User talk:Stemonitis/Archive36

DO NOT EDIT OR POST REPLIES TO THIS PAGE. THIS PAGE IS AN ARCHIVE.

This archive page covers approximately the dates between November 8, 2011 and December 12, 2011.

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Image

Could I impose on your expertise to explain to me what resizes an image to approximately the given multiple of a user's preferred width means at WP:MOS#Images? What's the difference, say, between 1.2 and 1.8? In terms of graphics layout, I come from print journalism and think in terms of column width, which of course we don't really have, except when we do. It would make sense to me if (in order to account for the device used to read WP, and so as not to make images too large when we want them to show detail) we could specify that the image take up a certain percentage of the available width, so as to leave room for the text runaround. But I think I'm missing something. Cynwolfe (talk) 23:03, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

My understanding (and I don't claim to be an expert at this) is that every user has a set preference for thumbnail sizes. If, like me, you haven't explicitly set one, it currently defaults to 220px. That means that any image formatted as "thumb" without any other explicit width will appear 220px wide (regardless of whether it's landscape or portrait). A user with low screen resolution could therefore set the preference to less, and all thumbnails without further formatting will appear at that new size. (I don't know if the mobile version of Wikipedia has a different default setting.) Manually setting an image to, say, "300px" overrides that user preference, taking no account of the screen resolution. For such an image on an original iPhone – with a screen width of 320px – there will effectively be no room for text without zooming out. One obvious problem is that portrait images and landscape images need to be shown at different widths in order to be the same size, and that's why the "upright" parameter was introduced. In its simplest form, it sets the image width to 75% of the user's preference for [landscape] thumbnails, since most images are roughly in 4:3 aspect ratio. Of course, there are plenty of images which aren't either 3:4 or 4:3, so you can set the proportional width using, for instance, "upright=0.86" which, applied to a square image, makes it the same size, in pixels, as a standard 4:3 landscape thumbnail. Using "upright=1.2" makes an image 1.2× the user's preferred thumbnail width (264px for most users); using "upright=1.8" makes an image 1.8× the user's preferred thumbnail width (396px for most users). Percentages can be used, but I haven't seen it done in any article of recognised quality. I think the point is that the information contained in an image (and they're here to illustrate the article, after all, not just be attractive images) is determined by the absolute resolution, not by the amount of space taken up, because screen resolution is so much less than traditional printing. In any case, that's unrelated to the use of "upright". --Stemonitis (talk) 07:34, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. And how does this relate (if it does) to column specifications in the refs section? I'm somewhat unclear what {{reflist|30em}} does. Does it establish a relative column width that then permits a flexible number of columns depending on your display screen size (and perhaps in relation to your font size also)? In contrast to setting a number of columns, which might produce unreadably skinny columns on some devices. (To me the principle should be the same with images, but it seems not to be.) Apologies for coming to you with this; it's just that you seemed at the Roman pottery article to have thought this through. I've become more aware of reading on other devices because members of my family use a greater variety than I do. Cynwolfe (talk) 13:59, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the column specifications are in some ways similar. Using "{{reflist}}" on its own is equivalent to "{{reflist|2}}", and produces two columns, regardless of screen width. A better solution (in my opinion) is to set a column width in ems, so that a sensible amount of text is visible in each column, even on narrow screens, albeit with the number of columns potentially reduced. You are right in saying that this will depend on the font size. Actually, the parameter sets the minimum column size, below which the number of columns is reduced. Thus, if you have a display of 100 ems, and you use "{{reflist|30em}}", you will get three columns of around 33 ems each, but if you use "{{reflist|21em}}", you will get four columns of 25 ems each, because there isn't room for five columns of at least 21 ems in the 100-em screen width. At the same time, a narrower screen of, say, 30 ems, would show a single column in either case. My understanding is that the CSS used to produce this effect does not (yet) work on Internet Explorer (i.e. shows as a single column), which has always suffered from a lack of standards compliance. It is slowly getting better, and future versions should display them properly, I would expect. I don't know if there's any real standard for how wide columns should be. I tend to use 32 ems, which produces two columns on my display, but I have seen several cases using 30 ems, which produces three columns for me; that seems to occur mostly on articles with longer reference lists. All of this is not just relevant to other browsing devices (although that's increasingly important), but also to partially-sighted people who choose to use larger font sizes, and so on. --Stemonitis (talk) 15:44, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. That was exceedingly clear. I often adjust font size myself instead of using reading glasses, so this is applicable to a broader category of readers as well as those who might qualify as partially sighted in terms of accessibility in the usual sense. I very much appreciate the time you've taken to inform me. Cynwolfe (talk) 12:55, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Schlumbergera article

If you have time, could you have a look at Schlumbergera for me? I've been working on this for some time, and wonder if it could be taken forward to GA status (they're a popular group of houseplants so worth a good article I think). I have no experience of taking an article to this level so would welcome your opinion. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I'll have a look. My first impressions are very positive, but a lot depends on the reviewer at GA (it shouldn't really, but it does). --Stemonitis (talk) 16:26, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

By my interpretation of the good article criteria, Schlumbergera should be an easy pass. I've listed a bunch of things which might be done to improve it, but almost none of them affect the article's GA-worthiness. I haven't checked your facts against the cited works.

