User talk:Invertzoo/Archive 17

ARCHIVE PAGE 17: May 2009

Message from Peter
Dear Susan,

I hope you enjoyed a good time at Nevis. My only recollection of this place is from cricket players and a TV show called Time Team, which did an archaeological dig on that island.

On Wednesday I walked in a rainforest, trying to identify all trees. The day was a spectacular success, and I found NINE tree species not on the previous botanical survey. Again I was asked not to write about this rainforest, as it is so precious and endangered. And publicity will lead to more people visiting and causing damage.

My great love is the rainforests of New South Wales, and in particular the rainforests of the Illawarra district.

Identifying trees in situ varies from extremely easy to almost impossible. However, with a calm mind and with time, most puzzles can be solved. I'm most proud that Australia's greatest rainforest botanist Alexander Floyd sent me two e-mails recently. He kindly answered my questions on tree identification in this forest.

In the rainforest I found several snail shells. Almost certainly local animals in situ. The shells were not in perfect form, and broken and old. So, I didn't bother to photograph them. In the jungle I thought of you, and wished you were nearby so I could ask questions. In fact, in the six hours it was all plants. Only two birds were seen, no animals. Australian rainforests can be places of trees and trees and no birds and animals. However, at night the animals come out.

As for Wiki, I have a big problem with photos. A contact of mine is a photographer. She takes wonderful pictures. However, the process of getting those photos with the correct license is incomprehensible and unmanageable.

What I need to know, is when I receive a "ticket", then how do I make the photo licensing acceptable for Wiki? Recently I received Ticket#2009043010063601, and associated it with photo Robber Fly Dungog Australia.jpg

The photo is on the page "robber fly" I want to know if this is acceptable to Wiki. If not, I want a user friendly way to figure out the right method.

My motivations are honest and genuine. And if my friends have acceptable photos, then I wish to know how to put them on Wiki, so the world might learn a bit more. It's too hard at the moment. Previous links I've been asked to read on the subject seem irrelevant and incomprehensible.

There's a couple more tree articles I wish to write in the near future.

Thanks for your support PETE

Poyt448 (talk) 10:42, 2 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello Peter, I am not sure what is the most proper way, but I would suggest something like this: Ros Runciman can send an email with permission, that User:Poyt448 can publish all/animal photos/plant photos/nature photos from Australia/OR SOMETHING LIKE THIS her photos at Wikimedia Commons under the licence LICENCE NAME. - If it is possible, so I think that it can be OK. Otherwise it will be necessary to write permission with every new photo or with every new photo collection. I hope that it can help. --Snek01 (talk) 17:20, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Dear Susan,

I hope you enjoyed your trip. Please let me know what you found most pleasing this time.

Thanks to your encouragement I've written several more articles lately. The most recent is on another rainforest tree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churnwood

It's my great pleasure to write about these trees I've photographed and loved for many years. And your kind words have certainly influenced my motivation to write more articles. So far, I've started 31 articles and signficantly added to many "stubs".

The problem with the photo copyright seems to be resolved. No-one seems to object to the copyright of this file; Robber Fly Dungog Australia.jpg So, I presume it is OK. Please confirm this. Thanks to Snek for his reply.

Thanks again for your support, and I hope to write more articles and keep within the rules of Wiki.

kind regards PETE xxx Poyt448 (talk) 23:56, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

You're invited...
In the afternoon, we will hold a session dedicated to meta:Wikimedia New York City activities, establish a membership process for the chapter, review the upcoming Wiki-Conference New York 2009 (planned for ~100 people at NYU this summer) and future projects like Wikipedia at the Library, and hold salon-style group discussions on Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects (see the March meeting's minutes).

In the evening, we'll share dinner and chat at a local restaurant, and generally enjoy ourselves and kick back.

You can add or remove your name from the New York City Meetups invite list at Meetup/NYC/Invite list.

To keep up-to-date on local events, you can also join our mailing list. This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 22:01, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Longevity myths

 * Hi, could you please take a look at the following discussion: Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard I noticed from the page history that you have previously edited this article and think that you may be able to provide another view to this discussion. Thanks for your help. Smartse (talk) 23:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK nomination of Juliidae
Hello! there still are some issues that may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath and respond there as soon as possible.

