Talk:Plesiorycteropus

Photo required

Photo required of the skeleton or an artistic impression of this animal. --Francisco Valverde 21:26, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Please go to the AMNH and take a pic. The only recent publication about this animal is [1]. There are some pics in there, but it's copyrighted. The only thing you can do is asking them to release it under GFDL or another license. I don't think Wikipedians in Madagascar will be of much help here - this animal has been extinct for a while now. Ucucha (talk) 06:06, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I know it is extinct but I believe that the first place to ask for a free copyright image of a bone or anything useful could be Madagascar... perhaps someone who is in the research, or perhaps in a museum of Madagascar... --Francisco Valverde 15:31, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I've got an idea. Perhaps if someone (I am implied) was to see the pictures from the AMNH, they could make some artistic impressions based on what they saw! --KnowledgeLord 06:58, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Bizarre? Mysterious?

Plesiorycteropus is one of the most bizarre and mysterious mammals known.

The article doesn't mention why except that it doesn't seem to have known close relatives.— JyriL ^talk 17:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Plesiorycteropus/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:48, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Okay, let's begin - Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:48, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for reviewing!

is a recently extinct eutherian mammal -if it is a pair of species may be better described as a genus or pair of species.

Now "eutherian mammalian genus". Sounds a little awkward, but I think it's good to put both the precise "eutherian" and the more common-knowledge "mammalian" in.

Agree, again precision trumps simplicity I think here as meaning is blurred otherwise. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:34, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

it was classified with the aardvark - "with the aardvarks" or "as an aardvark" - sounds funny as a group noun. oops, forgot there was only one species of aardvark. Still, I think that sentence and the next needs rewording. I will have a think about it.

Lead needs to have some basic size figures in it as well as when it became extinct.

Added something.

Ross MacPhee found little support for the tubulidentate affinities of Plesiorycteropus (in their data) - bracketed bit redundant as it is clear McPhee is looking into the data of the 1994 study.

Actually, he found little support in the data from Patterson's and Thewissen's papers—he writes that Patterson in particular was (to put it bluntly) interpreting the data tendentiously in support of tubulidentate affinities. Ucucha 06:23, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Also "affinities" used in three sentences in a row.

Changed two.

the identification of which is partly problematic, - could be stated more simply, begs the question why "problematic" - just becuase they are very generic looking bones?

One that Lamberton attributed to P. is from a large lemur according to MacPhee; and for the distal phalanges MacPhee says explicitly that their identification was problematic, but he identifies them as P. because they don't look like phalanges from nesomyines, euplerids, or tenrecs. I have gotten rid of the phrase, because it seems to be more problematic than enlightening.

2150 Before Present - "years ago" simpler

But wrong; "Before Present" means before 1950. Ucucha 06:23, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I did not know that. okay nevermind. Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:08, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and a question for you: you changed "multiple species" to "more species". I like "multiple" better there, because it more clearly means "more than one". Ucucha 06:27, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

good point. revert then :) Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:07, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

I notice there are no images (not surprising given the subject matter, but I feel it could be a little more visually appealing. Maybe a map of madagascar with the locations of where remains have been recovered? Or a crude anatomical diagram with the bones which have been recovered (this would be hard I realise...) Any other ideas welcomed. I can help make a map if I have an image to work from. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:37, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Anyway, nearly there pending query above on images. I trust all sources have been scoured... Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:37, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Visionholder has kindly offered to make a map; I'll send him the locality list from MacPhee '94. By the way, there was a reconstruction in an earlier version of this article, but I threw it out because it was reconstructed as an aardvark-like mammal and sources like Walker (1999) explicitly say we shouldn't do that. Ucucha 13:51, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. I knew it was going to be tricky if possible at all, so disregard. Map or lack thereof not a deal-breaker really so......Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:58, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

1. Well written?:

Prose quality:

Manual of Style compliance:

2. Factually accurate and verifiable?:

References to sources:

Citations to reliable sources, where required:

No original research:

3. Broad in coverage?:

Major aspects:

Focused:

4. Reflects a neutral point of view?:

Fair representation without bias:

5. Reasonably stable?

No edit wars, etc. (Vandalism does not count against GA):

6. Illustrated by images, when possible and appropriate?: (none currently but some will help)

Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

Overall:

Pass or Fail: - prose probably could do with some more massaging but enough for GA. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:18, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

In defense of an edit reverted

In the edit summary explaining why he reverted an edit that I had made, Ucucha wrote: "That's in fact a more complicated system; and MOS says not to change reference style needlessly." I never make what I consider to be "needless" edits. When I came upon this article, the links from the notes to the cited references were not the usual super scripted ^[1] and ^[2] that one expects to see. Rather, the links to the cited references were superscripted strings of 30 or 40 characters. Sort of like this: ^{[1asdfkjerltguhzdflighbalerughnzdrjghxlcvnzlirUtajrfnv]}. The markup text in the article was/is correct according to WP:REFNEST, yet it produced the unexpected result I've described. So I changed it.

After reversion, the original markup is apparently working correctly. Unexplained, unexpected, and apparently intermittent results are disturbing, suggesting the use of an alternate method to avoid inconsistent behavior on the part of Wikipedia's code.