I am not familiar with the ICNCP, so I assume that your formatting of names under that code is correct.

Taxobox:

• List the 6 species in the taxobox; there is room here, and the list of species is not very prominent in the text.

Description:

• "20-30" – should use n-dash.

Taxonomy:

• "it has been detailed by McMillan and Horobin" needs an inline reference, in my opinion.
• Link Rouen.
• "Lemaire re-named it Schlumbergera epiphylloides (under the rules of botanical nomenclature it should have been called Schlumbergera russelliana, which is its current name)." Should that be "under the current rules"? I gather things weren't quite so formalised back then.
• "In 1890, Schumann transferred Epiphyllum truncatum to Zygocactus truncatus." Is Zygocactus a new genus at this point? The later text suggests so, but it isn't entirely clear.
• When referring to people for the first time, I think it's better to use the full name: "In 1890, Karl Moritz Schumann transferred..."; "In 1953, Reid Venable Moran placed..."; etc.
• Knebel is a disambiguation page; the other redirects to botanical authorities are not broken, but it might be nice to link directly to the articles there, too.
• "Linnaeus had created the genus Cactus." When? Link Carl Linnaeus, and probably give his full name. I was going to suggest that you link to the genus Cactus, too, but apparently it's a nomen rejiciendum; I had no idea.
• Linking "Epiphyllum Haw." is very unusual. Unless there's some good reason for it, I would replace it with "Epiphyllum Haw.".
• "Only selected synonyms are given in the list below." Selected how?

Distribution, habitat and ecology:

• Consider linking "20°S" to 20th parallel south.
• "David Hunt describes..." Would that be David Hunt (botanist)?
• It would be nice to have images of the wild plants as well as cultivars, and this would probably be a good place to put them. I can't see any obvious examples, but if you come across one, it would be a nice addition. If you have to remove an image for balance, I'd get rid of the Hungarian stamp – it doesn't seem to add much, and is misidentified (although we've got no source for that).
• Link hummingbird.
• Perhaps link "cross-pollination" to allogamy.
• Try to find a way of linking to vegetative reproduction at the end of the section.

Cultivation:

• "One of these, now called S. 'Buckleyi', is thought to be the plant most widely grown since as the common Christmas Cactus." This sentence seems somehow awkward; I'm not sure how to improve it.
• "A single Dutch grower..." – do we know who?
• Use image widths of (for example) 314 px, 363 px and 229 px to produce images of even height in the {{multiple image}}.
• The biggest potential problem, and the only one that seems likely to trouble a GA reviewer, is the Care of cultivars section. I think most of the material is acceptable, but you will need to be careful how you present it, in order to avoid giving advice, rather than merely describing common practice (WP:NOTHOW).

References:

• Put the full details for Anderson (2001) in the Bibliography, since it is referenced twice.

Other:

• Add a link to the Wikimedia Commons.
• If you really want to go overboard, you could start worrying about alt-texts (FA criterion).

Sometimes if I'm reviewing an article that is already very good, I suggest changes that go beyond the GA criteria, on the assumption that the author is trying to make the article as good as it can be, rather than just scraping by the mark. You may find that happens to this article as well, but it's nothing to worry about. If it were up to me, I'd be happy to pass Schlumbergera as a Good Article. Good luck with the nomination! --Stemonitis (talk) 10:16, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks; very helpful comments which I'll act on. I definitely don't want to just "scrape by the mark"; I don't really care about the formal status of the article, just getting it as good as it can be.

• I've searched extensively for copyright free images of wild plants; I have a couple of e-mail enquiries outstanding for copyrighted images in the hope that the holder will allow a low resolution image to be used. (This also affects the articles on the individual species - perhaps even more so.) It's a pity. I suppose that we couldn't claim "fair use" here?
• Care of cultivars is, I agree, a tricky area. The problem is that this is what most readers seem to want (and they keep adding poor quality web sites with this information to the External links section). I'll copy-edit it again to try to be as descriptive as possible.
• The stamp: yes, it shouldn't be there, with my correct but un-attributable statement that its caption is wrong. I put it in the article when I was considering whether there could be section on Schlumbergera in popular culture. There probably should be (another common name is "Grandmother's cactus", and old specimens of the true Christmas cactus are often family heirlooms), but it's hard to source.