Powell
Welcome back! just a note to let you know that I have regained possession of Powell (for four weeks). --Geronimo20 (talk) 02:10, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Welcome back!
I trust you had a fun and spent some time under water. Please forgive my absence. A number of events have stolen almost all of my time. When things get complicated in China, time gets consumed. I miss the whole Wikipedia thing, and have only been able to make the odd contribution here and there. I hope to get through these annoyances and get back to Wikipedia soon. All the best to you, and try to walk on a quiet beach from time to time.--Anna Frodesiak (talk) 12:35, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

south african/cape peninsula marine life
Hi Invertzoo, and thanks for your message -- I know about the copyright guidelines and am doing my best to follow them, which is to say, although the descriptions end up describing the same animals, they are not in the same words as the given references. I appreciate your concern though, and as a new editor, I am trying to follow the wikipedia protocols as far as I understand them. One thing that has been concerning me though is, what does one do about lists? I did genus updates for Iphimedia, Pleurobranchaea and Flabellina yesterday, and though I got them from two or three different sources, there's not a lot you can do with a list of binomials and binomial authorities. I am assuming that this cannot be copyright and hope that the common sense view will be the prevailing one. If you notice me doing anything wrong, please do let me know! best wishes Seascapeza (talk) 06:18, 21 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your kind reply, and thanks so very much for being so conscientious about your articles, that's really great! (I am working on cleaning up after an editor who copied a lot of stuff verbatim for about 3 years before we caught on to that, so I am trying to remind people as soon as I get a chance.) And yes you are absolutely right that straightforward lists of species are not a problem to copy. Information itself is not copyrighted, only the way it is expressed. Your articles seem to me to be excellent, and it is really terrific that you have given images to illustrate them too. A few years ago at the AMNH I was sorting and identifying a batch of seashells from your part of the world; that's my only exposure to the marine life of that area unfortunately, because it is very interesting, being where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans faunas meet. Best to you, Invertzoo (talk) 12:44, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

thanks!
Thanks for the warm welcome. I don't think I have the time to dedicate myself fully to WikiProject Gastropods, but I'll lend a hand when I do. I really appreciate all the fine work you and other Wikipedians do on species pages. It's incredibly valuable to have an open, free source of natural history information!

Kueda (talk) 19:03, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Common names

 * Hi Invertzoo. Thanks for your help on the Common names article. Perhaps you could say exactly how it is "poorly organized" and how you would "tighten it up". Better still ... you could help make it less of a "patchwork" yourself. A couple of comments: you deleted a sentence about the addition and removal of common names from our vocabulary. It may have need a citation and been poorly expressed but the points it was making are important - could you either replace it or make the same points in a more acceptable way please? Also, your use of the expression "the same thing" in the opening sentence does not, IMO, improve the sentence so I have removed it - we can discuss this further if you like. I look forward to your assistance in tidying the article up. Granitethighs (talk) 23:42, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

So, a happy wikibirthday to you Granitethighs! Thanks for your note about the changes I made to the common names article, and my comment on the talk page. If I have offended you, my apologies, and feel free to change what I did. I just replaced one small section of that deleted paragraph, although I may have put it in another place. Unfortunately I cannot spend a lot of time on re-structuring the article right now, as I have a rather large remainder of work to do on fixing CopyVio problems on gastropod articles, which is a very pressing priority that I have not got around to since coming back from a 3-week no-wiki trip about 10 days ago. I would be happy to have a go at trying to help reorganize and clarify the article at some point in the not too distant future though. Best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 00:22, 21 May 2009 (UTC)


 * That's fine - good to have the chance for a clean-up when you are ready - sorry about all the work, that's the penalty for having such a good time in those tropical climes. Granitethighs (talk) 00:49, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

