User talk:Shadowshador

September 2011
Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute to the encyclopedia, but when you add or change content, please cite a reliable source for your addition. This helps maintain our policy of verifiability. See Citing sources for how to cite sources, and the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. mgiganteus1 (talk) 12:33, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Edits on some gastropod articles
Hello Shadowshador, and a big Welcome to Wikipedia! Thanks so much for taking an interest in some of the gastropod articles, in particular the Cone snail articles. It looks as if you have a strong interest in these animals. Do you mind if I ask: are you a shell collector? Or even maybe a malacologist? Here on Wikipedia there is a group of people who are working on trying to improve the overall coverage of gastropod-related articles, and that group is called WikiProject Gastropods. I would be happy to invite you to join that group. If you have any questions or comments on anything at all, please do drop me a note on my talk page. It can be hard at first learning what's what on Wikipedia; it can easily take a few months to get the hang of all the bits and pieces. Welcome again and best wishes to you, Invertzoo (talk) 15:33, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

An update
Ah, just now I see that you describe yourself on your User page as a taxonomist. Can I ask if you are a professional taxonomist or a serious amateur? Either way we respect your interest greatly. Do you specialize in this group? You could be very valuable to Wikipedia. As you know, the Conidae and Conoidea have been undergoing a great deal of revision recently, and it is true that our taxonomy for this particular group of species is out of date, as we have all the species still listed under Conus. It would be really excellent to get that whole group revised and updated in terms of the current nomenclature, but it is a really huge group and it will demand a lot of man-hours to revise it properly. I really appreciate your current efforts in that direction, and it is very kind of you to start in on this.

If I may say so, rather than starting out by making changes in the species articles (without any citations to back them up) it is better if this process is carried out starting with the Conidae family article, then the Coninae subfamily article, then working down to Conus and List of Conus species, and then the numerous new genera articles (all of which will need creating from scratch) and then finally changing the species articles one by one by genus. The great majority of species articles will need their titles changed (or "moved" as we call it). Also every one of these taxonomy changes will need to have a citation from the appropriate published source to back it up. The gastropod project members (including myself) can certainly help you with all of this work, and can show you how to do the changes that you don't yet know how to do, or maybe can do the more difficult changes for you. Wikipedia is above all a collaboration. The gastropod project talk page where the members of the gastropod project communicate and coordinate our efforts, is to be found by clicking on this link. The project page itself, which gives background and context for the project, and lists our members on a subpage, is to be found here.

An invitation
Because you seem to have a real interest in this class of animals, here is the invitation I was talking about:

Best to you, Invertzoo (talk) 15:41, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Hold on a bit!
Hello again Shadowshador, would you mind just halting on your cone snail edits until we can talk this through? I don't really want to revert all of your well-meaning edits (reverting is very easy to do) but really, the method you are currently using is not the best way to go about updating the nomenclature of this group and will cause headaches for the rest of us. Your work may end up reverted anyway, so it's better to stop and talk now. Thanks for any cooperation you can give us. It would really be appreciated. Best wishes to you, Invertzoo (talk) 17:10, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Hey Shadowshador, thanks for the message you left for me on my talk page. By the way, next time you leave a message, if you put 4 of these things "~" after it before you hit "save", the software on Wikipedia will automatically convert those four squiggles into the blue links for your user page and talk page and also the date and time.

I hope you don't mind that I made a copy of that message from you and put it on the gastropods project talk page so other editors could see it and understand what was going on? I did look at your Flickr page and I really liked your shadow images, and your shell images are also very good! I wanted to say that if you perhaps have a collection of cone shells or other gastropod shells and would like to photograph some of the ones you have, there are many species here that we don't have an image for, and to have images of the shells would be extremely helpful. As for the taxonomy of the Conidae, User:JoJan wrote, on the project talk page:


 * "The genus Conus is a tough nut to crack. Tucker and Tenorio (2009) proposed a split up of this genus in many genera (such as Africonus, Gladioconus etc.); This seems to be accepted provisionally by Bouchet et al. (2011) in "A new operational classification of the Conoidea (Gastropoda)". However, they also mention that a new molecular phylogeny of the Conidae is currently in preparation. WoRMS, on the other hand, accepts all these new genera as "alternate representations" of Conus (see : ). These changes were done by dr. Bouchet himself (see:) It is my opinion that we stick to the policy followed by WoRMS, awaiting a definitive study. We can always mention the alternate representation in the taxobox. JoJan (talk) 17:02, 18 September 2011 (UTC)"

I don't know if you can follow what JoJan is saying, but a new study on Conidae will be coming out quite soon, and will probably be pretty different from the 2009 taxonomy, which is what you are using. Can I ask you which book or website you are (or were) getting the names from? That would be helpful to know. Invertzoo (talk) 18:22, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps you can see that setting up all the new names and the groupings under new genera according to the system proposed in 2009 by by Tucker and Tenorio, and then shortly having to rename, rework and regroup about 200 articles when the new, more definitive molecular study comes out, is more work (more man-hours) than is reasonable. The main published source we use as a basis for our gastropod taxonomy on here has not implemented the Tucker and Tenorio names, and we are following that lead. Everything on Wikipedia needs to be backed up with published reliable sources, and that is especially true of taxonomy; our overall taxonomy of the gastropods has to follow one system accepted by one set of experts, and can't include all the competing systems proposed by other malacologists. Invertzoo (talk) 12:21, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Your photos
Thanks so much Shadowshador for your new note. I am sure we can work something out one way or another over time, but it looks to me as if your gastropod shell photos on Flickr are "all rights reserved" and Wikipedia needs images that are free use (no copyright problems) so if these are indeed "all rights reserved" we would need new shell images I guess. I asked another project member to check them out and we will see what he says.

