User talk:Rkitko/Archive17

Conservation status not endangered
Realization of my mistake is growing by the hour [since sequoia] with naming Category:Endangered flora of California and Category:Endangered flora of the United States and Category:Endangered fauna of California.....yikes. The Aussies did Category:Flora of Australia by conservation status parent cat. with proper IUCN child cats. within it; a [Category:Flora of California by conservation status] an option? Another idea via NatureServe terms is is [Category:Plants by conservation status in/of California]? Just sharing some ideas before bedtime, and seeing that original one needs to go. Your wider-deeper knowledge and insight is very invited, if this even interests you to see fixed. Thanks for hanging in there with me and my learning curve.--best-- Look2See1  t a l k →  04:02, 2 October 2010 (UTC)


 * A couple quick replies... I would stick to a well-known conservation status system. While IUCN can be frustratingly out of date sometimes, it does seem to be one of the most trusted. Another point I would make is do you have an idea of how many plant species would be included in such a conservation category structure just for the state of California? I know the state is large, but I wonder if a list article might better serve the purpose? That way you could also include species that don't yet have articles and it could be comprehensive. Also, I don't suspect you've come across this opinion yet, but there are people here who strongly believe that the "by state" categories for flora and fauna shouldn't exist. In fact, they deleted the fauna by state categories a few years ago. I was happy they didn't notice the flora by state categories at that time! Just a head's up that you may eventually encounter someone who bristles at the notion of more by state categories for flora of fauna.
 * The Aussies are usually a good system to model after. You might want to ask one of them for their opinion on whether would be a viable category. In that case, it would also be a good question to ask whether or not you think such a category would exist for each state, or do you think by region (Southwest, Pacific Northwest, Southeast, Northeast, Midwest, etc.) would be better? Thanks for the interesting discussion. I hope my comments here help! Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 04:13, 2 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi Rkitko, Glad you noted the 'old CA.endangered cat. approach' was inaccurate and prompted my stopping and redo. Have set up the Category:Flora of the United States by conservation status cat. after your comments above. Some specific children cats. too, and connecting to international cats. Have begun populating them, and can see the extra effort you had to do to find and remove my old 'vague endangered' ones - I'm sorry. Is this an acceptable-usable system for you and the other experts to consider?  I'm questioning the separate Calif. conservation status child. cats, especially CA.fauna ones, per your mentioning the wiki-states bristle history above. If helpful I'm glad to explain [try] the rational for the "biogeography" cat. adds. If it is all just a new mess will clean it up. Thank you---best--- Look2See1   t a l k →  22:53, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Salvia forsskaolii or forsskaolei?
Do you know the correct spelling of Salvia forsskaolii? I can't find it on IPNI under either name, and GRIN is down. Google search gives almost exclusive weight to forsskaolii, but a user just moved it to forsskaolei according to "name by MBG and KEW". MBG looks like they spell it that latter way, but the unscientific Ghits are about 3,800 to 3 against them. Thanks, First Light (talk) 15:41, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Then there is Salvia forskaohlei as another possibility. It gets a significant number of Ghits. First Light (talk) 21:11, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, IPNI allows wildcard searches ("Salvia fors*"), which came up with both Salvia forskahlei and Salvia forskohlei. So now we have forsskaolii, forsskaolei, forskaohlei, forskahlei, and forskohlei :-). There are more, but these seem to be the most common at this point. First Light (talk) 21:18, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * And now GRIN is working and I find yet another spelling - Salvia forskahlii. First Light (talk) 21:24, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Could you reply at Talk:Salvia forsskaolei? I've rewritten my comments there, hopefully to make it less confusing, and also to get other editor's opinions. First Light (talk) 03:28, 6 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry I didn't reply right away. It looks like you got plenty of help at the talk page, though. I'm not sure I could clarify anything more than what's already been said. I'll try to reply faster next time! Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 01:15, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

WP:EL questions
I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, and would appreciate some clarification on why the external links of the Michigan Central Station page do not meet the criteria.

Thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Albert duce (talk • contribs) 01:00, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Re:Camellia x Williamsii
--Sainsf&lt;^&gt; (talk) 05:30, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Problem with elm, and other, pages
Dear Rkitko Thanks for replying. Regret I don't think that bunching is the cause. I recently edited the page on the composer Darius Milhaud, and found the same problem (line extending across the infobox photo): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_Milhaud Regards Ptelea (talk) 10:46, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Re:Camellia x Williamsii
--Sainsf&lt;^&gt; (talk) 15:11, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

J F Hance
Sackcloth and ashes time; page should have been removed long ago. Apologies. Ptelea (talk) 10:25, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

dab
Thanks for dealing with that Riedelia dab page. I got the message almost straight away, looked at the dab, and decided that I couldn't be bothered jumping through procedural hoops to make an obviously useful page satisfy their criteria. Let it be sacrificed on the altar of wonkery! I then gave the matter no further thought, and only later noticed that you had done what was necessary to save it. Ta. Hesperian 01:59, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Hint
Hi Rkitko. If you are creating  articles which have a lot of text between the opening and closing tags, it could be confusing to anyone editing the text later. There is a work around for this. See how a copy editor has done it at Tussock (grass). Note the special use of the ==References== section. Cheers, --Kudpung (talk) 01:21, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Journals vs magazines
Well the CPN seems to be a borderline case, as it includes elements of both typical magazines (field reports, cultivation guides) and typical academic journals (peer-reviewed scientific papers, including taxon descriptions). I've been reliably informed that according to the categorisation system used on Wikipedia, they are considered magazines, so I've recategorised them accordingly. I can see the logic in drawing the line there, but it still seems a bit strange that self-styled 'journals' should fall under the magazine and not the journal wikiproject. mgiganteus1 (talk) 02:19, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Just an example I thought of: the Wall Street Journal does not fall within the journal wikiproject either... :-) --Crusio (talk) 02:22, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, my point is not that it calls itself a journal. My point is that it seems to fit the description of a journal. The CPN of maybe 20 years ago was certainly just a newsletter or magazine. But as it exists today and has for the last decade, the amount of academic work presented in the publication seems to make it more like a journal and much less like a magazine. Rkitko (talk) 02:28, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I guess it is a sliding scale, but when I look at the recent issues of CPN, I really have trouble identifying the articles that might fall under the refereed/professional category. Most seems to be directed at a public of plant fanciers (explanations of systematics, cultivation directions, descriptions of cultivars, etc). I assume the new species descriptions would get peer review, but the bulk of the contents seems to be non-technical (or non-professional, if you prefer). I bet that if you would ask subscribers of CPN, that most of them would be surprised if you asked them if they think they're subscribing to an academical journal. Compare it to Nature (journal) or Science (journal) (which calls itself "magazine", by the way). Next to peer-reviewed articles, both publish news items, covering events in the world of science, or commentaries on exciting scientific findings that are not reviewed (except by the editors). However, there are two differences with CPN: first, the proportion of reviewed to non-reviewed material is much higher and, second, even the non-reviewed stuff is directed towards an academic public. So to me, when I look at the web site of CPN, that just screams "magazine" to me, not academic journal. Please note that I do not mean any value judgments with this when I use the words professional/technical or magazine/journal (after all, the one new species description that I am guilty of was published in a magazine, too :-). --Crusio (talk) 02:51, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I just did a quick search on some of the most recent issues. I don't know where my 2010 issues are hiding, but here are some of the articles identified as "technical refereed contribution," meaning it's peer-reviewed: March 2009 (2), December 2008 (2), September 2008 (2), June 2008 (2), March 2008 (2). I count maybe 4 or five articles in each issue. And many of these, while not peer-reviewed (so-called "Writings from the readership") are of an academic caliber and of interest to academics, e.g. Soil fertilization of Sarracenia seedlings (June 2009), A nomenclaturally acceptable rank for the sundew epithet "obovata" (December 2008), Floral dimorphism in Utricularia janarthanamii (March 2008). So you can see why I'm fairly certain this is more of a journal than a magazine. The content seems to reflect that. Anecdotally, I can also tell you that there's frequent enough complaints that the content is too scientific for some subscribers. Comparisons to Science and Nature aren't terribly fair, but I get the point. I still think that, based on the content, that the CPN is closer to a journal than a magazine. Rkitko (talk) 03:22, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Removal of galleries for tree species
Hi! I thought that for some of the African tree species a small gallery would be appropriate as they're often VERY highly variable and difficult to identify without a few representative images of their different forms. I read through the WP:IG section and didn't see any rules against this. Are there rules against this that I don't know about? (I am new on Wikipedia!)