cape peninsula marine life
How fascinating that shell sorting must have been. I have been scuba diving here for 19 years and am constantly amazed by the variety of marine life. We also discover undescribed species quite regularly, which makes life even more interesting. I am trying to always add images to my articles where possible and am slowly uploading to Wikimedia Commons, but am battling because I can't find a template of how to format the uploads -- according to a bot, some of my images aren't categorised but all the help pages say is 'add the category to your image description page' .... well, fine, but where? How? Very frustrating! Also, adding file links. Could you perhaps send me to a link which will cause the fog of ignorance to clear? best wishes Seascapeza (talk) 04:58, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I will do my best to find you a source of clearer info on categorizing your photo files and adding file links. It might be a person you can talk to rather than a page to read though. Best, Invertzoo (talk) 13:41, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Just back from a wonderful weekend underwater -- three scuba dives on Saturday and then rockpool snorkelling yesterday. I absolutely agree with you insofar as finding someone to copy from and have been trying to find images with useful templates I can use, but so far it seems that image uploading isn't as well organised as data uploading! People seem to just upload and don't add links or don't give categories etc .. but it's Monday and I'm feeling ready for yet another assault on the problem ... if you come across anything useful I'd be most grateful though. best wishes Seascapeza (talk) 04:14, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your image advice -- I am going to see if I can come up with a workable link/category template, and if you would like, I will send it to you once the kinks have been worked out -- I am trying to get Cape Peninsula marine animals (well the ones I know, anyway) onto the wikipedia, all with pictures and I don't have all the photographs myself, so need to ask my various photographer friends to do their own uploads. As you probably know, if it's not easy to do, they won't be doing it! I'm trying to keep/get all my gastropod articles in Project Gastropoda format, so if you see any where I have made a mistake, do let me knopw. best wishes Seascapeza (talk) 06:18, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your mail. I think in the instances where it is only one or two pictures per photographer to be uploaded, it's going to be easier if I just upload the images along with their copyright permissions, but some of them will be doing big numbers and I'd rather they have their own accounts -- also, the more photographers taking great pics of marine species and uploading, the better, in my view. I came across the Tree of Life project while trying to work out the easiest template to give the photographers -- are you involved with this at all? best wishes Seascapeza (talk) 08:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Blue Planarian
Dear Susan,

I've photographed an invertebrate entering the house where I live. And put the photo on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terricola

It's a worm, not a mollusc so it may not be of interest to you. Please let me know if you or any of your invertebrate colleages would be interested in writing an article on this flatworm.

The Blue Planarian (Caenoplana coerulea) came knocking on the door, wishing to get inside. That's one invitation you can't refuse.

kind wishes, PETE Poyt448 (talk) 01:33, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Pete, Well... they sure are amazing creatures. I find it extraordinary that very simple creatures like flatworms can get so large, exhibit predatory behavior etc. I suppose a lot of people think they are slugs, and some of the more colorful large marine ones are often mistaken for nudibranchs. Let me think a bit. I don't know much about them, but I probably could throw together a basic stub article. Probably you could too. A stub does not have to be elaborate or complete: other people would add to it I'm sure. We create a lot of stub mollusk articles over at Project Gastropods. Since you have a nice image of the species that's a big start right there. Invertzoo (talk) 20:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

flatworm stub
Thanks for your excellent advice, I had a go at a stub of the Blue Planarian, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caenoplana_coerulea

regards, Peter Poyt448 (talk) 01:13, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Freshwater mollusks
Dear Invertzoo;

Thank you for your extensive contributions to all aspects of malacology. I have felt there should be a page dedicated to freshwater mollusks in general, as there is, for example a freshwater fish page. For this reason, I have started one. What I have so far is at

User:Martino3/Freshwater mollusks

but obviously adding some pictures would be nice. If you have the time, give it a look-over and see what you think.

Thank you for you interest,

Martino3

Martino3 (talk) 02:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hello, your idea is good. My opinion is like this: There should be pages snail, land snail, marine snail, freshwater snail (freshwater gastropod redirecting to freshwater snail), slug, marine slug. Then there will be easy make wikilinks to them and so on. There can be also article freshwater mollusc, but only with facts that are common to both groups to freshwater snails and to freshwater bivalves. Snek01 (talk) 08:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi Snek. Please do not write your own answers to questions people have posted to me, on my talk page, before I have had a chance to reply to the person myself. This is not considered polite. The letters on my talk page are addressed to me, not to "any member of project gastropods who happens to be looking". If you do read a post there and want to say something before I have replied, please write an answer on the other person's talk page, and then just leave me a note letting me know you have done that, so I can look and see what you said. Thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 14:03, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, thank you for your message. I am sorry about it. --Snek01 (talk) 14:13, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks very much for your note Martino3 and for the kind comments. I do think this is a very good idea. I like very much what you have done with it so far. I have to go out right now for an hour or two, but I very quickly pasted in some images from what I assembled a few months ago at. However you may want other images rather than these ones, whatever seems best. You also might want them as galleries, and you might want each one labelled by its family, not just the genus and species. Talk to you later, very best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 14:19, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you for your support and (ongoing) help, also Snek01. I just moved it into public space, and I hope that didn't interfere with your ongoing edits. The trick now will be to give it some incoming links, and decide whether it should be "mollusks" "mollusca" "molluscs" or a singular form. "Freshwater fish" had it easy.