Thanks again. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:30, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

I've now made all the changes you suggested; on the strength of your comments above I've rated it as "B" on the WP:Plants scale and nominated it for GA review. We'll see what happens! Peter coxhead (talk) 23:07, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Crayfish

Over the past several month, aside from yours and mine, most of the edits to the Crayfish article have involved obvious vandalism--all from anonymous sites. I suggest blocking anonymous editing on the article for 2-3 months. We've disagreed on some earnest edits (and subsequent deletions) and I can live with that, but, at this point, I think, the block is warranted. Certainly, the content can be improved, but it's not going to happen on anonymous edits. Alex.deWitte (talk) 20:23, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've semi-protected the article for three months. It's on my watchlist (and those of 98 other people, probably including yourself), so any requests for edits on the talk page will be picked up soon enough. --Stemonitis (talk) 09:08, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Indeed, I've been watching it ever since adding some of the material. I only started watching pages earlier this year and some of the vandalism is absolutely hair-raising. Absolutely puerile stuff. In part, this is what makes me more defensive about deleting semi-legitimate edits (possibly good material but in improper format, lacking citations, etc.). Alex.deWitte (talk) 19:27, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

About bird classification

Re: Discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Birds#Repetitive_work. Do you have any thoughts on using lists or websites to add details to bird pages with bots or semi-automatic tools. Snowman (talk) 20:14, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I've been watching that discussion unfold. If there's a reliable source (and for birds, there probably is), then (semi-)automating the citation process looks like a universally desirable act. I'd offer to help, but my remedial Perl would only hold you back! --Stemonitis (talk) 20:29, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I would be grateful for you opinion on the references that have been suggested there, as we do not want to make the same sort of mistakes as Polbot. Snowman (talk) 20:36, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

If the project members are happy that a source is reliable, then I am in no position to disagree; I really don't know the birding world very well. It would be good to see an example of your proposed output, or rather for the project to see it. Even tiny mistakes can be quite annoying, if propagated over hundreds of edits, but are easily prevented if spotted early enough. --Stemonitis (talk) 20:49, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Is case you are using tools that I am not ware of: Do you read the article to know where to put the {{cn}} tag for monotony issues or do you use a regex to do it semi-automatically? How have you found the pages to add these tags? Snowman (talk) 20:36, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I have to read the articles, and I find them from a list kindly produced by User:Quadell at User:Quadell/scrap2. Unfortunately (for your purposes), the wording is not always the same. Although Polbot used a single wording, I believe, that wording was badly written ("Aus bus is monotypic in the genus Aus." – it is the genus that is monotypic, not the species), and so many editors have changed it in a variety of ways. I guess you might be able to match any sentence containing the text in the genus= field of the taxobox, and the word "monotypic", and look for the {{citation needed}} tag at the end of the sentence or clause, but very simple regex approaches will miss several instances. --Stemonitis (talk) 20:49, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I see. What is the status lists in the the sections headed "Confirmed monotypic" and "Confirmed polytypic"? Are these lists complete? Are there any monotypic species or genera not on that subpage? Snowman (talk) 20:57, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

That is a single cleanup task, to do with Polbot making possibly unjust assumptions. The list on that page covers not only birds, and you need only consider the #Citation needed section, I think. There are many more monotypic bird genera than are mentioned there; I don't know how assiduous the Birds project has been in assigning them to the category, but there are over 300 in Category:Monotypic bird genera. The entries in #Confirmed monotypic and #Confirmed polytypic already have citations for the number of constituent species, whatever it may be, and so will not need further citations. --Stemonitis (talk) 21:02, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I now know that we need to start a list of monotypic bird genera and species from scratch. I have not forgotten that the in-line citatiton needs to be added as well. Snowman (talk) 21:15, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Deletion of categories

Does the decision at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2011_November_5#Category:Malayemys constitute a precedent? Or does every similar small category need a discussion before deletion in future? I've come across quite a few plant category pages where putting the entries at a higher taxonomic level would be more sensible. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:10, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

In a way it does. Actually, I think the precedent was established long before that very small categories are not useful. I have only been deleting categories containing only one article, because they are clearly useless (for reasons I have discussed elsewhere); a category with two entries could conceivably be useful, although I agree that they rarely are. I have also only been deleting categories created automatically by Polbot. For a category created by a real user, I would consider discussing it with the creator first. I think a lot of people may have got the impression that we should for some reason have a category for every genus, possibly just because they saw Polbot's categories. For deliberate categories, my general approach has been to move all the articles to the parent category, and then blank the small category (so it doesn't appear in the parent category itself). After four days, it is unambiguously deletable under the criteria for speedy deletion. That also gives the category's creator (or anyone else) time to repopulate the small category if they think it's useful. The key criterion should generally be the size of the parent category; a subcategory should be created if the parent category needs diffusing. --Stemonitis (talk) 08:14, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

This seems a sensible approach. A problem I've found with diffusing the higher level category is that the information needed is hard to find or not available. Thus subfamilies may be the 'right size' for a category in a reasonably-sized plant family, but with the exception of those specifically established for families abandoned in APG III, lists of genera by subfamily are usually woefully out of date. Kew and other similarly maintained databases only give the family. (The same problem applies to sections within large genera.) Other than searching the literature, do you know of any useful sources of such information? Peter coxhead (talk) 09:27, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Sadly, no. --Stemonitis (talk)

Three very small Polbot-generated categories I've blanked today (moving the articles upwards to Category:Scilloideae) are: Category:Rhadamanthus, Category:Ledebouria and Category:Whiteheadia. Perhaps you can delete them when the appropriate time has passed. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:21, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

