the right track, but I can't help you with the detail. User:Sminthopsis84 might know more.

I've left the Race (biology) article aside for the present, though noting the real progress you've made. There's something of a mess created by splitting Berry and Berry (botany) to sort out – masses of existing links which may now go to the wrong article. Grumpy remark: being selected as the current "article for improvement" is no guarantee of improvement... Peter coxhead (talk) 14:31, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Speaking of such messes, see the genus merge stuff I posted to

WP:GAMING definitions from them, on lot of articles, e.g. to apply an overbroad and imprecise definition in favor of a more narrow one in more topical, non-tertiary sources, or conversely to stick to a detailed definition that may be dated and not reflect current usage.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:35, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi User:SMcCandlish. I think you are seeing all types of literature that I am aware of. A factor that may be complicating things quite a lot is that many biologists refuse to dabble in nomenclature, and I think that explains them using race terminology. A plant pathologist and a mycologist are both permitted to apply the rules of nomenclature to establish a name, but many prefer not to. This may be because what they are studying is not something that they consider to be in itself a discovery. I expect that they also probably don't deal with very large numbers of organisms, so they aren't as acutely aware of the benefits of concise naming. So to summarize, I think you are right, that f. sp. simply provides a way to name a fungal pathogen race, the two are equivalent. It is rather a weird thing, that "informal" status of the f. sp., and for that reason I wondered if it was actually included in the latest code of nomenclature, but it is, and I think that probably means that it is here to stay, because matters to do with mycology have been thoroughly reworked by recent botanical congresses.

I too have put the Race (biology) article aside for the present as a blood-pressure-defense mechanism, but have been planning to look in later. Sorry to see the massive mis-communication that has been going on there. It is very hard to deal with such complete misunderstanding of whatever one writes, as if one is trying to communicate with a different species. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:16, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Glad you were

WP:JAGUARing; I'd meant to ping you and forgot. That one guy on that article (and the new sock who's arrived) are driving me nuts, but the solution seems to be to just keep adding sourced material until they have no argument left to make. I think this will be a months-long cleanup process. The landrace article needs similar work, and raises similar interference (not from the same party but from a different one who has also been active on both; there are basically three, not two, "camps").  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:35, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

PS: I have to retroactively apologize for helping create some of the drama at that page. I let the

Dunning-Kruger effect sneak up on me. My familiarity with the disuse of "race" in mammalology (and remembrance of being told by biologists when at university that it's avoided in that field, most especially by primatologists), combined with not having seen it used in caudatology in years, lead to an assumption that the term was also disused in other fields, so I argued that it was obsolete without checking my assumptions. I think that inspired some of the "delete this page!" stuff, inadvertently. I'm now committed to seeing the page done right.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢

 ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  15:35, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: so you can see that we're both happy to leave you to it for the present, but don't hesitate to ask for assistance if there are new problems.

Choosing my words carefully, as you will realize, I'm impressed by your example of calm reasonableness. :-) Peter coxhead (talk) 17:16, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

While violet blue was meant, I actually separated the word links on purpose to lead to the separate colour links; but I prefer it as you left it, that is, Indigo (violet blue), for two reasons: 1/ It is the real colour of Wild Hyancinths; and 2/ There are enough other links for 'violet' and 'blue'. Werdna Yrneh Yarg (talk) 20:55, 23 September 2015 (UTC)Andrew

@

WP:RS). So the real question is: what source says that wild hyacinths are "violet blue"? Mathew (1987: 103) describes them as "mid-blue" (with "whitish or pinkish" forms also found).^[1] If you can't find a source that gives this description, then it will have to be removed. Peter coxhead (talk

) 07:53, 24 September 2015 (UTC)