Martino3 (talk) 01:25, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Few shots for you

 * Hi Susan,
 * I took few pictures for you. I'm not interested in what will happen to them. I uploaded
 * them only because I took them for you. If they are not of any interest for you, may I please ask you
 * to disregard the message?
 * File:Sea slug in Kona.jpg,File:A shell at the beach in Kona Hawaii.jpg;
 * File:A shel at the beach in Kona, Hawaii 2.jpgFile:Shell mollusks in Kona.jpg
 * File:Sea urchin uses shels for camouflage.jpg
 * Best,--Mbz1 (talk) 03:43, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Mila, that is very kind of you! I always enjoy looking at your shell images. And yes, they are all interesting to me, thank you. And some I will be able to place in articles also. Best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 13:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Tree of Life
Greetings! I swore off the wiki yesterday due to deadline pressure and am only now back at the coalface. I think the Tree of Life project looks fascinating and suspect I will be able to recruit a couple of people who will be capable of doing a bunch of additions to it, specifically in southern African marine fauna. I have switched to using the B&R taxonomy for my gastropod uploads, but have not so far started updating other taxoboxes I come across, partly because I am still learning how to produce good Wikipedia articles, and partly because I have only just started using B&R. You raise an interesting point regarding possibly using another system to taxoboxes.. it's hard to imagine something that will replace them, because one would need a three or four dimensional (at least) classification system and that'd be pretty tricky to represent graphically. Perhaps when we have reliable hologram technology we'll manage more accurate classification better. Then again, it is a particularly human thing, isn't it, wanting to classify in the first place ;) best wishes Seascapeza (talk) 04:06, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

moisture loving invertebrates
Thanks for improving the article on the Blue Planarian. Yesterday I saw two more of them creeping along the driveway. Also saw a huge leech, the biggest I've ever seen right next to the front door. It's in the group known as Gnatbobdellida.

Plenty of moisture loving invertebrates appeared lately. But no sign of the Red Triangle Slug, (I'll keep looking). PETE Poyt448 (talk) 04:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

new article Melhus church
Hi Susan. I wonder if you would have a time to take a look at the small article I am about to finish (not on Wikipedia just yet), and correct my English. I will probably add this article tomorrow, and I am going to nominate it for DYK. If you have no time, that's absolutely fine. I'll sure understand. Best wishes.--Mbz1 (talk) 05:39, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I'll let you know, when I put it to Wikipedia later today or tomorrow. Best wishes.--Mbz1 (talk) 13:42, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's the link: Melhus church. Thank you!--Mbz1 (talk) 21:29, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi Susan. I submitted the article to DYK. If you have a time, maybe you could take a look at the hook. Thank you for helping me with the article and for your time!--Mbz1 (talk) 23:13, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Susan. As a matter of fact the reference from the Dass museum talks in length about this portrait, but I did add one more reference as you suggested. Thank you for your help!--Mbz1 (talk) 01:53, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I moved the article to Melhus church and Controversy of the Petter Dass portrait in order to try to save DYK, but I doubt they change their mind. Sorry, and thank you for your help!--Mbz1 (talk) 14:56, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Powell copyright questions
Howdy Susan. Powell has a large section on Powelliphanta and its species, but it doesn't seem that GB used any of this in the article. Powelliphanta "Augustus" was discovered after Powell wrote his book in 1979, and there doesn't seem to be any copying there either. However, GB spun out another 62 articles on the species belonging to the genus, and GB definitely used Powell in those. --Geronimo20 (talk) 23:43, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

DYK - assistance required
Hi,

I'm trying to nominate my new article on the Thorny Yellowwood for DYK. (My 50th new Wikipedia article.

I'm afraid I can't figure out the DYK instructions. It's embarrassing as I can't follow the instructions.

However, I found another nomination and copied that. Please assist with my first self nomination.

thanks PETE Poyt448 Poyt448 (talk) 13:18, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Thorny Yellowwood

 * ... that the Thorny Yellowwood is a rainforest tree with a spiky trunk?

5x expanded by User:Poyt448 (User talk:Poyt448). Self nom at 11:17, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

picture file is: Zanthoxylum brachyacanthum Tooloom NP April 1998.jpg