User talk:Graminophile

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Your edits to Pampa
Please note that the English Wikipedia has no general preference for a major national variety of the language. You should respect national varieties of English. Happy wiking. Alexf (Talk/Contribs) 11:42, 24 October 2007 (UTC)


 * What's your point? I simply reverted the previous editor's pointless change. What's wike?

--Graminophile 14:50, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

A Senecio by any other name
Senecio jacobaea is known to some as Jacobaea vulgaris. This has also been the source of an edit war at the commons, which I have no desire to re-enter. For the article Senecio, I put the image with the list of genus that have been redefined by some due to the fact that there seems to be two different ideas about it. The most interesting thing about the articles here is that people are only interested in the warring parts of the discussion and not in the improvement of that article and at the commons, the same thing, the insistence that the images be categorized as Jacobaea without the effort to make the Jacobaea section proper.

The inclusion of the photograph in the article is correct, the inclusion of the photograph with the list of genus that used to be or are in transition or are new and disputed was also correct -- it was thoughtfully and peacefully placed by me.

Please reconsider the move of the image on the article Senecio. -- carol (talk) 19:44, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, I wasn't intending to be controversial so you can move it back if you like. A check on Google Scholar for "Jacobaea vulgaris" returned exactly 8 results though and I didn't see any evidence it was a name in widespread use. Perhaps annotate the image along the lines of "Senecio jacobaea, occasionally known as Jacobaea vulgaris". Also, I don't understand why the section heading (Nomina Nova) needs to be in Latin. Nor, for that matter, do I see the relevance of the quote from Linnaeus and the following paragraph - a genus article is no place for a general discussion on taxonomy. --Graminophile (talk) 21:32, 19 May 2008 (UTC)


 * It is a genus that is being reduced in size. While researching the species I have written articles for, there have been papers and information for old names and new names.  That being said, there has also been 'information' available for mispelled names of species as well -- it is very confusing and I really am not certain that I did not author an article about a misspelled species name as well.


 * The division of this genus is interesting for the parts of the science of botany that I have encountered since starting to work with them. 70% of my experience before this was with gardening, 30% of it was with herbal medicines; I used to look for information about species who were named 'officinalis' and 'vulgaris' -- so not much taxonomy there....


 * I like the stance taken by Flora of America for Jacobaea.http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=242348344 -- carol (talk) 21:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)


 * More of the apology, I really did stand in a place and among people who I could make the trail of marriages and begats out to 5th cousin and one case where I was able to do something similar to this in a different location with step-family relationships; which are not biological at all but are legal. I am not bragging about the situation, but the facts just were there and my ability to embrace the situation and work through it is somewhat brag fodder.  I did not even much like that woman without actually disliking her (the fifth cousin).  This 'idea' is present whenever I am working on any of these articles and without the information that I was reading open at easily at hand, my brain kind of defaults back to this 'understanding' of things.  Heck, we did the same thing with the Astronomy lab instructors and when I met the second generation after me, I called them my 'grandson' -- one of them was older than me.  It is the same map that L. used for making this taxonomy to begin with so avoiding thinking about it that way, while not scientific is also very difficult to avoid.  (I have a strong feeling that one of those 'grandsons' might have felt very uncomfortable with how much he had compared to how much his 'grandma' didn't).  I will get back to those articles, I wanted the African species on other articles not to be red links. -- carol (talk) 22:56, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Um, yes, I'm confused. Did you marry your 5th cousin or begat her (or both)? --Graminophile (talk) 23:19, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Heh, none of the above. Encounters at shift overlaps where I worked. :) -- carol (talk) 17:14, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Komodo Dragon
Nice rewrite on that paragraph!--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 23:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! --Graminophile (talk) 09:20, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Accipitriformes
Hi. I'm glad you're contributing to bird-taxonomy articles, but can I ask what your basis was for editing Accipitriformes to say the Hackett et al. paper "shows" that falcons aren't close to Accipitridae?

There are two reasons I doubt it. One is that a molecular study often gets refuted by the next one. Hackett et al. may have sequenced more DNA than anyone yet in ornithology, but others will do still more. When people sequence the whole genome of every species in the taxon and have a really good understanding of molecular evolution, and different approaches agree, I think it will be time to talk about "showing".

The other is that User:Dysmorodrepanis, who I generally trust, has argued that the paper is flawed since it doesn't deal well with something called "long-branch attraction" or with the known odd molecular evolution of some taxa, including Accipitridae. There are (long) discussions here and here. I can't evaluate his arguments, but it looks suspicious.

Finally, as I said in those discussion, I think we should wait for the checklist committees and other authorities before committing ourselves to this. The SACC is only one so far that I know of. &mdash;JerryFriedman (Talk) 04:25, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe 'shows' is too strong, but I felt that 'suggests' was too weak. As a reasonable alternative, how about 'indicates'? My (possibly incorrect) understanding is that wikipedia bird names follow the IOC list, which accepts the division of Accipitriformes/Falconiformes (http://www.worldbirdnames.org/n-raptors.html). --Graminophile (talk) 14:21, 12 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Okay, I made it "indicated", though I actually think "suggested" is too strong&mdash;it's more like "raised the possibility". Thanks for the information about the IOC, which I should have looked at earlier.  I added that to the article.
 * As I understand it, we follow the IOC on English names of species, but for classification, we treat them as just another authority. &mdash;JerryFriedman (Talk) 19:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

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