User talk:Aranae/Archive3

This is an archive for my user talk page. It contains all discussion from my third year as an editor. For current messages, see User talk:Aranae.

Western Gray Squirrel and The Dalles

First, the name of the town is The Dalles, note that The is capitalized The Dalles official Web site

Next a quibble about general wording, your wording implies that the Squirrel was described, in 1818, by Lewis and Clark. Since Lewis was dead, Clark was working in Indian Affairs, neither would have been involved in the 1818 assigning of the scientific name.

I'm not going to change the wording, but I will fix the proper name of the The Dalles

TTFN Ralph --N7bsn 03:29, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I've modified it again. I agree that my wording was poor. "Described" had been used improperly. In a sentence like this it should be reserved for the formal species description. Please modify what I have written if you find the wording still awkward. --Aranae 17:28, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks much better, TTFN, RalphN7bsn 17:56, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Did you know?

On 2 December, 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Meriones (genus), which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--GeeJo ^(t)⁄_(c) • 17:17, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Regarding this article, do you think you could add details on the etymology of the genus name and it's description/discovery by Illiger? Circeus 18:46, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know that information and tracking such things down from older names is often difficult. It might be names after Meriones from the Iliad, but I can't confirm that. --Aranae 19:37, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

As for the taxonomic history, it might be described in Chaworth-Musters, J. L., and J. R. Ellerman. 1947. A revision of the genus Meriones. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 117:478-504, but I cannot locate it from any sources near me. Apparently, Illiger originally described Meriones tamariscinus from Mus tamariscinus, and most species were later transferred to the genus from Gerbillus (including M. unguiculatus in 1908 [1], despite what the article actually says). Circeus 22:27, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

On December 4, 2006, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Meriones (mythology), which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Thankyou for the very comprehensive article. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 01:14, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Cladistics FAR

Opabinia regalis mentioned to me a while back that you may be able to help out on this review.

Cladistics has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy (Talk) 23:16, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Little Brown Bat/Eastern Pipistrelle

I'm not a bat expert. If you'd like to use the image to illustrate the Eastern Pipistrelle instead of the Little Brown Bat, that's fine with me. The EP certainly covers the same range. Loperco 17:23, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Update

I remember now why I identified it as a Little Brown Bat, not the Eastern Pipistrelle. The bat was about the size of my fist, so I'd say too big to be the EP. Loperco 17:38, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

If you don't mind, I've moved the discussion back to Image talk:Littlebrownbat.JPG. --Aranae 00:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Rat and mice cats

Some enthuastic person has made a number of categories for rat and mice breeds. I know you have done a lot of work on rodents, so you might want to weigh in on the renaming discussions here. --Peta 00:41, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

i have responded to your arguments, i am mostly in accord with you, but would appreciate a response. I have also provided another link to a discussion you would probably be interested in. -ΖαππερΝαππερ ^Babel_Alexandria 14:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I've responded at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 December 29 regarding the OWRAM and NWRAM categories. Basically seeking a compromise for the layperson and the knowledgable. I had originally thought to follow the guidleines for common name when i made my proposition, and it was mostly to try and fix the horrendous idea of "Rat breeds", but you made good points. My compromise is essentially to retain all categories and discuss the subjectivity of labelling something a mouse or rat on the respective Category:Species of X. Which i think will do a better job of teaching than merely having the categories organized one way. So, for example, Black rat would belong to Category:Old World rats and mice and Category:Species of rats. While Pack rat would be in both Category:North American rats and mice (soft redirected from Category:Neotominae and Category:Species of rats, properly being grouped with Golden mouse and colloquially being grouped with Brown rat. Does this answer your problem of misinformation and confusion? -ΖαππερΝαππερ ^Babel_Alexandria 17:37, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I've been bold today and restored the two cats. Let's come up with something that will move us forward from here.... - UtherSRG (talk) 20:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I noticed and I certainly don't object. If you had any other ideas, I'd be happy to hear and probably implement them. --Aranae 21:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

User:Headphonos left me a message regarding the change in categories, and as i decided to stay out of it this time, i don't have much information for him, and have suggested he talk to you. However, it may be better if you go to him first, and politely explain the reasoning behind the reversion of the categories back to the way they were. -ΖαππερΝαππερ ^Babel_Alexandria 18:14, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Monkeys

