User talk:Big iron/archive 1

Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149

Hi, I assume you are Canadian from your topics; it's nice to have a North American writing some bird articles, so far they have been biased to Europe or Oz (the latter courtesy of Tannin). There are some public domain images on the USFWS website http://images.fws.gov/default.cfm?CFID=1813329&CFTOKEN=63774106, but nothing suitable for Ring-necked or Redhead.

I've been to Canada a couple of times, Southern Ontario (esp Pelee) in 1999, and Nova Scotia last Oct, jimfbleak 19:21 21 Jun 2003 (UTC)

One thing I forgot to mention is that there is a policy that fauna names, if more than one word, have a lower case redirect to them. Thus Ring-necked Duck has a redirect from ring-necked duck. I've fixed that one and the two teals. jimfbleak 05:49 23 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Sorry, I jumped the gun a bit with the Wood Duck image. If you want to change them around or dump mine, that's fine with me.

On the general image point, an uploaded image replaces another with the same name without giving a warning, so I tend to put a number on the end of the name to make it less likely that this will happen by mistake. Probably a bit over the top, since people are unlikely to be queueing to upload duck pics. jimfbleak 05:46 25 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Hi Big Iron. Nice work on the ducks. You seem to have taken to this Wikipedia thing like .. er ... a duck to water. :) Tannin

It's just Goldeneye on this side of the pond, and Common Goldeneye in North Am. Wildfowl by Madge and Burn, which I take as my bible on swans geese and ducks lists it as Common Goldeneye, with Goldeneye as the only listed alternative. European isn't even accurate, so I wouldn't bother including that (I hope it wasn't me put it on the disamb page). jimfbleak 12:24 10 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Excuse me butting in here, Big iron, I saw your note on Jimfbleak's talk page. The classification of the egrets is all over the place like a dog's breakfast. So far as I can tell, the number of different "official" ways to assign the various egrets to particular genera is equal to the number of authorities consulted plus one! Jim and I discussed this briefly somewhere a while back (probably on our talk pages, or maybe the egret talk page), but I don't know that we got any further than scratching out heads. From the point of view of search-engine friendliness, we should try, somewhere in the text of each species account, to mention all the names - so that if you hit Google looking for a Great Egret (Great White, American, whatever) under Ardea alba or Egretta alba or Casmerodius albus, you still find it. Which doen't help with your question about rationalising them, of course .... Tannin


 * In Europe, it's Egretta, in N.Am, except Peterson (ie National Geographic and Sibley), it's Ardea, in Oz and New Zealand it's Ardea. Since it breeds in all three areas, there needs to be a rational main name. I can live with Ardea, so I suggest we go with that. I should say however that the similarly widespread Cattle Egret is Bubulcus everywhere except Oz, so I'd prefer that as the main version for that species.   Jim
 * BTW, Your Night Heron made Main Page today.

On the taxonomy issue, I don't know how closely you have been following the various discussions on this. At the order/family level, our effective working scheme, unless you strongly disagree, is that at List of birds, although the passerines are not fully sorted yet. There is another scheme at Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy.

Species list come from various sources, and don't always agree on scientific names at the genus/species level, although Great White Egret, with three to chose from, is a particularly bad case. I would say that if a decision is purely North American, eg whether to have Yellow-rumped Warbler as one species or two, just decide yourself.

For the species which have a wider range, I imagine that we will have to discuss them as they arise to ensure a consistent approach. A similar problem could theoretically arise with a species pair; for example European Little Egret and Snowy Egret must be in the same genus, whatever it is.

Jim

Hi, I've added an image to Least Sandpiper, but it's so poor almost anything else would be an improvement. Jim

I'm sorry you are having to create so many links for you new articles. When I started, I put in links for common European and NAm birds (didn't know enough about S hemisphere to do Australian/NZ birds), but by the time I got to the waders, I'd given up hope on anyone doing any NAm, so I mainly linked European species. jimfbleak 08:53, 9 Sep 2003 (EDT)

Just a query about the diet of Black Guillemot. Are you sure about the insect and plant bits? I've never seen them do anything but dive for food, and there are few insects in the sea. Liked Caspian Tern, Jim


 * That's fine - I should have known, you are more careful than me - i'm the one who put a whale as a marsupial! Jim

An anon user has added a bit to Grouse about ants. It's clearly intended to be a link to his specialist topic, since most of his/her contributions are in that field. I think this is pure speculation, because grouse don't occur in southern England where this Donisthorpe guy researched.