I have deleted them. There is consensus (among us two) that they should be deleted, and their creator will not raise any objections! --Stemonitis (talk) 19:29, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about my erroneous re-categorizations which you fixed; it comes from using the HotCat tool; I'll be more careful.Peter coxhead (talk) 20:36, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Another Polbot one: Category:Renealmia Peter coxhead (talk) 20:36, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Also deleted (and indexing fixed). --Stemonitis (talk) 22:09, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

Bot

I have disabled the bot from running automatically, so I can try to debug the problem again. The difficulty is that the problem is caused by the toolserver database, not by the bot, so it's a matter of making the bot sufficiently wary not to be tricked by bad data. Unfortunately I can't make the toolserver database break when I want it to, it only breaks when I am not looking.

In any case it's safe to unblock the bot, although there is no hurry. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:53, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Unblocked. --Stemonitis (talk) 13:15, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Quick question

Hey again, this one isn't about taxonomy for a change! Over at Talk:Portia_africana/GA1 I was wanting to know whether it is acceptable to write Portia's and Portia africana's or not? I've already reworded the article to remove any Portia's but just wondered if this was correct or not? Thanks as usual! SmartSE (talk) 22:20, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I always consider it incorrect. If nothing else, it's awkward. When I'm writing, I always re-word the sentence to say "the eyesight of Portia" or "the species' eyesight" or "the spider's eyesight" or something similar. I'm not aware of any style guide that mentions it, but it's definitely not something you see often in good scientific writing. --Stemonitis (talk) 08:08, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Revert of Zyzzyzus

I'd like to understand the rational for the full revert of my edits to Zyzzyzus. This is a sincere request in the interest of improving my editing of other articles. I expect to be making many edits to Cnidaria articles and would like for those edits to be productive and high quality. I do understand (and accept) the preference for bare url ref rather than WRMS template but rational the reversion of Automatic taxobox and replacement of the stub category are less clear to me. Can you provide explanation or point me at appropriate style guidance or article exemplars I should be emulating? bondolo (talk) 19:45, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

The main point is that there was nothing wrong with the manual taxobox (indeed, quite the opposite, since at the time the automatic taxobox was displaying unwanted minor ranks, contrary to WP:TX). While there are some advantages to using automatic taxoboxes, there are also some real disadvantages, chief among them the separation of the visual output from the article itself. The automated taxobox system is no better at producing taxoboxes, but is much better at producing bewilderment in untrained editors.

I hadn't actually realised that you'd changed the stub tag, which I have now re-implemented, in preparation for a point in the future where it makes a difference (it is currently upmerged). You also removed a valid category, for which I can see no justification, and you replaced a well-formatted citation to an external source with a badly-designed and woefully incomplete template-produced version. {{WRMS}} may be acceptable for an external link (although I would say not), but absolutely cannot be used for referencing. --Stemonitis (talk) 20:17, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback. The category removal was accidental. Sorry. Splitting the upmerged Cnidaria category is my ultimate goal before adding Anthozoa-stub to a lot of coral articles. I figured it would be easier to effect the split before Cnidaria got too large and hope to complete the split in the next couple of days.

I kind of like Automatic taxobox as it removes a lot of boilerplate (and opportunities to make mistakes and factual errors). YMMV of course. I somehow got the impression, perhaps erroneously, that Automatic taxobox was "the new way" and performing conversions was a worthwhile activity.

I completely agree that the WRMS template is inadequate and the species template is especially ugly. I am still learning wikimedia templating and have to learn more before I'll attempt to improve it. I do plan to though as WRMS is a great resource for coral taxo references. I would like to make the WRMS template more like the ITIS template. If there are better exemplars than ITIS I'll use them as my guide. bondolo (talk) 03:58, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I think it would be perfectly appropriate to make a new template for citing WoRMS, specifically for corals (i.e. all those taxa included in the World Hydrozoa Database). It's fairly straightforward, and I can help you if you like. My command of templates is not brilliant, but it's enough for that kind of thing. It's just a question of passing the right parameters to a {{cite}}-family template. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:43, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I've just knocked up a template which will do what you want. It's currently in my userspace, but if I move it across, then this:

{{cite WoRMS |author=P. Scheuchert |year=2010 |title=''Zyzzyzus'' Stechow, 1921d |db=Hydrozoa |id=267956 |accessdate=November 24, 2011}}

will produce this:

Stemonitis/Archive36

Political geography
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Country	Scotland

It also works for a couple of other WoRMS databases that I know of, and I can easily add others. --Stemonitis (talk) 08:15, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I will follow up on this new template eventually. Thanks! bondolo (talk) 21:28, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Revert at Hemiptera

