User talk:EncycloPetey/Archive 1

Lycopodiophyta

Hi, once i finished the honwort diagram i have finished the bryophytes life cycles and i am moving into the tracheophytes. especifically right now i am going to start working on the clubmoses. yet i seem to have problems to find good sources. plain said i have just found one [[1]]. and since you seem to understand more about plants than me, i am guessing you may have some good book about the subject or access to such a diagram. And maybe if you would be so kind you could help me and either tell me the name of the book to look for it. scan the diagram, and or give me the link of it. :)) Please?LadyofHats 15:53, 11 November 2005 (UTC).

Yes, I can recommend some good sources for life cycle diagrams. Be warned, though, that there are two basic life cycles in the Lycopodiophyta. Species in the class Lycopodiopsida are all homosporous, with a single kind of spore and single kind of gametophyte. Species in the other groups (Sellaginella, Isoetes, and numerous fossil species) are heterosporous, with two kinds of spores that each give rise to a single-sex gametophyte. I'd recommend that you consider doing separate life cycle diagrams for the two kinds of Lycopodiophyta.

Anyway, the best sources I know of for life cycle diagrams are:

• Raven, Peter H., Evert, Ray F., & Eichhorn, Susan E. (2005). Biology of Plants (7th ed.). New York: W. H. Freeman and Company. ISBN 0-7167-1007-2.
• Stern. Introductory Plant Biology. (the original source of the diagram you found for Selaginella)

and you can find lots of useful information and illustrations in:

• Campbell, Douglas Houghton. (1918). The Structure and Development of Mosses and Ferns, (3rd ed.). New York: The Macmillan Company.

-- EncycloPetey 06:53, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

thanks i will have a look. LadyofHats 13:46, 12 November 2005 (UTC).

WELCOME

First, let me welcome you to Wikipedia ! I see you have a special interest in the liverworts, which is great because we have scant info on those plants at present. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

• The Five Pillars of Wikipedia
• How to edit a page
• Editing, policy, conduct, and structure tutorial
• Picture tutorial
• How to write a great article
• Naming conventions
• Manual of Style
• Merging, redirecting, and renaming pages
• If you're ready for the complete list of Wikipedia documentation, there's also Wikipedia:Topical index.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! By the way, please be sure to sign your name on Talk and vote pages using four tildes (~~~~) to produce your name and the current date, or three tildes (~~~) for just your name. If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my Talk page. Anyway, I'm happy to be the one to welcome you, since I just reverted a couple additions you made. %^)

I want to assure you, I'm not an ogre, and changes to your edits involve long-standing stuff that you could not be aware of this soon. So you might see such statements as "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" on pages where you have developed a definition only. The statement is true and there is Wiktionary for such placement of "articles" that are nothing more than definitions. Develop your definitions within the context of a broader article (such as liverworts) and expand out from there, as needed, once the article starts to get too big.

Your change of perianth from a redirect to a definition page is an example of creating a definition only article; however, I see the reason you did it was to point out that the term has two different meanings in botany. In that case, the page should be made into a disambigution page (I can do that for you as an example). The only problem then, is that we try not to create links to disambigution pages, but to correct links to point to the correct use of the term sorted from the several possible ones. Hope this is not too confusing. I'm available if you have questions. - Marshman 02:09, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Cryptogams

Just a note that somebody proposed the category Cryptogams for deletion. As you seem to be one of the main users maybe you'd care to add your opinion in the discussion on the deletion page? [at the moment the server does not carry my log in] 19:26, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Welcome

Nice job done with the hepatics. I am a botanist currently doing a liverwort-research in Brazil. If you need photos I have plenty. By the way , the Dendrocerod photo on the Dendroceros page is a D.crispus (I took the photo).1978 03:10, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I've got some photos of my own (mostly Marchantiales), but no longer have access to good photomicroscopy so I can't take more. I appreciate your offer of more photos, and will probably ask you about them soon. I'm adding a Lepidoziaceae page which will include your photo of Arachniopsis, and hope to do a lot more with the liverworts, hornworts, and bryophyte pages over the next few months. -- EncycloPetey 03:14, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Liverworts etc.

