Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Viruses/Archive 1

Inactive?
There's an inactive tag on this project... 132.205.94.174 23:09, 24 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Due to small numbers we're not really inactive, just it seems that way when all 5 of us are busy elsewhere in our lives! -- Serephine / talk - 02:07, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Unranked levels
The current Templates guide says to include levels that viruses are not classified at, with the label unranked. I'd like to suggest against this. To me, it implies all viruses would have orders if we knew more. I'm not certain, but it looks to me like the orders are meant to be real phylogenetic groups, so if some families have separate origins it may be deliberate. More importantly, it isn't the way the TOL project usually does things and it doesn't appear on many pages, even for viruses. Josh
 * My bad, overzealous editing in the hope that an (unranked) tag would stop people wondering if the taxobox was incomplete. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction for the general taxoboxes, though for clarity's sake I'd prefer to leave (unranked) on the main Virus article. The ==Classification== heading adequately explains that classification begins at the order level, and the taxobox there alerts users to the fact that they aren't placed above that level. Thanks again! --  Serephine   ♠   talk   - 16:45, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

It's no problem - thanks for taking charge here and setting all this out. There was another thing I wanted to see what you, and other virus-people, thought about. It would be nice to have taxoboxes for viroids, which fall under the same taxonomic code as viruses. I've created a sample, but maybe listing virus classification is too weird. Are there any ideas for how this should work? Josh
 * I see no problem with the project incorporating viroids as a part of the work. I personally have never studied them so would be very careful in my dealings with them, but the lure of your taxobox creating skills is too much haha. Looking online seems to indicate no hard and fast classification system, and seeing as though the Viral classification page contains viroid classification I am keen to adopt your taxobox for the time being. Perhaps the ToL could give us a direction for this... I wouldn't want Wikipedia getting ahead of the virologists! --  Serephine   ♠   talk   - 03:07, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

rice yellow mottle sobemovirus RYMV
Structure. RYMV virions are icosahedral particles and form a single band when centrifuged in CsCl (1.36 g/cm3). The particles consist of approximately 20% RNA and 80% protein and contain no lipids or carbohydrates (13). The virus capsid is constructed from 180 copies of 26-kDa coat protein (CP) subunits assembled in a T = 3 icosahedral structure (Fig. 4B) stabilized by divalent cations (Ca2+), pH-dependent protein–protein interaction, and salt bridges between protein and RNA (30). The structure of RYMV has been refined to 2.8 Å resolution by X-ray crystallography (Fig. 4C) (54). Plant Disease 2005 / Vol. 89 No. 2 page 124 Viroid states it has no protein coat. What is right than? --Stone 11:22, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Thankyou for picking this up. RYMV is a virus, and must have been incorrectly placed in the Viroid article due to confusion over this abstract. The article was talking about associated small cytoplasmic RNA, which was not stated. I will tag the article as possibly containing more incorrect information and get onto correcting it after my exams. Thanks again Stone! --  Serephine   ♠   talk   - 11:40, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Version 0.5
I'm member of the Wikipedia CD Version 0.5 project. Please show me virus related articles which I could nominate. Thanks. NCursework 20:24, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Requenst for Peer-review of Influenza
Hi there. I'm trying to bring this page to FA quality, so comments are very welcome. Review page is Peer review/Influenza/archive1. Thank you. TimVickers 23:28, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Influenza
Page now nominated as a FAC. Comments and suggestions are welcome on the review page. Thank you. TimVickers 00:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Project directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council has recently updated the WikiProject Council/Directory. This new directory includes a variety of categories and subcategories which will, with luck, potentially draw new members to the projects who are interested in those specific subjects. Please review the directory and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope that all the changes to the directory can be finished by the first of next month. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 23:47, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

To do list
Hi all. have just joined the wikiproject but it still doesn't seem very active. IMO, we should start a to do list, e.g. determine missing articles, articles which need expansion or categorizing.,.. etc. We can also organize our priorities and select an article or group of articles to work on every week. Anybody interested?--Wedian 19:47, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I just started the effort to bring this project back to life last night. I already started tagging articles of relevance to the project with the Wikiproject Viruses template, but yes, we have quite a bit to do. Any help would be dearly appreciated, even if it's just tagging articles and ranking their importance! – ClockworkSoul 21:26, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Wildlife Barnstar
There is currently a barnstar proposal at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals for a barnstar which would be available for use for this project. Please feel free to visit the page and make any comments you see fit. Badbilltucker 15:28, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Sida-aids-orange.png|44px|right]][[Image:Original Barnstar.png|100px|right]] I do not believe it would be a good idea to use the Wildlife Barnstar because viruses aren't really related to "wild or domestic animal" (indirectly, but kind of a stretch). I prefer a WikiProject Barnstar, since it'll be more focused.  How about superimposing the virus pic over the original barnstar pic?  Jumping cheese  [[Image:Misc-tpvgames.gif|18px]] Cont @  ct 11:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Tagging
What pages are included under WikiProject Viruses? Does the project include the diseases caused by viruses, or only the virus itself? For example, the HIV is tagged, whereas AIDS is not tagged. I prefer tagging all articles related to viruses since the tag states "this article is within the scope of the Viruses WikiProject". I'll hold off tagging the disease pages until a consensus is reached. =)  Jumping cheese   Cont @  ct 11:40, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh...and according to Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Virus articles by quality, there is only a handful of virus pages that are tagged. I got some fun work ahead of me!  =)   Jumping cheese  [[Image:Misc-tpvgames.gif|18px]] Cont @  ct 12:00, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, very few articles have been tagged to date. The project isn't especially active, and is in need of somebody with the time to put in the effort to revitalize it. I myself am pretty much part time, putting most of my effort into maintaining the MCB wikiproject. To answer your questions, though, I think that both the diseases and their associated viral pathogens can fit comfortably into the scope of the project. Besides, if it doesn't work out, it can always change at a later date, anyway. – ClockworkSoul 16:26, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The more pages that are tagged, the more people will know about the WikiProject Virus, and thus more participants! yay  I'll tag as many as I can, including the diseases.   Jumping cheese  [[Image:Misc-tpvgames.gif|18px]] Cont @  ct 08:27, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

New Wikiproject proposal
I'm looking to start Wikiproject Microbiology. I have just put a proposal up at WikiProject_Council/Proposals and I invite anyone that thinks they would like to join to express their interest there. A suggestion has been made there to merge WikiProject Viruses into Wikiproject Microbiology, and it would be great to get some comments on this. I have a temporary page up here. Thanks. ◄ §ĉҺɑʀκs  ►  07:33, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:21, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Immune system FAC
Immune system has also been nominated as a FAC, any comments or suggestions are welcome. Thank you. TimVickers 16:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