Otherwise if the galleries really must be removed, perhaps it would be best to at least leave a link to the Commons page so that users can browse these pictures if necessary. A single image really can't be representative or very helpful on its own. Thanks and all the best. Abu Shawka (talk) 07:06, 6 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi. Yes, WP:IG states, "A gallery is not a tool to shoehorn images into an article..." and "One rule of thumb to consider: if, due to its content, a gallery would only lend itself to a title along the lines of "Gallery" or "Images of [insert article title]", as opposed to a more descriptive title, the gallery should either be revamped or moved to the Commons." The articles were too small to support so many images. If the articles are expanded and the space exists, images can be moved back; we just don't want to overwhelm readers with images when there's so little text. Yes, a link to the Commons gallery is an excellent idea. I'm sorry I didn't put one in when I removed the galleries. We can do this with Commons or Commons-inline. I prefer the latter on stub articles since Commons produces a link box that gets pushed below the taxobox on the right, but you can do what you think is best. Welcome to Wikipedia and please let me know if you have any further questions or anything else I can help with. Cheers, Rkitko (talk) 12:55, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Teak
I've read it: 'a gallery section may be appropriate in some Wikipedia articles if a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images', so there, neither you or me fancy describing what is in those images, so let's leave it at that. Brutal Deluxe (talk) 00:05, 18 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure you understand what WP:IG is saying. It's certainly possible to describe what's in those images. The aspects of the plant illustrated by those images can be "easily or adequately described by text." This is improper use of the gallery. I quote WP:IG, "Wikipedia is not an image repository. A gallery is not a tool to shoehorn images into an article, and a gallery consisting of an indiscriminate collection of images of the article subject should generally either be improved in accordance with the above paragraph or moved to Wikimedia Commons." These images are mostly included in Commons:Category:Tectona grandis. I note that the article lacks a link to this. Could we nix the gallery and include this link with Commons category instead? Rkitko (talk) 00:13, 18 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course I understand it, there's nothing there that explicitly forbids galleries. The paragraph you quoted is fundamentally designed to eliminate vanity galleries, not essential details like the look of teak wood (the article would be void without it) or of its bark, leaves and flowers. I feel these details at least should be included in every plant article, regardless of where in the article they are put. Let's compromise and have a stripped down gallery plus the link to Commons. Brutal Deluxe (talk) 08:34, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Personal criticism
You are critical of just about every suggestion or comment I make about the content of wikipedia. Yes, I realize you consider me stupid. I got that out of our first couple of encounters. I do not what is going on with this, but, please, I will no longer respond to anything you write, and I think that should suffice, for fuck's sake. --Kleopatra (talk)


 * The phrase "for fuck's sake" cannot be construed as personal criticism about you, neither can anything else I wrote. It perfectly expressed my frustration with the discussion; it didn't seem like anyone was understand what I was saying. Perhaps that's my fault and it was not intended to be directed at any one person. I don't feel I need to apologize for it. And no, I don't consider you stupid. Rkitko (talk) 15:17, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

I saw this already. Enough of this. I removed my comments long before anyone said anything, then someone put them back, and now they're actually a topic of conversation, for fuck's sake. --Kleopatra (talk) 05:32, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Huntington desert garden
OK - just been struggling with some issues on commons re it and gardenology - sigh - had thought due to the range of desert plants that are indicated at the garden - it might have come under the radar - have a happy new year SatuSuro 04:42, 28 December 2010 (UTC)


 * No worries. The only botanical gardens that WP:PLANTS includes are those with significant importance on taxonomy, e.g. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Otherwise we'd be tagging every small garden with no real connection to the project except that there are plants there. Why not tag all national parks and natural areas, then? Just seems to be beyond the scope. G'luck with the article. Rkitko (talk) 04:51, 28 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Nah for me the issue at commons is where huge downloads of plant piccies include either the downloaders pictures (ie mug shots of the family) against the plant name -( I hardly am a scaevola :)  ) - as for your comment re gardens - i was under the impression that the huntington desert one was up there in the kew variety for its specific desert speciality - but hey never been there so i dont know - as for nat parks and scope corollorary - hmmm - i wasnt started editing yesterday :}  SatuSuro 05:07, 28 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Huntington has a spectacular collection, but its research staff (last I looked) don't have the same stature of those at Kew or even Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden.--Curtis Clark (talk) 05:36, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Yup I understand - thanks for clarifying that - I do appreciate the explanation - have a good swear word free new year (viz above) SatuSuro 05:42, 28 December 2010 (UTC)