I would welcome any further modifications to any of these articles to make them more accesible to non-botanists. I will hang fire for the time being to avoid any edit conflicts. I am interested in your comments on liverworts and the type species. My own experience living on the north west european sea board is that liverworts are very common and most common as ground cover thalloid species. I guess it depends upon ones own personl experience as to what seems common and what uncommon. Velela 14:18, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

I've made what I think would be the minimal changes to the liverwort page already. Please have a look. I suspect that one reason you're more familiar with thalloid hepatics is your location. If you get into Greenland or Scandinavia, the leafy liverworts become far more common as ground cover than thalloids. Non-experts often just assume that these leafys are mosses. As I say, thoughh, I'm not expecting to work on the liverwort pages for a while, just the hornwort pages. Feel free to make or suggest changes each week as I revise the various hornwort articles. I want to eventually have a page on each genus and each of the three families of hornwort. -- EncycloPetey 14:23, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Heraldry-stub

Hi - thought you'd like to know that there are now separate {{Heraldry-stub}} and {{Flag-stub}} templates, and I've just sorted all the stub articles into the two separate folders! Grutness...wha? 08:04, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Ecopoiesis

Aloha. I'm curious, why do you think ecopoiesis should be stubbed as an environment instead of an ecology stub? I haven't been following the debates on WSS. --Viriditas 12:36, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Environment is a sub-category of ecology, so I don't list it there instead of listing it as ecology, I just chose to be more specific. Ecology deals with individual responses to the environment, populations of individuals, etc. and not only the study of whole ecosystems. That doesn't mean a valid and convincing argument couldn't be made the other way, of course. My primary concern right now has been just to sort out as many ecological articles as possible from the bio-stubs beginning with A through M (and I've pulled a lot of things out for other categories as well). -- EncycloPetey 12:42, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your answer. I should probably expand the article and remove the stub notice. :^) --Viriditas 12:50, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Greetings back!

I had to laugh when the first speaker of blazon that I clicked on turned out to be someone I know. I only recently (about when you did) started using Wikipedia seriously, and right now most of my contributions actually involve additions and changes to pages on medieval logicians. Most of the great contributors to medieval logic don't have any mention of their logical works on their pages at all! But once I have a bit more time (hah!) I'll be looking into some of the names and blazons articles too. --Sara Uckelman 15:37, 19 November 2005

Category:Trees and Tree-stub

Hi Petey - please be very careful what you're putting where! - there's quite a few items you've tagged 'tree-stub' which are not trees at all (e.g. Bush poppy, a small shrub, and Canadian Dwarf Cornel, a herbaceous plant). Quite a few are no longer stubs at all and should have the stub tag removed altogether. Also Category:Trees shouldn't generally contain individual tree species; they are categorised to their order or family (e.g. Category:Fagales, with that category then a subcategory in Category:Trees (i.e., not listing the same page twice in a category and a subcategory of that category). If every tree species page was put in Category:Trees, it would end up with about 10,000 articles! - thanks, MPF 11:44, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

You're quite right about the potential size of the Category:Trees. I have been putting Conifers, Oaks, and Palms into their respective categories, but for most tree species, there simply insn't an appropriate subcategory for them yet. Many trees belong to genera or families which contain non-trees as well, and most of the stub articles on trees have no category at all right now. They need some sort of category.

Thanks! Generally, I at least would have no objection to orders/families that contain a substantial number of trees being subcatted there; they needn't be 100% trees (hardly any are!). Things like Cat:Magnoliales, Cat:Rosales, etc., contain enough trees that they can reasonably be put there. For the ones with no cat at all, they're best put in their order cat (or family if a large family with its own cat). Cat:Oaks, I think should be merged into Cat:Fagaceae; I think it's a bit of over-categorisation. - MPF 15:09, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm dealing with a host of articles listed in plant-stubs (nearly 1700 stuba articles), many of which do not identify whether the plant is a tree, shrub, herb, vine, or what. Sometimes the article gives a false impression that the plant is a tree (e.g. "Tree poppy") and I have to go by what I can glean from the article. If you can subcategorize the trees and re-classify articles that are not about trees, then I would love the help. So far, it looks as though no one has been categorizing many tree articles. --EncycloPetey 12:02, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks; I'll check through and change any as need be; I'll try to remember to add plant form in articles which don't have it as well - MPF 15:09, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Just to chime in on the same subject, many (most?) plant families include trees and non-trees, so the tree-stub note is misleading. Personally, I think "plant-stub" is finely-enough divided - subdividing further doesn't serve any purpose that I can think of, it certainly doesn't do anything to induce interested writers to de-stub them. Stan 12:57, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