General question
I'm new to wikipedia and I was wondering, for an article to be included as part of the Virus WikiProject does it need to be approved in any way or can I just add the Wikiproject Viruses template? MadScientistVX 06:18, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * No, there is no special procedure for tagging articles as being within the scope of this wikiproject; you may just add the template to the talk page of the article. Welcome to Wikipedia! -Frazzydee|&#9997; 14:00, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Narnaviridae
This article on a particular virus has not been edited in two years until I touched it up. Since I'm not a specialist on viruses, could anyone try to improve this article? Thanks, Sr13 (T|C) 06:28, 2 March 2007 (UTC) Also add Potyviridae to the list. Sr13 (T|C) 06:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Turnip yellow mosaic virus
I have started article Turnip yellow mosaic virus, and added my images there. Verification needed. --Snek01 23:58, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Antivirals and vaccines
Should antiviral drugs or vaccines (or both) be included in this project? G716A 19:55, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're welcome to contribute on those subjects to WikiProject Viruses (anything related to viruses is within the project scope). Some related pages are located at Category:Antivirals and Category:Vaccines. +A.0u 01:22, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Influenza pandemic RFC
I'm hoping this article should fall within the interest of some of the members of this Wikiproject - there's a request for comment going on at the Influenza pandemic talk page over the inclusion of a section, and hopefully your input could be useful in establishing a consensus over what to do. Cheers. QmunkE 08:45, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

WP:TOL template
I'm working on a proposal to subsume all the WP:TOL project banners into a single one. Please see WikiProject Tree of Life/Template union proposal and its talk page. Circeus 19:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Scrumpox
I've just created this article, but I'm not so knowledgeable on the subject (neither sport nor visuses), and would appreciate an eye-over from someone here. Thanks. Cormaggio is learning 22:15, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Not from her. But I've given it a make-over. Can I just "eeeuuuugh!"--ZayZayEM (talk) 06:27, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Sendai virus
I just expanded this article from a former stub, and would like someone to peruse it/edit it, should such be necessary. Thanks! -EarthRise33 00:03, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Virology journals
I've created a list of virology journals at List of scientific journals in biology. I believe it's reasonably complete for periodicals in virology and antiviral drugs (excluding journals whose main focus is microbiology and discontinued ones), but if I've left out something obvious please do amend! I intend to write articles for at least some of the many red links over the coming months. Espresso Addict 03:59, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Italicization
How's italicization handled in viruses? For example, is it "Rhopalosiphum padi virus" or (more in line with "true" lifeforms) "Rhopalosiphum padi virus"? Dysmorodrepanis 11:33, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Technically, I believe the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses recommendation is that species names should italicised, including the word virus. (See, for example, where the virus species are italicised on the subpages, if not on the index page.) However, with some exceptions, normal usage generally doesn't italicise any of the name, and currently most articles use the more informal style except in the infobox. Hope this helps! Espresso Addict 21:28, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Gr@cias! Dysmorodrepanis 23:30, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Virus-related AfD discussion
Just a heads up that potato virus U is currently up for AfD. Espresso Addict 01:55, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Now kept. Thanks anyone who visited and commented! Espresso Addict 09:36, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

How to include serotypes in taxoboxes??
Taxoboxes seem to end with the lowest level as species. How do we add serotypes? For example, for Coxsackie B, the taxobox is:

but should be

but the serotype does not resolve. Anybody have a fix? TIA &mdash; G716   08:33, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Influenza related articles need attention
Hi. I've been noticing a very serious trend in Influenza related articles to be promoting alarm, safety instructions and over-focus relating to H5N1. These articles have issues with Tone, Undue Weight, Lack of Context, Unclear referencing, Too many extra external links, Readability, POV-Forking among other issues. Some of the articles I express serious concern over: In particular I have been having trouble communicating with about his editing style and collaborating towards improvements toward these articles. (Dialogue User_talk:ZayZayEM) Any help, interest or advice from the community involved in this project as to how to improve these articles will be appreciated.--ZayZayEM 10:43, 13 September 2007 (UTC) I am largely responsible for the flu series of articles and I am trying to edit wikipedia less these days. Anyone who wishes to take over the care and feeding of these articles is encouraged to do so, as I am no longer taking care of them. It would be great if people would do to all the flu articles what User:Tim Vickers did to the flu article. Good luck everybody! WAS 4.250 23:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Influenza pandemic - serious issues here see Talk:Influenza pandemic
 * Avian flu
 * Transmission and infection of H5N1

Winter Vomiting Virus redirected
There was a very short, unreferenced article at Winter Vomiting Virus that basically repeated some information from Norovirus. I don't know if Winter vomiting virus has its own scientific classification (I am not a doctor or a virologist) - but since a user proposed a merge in March and no-one commented since, I went ahead and redirected the link to Norovirus. Please research and fix it if you see an error in that. --Hroðulf (or Hrothulf) (Talk) 08:31, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Looks fine to me; it looks as if "winter vomiting virus" is just an informal layperson's term for the Norwalk virus. Espresso Addict 09:59, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Rotavirus and Hepatitis B virus
Hello everybody. I've done a lot of work on these two articles and they have been awarded GA status. Do they have any FA potential? All comments are welcome, I have grown a thick skin since nominating Virus! Best wishes Graham Colm Talk 20:21, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

How do I request that an article be re-assessed?
How do I request that an article be re-assessed? talk:Simian immunodeficiency virus‎ says it is stub/low importance. Personally I would have said start/mid myself. RJFJR 20:38, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Go ahead and do so yourself, but put a brief explanation of your reasons on the talk page. Tim Vickers 21:06, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Ross River Fever & Ross River virus
Possible merger, please see Talk:Ross River virus. Thanks. CambridgeBayWeather (Talk) 16:35, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

FAC Nomination
Featured article candidates/Herpes zoster. Any help will be appreciated. Orange Marlin Talk• Contributions 17:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Rotavirus
Hi, are there any viable virologists here? Rotavirus is a FAC but apart from Colin, there are no comments from the project.--Graham Colm Talk 21:03, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Erroneous redirect
The redirect from Adeno_associated_virus_group to Adenovirus is completely inaccurate, adeno-associated virus and adenovirus are not synonymous terms. NCBI taxonomy browser links provided as evidence. Adeno-associated virus http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?mode=Undef&id=10803&lvl=3&p=mapview&p=has_linkout&p=blast_url&p=genome_blast&keep=1&srchmode=1&unlock Adenovirus http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?mode=Tree&id=10508&lvl=3&p=mapview&p=has_linkout&p=blast_url&p=genome_blast&lin=f&keep=1&srchmode=1&unlock 69.115.94.176 (talk) 02:56, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
 * This has been fixed 69.115.94.176 (talk) 19:05, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the notice. There is an article on Adeno-associated virus already in Wikipedia.  I did not know this.  I added information to the Dependovirus article.  They should probably be incorporated into just the one.  Does Wikipedia have specific guidelines I should follow on this?  --Blechnic (talk) 09:27, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

There are also serious problems with the helper virus article, if anyone has time. --Blechnic (talk) 21:54, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Rubulavirus
If anyone fancies a project, Rubulavirus could really do with an expert to write some content. Ka Faraq Gatri (talk) 00:03, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS. Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles. Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot  ( Disable )  21:32, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
 * The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
 * A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Redirects on "G. species" disambiguation pages
Please see this discussion so that we can come to a conclusion about redirects used on "G. species" disambiguation pages. Thank you, Neelix (talk) 22:37, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