I have added some comments to the discussion. It seems like you are remembering the folk name mapping with the old Hemiptera-Homoptera rather than the new Hemiptera=(Heteroptera+Sternorrhyncha+Auchenorrhyncha). Shyamal (talk) 12:01, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, "true bugs" isn't really a folk name, but rather one that specialists use when trying to communicate with lay people. I don't think the classification outside Heteroptera really matters. The important thing is not to change the weighting too much; "true bug" is mostly used for Hemiptera, but also sometimes for just Heteroptera, in my experience. That shouldn't be changed to suggesting that it usually means Heteroptera only, at least not without discussion. --Stemonitis (talk) 12:54, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, it is mostly used for what is now Heteroptera (which was earlier referred to as Hemiptera) - and since Wikipedia is defining the new meaning of Hemiptera, that mapping must be appropriately changed or at the least explained) rather than to go only with old references. I think the sources that are currently being used are not appropriate and reliable for this information. A recent encyclopaedia like Resh and Carde is quite appropriate as it captures the confusion and history, but I will leave it to you and others. Shyamal (talk) 13:04, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I would be quite suspicious of that claim. I think there are also national differences – my suspicion is that Americans prefer to use "true bug" to mean Heteroptera, while people from elsewhere use it to mean Hemiptera, as I would. I'm not saying that the article shouldn't be changed, just that an abrupt change like that needs to be done carefully. You state "Heteroptera (which was earlier referred to as Hemiptera)"; is that really true? Hemiptera is a Linnaean name, and included aphids, cicadas and others even back then. --Stemonitis (talk) 13:10, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I affirm the basic contention although I should correct myself very slightly in that the Heteroptera were earlier included in the Hemiptera (when the Hemiptera - Homoptera dichotomy was followed). I have noted (and quoted) the structure of Borror-Triplehorn-Johnson and their notes in the talk page. What seems to be happening on the article is a conflation of terms with supporting references from different epochs. Shyamal (talk) 13:17, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

-a/-us/-um

Hi, thanks for the edits at melanocephalus. Your addition of the neutral version set me thinking - I feel that our default position on the title for this kind of article should be to opt for the neutral term if it exists, rather than arbitrarily picking the male or female version - do you have an opinion on this, or are you OK for me to go ahead and move the page? Thanks SP-KP (talk) 18:01, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the masculine is probably the best title. Bear in mind that grammatical gender is not intimately linked with biological sex, so neuter is not necessarily "neutral" in that sense. Dictionaries (including Wiktionary; cf. wikt: ater / atra / atrum) generally quote the masculine form, and we should probably follow that precedent. --Stemonitis (talk) 18:05, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, and also for the Orang-utan comments. I'll leave melanocephalus as is. SP-KP (talk) 19:19, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

You're very welcome – any time. --Stemonitis (talk) 19:21, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

About one of your edits

I might have misunderstood the taxobox in question and my edit might have been an accidental error. To me it looks like your edit that reverted my edit was done by rollback. Is this the case? Snowman (talk) 21:38, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

No, that rollback was very deliberate. The article was fine before you edited, but your attempt to add manual formatting caused the taxobox to stop displaying properly. You may have overlooked that hoatzin uses an {{automatic taxobox}}, which functions somewhat differently from {{taxobox}}. It's important to preview edits before applying them; you'd have been able to see how the article would looked without saving it in that state, for instance. --Stemonitis (talk) 22:02, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Are you saying that you used rollback? Snowman (talk) 22:53, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, per the first reason for using rollback: edits "where the reason for rollback is absolutely clear". --Stemonitis (talk) 06:50, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

The rollback feature is not for this sort of accidental error. As you have implied above, you thought that I may have not noticed that the taxobox. The guideline states that "When in doubt, use another method of reversion and supply an edit summary to explain your reasoning." I think that repeated use of the rollback tool like this would be abuse of the tool. Another sort of function to revert my accidental error would have permitted you to state in the edit summary that the taxobox is automatic pointing out to me what you had suspected I had accidentally missed. Snowman (talk) 11:58, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Your edit was not an accident. You did not accidentally click on edit, accidentally add ten apostrophes and then accidentally press "Save". You intended to make a change, in good faith, but one which was evidently and seriously detrimental. Anyone looking at the two versions can see that your edit caused significant harm and no benefit. Why are you making a fuss about this? You made a mistake, and I corrected it quickly and efficiently. I consider that an acceptable use of rollback, and that is corroborated by policy. Accusing others who clean up after you of "abuse" is not helpful to anyone. I suggest you be more careful in your edits in future, and then such situations will not arise. --Stemonitis (talk) 12:09, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I have not actually said that one edit like this is abuse, but that I thought that repeated use would be. I am trying to help you to understand that it would have been better to use another sort of revert here, because I think that it would have been better for the edit summary to explain that the taxobox was automatic. You had suspected that I had missed that the taxobox was automatic. Perhaps, you should have thought a bit more before using the rollback function, because the rollback function did not provide me with useful information in the edit summary and it was not obvious to me what had gone wrong with my edit initially. Clearly, you were aware that the taxobox was automatic and you suspected that I had missed this. So I think that your use of the rollback was not very intelligent here. The guidelines states that "When in doubt, use another method of reversion and supply an edit summary to explain your reasoning." Snowman (talk) 12:28, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't obvious to you what the error was!? You must start using preview. I could have used another type of revert, but it would have taken longer, and the problem was incredibly obvious, and there was no doubt that it was an ill-conceived edit. I worked out only afterwards how you might have thought such an edit a good idea; I still find it hard to believe. Thinking about it, not only must you have failed to use preview, you must not have looked at the article beforehand – you would have seen that the genus was already in bold italics in the taxobox, and needed no further formatting. The more I think about it, the less sympathy I have for your complaint. You made a terrible mistake, and it was fixed. These things happen, and nobody makes a big thing about it normally; you just shake your head and move on. Seriously, move on. --Stemonitis (talk) 12:36, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