The WikiProject Stub Sorting group disagrees. The {{tree-stub}} was up for a vote for over a week, with one person responding in favor and no-one voting against. Part of the rationale on my part is that a stub category that includes algae, moss, ferns, trees, and every other kind of plant in a single category makes it difficult for would-be writers to find stub articles in their field of expertise. In any case, the Stub Sorting group has a set of criteria for subdividing stub categories on their Project page if you'd care to help out. My talk page is not the appropriate forum for discussing the relative benefits of creating new stubs. --EncycloPetey 13:03, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't have any great objection to tree-stub, but it would have been nice if a note requesting comment had been put on the WP:TOL talk page before the vote was taken :-) I never knew about it until it was done and dusted, and I don't suppose many other species page authors did either. [note: more inserts above] - MPF 15:09, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

It all comes from knowing what projects are out there and visiting the appropriate proposal pages. I have a hard time keeping track of some of them, and I've got several on my watch list for just that reason. Honestly, listing the stub proposal on the TOL project page hadn't occurred to me, and I say that as a well-trained cladist who was overjoyed to see that Wikipedia dismantled the Liliaceae sensu polyphyly. Since the category of "tree" is a morphological category, asking for opinion from the group working on taxonomy wasn't something that came to mind. It's not that I didn't know about the group. In fact, I've added or updated quite a few incomplete taxoboxes out among the plants (and even a few fungal groups).

Since you're interested, I'll mention that I've proposed two new stub categories to subdivide the plant stubs: succluent-stub and grass-stub. At some point, I may propose a separate euphorb stub, since it looks like Qwertzy2 went through and created several dozen stub pages in that family and labelled them all "plant-stub". Most of the pages consist of little more than a taxobox in what is a very, very large family.

I'll also note that {{paleo-stub}} has been populated by quite a few taxa that have no taxobox at all. Many of them are extinct early fish, which is a group for which I don't have the knowledge to add a taxobox. Perhaps someone in the TOL group could help? -- EncycloPetey 15:53, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks; I think WP:TOL covers anything to do with life, not just taxonomy . . . it even includes "tree" in its title :-). I wonder if a 'monocot-stub' might be better than a 'grass-stub'? - there can't be a huge number of Poaceae pages; I suppose another option is a 'herbaceous-stub' tho' this and 'succulent' are both even more amorphous and less definable than 'tree'. Sorry, I know nothing about fossil fish, but do put a request on WP:TOL talk - MPF 18:47, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I noticed you just moved a plant stub to an asteraceae stub... isn't that maybe a bit too much pigeon-holing? (OTOH, if there is an asteraceae fanatic running about the place, that might be perfect!) I've added stuff to plant stubs, but it probably wouldn't even occur to me to look at an asteraceae stub. I do think that sort of stubbing might have merit for families with more fanatical followings, such as the orchids, ferns, or bromeliads (and even then, maybe it can also be a plant stub?). SB Johnny 18:16, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I am all for organizing stubs, but am unsure of your project. In the past I have moved some plant stubs to the categories they are destined to belong to (so including them in two categories, plant stub and destination category). This looked to be as good a way to attract specialists attention as any.