I'm not saying it's biologically meaningful to consider chimps and gorillas monkeys, I'm saying this is how the term is used in the mainstream culture. Thus I don't understand the scientific pretense of some editors claiming the common definition is ignorant because biologists say gorillas & chimps are not monkeys. There's no biological reason to exclude chimps & gorillas from the monkey category. There's also no biological reason to exclude humans, however EVERYONE agrees that humans are not monkeys, but only the hoity-toity say chimps and gorillas are not monkeys. My point is that since neither definition is scientific, we might as well go with the common one, the one that makes sense to the general public Influencey

Check out the movie funkey monkey[[2]]. It's about a chimpanzee. Did you know planet of the apes was originally called Monkey planet? Did you not see King Kong where they called him a giant monkey? And what about racists who refer to black people as "monkeys" because they think they're closer to the apes. Also check out this poster called Monkey Business.[[3]]. It's a picture of a gorilla in a suit. Influencey

Biologists do not use the term "monkey" for hominoids, except for perhaps a handful who are trying to make a point about cladistic classification and those will include humans. Taco Bell may spell "night" as "nite", but wikipedia's role is to disseminate the knowledge of the experts on these matters, not advertisers and the entertainment industry. --Aranae 09:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Biologists are not experts when it comes to monkeys because monkey is not a biological construct but a lexical one. Hence how biologists use the term monkey is not relevant. Influencey

Of course they are: New World monkeys and Old World monkeys. I can't believe we're even discussing the credibility of Jane Goodall compared with the director of Smoky and the Bandit. As for dictionaries, every one I've looked in has excluded all apes. For example, dictionary.com. --Aranae 03:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Rodent monophyly

Hello there, I'm just responding to your revertion of the classification issues on the degu wiki; Although this has indeed been going on for some time it is still very much ongoing and has by no means been resolved as of yet. If you would like to view a chronological list of papers involved in this debate, please visit this section of Degutopia's website. Kind regards, Chloe (Degutopia 10:56, 26 February 2007 (UTC)).

Carleton and Musser (2005) discuss this at great length in Mammal Species of the World volume 3. The notion of rodent polyphyly first cropped up in the Grauer (1991) paper and was all but over by the mid-nineties. A few of the earlier complete mitochondrial genome papers that came out right at the turn of the century (Reyes et al., 2000; Mouchaty et al., 2001) brought back the notion of rodent polyphyly, but once more rodents and lagomorphs were added to the tree, the mitochondrial data came in line with the many studies based on (more appropriate) nuclear data and supported Rodentia. Note that Lin et al. (2002) used the same dataset as the prior two papers, but by simply adding a pika and a vole they were able to break up those long branches that were misleading the analysis. Again, I highly recommend you look at Carleton and Musser (2005) for this summary. --Aranae 02:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks, I will do that. I've been greatly interested in this debate for some time, including having some friends run MitDNA sequences. It's nice to have someone new to discuss with. Chloe Degutopia 12:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

DYK

On February 27, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Mammals of New England, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

Blnguyen (bananabucket) 02:24, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

commons:User:Aranae

I assert that I am the same user as commons:User:Aranae. --Aranae 02:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Seanbaby

I have added a "{{prod}}" template to the article Seanbaby, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but I don't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and I've explained why in the deletion notice (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. Pandacomics 06:15, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Guinea pig

Question for you; you seem like the right person to ask. As I understand it, the taxonomy of the guinea pig should follow the subordo Hystricomorpha, infraordo Hystricognathi, and parvordo Caviomorpha, correct? Yet, Wikispecies does not list the subordo Hystricomorpha for Cavia porcellus at all. I don't have an account on Wikispecies and don't know how to fix this if I did, but the information it presents appears to be at odds with Wikipedia's information. Chubbles 18:41, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I have issues with wikispecies and don't edit there either. It looks like someone has started converting wikispecies away from the taxonomy of (Woods, 1993; Mammal Spp. of World 2) and towards Woods and Kilpatrick (2005; Mammal Spp. of World 3). Cavia porcellus is among the many taxa that hasn't been switched over. Incidentally, Chubbles, if I haven't done so I've been meaning to compliment your work on guinea pig. I seriously hope the tides of editcruft can be kept at bay and some stability can come to the page. Articles on animals kept as pets are horrible for that (they attract a very varied crowd of editors). --Aranae 21:23, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I was considering advancing Guinea pig as an FA candidate in the near future; it recently received GA approval. I was wondering if you had any further comments about the article and suggestions for improvement. Chubbles 05:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Taxoboxes