A quote from the introduction at Wikipedia:Rollback feature; "Standard rollback may only be used in certain situations – editors who misuse standard rollback (for example, by using it to reverse good-faith edits in situations where an explanatory edit summary would normally be expected) may have their rollback rights removed. Since rollback is part of the core administrator tools, an admin could theoretically be stripped of their administrative privileges in order to remove those tools.". Snowman (talk) 12:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Now you have gone too far. You came here to complain that I had mended your error (!), and now you are implicitly threatening me with desysopping. Your response is entirely disproportionate, and you have eroded my sympathy for your complaint down to nil. If you have any reasonable questions or comments, I will be happy to comment on them, but until that time, I would ask you to leave this page alone. Other people in a similar situation tend to leave comments thanking editors for fixing their mistakes, and everyone shares a laugh at how foolish the mistake was. Accusations make few friends, and in a collaborative project such as Wikipedia, that can be very important. Not once have you apologised for making a mistake, for making others clean up after you, for wasting their time. Your edit was at fault, and you must not try to shift the blame to other people. --Stemonitis (talk) 13:08, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I also note that you used rollback here, and you used it several times where the new user deleted categories from a redirect. As far as I am aware, you did not explain to the new user why you were doing this. I guess the new user did not know why a redirect would need a category or more than one category, and I would have to look up the guidelines to find out. I think that the new user would have benefited from an explanation in the edit summary, but alas the rollback function does not permit this. Hence the guidelines suggest that rollback should not be used for reverting good-faith edits and where an explanatory edit summary would help the user. I guess that a new user would be disappointed to have his or her edits reverted by unexplained rollback functions. Snowman (talk) 13:02, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

He or she can ask me if it isn't clear to them. The explanation would not fit in the edit summary, anyway. That's more useful than trying to read his or her mind. You don't know what they were thinking, and nor do I. --Stemonitis (talk) 13:08, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I would have thought that this rollback function would have needed an explanation. Snowman (talk) 13:10, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

You would be wrong. I will listen to apologies, but other comments may well be deleted (yes, even rolled back). This is becoming harassment, rather than constructive criticism. --Stemonitis (talk) 13:15, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Bulbophyllum nocturnum

Orlady (talk) 14:49, 29 November 2011 (UTC) 00:02, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Formatting of Ericaceae list

For now, I would like to be able to control the look of the Ericaceae list (though additional references/content etc. are always welcome). Eventually I'll move it to a more suitable location (EricaceaeWeb.com or similar), but for now Wikipedia is an easy outlet. Once this has occurred I'll stop editing here and you'll be free to format it in any way you chose. From my understanding there are no strict rules for taxa lists. All-caps are apparently frowned upon, but I find them useful in this case. All the red text is an eye sore in my opinion. But as I create new relevant taxon pages I will add them in. And also, the sentence "Currently accepted subfamily names are all capitalised, while tribal ranks are in bold." made no sense after your edit. BC Myles (talk) 08:32, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, all-caps is unacceptable, and there is no good reason for removing red links. Nor should headings be in title case. I'm afraid you don't get to choose the style of articles on Wikipedia (you can use your user-space for that), and asserting special status as the creator is close to ownership. I suggest you reintroduce the changes I made, and perhaps update the text accordingly (sorry for overlooking that in my original edit). --Stemonitis (talk) 08:41, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

		The Good Article Barnstar
		Thanks Stemonitis for helping to promote Hemigrapsus estellinensis to Good Article status. Please accept this little sign of appreciation and goodwill from me, because you deserve it. Keep it up, and give some a pat on the back today. --Sp33dyphil © • © 05:53, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Bougainvillia

When I created the page Bougainvillia (Hydrozoa) I thought the name Bougainvillia was already in use for the plant genus Bougainvillea. I did not realise that the names were spelled differently and that it merely redirected there. For this reason I created the name with (Hydrozoa) added though in fact that addition was quite unnecessary. When I tried to rename the page to its genus name I could not do so because that name was already in use for the redirect I had created. Please could you sort the mess out for me? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:32, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done. Glad to be of service. --Stemonitis (talk) 17:12, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:36, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Prostoma jenningsi

Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:05, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

WP Tree of Life in the Signpost

The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Tree of Life for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering. Multiple editors will have an opportunity to respond to the interview questions. If you know anyone else who would like to participate in the interview, please share this with them. Have a great day. -Mabeenot (talk) 03:26, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Holaxonia