I support the sentiment that short items are not necessarily stubs. A short entry can be enough onto itself. Brya 08:15, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

No Idea

I have no idea what might be causing your problems. I haven't been encountering any myself, not even the clogged servers that sometimes curse mine efforts to utter perdition (or maybe Uttar Pradesh Caerwine Caerwhine 11:13, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Me neither. your IP doesn't saeem to be blocked - I'll paste your message to me on Wikipedia: Village Pump (technical) - hopefully someone there will be able to fix things. Grutness...wha? 09:26, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Sportspeople stubs

Thanks for sorting out those new sportspeople stub types - I had kind of lost momentum on it a bit! I have moved {{triathlonbio-stub}} out from under {{athleticsbio-stub}} though, as triathlon isn't normally counted as part of track and field athletics. sjorford (talk) 18:49, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Re: Hong Kong film stubs

Thank you. :-D — Instantnood 20:39, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Great work on heraldry!

Thanks for your work on heraldry - do please keep at it! Chelseaboy 23:03, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Papal Bull (cocktail)

Hello, EncycloPetey! Sir, to the untrained eye your Papal Bull article looks like a Wikipedia first: a vanity cocktail article. Is this a real and notable cocktail, or was it invented by you and your friends? If the latter is the case, then the article should be removed, interesting and well-written though it is. Cheers! Babajobu 22:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Impressive!

Just wanted to let you know how very impressed I am with your work. DS 21:36, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Xylem

I noticed that you took an interest in "xylem". Your new proposal does not make the grade, so I would like to ask you to do try it right or to go with my personal preference (which is for a short entry). The trouble is:

1. there is primary xylem and there is secondary xylem, which are very different
2. very many plant groups are involved with great differences in their xylem structures.

One way to deal with this would be for several separate entries. But this is a considerable task and such entries would benefit greatly from good illustrations. Do note that "secondary xylem in conifers" rates a book by itself, "secondary xylem in angiosperms" a series of books, and those are just the big topics. It is very hard to say something in general that will apply to all xylem in all plants.

That leaves untouched how "wood" relates to "secondary xylem", which is another topic requiring great delicacy. Brya 08:03, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what "proposal" you are referring to, but please keep in mind that your comments are coming out of thin air, as far as I am concerned. If you have a specific personal proposal about how the xylem page should be structured, then why not write some of it into the article? If your writing skills are not up to the task, or if you simply don't have the time to undertake the writing, then you might place a basic outline of your ideas on the xylem page. The wiki-community does not contain mind readers (at least as far as I now), so unless you put your ideas down somewhere that people can find them and make use of them, your opinions will be only so much aether.

I did notice that you had deleted the entire section about xylem structure. True, that section was riddled with errors, but my persoanl philosophy is to improve upon what others have written, replacing problem text with improved text rather than with a void. Doing so often happens in stages -- writing a bit, then taking time to think about the deficiencies and further avenues for expanding or modifying that text before doing more. I would never presume under any circumstances to say that text I had written was the definitive and final version. --EncycloPetey 04:26, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

The wikipedia policy of allowing everybody to edit has great advantages: people can add little-known facts on any topic. I am all for that, truth is stranger than fiction, and this is a great way of exchanging information. However, this policy also means that it is predictable that people are encouraged to add anything that happens to occur to them.

You mention philosophy. Many wikipedians, with an administrative mindset, subscribe to the view that it is desirable to just pile up text, compiling fact, myth, speculation, and utter fantasy. Concise entries are to be combatted by padding them with text, of whatever content. Others subscribe to the view that the purpose of the wikipedia is that users will be better informed after consulting wikipedia than they were before doing so. Anybody with any experience in education will be able to tell you that unlearning is more difficult than learning. Once a piece of information is out there, no matter how demonstrably wrong it is, it becomes almost impossible to eradicate it.

In the case of xylem, this is a topic that concerns all the vascular plants (400.000 species?), and great care is needed in phrasing any statement. Clearly the “section about xylem structure” that I deleted was detrimental to a better understanding of the topic. The more extensive rewrite that you substituted also contains gruesome error, and will definitely hinder anybody trying to inform himself on the topic. I tried to point out to you that you need to rewrite this extensively if you want to salvage any of it. I had assumed you were someone who cared about factual accuracy. Apparently a mistake? Brya 12:01, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Instead of making vague statements that text is "detrimental" or contains "gruesome error", why not edit that text to fix the specific errors you see there. Are you limited to merely criticizing the work of others, or can you please take initiative to make the improvements you seem to want? It is very easy to sit around and criticize others for not meeting your expectations -- it is quite another to rise to the challlenge of correcting deficiencies in Wikipedia entries. --EncycloPetey 12:05, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