Hello, Aranae. My current project is to make genera pages and species lists for all of Rodentia on the list of placental mammals. I have only a few done, but the new ones need taxoboxes, and you do a great job with those (and I'm not sure how/what they require). I thought I'd let you know about these new pages:
Bathyergus
Cape mole rat
Cryptomys
Dactylomys
Silvery Mole Rat

Thanks for the good work. TeamZissou 17:30, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Check out WP:TX. In the meantime, I'll get around to looking at these new pages too. --Aranae 23:16, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Cool. Appreciate it! Some other kind peoples already made it to a few of those. I'm working on turning all the red genus names blue so that species pages won't simply be floating in wikispace. TeamZissou 17:37, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

List of mammals in California

Thanks for the contributions, especially good to see an endemic fox photo on there. --Justin 20:06, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I tried to focus on endemics or CA specific spp. if possible. I noticed that you split the mustelids into subfamilies. I'm thinking of doing that for rodents and maybe some other taxa. I agree with the alphabetized by sp. name, but it is a bit odd to see voles mixed in with NW rats and mice. Please revert if you disagree. --Aranae 20:51, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I totally agree - mustelids was my pilot section. I was having the same reaction to how the alpha by family turned out. Do whatever interests you, and later I'll pull in more sub-taxa where appropriate. --Justin 01:22, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Template

You like the template on the list of Azerbaijani mammals? I am just created Template:WildlifeofAsia and Template:WildlifeofIndia templates -interested in helping out? ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ ^{"Expecting you" Contribs} 20:52, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I like how it allows for easy access to related pages. --Aranae 22:19, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Neoepiblemidae

I have added the ref; you might want to check it out. I changed "may" to "might" which is more appropriate; genera bounce around between the N. and the Dinomyidae in recent years (see Horovitz paper). I chave not checked out the original ref therein:

Bondesio, P. & Bocquentin-Villanueva, J. 1988. Novedosos restos de Neoepiblemidae (Rodentia, Hystricognathi) del Mioceno tardío de Venezuela, inferencias paleoambientales. Ameghiniana 25 (1): 31–37.

I have left the ref in a somewhat crappy format (some non-crucial info such as full authors list is missing) as a mental note for myself that I have not worked it into WP. Because that would require a review of Phoberomys which I can't do with the literature at hand. If you have no access to the paper, I could send it to you; drop me a note in this case. Dysmorodrepanis 22:51, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Great. Thank you. --Aranae 22:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Rodents, again

Someone restored the debate over rodent taxonomy to the guinea pig article today. It seems like it might be time to find a place for the history of the debate to be laid out, so that species articles such as gp, degu, etc. can be linked to it; would caviomorpha be a good place to do so? Or hystricomorpha? Chubbles 06:33, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I would vote for either Hystricognathi or Rodent. I have never seen anything in the literature applying rodent polyphyly to anything but the hystricognaths. Hystricomorpha wasn't widely used (in its current composition of gundi + Hystricognathi) at the time the debate was taking place. Rodent is really the place where it should happen. A section heading called "Rodent polyphyly" or within taxonomic controversy. Your version was actually very nice. Expansion would be fine, but the current version where it is described as "new" (it's >10 yrs old) and a "theory" (it's a hypothesis) is pretty bad. --Aranae 06:43, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I started a subsection on the rodent page basically cribbing the information from the Degutopia website. If you are able to, can you update it with the most recent research? Thanks. Chubbles 07:09, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Update: I grabbed Mammal Species and added a vague summary. Feel free to specify. Chubbles 17:16, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Guinea pig

Passed FA! Thanks for all your help with the project. Chubbles 04:34, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Shrewlike rat

On 12 May, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Shrewlike rat, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

--howcheng {chat} 05:58, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Chinese Dormouse