Your images of microorganisms might be great for WikiProject Microbiology here, assuming the copyright status is OK on them, which I guess it might or might not be. I can leave the folks at that project a message about your micro images if you like?

Invertzoo (talk) 20:33, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Your recent edits
Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( &#126;&#126;&#126;&#126; ) at the end of your comment. You could also click on the signature button or  located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 14:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Taxon
Hello again Shadowshador, and thanks for your interest and your enthusiastic perseverance! I understand that it strikes you like this: the 2009 taxonomy is the most up to date for Conus, so why not use it??

However, although you might find this hard to believe, the WoRMS database is not actually out-of-date, in fact it is constantly being updated by some of the best living malacological taxonomists including Dr. Philippe Bouchet himself.

I have not seen the 2009 paper myself but assuming I have understood this correctly, the reason that WoRMS is not using the 2009 taxonomy for Conus is because that 2009 proposal was (presumably) not based on molecular (DNA or RNA) research, but on the morphology of the shells, the radula, and the animals' other anatomy, that kind of thing. That morphological approach to taxonomy is actually the thing that is outdated! Usually when DNA/RNA studies are done, the taxonomic results come out very differently to the ones derived from morphological studies, especially in a group as tricky to make sense of as the cones. These days no-one wants to accept any "new" gastropod taxonomy that isn't at least in part based on DNA or RNA. I think it's rather unlikely that the upcoming Coninae taxonomy only grouped these new genera into subfamilies, tribes and subtribes.

In other words WoRMS is deliberately not using those names and is deliberately waiting for the new molecular study before they change the taxonomy they are using.

Let me know if you don't understand what I am trying to say. Thanks again, Invertzoo (talk) 21:20, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Chilean rose tarantula image
Hi again. There are two things you can do when you spot an error like that. One simple thing is to put a note on the talk page for the article, explaining that you are sure the photo is incorrect. The other thing, if you are quite sure that the image in the taxobox is wrong, and (perhaps?) you are quite sure that the photo of the "Fire Hair Tarantula" further down the page is in fact correct, and should be in the taxobox, then you can delete the wrong image and cut and paste the link to the good image into that place in the taxobox.

You must learn to write a brief "edit summary" every time you do any kind of edit anywhere, so of course you need to do it for this kind of edit. Also it would be good to leave a note on the article talk page explaining what you did and why. If you don't understand how to change the image over, let me know and I will do it for you, but be sure to leave a message on the talk page there, so people know it was your idea. Invertzoo (talk) 21:31, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I see you deleted the image of the wrong tarantula, but you forgot to put an edit summary of what you did when you did those edits. Try to remember to do that before you hit "save" every time. You will see the edit summary slot right below the edit window. You only need put a couple of words in there. I went ahead and moved the other image up into the taxobox. Just now I put a note onto the talk page about what we did. Normally you could do that yourself. Thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 01:37, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

OK Shadowshador. I put what I assume is a correct image in now. Let me say: it's great that you want to see the encyclopedia improved, and that you want various corrections made, and I appreciate your caring enough to point these things out to me, but... I am working primarily on the gastropod project. You are going to have to learn how to do all these various things yourself if you want to help get them fixed, that's what becoming a Wikipedia editor involves, is gradually learning how to do all various kinds of corrections and additions. And once more, can I ask you to learn to leave an edit summary before you hit the Save button when you make an edit? And also to sign your name not by putting "Shadowshador" but by putting four of these "~" instead? These are two of the first things to learn. Best, Invertzoo (talk) 20:25, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Editing
Thanks for your note. You are brand new on here and yes, there is really a lot to learn about how to edit Wikipedia. You will gradually learn the Wikipedia "mark up" bit by bit. If you want to experiment, you can use the Sandbox (a page for experimentation and drafting) here. I would rather show you how to do things than do them for you, it's much better that way in the long run. Start of by trying hard to remember the two things I already showed you: 1. how to sign your name properly when you leave a message and 2. always leave an edit summary. Best, Invertzoo (talk) 20:47, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Your edits to Conus
Thanks for your well-meaning efforts in revising the genus Conus. However, as InvertZoo explained above, this is a tricky question not yet resolved even among experts. We are following WoRMS as it is maintained and updated on a daily basis by the best taxonomists in their field of experience. For example, you just changed the article Conus bruuni and changed its name into Asprella bruuni. In WoRMS, Asprella bruuni is considered an "alternate representation" of Conus bruuni. The Conus biodiversity database doesn't even mention Asprella bruuni. Changing all these names of Conus species may give us a severe headache in the future if they are wrong. I hope you can back up your claims with solid and recent evidence. Furthermore, you are just changing the article and the taxobox  but you don't move the article to its new name. This gives an inconsistency in the article between the title and the text. And when moving an article, the template on the talk page of the first article has to be deleted. This can only be done by an administrator, such as me. I advise you to talk this through with the members of our project on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Gastropods. Or perhaps a better option for you would be to add more content to the existing Conus articles (where you can also mention their alternate representation in the text of the article), awaiting a more definitive taxonomy for Conus. JoJan (talk) 09:42, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Flickr pictures of cone shells
Hi Shadowshador, I noticed that you mentioned on User:Invertzoo's talk page that we can use your Flickr pictures here. We will need the photos to be licensed a particular way on Flickr before we can use them. The license must allow commercial use of the photo. The license can be set to any of the following:


 * Attribution Creative Commons
 * Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons
 * Attribution-NoDerivs Creative Commons

The first two options are preferred. Flickr has a brief description for the options. This Wikihow page has the instructions on how the Creative Commons license can be set for your pictures. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks. — Ganeshk  ( talk ) 21:28, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Help learning how to edit
If you don't know how to do something, you are welcome to ask me. Invertzoo (talk) 16:27, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

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