I contributed quite a bit of content to wikipedia, so you have no grounds for your claim. Two main considerations apply here:

1. a contribution must lead to an improvement. If adding correct content will lead to others jumping in and burying this under additional wrong information then adding the correct content will have been counterproductive. There are some really horrendous errors in the botany section of wikipedia, which are beyond fixing, at least until such a time that there is a robust cadre of contributors.
2. information on xylem :

• must not only be carefully worded but also be accompanied by plenty of illustrations
• is available elsewhere on the internet, through existing links within wikipedia. This information is well-illustrated and guarded from drive-by 'contributions' by passers-by who are not aware of the difference between wood and xylem. Brya 17:27, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Please remember that some of your "contributions" were informational errors of the kind that freshamn botany students might not even make, and that these errors had to be fixed by myslef and others, which is in direct opposition to the philosophy you are propounding here. Why not go contribute to those sites that you think are worth-while, instead of belly-aching about a site where you are clearly unhappy and are expressing that unhappiness as attacks on others? --EncycloPetey 03:12, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

I am not aware of any errors I entered in wikipedia. However, a considerable number of quite correct facts I did enter have been overwritten with gross errors by people who care nothing about the factual accuracy. Brya

Afraid I removed the material from xylem again. It really is wrong. Even if it were not wrong it would be out of place. I suggest that, if you feel strongly about it, you add material to the separate entries (vessel elemnt, vascular bundle, etc). But please make sure you get it right and, also, do illustrate. An entry should enlighten. Brya 08:12, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

While you may not beleive in evolution personally, that does not give you right to deny others access to that information. Text restored. --EncycloPetey 08:30, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I will try to take a look at the reference you listed. Peter Crane is a respected palaeobotanist, and I can hardly believe he would have made a mistake this big. Brya 12:27, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Leaf anatomy picture

I saw your leaf anatomy picture (Image:Leaf anatomy.jpg) and created a higher quality .SVG version (Image:Leaf anatomy.svg). As a result I have tagged your image for deletion. Thanks for taking the time to translate the diagram from German in the first place though - it really adds to the article. Oh, and if I missed anything on the diagram, just leave me a message and I'll make sure to fix it. DynaBlast 18:05, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Updated the image according to your corrections. DynaBlast 06:54, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Mistaken image notes

Greetings. I noticed that you tagged my series of heraldic images (tinctures) all as being "Now Commons", but I would point out that the images I made are *not* the same images as those on the Commons, merely very similar ones. This is easiest to see when you compare the two versions of purpure, since the shade is different and the lines are rendered differently. I suspect the Commons images are the same as the ones on the French wikipedia instead. --EncycloPetey 00:53, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I could've mistaken one for the other, as I took images from both en and fr. But even if it's not the same image, one is redundant to the other, so I'd have to tag 'em as ISD. I think the only ones that are not identical to those on Commons are azure and purpure - if I missed one, could you please finish the job for me?

Thanks for letting me know. --Fibonacci 02:08, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

History of art now COTW

Thanks to your support, this article is now the collaboration of the week. Feel free to help in any way possible during this week. — ₀₉₁₈^BRIAN • 2006-02-19 20:21

Connecting tubule

Hello. I noticed that you are a participant in the WikiProject Preclinical Medicine. The article Connecting tubule has been nominated for deletion. As this is an anatomical subject I was hoping to get somebody within the project to adopt the article for expansion. I could find no way to add the article to this project. I hope you or your fellow particpants would consider adopting this article to love. James084 22:06, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Re: Veterinary stub proposal

Hi EncycloPetey. I noticed your comment on the proposal for the Zoology Medicine stub - I am not sure whether you are simply listing the comment as a neutral, a support or an oppose, or simply and purely as a comment... Is there any chance you could possibly pop back to the proposal, and just mark which one your point is please? Thanks very much. Thor Malmjursson 22:31, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Bruno Bernard Heim

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm still pretty new at this, and it's nice to know it's all appreciated.Evadb 13:36, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