ADW lists both Chaetocauda sichuanensis and Chaetocauda suchuanensis--one is considered the Chinese dormouse, the other the Sichuan Dormouse. I can find no other information concerning this online. Should we change the list of placental mammals to reflect this? Also, the species list in the article dormouse should also be amended. TeamZissou 12:38, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

suchuanensis appears to be the misspelling. MSW3 lists sichuanensis and ION cites sichuanensis and names the Wang artitcle which actually has sichuanensis in the title. I think it's clear that there's a mistake at ADW. Probably two people writing an article on the same animal and one misspelling it. --Aranae 18:00, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Glad it's cleared up now. I'll change the common name on dormouse to "Chinese dormouse" reflect the title of the article and the accepted venacular name. Thanks, Aranae, as usual. TeamZissou 23:19, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Lists

You've probably done most of them now, but I can do what you are doing for all the pages if you want to save yourself the effort. Yomangani^talk 23:59, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

As in with a bot? The big thing about those lists is that the genera are not italicized, but should be. Any interest? --Aranae 00:01, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I just noticed that and fixed it in my script. It isn't a real bot (as it doesn't update the lists directly), but it is easier than manually changing everything. Looks like you made a suborder change for the mice too. Yomangani^talk 00:05, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

IUCN is a bit out of date with their suuborders. Carleton and Musser (2005)'s suborder designations are more phylogenetically accurate and here: Rodent#Standard_classification. Thanks. --Aranae 00:07, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I based the hierarchy on our own List of placental mammals which is obviously out of date too. I'll do any that are straight substitutions for now, and revisit it later. Yomangani^talk 00:22, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds more than reasonable. By the way, great work on those lists. They really are a valuable addition. --Aranae 00:44, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Is Myomorpha a straight substitution for Sciurognathi? Hard to tell from the articles Yomangani^talk 00:47, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

No. Sciurognathi is a much bigger group that is no longer considered valid. Myomorpha includes the families Dipodidae, Muridae, Cricetidae, Nesomyidae, Calomyscidae, Spalacidae, and Platacanthomyidae. For most countries, Hystricomorpha is a straight substitute for Hystricognathi. Hystricomorpha is Hystricognathi + Diatomyidae (Laos only) + Ctenodactylidae (Algeria, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Somalia, Tunisia). --Aranae 01:08, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I've done a few samples: List of mammals in Iraq (just genus italicising) List of mammals in Israel (substitute Hystricognathi) and List of mammals in Senegal (substitute Hystricognathi and add Ctenodactylidae under it). If you think that is OK, I'll start it running tomorrow and then gradually copy them over. Yomangani^talk 02:09, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Looks great. --Aranae 03:59, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Pelagia genus

The genus Pelagia is not located at Pelagia - please follow the link and view what is there. You should not revert my removal of that link. If you wish to create a page Pelagia (genus) you may do so and link to that. Felisse 18:53, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Map at United States presidential election, 1992

That map is incorrect. It says that the Reform Party of the United States of America got almost 20% of the vote, although the party was not founded until 1995. If you have the means to fix the image, I encourage you to. Otherwise, we shouldn't have incorrect graphics in the articles. Croctotheface 06:06, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Presidential questions

Thanks for the questions, they were among the most insightful we've seen on the Presidential interview questions list yet. -- Zanimum 14:45, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for doing this. It's a fabulous idea. I look forward to seeing how it all turns out. --Aranae 14:57, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Category:Octodontidae

Thanks for that ... I'm sure you can tell I'm an engineer, not a scientist. -- Prove It ^(talk) 23:45, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Help!

See: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_August_4#Category:Dipodoid_rodents ... Am I doing the right thing? -- Prove It ^(talk) 00:36, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Category:New World rats and mice

Hi, I recently noticed that this Wikipedia still has a category on New World rats and mice. This seems a bit weird to me - after all, New Worlds rats and mice form a paraphyletic (Jansa et al., 2004; sigmodontine-arvicoline clade) group that is not formally recognized in taxonomy. Wouldn't it be better to split it up into the three currently recognized subfamilies? Ucucha 06:08, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the jury is very much out on the monophyly of the New World rats and mice. If I remember correctly, the statistical support for any of those is poor and the topology changes with different studies (i.e. Jansa and Weksler, 2004; Steppan et al., 2004; Michaux et al., 2001). Nevertheless, yes they should probably be split. Are you involved with the category discussions going on (see a few posts above)? If not I'd encourage you to weigh in. I think I'm leaning toward an accurate straightforward common name when available (i.e. Gerbils, Hamsters, Old World rats and mice), and a common name derived from the group name when not straightforward (i.e. Nesomyid rodents, Spalacid rodents, Neotomine rodents, etc.). --Aranae 16:12, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

