User talk:Baskaufs

Welcome!

Hello,, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers: I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~&#126;); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Questions. Again, welcome! --HartzR 12:52, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
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Please do not add commercial links (or links to your own private websites) to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising or a mere collection of external links. You are, however, encouraged to add content instead of links to the encyclopedia. See the welcome page to learn more. Thanks. Mwanner | Talk 15:35, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

That's the boilerplate. Now, I can see that the links you are adding are worthwhile, BUT, we get cranky here about people who only add external links. We are an encyclopedia, not a collection of good external links. I won't remove your links (though someone else might) but please consider adding content to our articles, not links. Thanks, -- Mwanner | Talk 15:44, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi-- I got your response (it ended up in my talk archive). What you're saying makes good sense to me. Just so you understand the problem, it's not about stepping on toes. We're a very high traffic site, and lot's of people who want to direct traffic to their sites like to add links from our articles in the hope of raising their sales/traffic/ad rates. Your contribution pattern looks just like theirs-- some here might argue that it is spamming even if the links are worthwhile.

So, while I don't really want to discourage you, you should be aware that there is some chance of someone coming along and undoing much of your work before you can talk them out of it. It would help if you were doing more of a mix of content editing along with adding the links, since that's something the spammers almost never bother to do. And hopefully, the presense of this discussion on your talk page will help.

Anyway, good luck, and let me know if you have any questions. Wikipedia is becoming a huge, complicated place, so it can take some getting used to. Cheers! -- Mwanner | Talk 21:04, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Comments for users concerned about "spam"
As you can see from the discussion above, the external links that I have added to many plant and ecoregion pages may have the appearance of "spam". Before any hasty attempts to remove those links, please examine them and you will find that they are NOT spam, but rather useful references to image content that is reliable, non-commercial, often not at all represented in Wikipedia, and in some cases unique on the Internet. Because of licensing incompatabilities between Wikipedia and the Bioimages website (http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu), I can't upload the images to the Wikipedia commons. However, all of the images are freely available for personal and education use.

Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D. Vanderbilt University Department of Biological Sciences Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.A. steve.baskauf@vanderbilt.edu Steve Baskauf 15:09, 5 May 2006 (UTC)


 * A quick hello. This is MichaelMcAnnis inYumaAriz on the ColoradoRiver, the border with Sonora, Baja Calif, S Calif and the Colorado Desert a subset of the Sonoran Desert. I recently started work on some birds, then the category including the Lower Colorado River Valley, and went to the plants, because the birds live with the plants, etc. Today is a day off, and I went out upon a desert road toward the NW from the Colorado River, last evening, to "Ferguson Lake", about 4 miles away( 1/2 way to the W side of lake I guess ) in a smaller wash/canyon were 12-16 Phainopeplas, who weren't happy to see me(borders Little Picacho Wilderness), and headed west into the sky, over the hill, to go towards their summer residence at the San Joaquin Valley.  I had been observing them since January, when I was intensively doing the bird pages (see Yuma, Arizona).  And now i am working on the plants.

{I did find 3 single plants): a Desert Blazing Star, a Mentzelia, at 140 ft above sea level. The book says 100 to 8000 feet, (next to the road), so maybe a motorist brought a seed.  Also one plant of Desert senna, covered with sand; the wind was blowing for the past two months, off and on (Senna covesii). I use the links on the Senna page, ... a lot, either  the Jepson Flora Project, the CalPhotos, and I am still perusing the Pima College, Tucson page(I went to the Univ of Arizona, Tucson, and graduated 1972 with a mech engr type/ environmental studies, portfolio. Been watchin' our poor earth ever since.) The third nice plant was a climbing milkweed.  The desert "rush milkweed" the leafless milkwood is very cool, and i think the plants can live 5-10 yrs, ? That is a guess. i saw a small group in a roadcut on an exposed hilltop, next to the Kofa Mountains Game Reserve. Just down the road was the 3 rd plant, a "Rambling Milkweed", in bloom, covering a Palo Verde tree, in a very tiny dip, or wash, in the foothill/hilltop area.  I had seen the pics in the book, and was happy to see 1 plant.