My inclination is to remove this bit, but I thought I'd check with you, since for all I know NAm grouse might munch ants like sweets (sorry, candy). I only got involved with NAm grouse, none of which I've ever seen, because I stumbled across a stub for Heath Hen, which then required Greater Prairie-Chicken to make sense.

BTW, I might do Glaucous Gull and Iceland Gull next, which overlap our continents. Jim

Only just saw your last message. I actually went out birding yesterday - saw the fourth Pectoral Sandpiper this month - it's been a bumper tear for this species in the UK. BCCorr seems to have systematically removed all the spurious references to Donisthorpe from other articles too, so it's up to you whether the ants go back in. As far as the UK grouse are concerned, I know they eat insects, which presumably include ants, but I've not checked in BWP yet. Jim

I put a public domain picture on Dark-eyed Junco, but if you have a decent photo, please dump it. One of my favourite NAm birds - I've even seen one in the UK. Jim

I've added some species to List of North American birds. They are basically edited copies from British birds, so I'd be grateful if you could check and delete anything I've incorrectly listed. This page is a bit of a mess at the moment, part listed by bird type, and part by scientific family. I don't have any preference, but it should be one or the other. I don't mind sorting it, but as the resident NAm birdperson, it's your decision which system you would prefer. Jim

First off, thanks for the Dark-eyed Junco article! I like that little bird.

Re: edits to Yosemite Valley and Sierra Nevada (US). There is a general question : should Wikipedia articles about animals be specific down to the species, or just cover genus? Either way, edited links should point to likely articles.. Your edits imply that, for birds, the specific species deserves an article (i.e., dark-eyed juncos versus other kind of juncos). How about trees & mammals? Does a white pine deserve its own article? I don´t think so (at least perhaps not yet). So, we might have an inconsistency between specificity of links to articles between birds and other living things.

I´m not a birder, so I really don´t know what the right thing for birds is... I just wanted to point out a possible inconsistency. What do you think? -- hike395 11:32, 19 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Re Burrowing Owl, that's fine by me. I like owls, and that one in particular is something of a favourite, being both diurnal and approachable. I've been doing mainly Old World species recently, but I'm planning to do a few more terns soon. Since many of these occur on both sides of the pond, let me know if I'm treading on your toes. Jim

just for info, I've done five more terns, but I've had enough for now, so I'm going to do some Old World passerines that shouldn't impinge on Canadian species. Jim

Hi. I'm working on the remainin non-passerine British birds. Most of the outstanding species are either seabirds or have a primary or significant North American population. Let me know if there are any that you would rather I left, otherwise I'll crack on with them as the opportunity arises. Jim.


 * following on from the above, I wrote Mourning Dove today, and in the process realised that I don't have much info available on this familiar bird. Would you be kind enough to take a look and check if there are serious erros or omissions? Thanks, Jim.


 * Many thanks for the help with Mourning Dove. I've finished rampaging through NAm species for the time being, and I'm now doing some passerines. I'm going to start with some Old World warblers, larks and the like, so we shouldn't be treading on each others toes, Jim

re Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch. Interestingly, I wrote Rufous-tailed Rock-Thrush this am, which is obviously a similar case. In terms of redirects, it doesn't really matter what we put (I used Rufous-tailed rock-thrush and Rock Thrush for that one, but Rufous-tailed Rock-thrush could also be a possibility), so the the question is really what style is used for article names.