I know you are interested in how articles display so I would like your advice on my new page Holaxonia. There are so many genera that I wanted to have more than one column but I also wanted to keep each family intact. The formatting I have used makes the columns start below the taxobox but other text, such as the heading "Families and genera", stays above. I added a couple of images to try to improve the appearance of the page. Is there a better way of making fixed content columns display when you are using a taxobox? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:33, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I think I understand what you're getting at, and I think the answer is yes. If you replace {{col-begin}} with {{col-begin|width=auto}}, then the columns will be only as wide as they need to be (if there's room, that is), rather than taking up a rigid 50% each. You can then align the images right, so that they show up directly below the taxobox on the right-hand side. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:49, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

That's much better. Thank you. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 14:32, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Hemoglobin

What do you suggest? Bear in mind that the name of the Wikipedia article is Hemoglobin and the Wikipedia article on Heme is also spelled Heme... I checked articles published by Max Perutz. He actually used both Hemoglobin and Haemoglobin until the 1990s. When he discovered the structure of Hemoglobin, he used Haemoglobin in the title of the research article. Probably because he was at Cambridge in England. I'm not saying Haemoglobin is wrong. I'm trying to make an argument, that Hemoglobin is more widely used outside the UK.

• Google
  • hemoglobin -haemoglobin 18,900,000 results
  • haemoglobin -hemoglobin 8,190,000 results
• PubMed
  • "hemoglobin" 94435
  • "haemoglobin" 23331

I'm Danish. And in Denmark it's spelled Hæmoglobin. Carstensen (talk) 16:51, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting anything. I'm just reiterating that this is a question of national varieties of English, and that therefore both spellings are correct. You insist that the British English spelling is not used, and I have shown otherwise. The article uses the American spelling, which is fine, but it must mention the British English spelling, and it must not alter direct quotations. There must be consistency in the prose, but that doesn't extend to the references or to the filenames of images. --Stemonitis (talk) 16:59, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Foreign character

Template:Foreign character has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Smerus 13:54, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I've added a bit of background, and I have tried to make it as neutral as possible. --Stemonitis (talk) 14:31, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

• And Template:Foreignchars Bulwersator (talk) 14:20, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Talyllyn postbox

Hi - I'm trying to disambiguate Talyllyn, and would welcome your help in locating one of your photos, File:Lamp box.jpg. It's used in Lamp box, but doesn't clarify which Talyllyn it refers to - Talyllyn Lake, or the hamlet near Brecon. Do you recall where you took this? Thanks. — An optimist on the run! 17:27, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I do. It's by Tal-y-llyn Lake (southern Gwynedd), just by the hotel. --Stemonitis (talk) 18:05, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks - I'm just drafting an article for the hamlet, so I'll link it to that. — An optimist on the run! 18:18, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Snowdon

The article Snowdon you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needed to be addressed. If these are fixed within seven days, the article will pass, otherwise it will fail. See Talk:Snowdon for things which need to be addressed. Jezhotwells (talk) 20:16, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Olindiasidae

The category "Olindiasidae" should really be renamed "Olindiidae", which is now the accepted version of the name for this family of jellyfish. I have changed the name in the taxobox of each of the 4 constituents of the category, but how can the category itself be renamed? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 07:14, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

It can't, not really. It's a technical limitation that the "Move" function cannot be applied to categories. All you can do is create a new category at the desired title, and either ask for the old one to be deleted (under WP:CSD#C2) or replace the contents of the old one with {{category redirect}}. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:32, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I have done what you suggested. Thanks for your help. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:38, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification

Hi. In HMS Collingwood (1908), you recently added a link to the disambiguation page John Murray (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. For more information, see the FAQ or drop a line at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:36, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

 Done. --Stemonitis (talk) 11:38, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Need for manual taxoboxes for hybrid genera

I'm quite keen on maintaining automatic taxoboxes throughout the Asparagaceae sensu APGIII, because I'm not sure that the merger of families will last (e.g. I know that some significant workers in this area, such as Alan Meerow, want some de-merging). If this does happen, it will be easier to fix if the taxoboxes are automated, although a few hybrid genera won't matter.

I'm not sure what the problem was that caused you to substitute manual taxoboxes. Can you explain? Perhaps the automatic taxobox templates could be fixed to avoid it. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:52, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Category:Automatic taxobox cleanup was littered with the broken templates. Well, that's an overstatement, but the two taxonomy templates were stuck there. If the automated system can be fixed, then that would be fine, but at the moment, it causes listing in cleanup categories (i.e. something is broken) for no benefit (i.e. they display the same information). --Stemonitis (talk) 12:55, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

vampire bat

I decided to bring back the Common Vampire Bat article as a GA nominatee. It has been given the necessary changes. LittleJerry (talk) 15:48, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