WP: Viruses userbox
And the code: {{Userbox | border-c=#000000 | border-s=1| id-c=#666666| id-s=12| id-fc=#FFFFFF| id-op=| info-c=#777777| info-s=8| info-fc=#FFFFFF| info-lh=1.2em| info-op=| id=| info=This user is a member of Wikiproject Virues.} To insert this on your userpage, use the template I would like some comments before I put it up on the wikiproject page, any comments? Also, I might like to suggest archiving this talk page. Linkthewindow (talk) 11:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Whoops, looks like there is already a viruses userbox. I'll keep this one up here if anyone wants to use it (I don't like the other one, too much red.) Linkthewindow (talk) 11:25, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Articles flagged for cleanup
Currently, 701 articles are assigned to this project, of which 106, or 15.1%, are flagged for cleanup of some sort. (Data as of 2008-07-14.) Are you interested in finding out more? I am offering to generate cleanup to-do lists on a project or work group level. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for details. More than 150 projects and work groups have already subscribed, and adding a subscription for yours is easy - just place the following template on your project page:

If you want to respond to this canned message, please do so at my user talk page; I'm not watching this page. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:17, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Whois watching
Hi, I wonder how active this project is. If you watch this page, could add your four tildes below?
 * Graham Colm Talk 21:07, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Although it is currently on my watchlist (mainly because I did some work on Cymbidium mosaic virus), I don't necessarily expect to get as involved as I am with WP:PLANTS. Kingdon (talk) 03:21, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Anybody else? Graham Colm Talk 20:26, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You don't have to shout mate. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:30, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * David Ruben Talk 03:47, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Watching, but wasn't active in September. Espresso Addict (talk) 06:28, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * It's great to know another virologist is around. Best wishes, Graham. Graham Colm Talk 06:39, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Virus
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7. We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations. A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible. We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 22:42, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Distinguish diseases from infectious organisms
Hi, I'm working on a proposal to make sure wikipedia tries to keep articles seperate with talking about diseases and the organisms that cause them. Please take a look User:ZayZayEM/Proposal:Distinguish disease from infectious organisms if you feel this is a topic that should be discussed further. I think that articles on disease should not be caught up talking about the infectious agent themself. They should focus on the infectious agent really only in terms of the disease itself (ie. epidemiology, and how the discovery of a connection between disease and infectious agent was found). This would prevent medical articles being bogged down with too much taxonomical classification data and general microbial ecology. At teh same time it will allow more focus in organism articles on ecology, taxonomy and non-medical biology regarding the actual organism itself rather than mashing that together with information that would be mostly very human-centric.--ZayZayEM (talk) 05:30, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I am opposed to a dictum on this; it depends on the aetiological agent. For some, separate articles make sense, but for many other articles it will create much overlapping text. I think we have to consider each disease/organism article(s) carefully to decide whether one or two articles are best for our readers. I prefer articles that give the full picture and particularly ones that put the more esoteric stuff at the end. But, WhatamIdoing  has my support in saying, there are times when a unified article makes the most sense, and times when a split makes the most sense. Graham. Graham Colm  Talk 22:01, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Article on rabies victim Lisa McMurray at AfD
Expert opinion needed on Articles for deletion/Lisa McMurray, an article about a person who recently died from rabies in Northern Ireland. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:10, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been working on the presentation style and layout for Rabies since October 2008, and I believe this is a good example the ongoing issue. These topics are extremely specific in nature: to the point where it detracts from the general topic as a whole. So far the solution has been to group these sections and throw the into another article (e.g. Prevalence of rabies, Rabies and animals), however this method is not sustainable and Wikipedia is not a news source (WP:NOT Point 5). The best solution I can see right now is to created a "Recent cases" subsection in Rabies, and when the case is no longer "recent" and cannot be meshed in improving another section or subsection we throw out the subsecton under WP:Notability. ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:39, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, I deleted most of this material as unencyclopedic while investigating the Lisa McMurray article (now merged with Prevalence of rabies). I think the prevalence article is viable, as long as it does not turn into a set of biographies. I've added some detailed summary material on the cases in the UK since eradication in 1902, including a few sentences on McMurray's case. They can be pruned if necessary when the next UK case comes along, or left to document cases in Northern Ireland, which, while in notification terms is part of the UK, is separate geographically. It's a shame that a few imported cases in the UK have been listed in detail, while the article is so sketchy on the areas where the disease is a real threat, but that's a reason for improving the other sections.
 * I think perhaps it's best to be more vigorous in pruning this material when it's added, otherwise it provides a precedent for other editors to add similar material and to argue for its retention when others try to delete. If it isn't referenced, then asking for a reference is appropriate. Espresso Addict (talk) 12:43, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm moderately happy with the way that reads.  A bit of Recentism, I suppose, but the text does put things in context.  On the other hand,  suffers from Proseline.  Much of this section can be reorganized, removed, etc. It to a fair extent duplicates . Perhaps Jeanna Giese should even be renamed to "Milwaukee protocol" (Jeanna Giese's treatment certainly warrants inclusion, but WP:ONEEVENT would seem to apply in terms of focusing on the treatment, not on the rest of her biography). Kingdon (talk) 14:45, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I wrote the section on "rabies prevalence -- UK"; it could definitely be shortened, but as the AfD ended as merge, I felt some identifiable information on the NI case needed to be added. It does represent both the most recent UK case and the only NI case in 70 or so years. I agree that Jeanna Giese should probably be renamed/focused as Milwaukee protocol; I recently added a redirect so that Milwaukee protocol points to that article. I'm quite uncomfortable with the level of biographical detail for a young woman who may come to wish to be more anonymous in future. Espresso Addict (talk) 16:08, 10 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the "Milwaukee protocol" would give the article better context, however we'd have to do a rewrite before that could occur. I cannot assess the notability of the situation, however it may be possible that the notability of the article is drawn from the significant media coverage of Jenna Giesse rather than the eventual establishment of the protocol. Also we've got another spin off, it's Rabies virus, I didn't see this one coming, but I like it; it needs a better summery though. ChyranandChloe (talk) 04:48, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've responded to the second part of this on the article's talk page. More relevantly to the project, I was surprised to find the main rabies article was listed as a Good article. In its present state, it clearly fails to meet the criteria and I would propose delisting until a stable version emerges. Please comment on the rabies talk page. Espresso Addict (talk) 15:39, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Virus spinoff guideline or recommendation
Discussed above, we enumerate that it is possible to divide the disease from the disease causing agent. One issue that have arised is how an article should be divided and the circumstance of when it should occur. Arcadian and myself have established the following draft: ChyranandChloe (talk) 04:35, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) WP:SIZE and WP:SPINOFF implies when the article should be split
 * 2) When a split is possible:
 * 3) If possible, split the virus into the scientific name and the disease in the common name
 * 4) If the common name adopts the scientific name (such as Bornavirus), then append "Virology of" to the begining of the title (Virology of Bornavirus)
 * 5) If the scientific name adopts the common name (such as Rabies), then append "virus" to the end of the title (Rabies virus)
 * 6) A for the virus template should be placed at the top of the article along with a summary section, in order to establish a link between the two articles