 * The names used are, by default, those from HBW, from where I got the species list. However, I've changed some of the names where it suits me, especially if it seems likely that someone would search for a more familiar name.
 * I'm not very keen on HBW hypenated styles like American Golden-Plover, and I would personally prefer American Golden Plover, which is what people would look for. However, since species names are capitalised in Wikipedia, the normal convention for the hyphenated group bit would be to capitalise both words, if the hyphen is in.
 * My preference would be to dump the hyphen and have Gray-crowned Rosy Finch rather than Gray-crowned Rosy-finch as the article title, and then the redirect is obvious.
 * What ever you decide, I'm sure it will be appropriate, I've read enough of your articles to know that

Sorry about the list, it's to help me clarify my own thoughts. Jim

All the remaining passerine British birds are primarily North American vagrants, so I've wandered back to your side of the pond. I'll steer clear of vireos and for now, and I'll keep you informed so we aren't chasing the same hare. Let me know if there is any other relevant species you want me to avoid (preferably not Cliff Swallow)! Jim
 * all that's left to do in passerine British birds are the New World warblers, so I'll do the species that have occurred in the UK next. Merry Christmas Jim

Would you mind having a look at Myrtle Warbler. I've written this and Audubon's Warbler as separate articles, with a redirect from Yellow-rumped Warbler. If you're not happy with that treatment, please do whatever you think is appropriate. Jim

Belated New Year greetings. I've finished British birds now, so I'm unlikely to be treading on your toes for a while. I'm going to have another look at some old bird articles to see if they need tweaking, and write up some favourite species, like Mosque Swallow, but I'll steer clear of NAm passerines for the time being. Jim

Hi - do you think the pic below is a first or second winter Glaucous Gull? It looks to be a bulky pale gull with a thick dark-tipped pink bill and pink legs. I can't see any black in the wings or tail, and the bill is wrong for Iceland Gull, but looks perfect for an immature Glaucous. I've seen definite Glaucous Gulls looking just like this in the UK in winter, but I just wanted to chack that I,ve not overlooked a NAm gull before I put it in the article. Jim

image:gull0414.jpg

Good, thanks, I'll put it in. Now what about the next one, photographed on Laysan Island? It looks like Franklin's Gull to me, but I'm way out of my range with this, only ever seen two Franklin's. Jim

image:Gulllaysan85.jpg

I'm sure you're right, it is a Laughing Gull. Its wings are much longer than the tail, the hind neck is dusky, not clean white, the bill looks heavy, and the white patch in front of the wings seems to be a feature too. Thanks for the help, Jim

Big iron, you and Jim amaze me with your productivity. Pretty soon there won't be any American or European birds left to do! But the reason I dropped by is to say that I just saw your Rock Wren illustration and ... damnit! ... I'm jealous. That is as beautiful a little bird as one could hope to see. Tannin

Hi there. I uploaded this image of an Orange-crowned Warbler from the USFWS, but then noticed you had a placeholder filename in the table already. Do you plan to upload your own image, or is the one I uploaded fine to add? Hadal 17:51, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Oh, it's the least I could do. Keep up the great work! :) Hadal 18:07, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)

There are a few bird images at this site. I'll add an image to Scrub Jay next, and then leave NAm alone again. Jim

I just nominated Image:PaintedBunting23.jpg for Featured_pictures. I love that bird, and your photo! Bevo 01:55, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Hi, could you take a look at the flight picture I have added to Red-tailed Hawk, please? I am 99% sure of my identification but I never saw the bird's upper parts to confirm the red rump, so I am seeking a second opinion on principle. Thanks very much. seglea 09:00, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Big Iron, Adrian and I are unhappy with the changes User:UtherSRG is making to taxobox images, and I wanted to consult more widely before taking any action. If you read the bit on his talk page first, and then mine, it will give you the idea, thanks Jim


 * ( Stupid seagull. :) I'll remove it. My bad. I figured it was gubmint, so it was PD. Thanks. jengod 21:36, Jun 22, 2004 (UTC)

BigIron: I notice that you've been putting a number of pages associated with the Canadian Action Party on the vfd site. While I won't make any claims as to the literary merit of most of these articles, my feeling is that this might be the wrong answer to the problem.

I would argue that the act of running for federal office in Canada is sufficient enough to make someone eligible for inclusion on Wikipedia. Most of the CAP articles are in need of a cleanup, but not (I think) deletion.