NOT the same

On the image page for Image:Trick tenne.png, you tagged that there was a vector version of the image available. this is not true. The vector version does not use the same colors, which is a problem for an image used to illustrate shades of colors. --EncycloPetey 13:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

In heraldry colours are only defined to an approximation. Both the version I uploaded as well as the original PNG version would be called tenne. If you want to delete the "vector version available" tag, well, allez votre corridor, but as far as heraldry is concerned these are the same. Shinobu 13:37, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Although you are correct about the variability in heraldic tinctures, I diasgree with you in this particular case. The SVG version of the image appears as brown, which would be termed brunatre in my experience. Tenne should be closer to orange and a lighter shade, though the specific color value varies. --EncycloPetey 13:47, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay, you should have said so right away, I can easily brighten it up a bit, although we should not make it too orange (here on the continent orange and tenne are different taints). They are intended as an alternative to the PNGs and any errors are to be corrected. I've been doing various tinctures, they're at Category:Heraldic SVG images. I have not done a brunatre yet (at least not intentionally :-), I will do so on request. Perhaps you can solve this mystery: I've found several different hatchings for tanne - which is correct/most common? Hatchings are tricky for the not-so-common tinctures. E.g. I've seen other hatchings for sanguine as well, and our current hatching for tenne for brunatre (the irony), as well as a statement that for brunatre the same hatching was used as for tenne. Shinobu 15:46, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I've encountered exactly the same problem, which is one reason I hadn't done a complete set already! I've even found that some authors say that sanguine and murrey are synonyms, so my work on the tincture pages has stalled while I try to sort it all out. I can say that I made the tenne PNG image, and that's the one set of hatchings that seems to be pretty consistent. The only way to be more certain for some of the others would be to find a copy of the original source in which the tricking patterns for the three stains was first described. Even then, there's no guarantee that the original designations have been followed consistently. We should keep in touch, but I can't offer more than that right now. --EncycloPetey 09:51, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

PNG to SVG

Thanks for all the feadback. The official reason(s) we are changing to SVG I don't know, but I think it's a good idea. For one, SVG images scale properly. This will become an advantage more and more as browser support increases. One day it will mean really good printed images too. A second reason is ease of editing. Vector images are very easy to edit compared to raster images. For example, if you want to shift two overlapping objects in a PNG, you cannot do so without access to the original versions. Resizing or recolouring? Cannot do so without the original vector versions. With SVG the image on wiki is the original vector version and all objects contained within remain separetely tweakable, replaceable etc. It helps the wiki spirit by allowing us to do with pictures what we are already doing with text. Shinobu 10:37, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Note: I have just discovered that there are several ways to keep filesize down, as well as to maintain a set of definitions that could be more easily copied to other SVGs. I will experiment on this. Shinobu 13:13, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I have cleaned up the Gules shield. It's filesize halved (although that's still much larger than the PNG version, but the advantages of SVG are big enough) and a few things were moved over to the defs section. This opens the way to a small library of heraldic things for later re-use in other images. I'll upload it to Commons soon. Shinobu 18:20, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

John Brooke-Little

Greetings...based on some other edits I've seen you do in heraldry-related articles, I thought you might like to join in the peer review of John Brooke-Little's article. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Keep up the great work.--Evadb 14:02, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

COTW

Well how I understood COTW voters give task to users involved in COTW and that they do most of the work. Am I right? Luka Jačov 10:02, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

No. Otherwise everyone might vote for an article that no one can work on. The voters and the writers are the same people. --EncycloPetey 04:01, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Non-vascular plant

I was wondering what you found bad about my edit at Non-vascular plant. I'll admit that I'm not a subject expert - I simply rephrased the existing material to read better. If there were any inaccuracies, then they are still there on the reverted page... Bluap 13:33, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

You didn't simply rephrase the existing material, you added "facts" that were incorrect, such as (1) calling it a generic name, (2) implying there is a single major subdivision of the group, (3) saying that only the sporangium of a bryophyte is diploid, and (4) unnecessarily introduced mention of the ferns and "fern-allies" which are vascular (whose mention in this article could lead to confusion). --EncycloPetey 13:37, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, and for your updates of the article. I agree with you that the article is pretty unsatisfactory, but that's often the case when referring to obsolete terms. In terms for "generic name", I hadn't realised that "generic" could mean "relating to a genus" - I was using the term to mean "non-scientific". Bluap 17:52, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Voting only for articles you will personally improve

Please see my comment in the COTW discussion re voting only for articles you will personally improve.

