Talk:Plesiorycteropus

Photo required
Photo required of the skeleton or an artistic impression of this animal. --Francisco Valverde 21:26, 27 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Please go to the AMNH and take a pic. The only recent publication about this animal is . There are some pics in there, but it's copyrighted. The only thing you can do is asking them to release it under GFDL or another license. I don't think Wikipedians in Madagascar will be of much help here - this animal has been extinct for a while now. Ucucha (talk)  06:06, 29 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I know it is extinct but I believe that the first place to ask for a free copyright image of a bone or anything useful could be Madagascar... perhaps someone who is in the research, or perhaps in a museum of Madagascar... --Francisco Valverde 15:31, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I've got an idea. Perhaps if someone (I am implied) was to see the pictures from the AMNH, they could make some artistic impressions based on what they saw! --KnowledgeLord 06:58, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Bizarre? Mysterious?

 * Plesiorycteropus is one of the most bizarre and mysterious mammals known.

The article doesn't mention why except that it doesn't seem to have known close relatives.— JyriL talk 17:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

In defense of an edit reverted
In the edit summary explaining why he reverted an edit that I had made, Ucucha wrote: "That's in fact a more complicated system; and MOS says not to change reference style needlessly." I never make what I consider to be "needless" edits. When I came upon this article, the links from the notes to the cited references were not the usual super scripted [1] and [2] that one expects to see. Rather, the links to the cited references were superscripted strings of 30 or 40 characters. Sort of like this: [1asdfkjerltguhzdflighbalerughnzdrjghxlcvnzlirUtajrfnv]. The markup text in the article was/is correct according to WP:REFNEST, yet it produced the unexpected result I've described. So I changed it.

After reversion, the original markup is apparently working correctly. Unexplained, unexpected, and apparently intermittent results are disturbing, suggesting the use of an alternate method to avoid inconsistent behavior on the part of Wikipedia's code.

I disagree with Ucucha's assertion that use of Ref / Note templates is more complicated than the #tag:ref magic word method of putting notes in a separate section. Note text should be segregated from the article text so that editors don't become confused by what they're reading. When note text is off in its own section, it is obvious that it is a note, parenthetical to the article - especially when note text is a number of sentences in length.

I should also like to see the works in §Literature cited encapsulated in templates. References in the article, which currently look like this:, should be changed to Harvard style:.

The reader gets a link from the article text to the reference and from the reference to the full citation. See how this looks and works in Bananaquit and Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group. These mechanisms also enforce standardization giving a uniform look and feel to the document both from readers' and editors' points of view.

--Trappist the monk (talk) 15:24, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * The random text you saw was probably a result of a bug introduced by a recent change in MediaWiki. It has been fixed, but remnants may have survived in the MediaWiki cache.
 * A disadvantage of the templates you used is that it is necessary to keep track of the note numbers in two different places. Use of makes the software keep track of that, and the system is inherently less fragile because it is inbuilt in the software. Ucucha (talk) 15:45, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * True, the editor must keep track of note numbers. But, it isn't that difficult and only needs to be done rarely.  I'd like to see some development that combines the best of both.


 * Since you did not comment on the changes that I'd like to see in this article, may I assume that you will not rise to object if I were to come back to this article at some point and make those changes?


 * --Trappist the monk (talk) 16:45, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * There is: we have list-defined references (WP:LDR). But I think it's better to keep note text with the place where the note is used; it makes editing easier.
 * Our Manual of Style says not to change a consistent and functional citation style. This article has such a style. Besides, the problem with standardization is that there is a host of competing standards. More articles use Cite journal and friends than use Citation; probably more use Sfn than Harvnb. Both of the examples you cite have several problems in their Harvard citations, as revealed by the User:Ucucha/HarvErrors script I wrote. Ucucha (talk) 16:56, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Nice tool. Those two pages are fixed.  Thanks.


 * If WP:LDR is the defining standard by which list-defined references are to be formatted, then this article does not comply. WP:LDR shows the list inside the  template but here that isn't the case.


 * I wasn't quite as clear as I should have been perhaps.  is the top level of a set of templates from which ,  , etc all descend.  I used  as a broad-brush to encompass those other templates.


 * --Trappist the monk (talk) 19:00, 14 November 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:LDR is one technical option, not the standard. Its use is optional. In this case, most citations are so short (and those that are not are mostly not in running text) that the gain from list-defined references would be minimal.
 * The top-level template is actually Template:Citation/core; Citation and the Cite xxx templates all use this meta-template, but output slightly different citations. Ucucha (talk) 19:10, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I don't think that we are communicating. I get the impression that you think that I want to use Citation rather than one of the derived Cite templates.  Not true as an inspection of the two example articles will show.  That is my fault.  So, I rewrite the afflicted sentence here:


 * I should also like to see the works in §Literature cited encapsulated in Cite book or related templates.


 * You said that this article uses list-defined references and linked to WP:LDR. When I pointed out that this article doesn't conform to WP:LDR you hand-waved that away and claimed that WP:LDR isn't the standard but rather an option.  Argh!  Where is the standard?  Why did you not refer to the standard to support your claim?


 * --Trappist the monk (talk) 01:17, 15 November 2011 (UTC)


 * There is no standard; LDR is but one option. I brought it up because it allows you to separate article text from reference contents, while avoiding use of the antiquated ref and note templates.
 * I've written dozens of featured articles using a consistent citation style, and every now and then someone comes along that wants the citation style in some one of them changed to fit their taste. That taste tends to be different every time. More recently, I switched to a style using Sfn and Cite templates, and people find the need to change citation styles to fit their tastes. The style guideline WP:CITEVAR is clear that we should not go around changing established citation styles. Ucucha (talk) 01:33, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I continue to believe that we are not communicating. For the greatest part of this conversation, I thought we were talking about references to citations - not about footnotes (where, for the purposes of this conversation, a footnote is defined as explanatory text, not references to citations). I haven't talked about footnotes since my second post where I agreed that the editor needs to keep track of note numbers. Yet here we are; back to talking about footnotes.

I'm confused. The first clause of the first sentence @WP:LDR says: "In order to make the article text easier to read in the edit window, ..." This is precisely why I think that Ref and Note should be used for footnotes. In your last post, you seem, sort of, to agree. Yet, contrary to what you just wrote, you used the which does not "separate article text from reference contents". Do you see why I'm confused?

As an aside, if Ref and Note are "antiquated", should they not be deprecated and their document pages marked with a big red watermark or some such indicator so that editors like me will stop using them? After all, how else are we to know that the markup that we are using should not be used?

I agree. That change made to Voalavo was pretty much pointless.

WP:CITEVAR: the other reason that this conversation got started. I said what I wanted to do in my first post just as WP:CITEVAR says I should. The second part of your most recent post is revealing. I wrote in my second post: "may I assume that you will not rise to object if I were to come back to this article at some point and make those changes?" Had you simply replied: "No. I own this article, please don't change it." That would have been the end.

--Trappist the monk (talk) 15:40, 15 November 2011 (UTC)