(Incidentally, I edited the Magnus Thompson page a while ago, though I apparently forgot to take down the cleanup notice. Thompson ran in both 2000 and 2004; as such, his page is useful as a link between the two separate results [albeit that the riding results for 2000 haven't been added yet].)  CJCurrie 00:05, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

VFD
B.I.: I suppose there are bound to be differences of opinion on borderline cases like these. I'd still argue that having pages on individual minor-party candidates is useful, if not always necessary.

I don't suppose there's any way I could convince you to withdraw your request for the deletion of the Thompson article? (Or, since that's probably impossible, to withdraw your support for its deletion?) CJCurrie 01:47, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Big Iron: I've been involved in a lengthy discussion with Jon Garrett on a possible compromise on the "fringe party bios" issue. You can check out our discussion pages if you want the full details. Here's one salient excerpt from one of my letters, forwarded for discussion:

Responses:

The general convention on the vfd page is that two-thirds support is required for a page to be deleted. I suspect that most people who've wanted to vote on the current round of fringe-candidate articles have already done so, and there isn't really a clear consensus on any of them (let alone a 67% consensus one way or the other). The closest to a consensus, at present, are the Dancey and Fernandez pages -- and the support for deletion here is only 58% (discounting The Recycling Troll) or 54% (including The Recylcing Troll). (I'm not completely certain that The Recycling Troll is a real troll, and every other contributor seems genuine enough).

I believe, for this reason, that the articles will probably survive the vfd page on at least technical grounds.

My concern, at the moment, is not so much with the technical deletion requests as with the broader principle. I think we can agree that there *is* a place on Wikipedia for some information on fringe candidates -- it's such a matter of determining the parameters and form that such information should take. I recognize that there are some advantages and disadvantages to *both* the "bio pages" and the "short bios on a central page" approaches (although I'm not sure if we should be determining Wikipedia policy based on the number of people likely to read any particular page ...), and I could very easily reconcile myself to the latter if it's the popular will. I'm just not certain that the latter course is necessary.

CJCurrie 20:21, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

consolidated pages
Big Iron: The idea of consolidating "fringe-candidate" information on a single page has its advantages, but it also creates some problems when the candidate has run in more than one election (although I suppose redirects could take care of this). I could live with either outcome, though I still don't think that the change is absolutely necessary. CJCurrie 17:53, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Canadian wikipedians
As a Canadian or Canado...phile? you might want to add your name/watchlist the fray at the Canadian wikipedians' notice board. Cheers! Samaritan 23:56, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Vrbica, Livno Valley
Hi, have you ever been in Vrbica near Livno? My mother is from there. You can see a link to Vrbica on Serbian Wikipedia. . Contact me if you have any questions. pokrajac_marko@yahoo.com

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 1000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:


 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk) 19:10, Dec 8, 2004 (UTC)

Collaboration of the week
Congratulations, the candidate you voted for, Underground Railroad, is this week's Collaboration of the Week. Please help edit the article to bring it up to feature standard.

Image tag
Hi! Thanks for uploading the following image:


 * Image:EasternWhitePine23.jpg

I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add one to let us know its copyright status?

You can use   if you wish to release your own work under the GNU Free Documentation License,    if you wish to release your own work to the public domain,    if you claim fair use of someone else's work, and so on. Click here for a list of the various tags.

If you don't know what any of this means, just let me know at my talk page where you got the image from, and I'll tag it for you. (And if you know exactly what this means and are really tired of the constant reminders, please excuse me. They will stop once the tagging project is complete.) Thanks so much. Denni &#9775; 23:10, 2004 Dec 18 (UTC)

P.S. You can help tag other images at Untagged_Images. Thanks again.

Did You Know
 Did you know has been updated and a fact from the article Meadow Vole, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you have another interesting fact to submit, then please suggest it at the section's talk page. Nice job, it's good to see interest in muroid rodents. Now just 999 species to go. --Aranae 17:44, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

Ottawa Wikipedia Meetup
Hey, just a quick note to let you know there is an Ottawa Wikipedia Meetup coming up this Saturday @ 2pm. If you can make it, please drop by the Meetup website and RSVP. If you can't, join up anyway, so you can find out about future Ottawa Wikipedia Meetups! --Spinboy 20:54, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Geo-stubs
Hi Big iron - good to see you adding a few new Canadian geography stubs... for future reference, there's a separate stub template for canadian geography: - if you use that instead of just geo-stub it'll make the articles easier for editors working on Canadian items to find. Cheers! Grutness|hello? 01:17, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

