Wikipedia:WikiProject Mammals/Bats Task Force

Welcome to WikiProject Bats, an attempt to improve the coverage and quality of bat-related topics on the English Wikipedia. This is a small but active project looking to keep growing; if you're interested in editing bat-related topics, please add your name to the participants list and dive right in! Our "goals" section is updated with new tasks every month, and there are tons of miscellaneous tasks of various skill levels that need to be accomplished. If you're unsure of how you could contribute, or you have ideas for the project, please leave us a message on our talk page!

Goals

We've come a long way since 2017, but there's more to be done. We benefit from the improvement of articles in any amount; efforts thus far have involved a three-pronged approach of creating missing articles, improving the worst articles (turning stubs into start class or higher articles), and targeting our most popular articles for nomination for GA. Here are some long-term goals for the project:

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Show your bat pride on your user page with this infobox: user Bats Task Force


 * bat species & all taxonomic groups
 * evolution
 * diseases
 * notable bat research/conservation organizations
 * notable bat researchers/conservationists
 * bat/human conflict
 * economic/cultural value of bats

This project is plagued with an abundance of stubs. Pick a random stub article to work on here:

Stub Progress
 * May 2017: 73.7% of articles are stubs
 * December 2017: 68% of all articles are stubs
 * February 2018: 66.5% of all articles are stubs
 * June 2018: 59.7% of all articles are stubs (!)
 * April 2019: 51.6% of all articles are stubs
 * October 2019: 48.3% of all articles are stubs

Tag bat articles on their talk page using this banner (Template here):

This is a suggested layout, based on the successful page for the common vampire bat. Possible topics for inclusion are listed, though this will vary by species and the availability of research.
 * Lead paragraph: A concise summary of the key facts
 * Taxonomy: possible items for inclusion are etymology of scientific name; systematics; previous names
 * Description: morphology, coloration, dentition, forearm length, mass, calcar keeled/unkeeled
 * Biology: life expectancy; hibernation or torpor
 * Reproduction: age at first reproduction; pups per litter; litters per year; survivorship
 * Diet: what do they eat; how do they capture prey
 * Echolocation: if applicable
 * Range and habitat: where can you find this species?
 * Conservation: what is the status of this bat; what threatens this species; are there any mitigation actions to conserve this species
 * References: use formatting; bare urls are not acceptable references
 * Further reading
 * External links
 * Navbar: usually by family, subfamily, or genus; see options Category:Template-Class Bat articles
 * Taxonbar: add taxonbar to the bottom of the page&mdash;underneath references & external links but before categories
 * Categories

(to refresh quality table, visit here and update "Bat")

For the charts and graphs about monthly progress, see WikiProject Mammals/Bats Task Force/Assessment. Note that WikiWork and Relative Wikiwork listed in the table are not updating automatically for the time being, so those statistics are out of date. The correct statistics are now manually calculated and recorded in the Assessment subpage.


 * Can't access a paper you need to write an article? Try putting a request in at the Resource Request page to potentially have another user email it to you.
 * email User:Enwebb if you would like access to the following texts, as I have the Chiroptera chapters
 * Ceballos, G. (Ed.). (2014). Mammals of Mexico. JHU Press.
 * Smith, A. T., & Xie, Y. (Eds.). (2013). Mammals of China (Vol. 9). Princeton University Press.
 * Gardner, A. L. (Ed.). (2008). Mammals of South America, volume 1: marsupials, xenarthrans, shrews, and bats (Vol. 2). University of Chicago Press.
 * Rabor, D. S. (1977). Philippine Birds & Mammals. UP Science Education Center.
 * Kingdon, J., Happold, D., Butynski, T., Hoffmann, M., Happold, M., & Kalina, J. (2013). Mammals of Africa. A&C Black.
 * Interested in creating range maps? Check out Wikipedia map conventions for standardized colors to use; check out Wikimedia Commons blank maps by region for a starting map for a given species
 * When describing bat weight, length, or the range of elevations at which it's found, it can be useful to use the convert template, as users around the world have different units of measurement:
 * "The big brown bat weighs " displays as "The big brown bat weighs 15-26 g."
 * There is also a useful template for a species' dental formula (here):
 * "Its dental formula is " displays as "Its dental formula is "
 * Tired of typing in tedious citation parameters? Try enabling the citation bot in your preferences to automatically fill in cite journal parameters with only a DOI
 * Want to maximize your impact? Find a bat article to work on by sorting by page views in a category (example: most popular article in Bats of Africa category or most viewed bat stubs)


 * Hugh H. Genoways