No, I am not actually involved at much on this Wikipedia - I just saw that you created the New World rats and mice cat and defended it in an earlier CfD (against a much worse alternative, that was). I don't really want to become too much involved either; I personally prefer writing on Philippine murines. ;-)

Actually, I find much of the current muroid categorization scheme quite messy. Some of the categories are about subfamilies, others about diverse families (such as Nesomyidae). Also, a lot of articles has apparently been botted into the category Muroid rodents. On the Dutch Wikipedia, we mainly follow the main ranks (class, order, family) in categorization, with further subdivisions if necessary (I'd never make a Category:Cannomys, for example; however, I introduced categories for Musser and Carleton's "Divisions" within the Murinae to avoid overcrowding the parent nl:Categorie:Muridae with either articles or genus subcategories). I believe a similar scheme, for example having a parent category "Muroid rodents" with subcategories for nesomyids, spalacids, murids and cricetids (Platacanthomyidae and Calomyscidae can, I think, happily be kept in the parent category), with these categories being having further subdivisions for subfamily, tribe, Division and/or genus. However, one could also consider that the subfamilies are much more "natural" taxa than the families (which aren't, in reality, much more than nodes on a tree, while the subfamilies generally, as far as I know, have some morphological diagnosis).

In any case, splitting up the New World rats and mice might be a good first step forward. Should I nominate it for deletion?

By the way, did you already know that Oryzomys has been split up recently by Weksler et al. (2006)? They named ten new genera and allowed about six species to remain in Oryzomys. They also stated that Microakodontomys transitorius was actually just an aberrant Oligoryzomys and transferred the alfaroi group to Handleyomys pending a revision by Carleton and Musser. Ucucha 17:56, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Voting to keep NW rats and mice back then really was about preventing the disastrous and useless "mice genera" etc. and I kept meaning to go back to one of the alternate proposals that is essentially what you're proposing. I personally think we should shunt everything into "Sigmodontine rodents", "Neotomine rodents", and "Tylomyine rodents" first and then delete the "NW rats and mice" category. Since the taxonomy is 1993-era on these bot-created articles, I suspect we can't use another bot to do the categorizing for us. I don't think it's a problem that some are subfamilies, and others are families, but I think we'd probably be better off having all the families with categories, the small subfamilies without further subcategories (such as Mystromys among the nesomyids or Lophiomys among the murids), and any further categorization beyond that. --Aranae 04:52, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Very well. See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_August_11#Category:New_World_rats_and_mice, and excuse me for the delay; I have been away for a few days.

I completely agree that proposed categories like "mouse breeds" c.s. are completely useless and indeed desastrous for any scientific coverage of muroids, and a category for New World rats and mice is fully preferable to one for "mouse breeds" or even "mouse genera".

Personally, I think the first thing to do should be placing all those articles currently in Category:Muroid rodents in their respective (sub)family categories; that'll make matters somewhat less complicated. However, a bot is really needed for doing that - I don't feel like manually editing about 750 articles (and some more in New World rats and mice).

Also, are you sure you want to use "Tylomyine rodents" and similar? I personally prefer simply "Tylomyinae" etc., which is mostly also the title of the article and sounds less artificial than "Tylomyine rodents" etc. (to me at least). Also, we could just as well use "Tylomyine cricetids" or "Tylomyine vertebrates" or, perhaps, "Tylomyine eukaryots" (however, that's becoming slightly ridiculous). Anyway, that's just a minor problem. Ucucha 19:39, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_August_11#Category:Cannomys

Thought you might be interested in this... -- Prove It ^(talk) 01:25, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Dipodidae