It would probably be more appropriate to start a new nomination, rather than resurrecting an old one; I'm not sure of the accepted form in such matters. I'm also not sure I can commit the time to check it out properly at the moment. After a quick look, the main problem appears to be that the article still needs copy-editing. The lead alone contains a number of fairly obvious errors of punctuation. I strongly recommend seeking the help of the Guild of Copy Editors, who will be able to find the faults and fix them. There are too many for me to deal with quickly. --Stemonitis (talk) 20:53, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

I did and it was copyedited. LittleJerry (talk) 23:38, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

All I can tell you is that it is still in need of proof-reading, by someone with proper command of semicolons and apostrophes. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:23, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

About Typhlochactas mitchelli clean-up

Thank you! --Shirt58 (talk) 10:21, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome. I didn't do all that much, really. --Stemonitis (talk) 11:02, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Just checking in, what with me being a loose cannon on the good ship HMS Arthropod and all. Thanks again.--Shirt58 (talk) 11:27, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Juxtastenopus

This is an automated message from CorenSearchBot. I have performed a web search with the contents of Juxtastenopus, and it appears to be a substantial copy of http://www.marinespecies.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=513964.

It is possible that the bot is confused and found similarity where none actually exists. If that is the case, you can remove the tag from the article. The article will be reviewed to determine if there are any copyright issues.

If substantial content is duplicated and it is not public domain or available under a compatible license, it will be deleted. For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material. You may use such publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences. See our copyright policy for further details. (If you own the copyright to the previously published content and wish to donate it, see Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials for the procedure.) CorenSearchBot (talk) 00:36, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Dumb bot. Reverted. --Stemonitis (talk) 00:38, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Bombus cockerelli

Hi. Several authorities had considered cockerelli to be a subspecies of vagans, others thought it was a synonym of flavifrons, and the list at the NHM ignored it accordingly (he does not list every synonym or subspecies under each name). The press release is in advance of any actual publications. We thought it more important to get the word out (covering only the essentials) than to wait a few months trying to find a journal that would review and publish all the gory details. Peace, Dyanega (talk)

I see. A reference would still be good, as soon as it's available. I'm sure you're working on it. --Stemonitis (talk) 08:41, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Sheldonian Theatre

Sorry Stemonitis, but I don't share your interpretation of the meaning of the image use oplicy. I would contend that the images in the Gallery section for the Sheldonian Theatre article do "...add to the reader's understanding of the subject..." as per said Image Use Policy by showing the Theatre from different perspectives, its interior and an exterior view from within the Theatre's Cupola. If you have objections to the quailty of the photography, or of some other pertinent nature I'm happy to consider them, but I cannot see that the final set of (I believe four) images that comprised the gallery did violate the Image Use Policy.--Ozeye (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:29, 10 December 2011 (UTC).

GA review of Schlumbergera

Thanks again for your comments before I nominated this for review, and also for putting a reminder at WT:PLANTS. You may have noticed that the GA review was successful. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:55, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

No, I hadn't seen. That's good news – well done. --Stemonitis (talk) 18:04, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Khanzada

I hope that you can forgive my boldness in merging Khanzada Rajput with Khanzada. I realise that you proposed a merger, but I had threatened to do something drastic with the articles about six weeks ago and have taken the opportunity presented to me.

I really do not understand how we ended up with two articles that pretty much duplicated each other, although I noted that your proposal was to "re-merge", which suggests that there is something in the history regarding a fork. In any event, and provided that no-one challenges, I intend to fettle Khanzada as best I can. The present sources are horrendously poor but we have to start somewhere and I think that the best plan is to fill in the numerous gaps, bring the citations etc up to standard, fix the copy/pastes (although they are mostly not copyvios) ... and then see if there are more modern sources that can be used in replacement for the extremely dodgy stuff churned out by British Raj amateurs who often relied on, for example, the even more dodgy work of people such as James Tod etc.

For reasons that I have not fully understood in this instance, but which are fairly normal for articles related to the northern bit of the subcontinent, there appears to be some friction of the Indo-Pakistani nationalist/religious variety on the talk pages. I'll just stick with policy when dealing with that: RS, V, DUE etc. Does this seem like a reasonable plan to you? - Sitush (talk) 00:22, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

What you've done so far seems fine to me. I was very pleased to see such a rapid response to the merger tags. I have had very little contact with the two pages in question. They had been tagged as containing "ibid."-style references for a long time, which is something I've been working on, and that's how I came across them. When I realised that the two articles were largely identical, I figured that that needed fixing before spending time sorting the references out. In the end, you've achieved both aims, and made the article much better in the process, as far as I can see. Please continue however you wish to proceed. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:01, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I've not finished but I am fairly sure that the clean up tag can be removed now. - Sitush (talk) 21:58, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

By all means. As I say, my task for that article has been completed (largely by you), so I have no further stake in it. --Stemonitis (talk) 22:00, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

		The Good Article Barnstar
		Thanks Stemonitis for helping to promote Snowdon to Good Article status. Please accept this little sign of appreciation and goodwill from me, because you deserve it. Keep it up, and give some a pat on the back today. --Sp33dyphil ©hatontributions 02:54, 12 December 2011 (UTC)