 * I'm not sure I follow the Bornavirus example. At least right now, looks like there are articles at Bornavirus and Borna disease, and no "virology of".  I'm also not sure that for is a particularly good way to tie the two articles, since I would think that the context-establishing parts of WP:LEAD would tend to point towards mentioning the disease/virus in prose. As for WP:SIZE and WP:SPINOFF as the threshold, that seems logical although probably some distance from current practice (which is not really standardized).  If the articles are combined, there is the question of whether to have Taxobox or Infobox Disease (with "both" being the obvious answer, I suppose). Finally, at the risk of making it even harder to get any consensus, this topic does get attention at WP:TOL and WP:MEDMOS, since whether to split disease from organism comes up with non-viruses too.  I assume you've seen past discussions like User talk:ZayZayEM/Proposal:Distinguish disease from infectious organisms and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (medicine-related articles)/Archive4? Kingdon (talk) 13:17, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you're right, one issue I would assume is perhaps we do not have enough articles reaching for an FA for any serious standardization to be conducted. There are numerous approaches and the ones listed above are the ones I am most familiar with. ChyranandChloe (talk) 21:03, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Virology FAs include Influenza, Rotavirus and Polio. Rotavirus is fairly self-contained, but there are numerous articles on the individual proteins. Influenza, gives a good account of the virology, Polio—not so much. It would be difficult to split Hepatitis B virus (GA) because of the separated viral proteins that are found in the blood and are used in diagnosis. I still think it depends on the virus/disease whether a split is needed, not the size of the article. Graham. Graham Colm Talk 21:22, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It's been covered before that particular diseases can be caused by one or more disease causing agents; and I like your Hepatitis B example. The disease would essentially be Hepatitis with more details in the article on the virus. Somehow I feel that there is a more fundamental point where these splits can be done. Nonetheless, the event that probably prompted to begin this discussion in the first place was the split done in Rabies. No longer a GA, the virology section was split into Rabies virus, and the article lost quite a bit of context. Another confounder is the genus Lyssavirus. To my understanding the disease is caused not only by the Rabis virus, but by the other species (within that genus) as well. What do you guys think. ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:16, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * You raise some interesting points here. First, hepatitis, although it is classified as a disease, more often than not it is regarded as a symptom awaiting a formal diagnosis which, in turn, has a specific disease classification. If the cause cannot be found it falls into K75.9  Inflammatory liver disease, unspecified . If the cause is known, say for hepatitis B it comes under B16 acute hepatitis B.  Furthermore, the pathophysiologies of each viral hepatitis are distinct enough to warrant separate descriptions—and, logically, separate articles. With regard to Lyssavirus genotypes, my understanding is that they are essentially rabies viruses but with a restricted host range. I am undecided as to whether each genotype merits a separate article. For rotaviruses, I included rotavirus B and C in the main article which is mostly about rotavirus A. This is why I find it difficult to be prescriptive about disease/virus splitting. So much depends on the particular virus/disease, how much is known and, dare I say it, how an editor chooses to present the material. The coverage of virus-related articles on Wikipedia is improving, but it is still fairly poor. Editors already have the general and medical manuals of style to get to grips with; I would be reluctant to encourage the introduction any more guidelines just yet. Graham, Graham Colm  Talk 21:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I second that, so we'll scratch the proposal about a recommendation or guideline about dividing articles. I believe I've made a mistake when I made my previous statement. In addition that particular diseases can be caused by one or more disease causing agents, particular disease causing agents can result in one or more diseases. This would perhaps be the more broad and correct definition, however, by article construction, it does not appear to be effectively in use. With our focus on the reader, when "Hepatitis B" is entered, they may refer to the diseases or the virus itself. This would be unknown to us, and perhaps the reader may even be looking for both. One of the reasons why a number of our articles, Rabies being an example, are divided so readily is perhaps the level of necessary prior knowledge is set too high. So by systematic bias, these articles are divided to what is most relevant (and digestable) to the reader: the disease — and we would therefore arrive at the the more restricted definition I used earlier. Labeling it, I would call it disease centric; however—and in order to provide even, complete, and well-rounded articles—this will probably have to change as we improve our coverage. The issue as I see it now is that articles potentially discussing virology are being splintered, to a certain extent, into almost their own universe. I have some possible methods of mitigation, but I'd like to know what you guys think. ChyranandChloe (talk) 05:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Milestone Announcements
I thought this WikiProject might be interested. Ping me with any specific queries or leave them on the page linked to above. Thanks! - Jarry1250 (t, c) 10:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Multiplicity of infection
I think it would be useful for members of this project to work on (currently unrated) multiplicity of infection a bit more. Specifically, I'm interested in the effect of MOI on whole animals rather than cells. I ask this because there seems to be something unstated in much of the scientific coverage I've seen of this issue: we know that the more, say, influenza that you give to a mouse, the more likely it is to sicken or die - yet in theory, virus replicates exponentially until it comes to the attention of the immune system, so the dose shouldn't matter. The importance of this to me is that my tentative "disaster plan" - if a highly contagious disease completely shuts down the health care system and cannot be avoided - is to intentionally expose myself to small amounts of highly diluted virus in refrigerated saline, on a schedule, in hope of being infected by a minimum MOI. (Route of infection and sampling from a mild case also might matter) But I don't actually know if this could help! So I think there is a real issue of public interest here. Wnt (talk) 22:15, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group
Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. &mdash; Delievered by §hepBot  ( Disable )  on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 06:56, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Swine influenza
Please watchlist Swine influenza; it is getting heavy editing by contributors who miss the main articles on the current viral outbreak. --Una Smith (talk) 14:40, 29 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Is there some reason we have Transmission and infection of H5N1 but not Transmission and infection of H1N1?LeadSongDog come howl  13:55, 30 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Unless I'm misreading Influenza A virus subtype H1N1, H1N1 is too broad except perhaps in a context like "2009 H1N1 outbreak" which narrows it down to the kind of H1N1 which is in the news now. Kingdon (talk) 12:34, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Medicinal mushrooms
I have compiled some research concerning the anti-viral properties of various mushrooms. It would be cool if you guys could review the page. Jatlas (talk) 23:10, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * You're talking about Medicinal mushrooms. It helps to link. It looks good, the information is adequately attributed using a consistent format, but that's not what you looking for. This is what I can see that can be improved:
 * Make your life easier. If you're citing a scientific journal that has a PMID, DOI, or JSTOR number, use the template: Cite doi, Cite pmid, or Cite jstor; if the specific journal has more than one of these, use DOI, since that's what the bot defaults to. This method is more efficient in two ways: (1) a bot will automatically fill in all those fields reducing the possibility of human error, improves consistency, and reduces tedious editing, and (2) when going through the wikicode, a small is easier to read than Cite journal. On the contrary, you won't be able to use the "quote" feature, but the abstract (which is usually the only piece of the work for free) is probably all I need to check if the source is consistent with the text.
 * Organization and focus, this is more content centered than the other points which concerns itself with article style. When I ask the question: how does the body ties itself with the title, lead, and scope of the article. Prose in a way, guides and articulates to the reader what the article is about and how its important. Without this guidance the article sounds a lot like a collection of facts. This reminds me of Wikiproject Novels, where it placed an interesting remark in one of their guidelines, it stated "should avoid reproducing the work being discussed[...]" Although this may be necessary from WP:OR, remember that the reader themselves can see most of the sources for themselves. I think you did a good job being clear, but ask yourself this, what do the facts amount to, and is there something important in this? This moves away from an objective point of view favored in Wikipedia through WP:NPOV, WP:OR, and WP:V—but this is ultimately a compromise.
 * The article is more of a list than one specifically about the History, Uses, and other pertinent subjects. Perhaps List of medical mushrooms would be more appropriate, but you are the primary contributor, and my judgment over the scope of the article will be deferred to yours.
 * Section headings "should not normally contain links", use the main or Seealso link instead. This is from WP:MOS. Guidelines are inherently "advisory", but it's something that might be brought up when you declare a formal Featured Article or Featured List peer review.
 * A new Gallery template is available if you want to use it—it's more flexible in my opinion. Second is Wikipedia is not necessarily a "collections of photographs or media files" (WP:NOT), Commons is, what I've seen some people do is to provide a commons link through the Sisterlinks template. This isn't necessary, and it certainly not over the edge, so this is entirely optional. I just wanted to bring this point as a refresher.
 * When the Peer reviews are over, move this section back into the article's talk and title the new section "Peer review by Wikipoject Virus". This makes it easier for future editors: (1) it a means of documenting how articles are written, and sometimes it may be helpful to pull up an old discussion for some notes, and (2) you can count this as a peer review, it's not a necessary first step, but it's good to keep track of these. When you've polished up the article, you can ask for a more formal one at WP:PR, if you can get moderate review go to WP:GA which will see whether or not it can fall into the category of "good articles", if you can get a good review go to WP:FA—it's though, but it's the prerequisite to getting you articles on the main page. I hope this helps. ChyranandChloe (talk) 05:10, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Checking content related to viruses (there isn't a lot of it) in the section "Mushrooms with Direct Antiviral Properties"; some of the items you listed aren't viruses; they're the diseases the viruses cause. For example, "influenza" is a disease. Orthomyxoviridae is the virus (actually virus family). The article you'd link to sometimes differentiates the two, we had a discussion not too long ago about determining a criteria of when the disease and disease causing agent should be divided. Nevertheless, if you're concerned with virus classification, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) has a website at ICTVonline.org. ChyranandChloe (talk) 18:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