 * Anyway, stay cool. Your name came up when I did Related changes on the List of Arizona-related topics that I recently started. Related changes, then 500, then 30 days, a 3 step maximum listing of related changes. Stay (desert) cool.  Michael in the YumaDesert,...peace,out--Mmcannis 11:57, 9 May 2006 (UTC)


 * And as a secondary note, The "Contrib" is a recent change in wikipedia, as is the list of Watch pages, with the Talk listed next to the item.  And, the third is the Italics on the "Special:Allpages/" which refer to the real page.  "Change can be good...."  'Adios',Michael in YUMA,az-Mmcannis 12:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Euonymus & ext links
Hi Baskaufs - sorry not to have got back to you before on your points raised, I only just saw them now (I don't look at the spindle page very often). On the links, it looks like Mwanner has already mentioned the general wiki policy that adding links without content is generally not liked. Personally, I think your links are good additions to individual species articles of American native species; on genus pages, I, like Mwanner, would rather encourage you to start at least stub pages for the species you add links for, rather than just adding the links at the genus page. On links to your site for species not native to North America, I feel these are a little less appropriate as they may confuse readers as to the origin and status of the species, and risk giving an inappropriate American point of view to a European or Asian, etc., topic.

On the names I removed, I did this because there is really only room in the list for a single common name for each species; adding two or more messes up the formatting (except for people with very wide computer screens!). Again, the individual species page is the place to list additional common names; if the species page is not there, why not start it? It is as simple as clicking on the red link, and start typing - one tip for an easy way to do it is copy the text from a related species which already has a page (e.g. European spindle), paste it in, and then change the relevant details (names, distribution, leaf dimensions, etc); anything that's not relevant on the new page just delete.

BTW, the spindle (shrub) page is now moved to the scientific name, to avoid the different name uses between UK/US (I thought 'spindle' was used on both sides of the Atlantic). Hope this helps, and again, sorry for not contacting you earlier - MPF 18:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Common names
Thanks for the comments at Rowan regarding the common names of the North American species. I made similar edits to the Sorbus article but neglected to make parallel changes to Rowan. Common names have been a contentious issue at Wikipedia so you're going to come across a lot more examples like this--just check out the edit histories and discussions at Cytisus scoparius and Juniperus bermudiana!. MrDarwin 14:42, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

A tag has been placed on Twenty Townships, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article providing little or no context to the reader. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.

Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. If you plan to expand the article, you can request that administrators wait a while for you to add contextual material. To do this, affix the template   to the page and state your intention on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. WebHamster 10:56, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

Allen County
Good job on finding the reference for John Allen. Once I figure out how to get this sourced properly, it will help with clearing up confusion. Nyttend 22:28, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:53, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Long live Trump!
Long live Donald Trump, the incredibly wise and dedicated leader of the USA! God bless the honourable Donald Trump and his family! God bless the United States of America! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2620:21:C000:D8:18AA:A8B0:A6BB:EBF6 (talk) 02:53, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:Appalachian-mixed-mesophytic-forest-map.gif


The file File:Appalachian-mixed-mesophytic-forest-map.gif has been proposed for deletion&#32;because of the following concern: "Orphaned map."

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.

Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and files for discussion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. ~ Rob 13 Talk 15:11, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of File:Central-us-hardwood-forests-map.gif


The file File:Central-us-hardwood-forests-map.gif has been proposed for deletion&#32;because of the following concern: "Orphaned map."

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the file's talk page.

Please consider addressing the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and files for discussion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. ~ Rob 13 Talk 23:31, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

 * Hi Baskaufs! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission.  I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Lounge
 * The Teahouse new editor help space
 * Wikipedia Help pages

-- 18:55, Thursday, October 1, 2020 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

 * Hi Baskaufs! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission.  I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Lounge
 * The Teahouse new editor help space
 * Wikipedia Help pages

-- 19:59, Thursday, October 1, 2020 (UTC)

Welcome to The Wikipedia Adventure!

 * Hi Baskaufs! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission.  I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Start Page
 * The Wikipedia Adventure Lounge
 * The Teahouse new editor help space
 * Wikipedia Help pages

-- 19:59, Thursday, October 1, 2020 (UTC)