I disagree with Ucucha's assertion that use of Ref / Note templates is more complicated than the #tag:ref magic word method of putting notes in a separate section. Note text should be segregated from the article text so that editors don't become confused by what they're reading. When note text is off in its own section, it is obvious that it is a note, parenthetical to the article - especially when note text is a number of sentences in length.

I should also like to see the works in §Literature cited encapsulated in {{Citation}} templates. References in the article, which currently look like this: <ref name=McP11>MacPhee, 1994, p. 11</ref>, should be changed to Harvard style: <ref name=McP11>{{harvnb|MacPhee|1994|p=11}}</ref>.

The reader gets a link from the article text to the reference and from the reference to the full citation. See how this looks and works in Bananaquit and Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group. These mechanisms also enforce standardization giving a uniform look and feel to the document both from readers' and editors' points of view.

--Trappist the monk (talk) 15:24, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

The random text you saw was probably a result of a bug introduced by a recent change in MediaWiki. It has been fixed, but remnants may have survived in the MediaWiki cache.

A disadvantage of the templates you used is that it is necessary to keep track of the note numbers in two different places. Use of {{#tag:ref}} makes the software keep track of that, and the system is inherently less fragile because it is inbuilt in the software. Ucucha (talk) 15:45, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

True, the editor must keep track of note numbers. But, it isn't that difficult and only needs to be done rarely. I'd like to see some development that combines the best of both.

Since you did not comment on the changes that I'd like to see in this article, may I assume that you will not rise to object if I were to come back to this article at some point and make those changes?

--Trappist the monk (talk) 16:45, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

There is: we have list-defined references (WP:LDR). But I think it's better to keep note text with the place where the note is used; it makes editing easier.

Our Manual of Style says not to change a consistent and functional citation style. This article has such a style. Besides, the problem with standardization is that there is a host of competing standards. More articles use {{Cite journal}} and friends than use {{Citation}}; probably more use {{Sfn}} than {{Harvnb}}. Both of the examples you cite have several problems in their Harvard citations, as revealed by the User:Ucucha/HarvErrors script I wrote. Ucucha (talk) 16:56, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Nice tool. Those two pages are fixed. Thanks.

If WP:LDR is the defining standard by which list-defined references are to be formatted, then this article does not comply. WP:LDR shows the list inside the {{Reflist}} template but here that isn't the case.

I wasn't quite as clear as I should have been perhaps. {{Citation}} is the top level of a set of templates from which {{Cite book}}, {{Cite journal}}, etc all descend. I used {{Citation}} as a broad-brush to encompass those other templates.

--Trappist the monk (talk) 19:00, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:LDR is one technical option, not the standard. Its use is optional. In this case, most citations are so short (and those that are not are mostly not in running text) that the gain from list-defined references would be minimal.

The top-level template is actually Template:Citation/core; Citation and the Cite xxx templates all use this meta-template, but output slightly different citations. Ucucha (talk) 19:10, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that we are communicating. I get the impression that you think that I want to use {{Citation}} rather than one of the derived {{Cite}} templates. Not true as an inspection of the two example articles will show. That is my fault. So, I rewrite the afflicted sentence here:

I should also like to see the works in §Literature cited encapsulated in {{Cite book}} or related templates.

You said that this article uses list-defined references and linked to WP:LDR. When I pointed out that this article doesn't conform to WP:LDR you hand-waved that away and claimed that WP:LDR isn't the standard but rather an option. Argh! Where is the standard? Why did you not refer to the standard to support your claim?

--Trappist the monk (talk) 01:17, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

There is no standard; LDR is but one option. I brought it up because it allows you to separate article text from reference contents, while avoiding use of the antiquated {{ref}} and {{note}} templates.

I've written dozens of featured articles using a consistent citation style, and every now and then someone comes along that wants the citation style in some one of them changed to fit their taste. That taste tends to be different every time. More recently, I switched to a style using Sfn and Cite templates, and still people find the need to change citation styles to fit their tastes. The style guideline WP:CITEVAR is clear that we should not go around changing established citation styles. Ucucha (talk) 01:33, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I continue to believe that we are not communicating. For the greatest part of this conversation, I thought we were talking about references to citations - not about footnotes (where, for the purposes of this conversation, a footnote is defined as explanatory text, not references to citations). I haven't talked about footnotes since my second post where I agreed that the editor needs to keep track of note numbers. Yet here we are; back to talking about footnotes.

I'm confused. The first clause of the first sentence @WP:LDR says: "In order to make the article text easier to read in the edit window, ..." This is precisely why I think that {{Ref}} and {{Note}} should be used for footnotes. In your last post, you seem, sort of, to agree. Yet, contrary to what you just wrote, you used the {{#tag:ref}} which does not "separate article text from reference contents". Do you see why I'm confused?

As an aside, if {{Ref}} and {{Note}} are "antiquated", should they not be deprecated and their document pages marked with a big red watermark or some such indicator so that editors like me will stop using them? After all, how else are we to know that the markup that we are using should not be used?

I agree. That change made to Voalavo was pretty much pointless.

WP:CITEVAR: the other reason that this conversation got started. I said what I wanted to do in my first post just as WP:CITEVAR says I should. The second part of your most recent post is revealing. I wrote in my second post: "may I assume that you will not rise to object if I were to come back to this article at some point and make those changes?" Had you simply replied: "No. I own this article, please don't change it." That would have been the end.

--Trappist the monk (talk) 15:40, 15 November 2011 (UTC)