H1N1 disease articles
Do the disease articles, that don't actually mention anything about the virus, fall under this wikiproject? 70.29.210.174 (talk) 10:28, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Partially, if its a virus, it's within our scope. This Wikiproject is mainly responsible for the "Virology" sections and the taxobox in articles where viruses are the subject, for H1N1, you're looking at Influenza A virus subtype H1N1—although its missing a few sections such as "genome" or "life cycle"—but that may be covered in Orthomyxoviridae. ChyranandChloe (talk) 04:24, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm talking about 2009 swine flu outbreak in North America and its ilk. User:Renaissancee has been tagging them with WPVIRUS banners. 70.29.210.174 (talk) 04:31, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It's hard to say, it's about an outbreak of a virus, and therefore within this project's scope; but it's probably mid or low importance. See WikiProject Viruses for the parameters. ChyranandChloe (talk) 04:45, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks. That clears it up. 70.29.212.226 (talk) 06:38, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Italicisation of virus names
What is the policy on the italicisation of virus names? Tobacco mosaic virus is currently a mish-mash of italics and normal text and I'm not sure which way it should be changed. I would guess that TMV is a common name, it is not a bionomial as it does not contain the genus name Tobamovirus. Do viruses have a proper bionomial like true organisms or not? Thanks Smartse (talk) 19:37, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * If you are using the binomial parameter, then yes (Template:Taxobox). I always assumed the remaining fields followed binomial nomenclature, but that doesn't seem to be the case. The family, genus, species—each part is separate from one another. I'm not certain if viruses follow binomial, but I'm assuming they do. Ask User:GrahamColm. ChyranandChloe (talk) 03:56, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * See here where it says "Only if it is necessary          to draw attention to the taxonomic position of the virus under study will          it be necessary to refer to the official species name written in italics." It goes on to say, "By introducing italicized virus species names, the ICTV in no way intended          to replace the existing vernacular or common names of viruses written          in Roman characters. The viruses studied by          virologists are concrete, disease-causing entities and not abstract classes,          and they should continue to be referred to by their common, nonitalicized          names. As recently reiterated by Drebot et al.          only the names of viral taxonomic classes are written in italics, not          the names of viruses. In scientific articles, authors need to refer most          of the time to the virus as a physical entity rather than as a member          of a taxonomic class. Therefore, the common name written in Roman characters          will most often be used; the species name, in italics, will appear only          once for the purpose of taxonomic placement of the virus being discussed."

So, in a nutshell, stick to Roman unless taxonomy is important to the sense of the sentence or section. Graham Colm Talk 18:30, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for clearing that up - I see though that on the same page they italicise family and order names. This is totally different to normal classification which only ever italicises the binomial. Is this another difference in viral taxonomy or have the authors made a mistake? Smartse (talk) 19:44, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Is this right?
I found this image on Introduction to viruses. Isn't the virus pretty large? Virus states "They are about 1/100th the size of bacteria" and mitochondria are a similar size to bacteria so the virus should be a lot smaller. (sorry for asking so many questions!) Smartse (talk) 19:58, 6 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The operative word is "about". The size of viruses range from approximately 10 nanometres to 400 nanometers. I think the size of the virus particle in the diagram is acceptable for an introductory article. Graham Colm Talk 18:24, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