New Wikiproject
Hi there, just a quick note to let you know that we've started a new wikiproject! WikiProject Ottawa aims to expand the amount of articles in Ottawa, and of the articles that are there, take them from stubs to something worthy of being a feature article. We hope you'll stop by and sign up! --Spinboy 03:48, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

"The Vole" Nickname Discussion
Appreciated your comments on Talk:Vole and the updating of the page ( I can't seem to edit that page without it being reverted by Nathan J. Yoder )). It seems crazy that I'm having to expend this much energy on a simple link to an existing article which already refers to the term. Winston Smith 21:46, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

Richardson's Ground Squirrel
Hi Big Iron - question for you on Talk:Richardson's Ground Squirrel (or there will be in 5 minutes!) seglea 20:07, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

lots of edits, not an admin
Hi - I made a list of users who've been around long enough to have made lots of edits but aren't admins. If you're at all interested in becoming an admin, can you please add an '*' immediately before your name in this list? I've suggested folks nominating someone might want to puruse this list. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:11, Jun 11, 2005 (UTC)

Wiki cookie
Some good work on classic Canadian songs, and on some Ottawa stuff earns you this wiki cookie. Enjoy :) -- Earl Andrew - talk 07:19, 15 August 2005 (UTC)



Greeting from Alaska
Hi Big Iron, I put the article on Ibram Lassaw on his page-, I also wrote it. Denise Lassaw
 * Thank you for dropping by. I was concerned that the material on Ibram Lassaw might have been used without permission. --Big_Iron 21:59, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Image deletion announcement
I listed Image:BonaparteGull23.jpg in Images and media for deletion. It was replaced by several better quality images, I think no-one is going to miss it. -Hapsiainen 19:58, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

I saved the new image as a png, because I had cropped it. If I had again saved it as jpeg, its quality would have decreased further. UFWS had saved the original image in jpeg format, I didn't want to compress it twice. This is a known problem. -Hapsiainen 10:50, September 6, 2005 (UTC)


 * The question isn't about whether to have a PNG image or a baad JPEG image in the article. There is another JPEG image of an adult gull. You can put it to the article if you wish so. Your vote on Images for deletion is incomprehensible to me. -Hapsiainen

Sarfaraz Nawaz
FYI because you have put a copyvio tag there. The title is incorrect. I am moving it (with tag and all) to Sarfraz Nawaz. Tintin 21:56, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I saw your name in the talk page and thought it was you. Tintin 22:06, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

WP:CP
Hi, you've reported copyright infringements to WP:CP in the last week, a new measure was recently passed to allow the speedy deltion of new pages that are cut and paste copyvios. Please follow these instructions if you come across this type of copyvio. Thanks. --nixie 00:09, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

User Categorisation
You were listed on the Wikipedians/Ontario page as living in or being associated with Ontario. As part of the User categorisation project, these lists are being replaced with user categories. If you would like to add yourself to the category that is replacing the page, please visit Category:Wikipedians in Ontario for instructions.--Rmky87 02:56, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for spotting the Naturalselection copyvio. I have deleted it. &mdash; J I P | Talk 13:08, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Charles H. Mackintosh
Please note that we don't file individuals directly in Category:Members of the Canadian House of Commons; individual MPs are sorted into subcategories by province and political party. The master category should only contain the list articles. Bearcat 19:08, 21 October 2005 (UTC)


 * No, actually, I'm in the process of emptying the historical category out as well. It was originally instituted to clean up the main Members category, but it's now become as big and unmanageable and poorly organized as that category was when it originally needed the cleanup. The province and party categories are intended to replace filing people in either Historical Members or the parent. Bearcat 21:37, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

OMYA link
Hi, I noticed you added a link to the local OMYA plant in the Rutland City, Vermont article, but the page you linked to says Florence Vermont on it and doesn't seem to be in Rutland (north of Proctor is definitely not Rutland). I was wondering why you added it to that page as opposed to, say, the Proctor article? Thanks. Jessamyn 14:43, 28 October 2005 (UTC)