Moss taxonomy

Hi, I was wondering if you know much about moss taxonomy. The wikipage uses a system of subclasses which are not used on NCBI - NCBI calims to be using the most up to date system. Which is correct?--nixie 00:22, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Moss taxonomy at the highest levels is in a state of rapid change right now. None of the on-line genetic databases has a complete or consistent system, never mind one that is up-to-date. I do know that Brent Mishler here at UC Berkeley has been asked to oversee the updatng of moss taxonomy in GenBank, but I don't believe he's done much with it yet. The NCBI has this disclaimer:

Disclaimer: The NCBI taxonomy database is not an authoritative source for nomenclature or classification - please consult the relevant scientific literature for the most reliable information.

And the disclaimer is appropriate. My own expertise lies primarily with liverworts and hornworts, and to a lesser degree with ferns and certain monocot groups. However, I do know that mosses have several competing systems in current use, which is one reason I haven't tried to flesh out the moss pages on Wikipedia or Wikispecies. If you'd like to pursue this, my best recommendation is to see what the relevant paper says in A. Jonathan Shaw & Bernard Goffinet (Eds.), Bryophyte Biology, pp. 21-70. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). ISBN 0-521-66097-1. This volume contains the most recent thorough treatment for liverworts, and I seem to recall that it had a similar article for mosses. --EncycloPetey 09:40, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'm ready to takle the finer points of moss taxonomy, I was going to make a page for a requested article - but the taxonomic mess made me hesitate. I could always make the taxobox and leave out the details below Class and above Genus. Thanks for the reference, I will take a look if it's in my uni library.--nixie 13:21, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Heraldry Portal...

Hey. I've proposed the creation of an heraldic portal. If you think that such a thing would be helpful, you can voice your support HERE and hopefully we can get the heraldry category items organized better. Thanks for all your hard work on heraldic topics.--Eva ^db 08:49, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement. The portal is actually up, now. I've fleshed it out a little bit, but have NO idea what I'm doing. Your input would be greatly appreciated.--Eva ^db 19:04, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

szstem of hatching

My name is Laszlo. I have read a very interesting Polish article on Wikipedia about the system of hatching (szrafowanie). The Polish hatching (szrafowanie) for the tictures szary, naturalny, cielisty, and furs (futer) łasica, and soból is very interesting to me, because its quite different from the systems found in other countries. I am writing now a comprehensive article about tinctures in heraldry. Do you know something about this way of hatching? Is it a genuine Polish system or applied from other country? Please, let me know or write to checkerr@post.sk.

{{Tincture}}?

• As I was wikignoming around through various navboxes, I stumbled upon the Tincture template and added Buff (colour). At first, I thought as you mentioned in your edit. But when I saw that the buff article did make mention of its use in heraldry, I thought I would be WP:BOLD and add the template. Certainly, buff does not have the heraldic content of say Orange (colour), but it did fall into that "other" category fairly nicely. While it doesn't make sense to add more of the colors mentioned here to the template, as they would be redlinked, the addition of buff would aid in navigation. Anyway, my 2c and it was too long to fit into the edit summary. :)  — MrDolomite | Talk 13:41, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Votes

Hello! I noticed that you are a member of WikiProject Plants. Therefore you may be interested in supporting the nomination of Cactus to the Article Improvement Drive. There are woefully few plant articles among the featured articles. Furthermore, Cactus definitely deserves a better article. this is our chance! If you agree, you can suppost the nomination at the AID page. --Chino 04:50, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Alternation of generations

Noticed your discussions on the talk page. Are you happy with the current article intro ? I am not. A well established definition should be quoted as is instead of the current intro. I would do that if I was more confident with my knowledge of botany. Shyamal 12:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)