Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Beetles/Archive 1

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:56, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Great! I can't wait for WikiProject Beetles to be revived. Gug01 (talk) 20:41, 14 January 2015 (UTC) Gug 01

Beetle refs

Hi! I'm wondering what sources are most commonly used on beetles. Thanks, Bananasoldier (talk) 04:42, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Good question. It depends. If you are trying to write on beetles in general, I don't really know (I have to admit). But each beetle family has its own reliable source. For Carabidae, say, it is carabidae.org. Gug01 (talk) 21:56, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

@Gug01: So let's say a random article like Cicindela marginata. Where could we get sources? Thanks, Bananasoldier (talk) 22:08, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

For that particular article, we would use Carabidae.org, since Cicindela marginata is a Carabid beetle (a ground beetle). For beetles in general, you would have to search for them online, and each family, as stated before, has its own websites. Gug01 (talk) 22:27, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Y Thanks! Bananasoldier (talk) 23:12, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Beetles to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Beetles/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. You can view more results, request a new project be added to the list, or request a configuration change for this project using the Tool Labs tool. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 04:38, 14 March 2015 (UTC)

Article creation

I think there is a problem here. I see lots of new articles being created or tagged, but nearly all are stubs. 90% or more of the new beetle articles are stubs. We seriously need to destub these articles. I was thinking to make a Destub Cup (Turning a stub into a start is one point, stub into C-class is two, stub into B-Class is three and stub into GA is five) but I'm not sure if it will work. Gug01 (talk) 18:14, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

That's the sad reality of Wikipedia articles on organisms. It's easy to make a new article, put in a reference to a taxonomic database, bang out a sentence or two of text and slap a taxobox on it. It's much harder to consult multiple sources and weave together an article that has some useful information in it. And it doesn't help that for many organisms, the only information available is what's in the relevant taxonomic databases and the paper where the species was first described. Articles on birds are probably the best developed of any larger group of organisms, and about 55% of those are stubs (fishes are 75% stubs, plants 80%, lepidoptera 98.5%). Without a larger editor base, a Destub Cup isn't likely to make much of a dent in the stubs.

The flood of "new" articles is really because Mishae is back to tagging existing articles for this project. Newly created articles on beetles average less than 3 per day. I went through Category:Beetles a couple weeks ago and tagged all the articles on species that were longer than 3000 or 4000 bytes (I forget the exact number I used). That means that almost everything that is plausibly better than stub class has already been tagged for WikiProject Beetles; any ongoing tagging will be almost entirely stubs. Plantdrew (talk) 20:47, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree that there are too many stubs, and I'm of the opinion that most stubs don't help impart knowledge to readers (especially the "X is a species of Y named in xxxx" bare minimum variety). Here's a quick way to improve a stub: merge species stubs into a single genus article, add some genus-level information from a couple reliable publications (not merely a database), and list species with specific details in a table (especially attractive for taxa with no more than a dozen species). There is no absolute rule that says all species must have an article right away, especially if the species stub is identical in content to whatever is in Joel Hallan's biology catalog or ITIS. If merely transcribing databases is the "point" we can make bots do that, but it takes humans to make a decent article. Should one particular species of a genus be expanded to the point it no longer 'fits' in a genus article, great, split it: the result is one good genus article and a decent species article. --Animalparty-- (talk) 01:30, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Aphoenops, Aphaenops

English Wikipedia has an article Aphoenops, French Wikipedia has Aphaenops. They are the same genus. I have left comments on both talk pages, and received a response on the French talk page, explaining that Aphaenops is preferable and citing this English-language paper (see its Appendix A). But I know nothing of beetle taxonomy, and would prefer to leave it with you here. Maproom (talk) 06:16, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Good point. I'll fix the case up, and yes, you are right. Gug01 (talk) 19:30, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Cyphogastra calepyga

I was looking at this edit to this article and noticed that neither the new information or any of the details on this article were sourced. And one of the science-related links that might be used to confirm the information in the article is a dead link.
I haven't edited any species articles and just wanted to know whether this was unusual, to not have any references. I wasn't sure if I should put the article up for deletion or even whether it could be a complete hoax. Thanks for any advice you can offer. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:40, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

It should be unusual, meaning that its something that is commonly fixed, unfortunately there are a lot of articles like this needing cleanups. It's most likely not a hoax (I will check). Thanks for asking. Gug01 (talk) 21:20, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Just checked, the species is not a hoax. Whether it should be put up for deletion is another story. Gug01 (talk) 21:22, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Copyright Violation Detection - EranBot Project

A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These possible copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest (if such a copyvio is present).--Lucas559 (talk) 19:21, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Reassessment required

Please could I request an article class review for Ptinus tectus following a merger and expansion. Thanks Zakhx150 (talk) 14:52, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I would also like to request reassessment for Anchylorhynchus. I have done some work on it lately and I believe it is not stub-class anymore. Thanks! Bruno.asm (talk) 17:37, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Done. I tend to be pretty conservative in assessing article class; Anchylorhynchus is a solid Start-class, perhaps getting close to C-class. Plantdrew (talk) 00:10, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Per the WP:WikiProject Beetles/Assessment page, and the Arthropods page too, I believe the article shuld be considered a C-class because to a casual leader, it does in fact provide some information. Gug01 (talk) 23:56, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Its almost ancient history now Plantdrew but I never said thanks for sorting that reassessment. Thank ye muchly. Zakhx150 (talk) 13:44, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Rice weevil

Re Rice weevil. Are the two images right? Is left right and right left? A user at the talk wonders. Cheers. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:02, 29 December 2015 (UTC)