HIV GA Sweeps: On Hold
I have reviewed HIV for GA Sweeps to determine if it still qualifies as a Good Article. In reviewing the article I have found several issues, which I have detailed here. Since the article falls under the scope of this project, I figured you would be interested in contributing to further improve the article. Please comment there to help the article maintain its GA status. If you have any questions, let me know on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. --Happy editing! Nehrams2020 (talk • contrib) 18:58, 18 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks; I've responded there. Kingdon (talk) 14:58, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Potato leafroll virus
Anyone knowledgeable on virus nomenclature is more than welcome to cleanup Potato leafroll virus. Much appreciated :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:25, 7 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi Cas, I have taken a quick look and edited it accordingly. The nomenclature seems OK, but the grammar needed a little massaging. Best wishes, Graham. Graham Colm Talk 21:14, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Articles_for_deletion/Phage_monographs
Comments, please NVO (talk) 07:01, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Updated Virus Taxonomy
The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) has published on their website many new updates for the official virus taxonomy in August 2009. A new Order (Tymovirales), many new families and subfamilies, as well as about 40 genera are created. NCBI (genbank sequence database) is currently going through the process to include all the changes in their data. I have updated the taxonomy on my site (, and will later update taxonomic changes on wikipedia pages. --Philippe Le Mercier (talk) 16:10, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you Philippe. There are a lot of viruses right? And most articles about viruses would hypothetically contain a link to ViralZone right? This reminds me of imdb for films, how most articles concerning movies would link to it. Rather than entering everything in WikiCode everytime, they used a template. For example, rather than entering Avatar at the Internet Movie Database   They would enter:      Both of which generate:    There are three advantages with templates: Flexibility, for example, if ViralZone changed it root from http://www.expasy.org/viralzone/all_by_species/.. to a new host say http://www.isb-sib.ch/viralzone/.., rather than fixing the link on every article, you would only need to fix the template.Trackability, you can instantly tell how many and which pages would have a ViralZone link. For example, here's the list for imdb.Bot capabilities, if ViralZone decides to change from using numbers to say names, a bot given the above list of pages that have a ViralZone link could quickly and efficiently correct all these pages.I have created and prepared the template. Specify the "id" which corresponds with the ViralZone page name e.g. " http://www.expasy.org/viralzone/all_by_species/ 104.html" ViralZone and the "name" of the virus. For example:  " produces "  ". You can read the complete documentation on Template:ViralZone. Here is the list of articles that use the ViralZone template. Here is a list of articles you have edited if you wish to look back and make these changes. I hope this helps you improve the encycolopedia. Cheers! ChyranandChloe (talk) 05:41, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Virus transmission and kissing
I caught a news article about a new hypotheses meant to explain the evolutionary utility of the kiss. The theory is all about cytomegalovirus transmission and inoculation, but the journal it was published in isn't peer reviewed, so if any virus project person who's knowledgeable could double check my addition, that would be great. Steven Walling 05:01, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

that does the name of the virus A(h1n1) means?
i mean what does A, H1, N1 means? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.202.39.58 (talk) 21:47, 20 November 2009 (UTC)


 * This is how influenza viruses are classified. "A" means it is influenza A, and not B or C; "H" is the type of haemaggutinin the strain has and "N" is the type of neuraminidase. I suggest you read (the excellent) Influenza. Graham Colm Talk 21:53, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

XMRV
Xenotropic Murine Virus Related Virus is rapidly becoming major player in the Retroviral world, and the larger virus community. With this influx of new and exciting research, the judicious use of primary sources should be used for the time being. Obviously, this has stirred the pot quite a bit, so to speak. I therefore feel that this subject matter should be investigated throughly and constantly to ensure the highest quality in related articles. I feel that the influence of illustrious members of this wikiproject would greatly contribute to the discussion, and reduce the inevitable edit wars that will undoubtedly, and have already, ensued. Thank you. Jclark77 (talk) 23:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't look up the sources or take any detailed look at the edit history, but I did read the article and looked over the discussion page. Looks like a good article which for the most part does a good job of providing appropriate caveats, offering both sides of disputed points, etc. Disputes seem to mostly be getting resolved on the talk page. Kingdon (talk) 02:48, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement
This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 04:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Unexplained moves
Recently, all articles regarding the 2009 flu pandemic by continent was moved by Immunize. I don't know if consensus needs it to be moved, but I reverted it before when TouLouse made the same thing. This day, Immunize moved all articles. A closing admin on 2009 flu pandemic in Europe's requested moved (moving back from 2009-2010 name to its 2009 original name) noted that the disease came up by 2009, so there is nothing worthy to call it "2009-2010". Any opinion? (Should somebody voted these to be back in their original names?) Thanks.-- JL 09  q?c 14:08, 27 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks like the matter might be settled by now, but generally I'd try to look at what scientists, organizations like the WHO or CDC, public health officials, etc, are calling it. I do note, by way of precedent, that 1918 flu pandemic is just named 1918 although it lasted until 1920. Kingdon (talk) 20:45, 14 February 2010 (UTC)
 * New user Immunize, has been creating problems all over the place (see User Talk:Immunize). I advise reverting any unilateral moves. Graham Colm (talk) 21:26, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Virus Template
Some time ago, the german wikipedia introduced a new template especially for viruses which can be seen here for example. It seems to me that this meets the demands for virus related articles much better than the generic taxobox because we were able to incorporate links to ICTVdb, NCBI tax and NCBI reference genomes. We believe that this crosslinking will help in the future to organize the articles easier and to get verifiable information more easy. It also helps the reader to find the most important information (e.g. genome, symmetry, baltimore etc) with one glance and prevents cluttering of the external links section with the links to ICTV. I believe that also the en-Wikipedia would profit greatly from such an improved taxobox for viruses. Especially with the sometimes changing taxonomy and the corresponding weblinks it would make it easier to change it only in one place (the article for taxonomy and the template if the weblinks change). We could also incorporate the link to the viralzone. I would also be willing to help incorporating the template; as I operate a bot on the german wikipedia and have replaced all the tables with the templates there, I could apply for a bot job here for the same task. Any opinions? Greetings --hroest 08:49, 3 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Seems to me that the links go better in an External links section than in the infobox (although I realize that some infoboxes are heavily loaded up with such things). Some of the others strike me as more appealing (especially symmetry and envelope). I'd also want to hear from Template talk:Taxobox or WT:TOL or some other page which is more heavily used than this one. Kingdon (talk) 18:46, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Editors trying to keep a table which plays down HIV transmission risks
Please comment. See: Talk:HIV  Phoenix of9  00:56, 25 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I've responded there. Kingdon (talk) 21:01, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Can pulmonary pneumonia be a complication of Infectious mononucleosis ?
While most literature sites other complications resultant from infectious mononucleosis, I request experts to answer whether pulmonary pneumonia can be a complication this disease caused by the Epstein-Barr virus ? Sharadchandra Joshi, INDIA —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.198.202.128 (talk) 12:05, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Templates for external links
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of life. --Snek01 (talk) 17:16, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Confused pages on Neuraminidase
Heya, i've been going through a lot of protein pages and I've comes across a number of articles related to neuraminidase which seem to be a bit of a muddle of facts. I was wondering if anyone with a better understanding than me might be able to help untangle it all. The following are the articles which I think need working on: Viral neuraminidase, neuraminidase, Hemagglutinin, Hemagglutinin (influenza) and hemagglutinin-neuraminidase Ta, Abergabe (talk) 15:49, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikifying Plant Pathogenic Virus Articles
I've recently stumbled across what look like hundreds of of articles -- probably bot-generated -- about plant pathogenic viruses that have been marked for nearly a year as needing to be wikified. Most (like this one) consist only of the text "X is a plant pathogenic virus" plus a taxobox, two external links, and a stub tag, and are already formatted with an external links heading and bolding of the article title. A few have been expended by a couple sentences beyond that. They're easy enough to wikify, but it feels like a waste of time when a bot could easily go through the bunch, add wikilinks to the words "pathogenic virus", and remove the "wikify" tag for the ones that contain no further text. Any thoughts? -- Avocado (talk) 20:15, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

list, category, template
Can someone explain the different purposes of three different ways of listing antiviral drugs. There's a template, a category, and a list of antivirals. Seems to be a lot of redundancy, and some inconsistency among the three lists. How should these be used, updated and maintained? Thanks.

Article alerts
This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the  parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

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Thanks. — Headbomb {{{sup|ταλκ}}κοντριβς – WP Physics} 09:50, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

Question about external linking
Over the past 3 weeks a new editor, User:Bpickett, has added ViPR links to many dozens of virus articles, apparently as their sole contribution. This has the appearance of spam-linking (even though the ViPR resource appears to have merit) due to issues of potential conflict of interest. I am raising this here so that others can weigh in, and be aware if this. If I'm out of line, please set me straight. -- Scray (talk) 00:00, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah thankyou, I have been watching this also and was meaning to leave him a message. Without outing the user, it's safe to say he is a member of the ViPR team and therefore has a definite COI  Je b us 9 8 9  ✰ 12:43, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * From what I see though, ViPR is simply one more database at the National Institutes of Health. We routinely link to several others through template:infobox journal, template:GNF_Protein_box, and template:Drugbox. Although that editor might have been more circumspect about getting concensus before doing it, I see no real problem with adding the links. Am I missing something? LeadSongDog come howl!  13:11, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * They are fighting about this (in a slightly different context) at Template talk:TaxonIds. My own opinion is weakly against a bunch of database links (unless they can meet the high standards at WP:EXT), but I don't have a particularly strong opinion one way or the other (and there are also various issues like where such links should go). I wouldn't worry too hard about whether the person adding links has some connection with the database in question (there is no evidence of WP:TENDENTIOUS, at least so far); I would worry more about whether we want such links. Kingdon (talk) 01:01, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Geminiviridae capsid assembly
Does anyone have any expertise on capsid assembly in geminiviridae? From what I have heard the phenomenon is not well studied, but just wondering if anyone had an idea of how the unique architecture is assembled. Thatotherblondeguy (talk) 20:13, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Cafeteria roenbergensis virus
Hello! Could someone please help fill in some of the information in the Cafeteria roenbergensis virus taxobox? I can't find any good references for this, and don't have the domain-specific expertise to infer this information for published sources. -- The Anome (talk) 09:50, 27 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Unless I'm misreading the Fischer 2010 paper, it isn't a particularly close relative of any known virus, which probably means they'll need to create new groups to put it in. Until they do so, we should just leave the taxobox empty (the other alternative would be to say incertae sedis). Also, although I'm no specialist either, I think organized committees of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses have more of a role than in eukaryote taxonomy. If so, that's all the more reason to wait until they have spoken. Kingdon (talk) 00:31, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Virus articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release
Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Virus articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (&diams;) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Sunday, November 14th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of November, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

If you have already provided feedback, we deeply appreciate it. For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 16:38, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Revival
Hello Everybody, I am trying to start a revival of WikiProject Viruses. I am hereby appointing myself as project co-ordinator, and I am going to revive the project. Thomas888b (Say Hi) 19:42, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Virusbox
Hey, Y'all!

The virusbox is ready for deployment! The virusbox is the newest member of the automatic taxobox family. It's actually slightly more streamlined than the automatic taxobox due to the simplicity of virus taxonomy.

We're aware there's a huge learning curve, and we're working to put together some documentation in the near future. If you need help using the template, feel free to ask questions at questions go here, where the very folks who designed and debugged the automated taxonomy templates can answer any question you like.

If you find a bug, report it at Template talk:Virusbox.

Please note that there is currently no consensus at WP:VIRUS for swapping a manual taxobox for an automated one-- until there is, the virusbox template should only be added to pages without taxoboxes.

Enjoy! Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 21:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Bob, I'm sorry, but I don't understand any of this. Graham Colm (talk) 21:48, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The new template is meant to serve as an alternative to the template taxobox. In using the automated version (the virusbox), taxa are automatically italicized, and the parent taxa (provided they've already been entered into the taxonomy database) are automatically calculated and displayed according to a complex algorithm that decides how to display each taxon as well as whether to display it. The automatic version is much more difficult to use (we're working on documenting it), but its use will mean that if there is a significant revision in a taxonomy, only a single edit will be required in many cases to update all taxonomies at once. For example...if Flaviviridae should be moved to a different order, someone would make an edit to the parent parameter at Taxonomy/Flaviviridae, and all articles relating to any type of Flavivirus would automatically be updated simultaneously, provided they employ the virusbox. Such taxonomic revisions are common in other areas of biology (I'm personally not familiar with virus taxonomy), and the usage of this at other areas of the WP:TOL is increasing our ability to eliminate out-of-date inconsistencies.


 * In most cases (once I get a significant bit of the virus taxon database put together), a virusbox will require less work to implement than a manual taxobox. What you'll do is type your taxobox as you normally would, using "virusbox" instead of "taxobox" and completely omit all the taxonomic ranks-- the virusbox will fill these in for you. The rest of the parameters, such as the display name, synonyms, image, etc, will still need to be typed in.


 * Next, you'll hit "preview". There will be a red error message in the virusbox-- that's perfectly normal. It should invite you to create a page (right-click and open that link in a new window). Fill in the parameters on that page as required (the editnotice at the top should help out a little bit). Then, hit preview. If there are two red messages on this page now, do like you just did-- right-click the link, open in a new window, and create the next template. If there's only one red link, you're done. Hit save on all the pages you've got open-- one at a time, starting with the highest-ranked taxon and ending with the article you're working on. Then, to clear that annoying red error on any template pages you've got open, there's a light blue link on those pages that says "Category listings out of date?". Click that. That should clear the last of the red error messages.


 * Let me know if you're still lost. Bob the WikipediaN  (talk • contribs) 22:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * By the way-- I've set up virusboxes at Flaviviridae and Adenoviridae that you can take a look at. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 22:10, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for taking the time to explain this more fully, much appreciated. Graham Colm (talk) 08:19, 13 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks Bob, now what we need to work on is fully reviving the project. -- Thomas888b (Say Hi) 21:11, 13 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm a little bit scared to bring this up, given the heat of past debates and difficulty of finding a definitive answer, but are you italicizing orders or just families? Italics for virus family but not order is what the Emerging Infectious Diseases style guide seems to call for (although I'm not sure whether they really envisage using virus order, as they more explicitly discuss order for bacteria and others). That document also has some italicization rules for non-viruses (which at least partly agree with current wikipedia practice, although unanimity seems hard to come by on such matters). Kingdon (talk) 13:01, 13 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Currently, it's set up to italicize all except the virus group, but changing this is a very quick, simple, non-scary edit. However, due to its stated level of controversy, an RfC is definitely going to be mandatory before that happens. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 20:23, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Virus vs. species
From : "A virus is not a species; a virus belongs to a species."

Would it be appropriate, therefore, to add another rank to the taxobox called "virus", which would appear below "species"? Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 14:29, 14 March 2011 (UTC)


 * No Bob, I don't think so. It's saying, for example, rotavirus is virus that belongs genus Rotavirus, the species of rotavirus are called A, B, C and so on. Same with influenza virus which belongs to the genus Influenza virus and the common (pandemic) species is Influenza virus A. It's all about the use of italics and upper case initial letters. If I am writing about rotavirus as a cause of disease, I just write "rotavirus". But in the context of taxonomy I would write, "Rotavirus A is a species of rotavirus in the genus Rotavirus of the virus family Reoviridae". Because a taxobox is, by definition, about taxonomy — there is no need for the other "rank". Graham Colm (talk) 19:57, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The application of the term "species" to a virus is itself problematic. It is inherent to the definition of a virus that it reproduces asexually. There must be a better term...LeadSongDog come howl!  21:14, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Not all species concepts are based on sexual reproduction. (Thankfully! There are enough asexual groups even in Metazoa–I'm looking at you bdelloid rotifers–to make the "fertile offspring" definition inadequate.) --Danger (talk) 22:26, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yup, plenty of virgin lizards, too. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 07:37, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Right, but the point is the term conveys no meaning without clarification. What definition is being applied in distinguishing this viral "species" from others? Where do we identify that definition? LeadSongDog come howl!  11:30, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses makes decisions on virus classification and nomenclature. Their, endorsed, definition is, "a virus species is a polythetic class of viruses that constitute a replicating lineage and occupy a particular ecological niche". It means that a species of virus is not determined by a single character, but a range of shared characteristics. For many years, some virologists resisted the introduction of the species level in viral taxonomy, but now it is fully accepted. This does not mean that it is easy to ascribe a species to a virus, and so your question, "What definition is being applied in distinguishing this viral "species" from others?" is a good one - and one that is not easy to answer. The range of characteristics include virion morphology, genome structure and nucleic acid homology, host range and others, which I have forgotten. It must be borne in mind that virus taxonomy is purely a human invention and does not necessarily reflect evolutionary relationships. Graham Colm (talk) 12:08, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The species problem is a famous one, and Darwin described in great detail the best answer I've heard in his Origin of the Species: The species is no more than a man-made boundary which is defined by whatever is practical for man at the time. He didn't use those words exactly, but that's the gist of it. But back to my original question-- does a species, as that link above suggests, contain multiple types of virus? For example-- can a specific epithet be applied to Flavivirus to specify the West Nile virus, or would the specific epithet not be specific enough...or too specific? <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN  (talk • contribs) 15:06, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * As far as I am aware, the whole idea of a specific epithet doesn't really apply to viruses, as they tend to be referred to just by their species name (and subtype, like H1N1 etc.), like "Influenza A virus" as opposed to Homo sapiens. It doesn't all seem to be particularly well-defined. Species sometimes do contain subtypes, so do refer to multiple "types" of virus.Gorton k (talk) 15:26, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * This is true, and species often contain many subtypes, such as serotypes, also the concept of viral quasispecies is important. But this I'm not sure that all this is needed in a Taxobox. I think this statement in the link above is confusing, "A virus is not a species; a virus belongs to a species". It only means, don't use italics or a upper case initial letter unless you are referring to the species. Bob's example is interesting because it shows that, by convention, we don't say "the West Nile virus flavivirus" although there is no logical reason why we shouldn't. In the risk of introducing confusion, the virus species Human Enterovirus C contains the three serotypes of poliovirus. We should never write Poliovirus only poliovirus :-) Graham Colm (talk) 16:52, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Graham. I hadn't seen that ICTV page (which needs some attention). Can we categorically state in the /doc for taxobox that editors should follow the ICTV taxonomy, and also link to that page? LeadSongDog come howl!  18:30, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes and yes, that page needs help - it's something I have been thinking of doing for a long time, and it is central to the virus project. We agreed, as a project, sometime ago, to use the ICTV taxonomy but to include the Baltimore classification as well. (This is given as "Group" in the new box, but "Virus group" in the old-style one. It should really say "Baltimore group" as the Baltimore classification is distinct from the ITCV one, but does not contradict it). I agree the /doc should insist that the ICTV system is used, but we should keep a line in the template for the Baltimore system, and somehow show that it is a separate, complementary one. Graham. Graham Colm (talk) 19:10, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Virus Taxonomy box continued
This is the current box for the family Adenoviridae. It is missing the type species. These are Human adenovirus C (for Mastadenovirus), Fowl adenovirus A (for Aviadenovirus), Ovine adenovirus D (for Atadenovirus, which is missing), Frog adenovirus (for Siadenovirus) and Rhizidiomyces virus (for Rhizidiovirus also missing). There is also a redlink problem when it is copied from another page, which new editors might try to do to save time on new articles.

Here is the old-style box for Rotavirus, which is accurate although it does not list the list the G and P serotypes of rotavirus A

I think the new box should at least include the type species. Comments? Graham Colm (talk) 17:45, 15 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The type_species parameter actually is available; I've added the parameter to your example, but I've left it for you fill in since I'm only serving as a sort of technical support here.


 * The automatic version actually supports the same parameters that the manual one supports, with the exception of rank parameters and a slight revision of the way authorities are entered. As for "missing" taxa, I've been working on entering the most upper-level taxa into the database as quickly as possible, but it takes time to get through all of them. If you spot a virus which isn't in the database yet (most aren't yet, at least not past the order level), feel free to get your hands on learning how to use this system. As I mentioned before, I can provide support, and there's also a small group of folks at Template talk:Automatic taxobox whom I have been working very closely with that can answer quite a few questions on its usage as well. We've so far (out of thousands of taxa) not found any that can't be automated, so don't be afraid to ask for assistance.


 * As for the ones you just mentioned, I'll go ahead and set those taxon templates up in our database. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 00:15, 16 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not a big fan of routinely including the type species, just because it seems to me to be of more interest to taxonomists than to the vast majority of readers. No idea whether there is a consensus one way or the other, though. Kingdon (talk) 00:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The type species is the first to be described within a taxon, and therefore, the parent taxon is actually supposed to be tied to that species specifically. If that species finds itself in a taxonomic revision, any remaining taxa are supposed to either be reclassified or assigned to a new taxonomic grouping. You're correct; that aspect has little to do with the average reader. However, ask yourself whether the average reader will be looking at the article in question. In many cases, only true scholars will have any interest in a particular article, in which case it may be helpful to know which species is the model around which the taxon is formed. However, weak enforcement of type taxa (at least in zoology) has significantly depreciated its value, and this may very well be the case in many kingdoms. <span style="font-family:linux libertine o, times; font-variant:small-caps">Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 05:32, 17 March 2011 (UTC)