No, I simply went by whatever the article is called, on grounds of consistency. Note that ProveIt's argument that "Dipodoidea is just a redirect to Jerboa" is incorrect, because it isn't a redirect. >Radiant< 08:50, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

phylogenetic swim

• Hi, I saw your October 2006 GA review of Computational phylogenetics and was suitably impressed. :-)
• There's a lot of shtuff scattered across a number of articles (starting with Maximum parsimony) that I'd love to trim down and consolidate...
• I left a message to Opabinia regalis regarding problems I encountered with overlapping material in Maximum parsimony, — some of which looks suspiciously like WP:OR. I mentioned more problems on the talk page. I shipped much of one section to the talk page of Bayesian inference in phylogeny for possible inclusion in that article, and I created another article (Distance matrices in phylogeny) and shipped a lot of shtuff there...that shtuff overlaps with a Distance-matrix methods section in the Computational phylogenetics article; plus much of the WP:LEDE of Maximum parsimony overlaps with the general info in Computational phylogenetics, and should either be consolidated or deleted...
• I spent hours on it last night and it feels "barely started" ;-)
• Help/advice deeply appreciated. I will be busy in real life (I'm relocating to a new job, etc etc etc) and may not be able to return to this problem for a while... but I will definitely return to this set of articles & give them attention...
• Later! -- Ling.Nut 17:33, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

• Never mind, I'll take care of it! :-) It may take several weeks to a couple months, since I'm overloaded with real-life stuff... but I'll get things looking shipshape eventually! --Ling.Nut 07:08, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Rats and demining

May I ask why you removed the mention of use in demining activities from the article on the giant pouched rat? DS 19:53, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Please feel free to incorporate the information into the article, but I reverted it because

1. There was a random "==" inserted into the article.
2. The statement was added to the species list instead of incorporated into the text of the article, which made for very awkward .
3. The topic is addressed in some detail at Cricetomys_gambianus#Pouch_rats_as_mine-sniffers, making the awkwardness of #1 and #2 particularly pointless.

Again, please feel free to write a sentence or two in the text of the article about the topic. Even better, I'd encourage you to update Cricetomys_gambianus#Pouch_rats_as_mine-sniffers. --Aranae 21:52, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

W

"In a summary of average scholar rankings of all US presidents (available on wikipedia), Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower are considered among the greatest presidents, Clinton, George Bush Sr., and Taft are considered middle tier, and Harding, Buchanan, and Pierce are considered among the worst presidents. Where will historians rank the current President Bush and why? --Aranae 23:25, 24 July 2007 (UTC)"

He is ranked next to lowest IQ of any U.S. president of all time (and that is not from the made up report) but his IQ is still a bit above 100 Contralya 11:23, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Common names

Hey Aranae, I just changed Himalayan Marmot to be capitalized since it was the only one of the 13 Marmot articles that wasn't consistent. I have no opinion on the debate, I was just trying to improve the consistency of the articles (and also the categories as you mentioned). Hope I didn't step on (or over) anyone's toes. Kaldari 21:43, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

No problem. I just wanted to make sure that if you were going to moving a lot of pages based on this that you also fixed the redirects. Again, thanks for your help on all you've been doing and keep being bold on rodent articles. --Aranae 22:30, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!

Hi Aranae,

Thanks so much for weighing in on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Lambeosaurus. It is like pulling teeth getting non-WP:DINO people involved in reviewing these articles, and your observations are appreciated and demontrated someone interested in looking for problems, suggesting solutions, and basing his review on his own knowledge of biology. Clearly from your contribution list, you're a mammal person, but may we count on you in the future when preparing articles for FAC? Some of us were considering working on Dimetrodon at one point, which is a "mammal-like reptile"... Firsfron of Ronchester 02:49, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I tend to be even more focused than that and edit primarily rodent articles. I'd be particularly happy to read over and review something. You all do great work on these articles. --Aranae 03:03, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment, Aranae. I look forward to seeing your reviews on future articles. We need more people outside the WikiProject like you. Thanks again for your time. Firsfron of Ronchester 14:22, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Specific stubs

heya - i'm still learning categories and whatnot (i'm not technically a beginning editor, but i'm slow learning rules ;). so stubs are to be as specific as possible? i'll remember that. thx - Metanoid (talk, email) 04:52, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Certainly on a taxonomic level. It avoids having huge categories at high levels (such as animals, mammals, or rodents), and allows the bigger groups to be split off making the whole thing more manageable. --Aranae 05:04, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

what's policy as far as assigning categories goes, or lacking that what works best in your experience? - Metanoid (talk, email) 05:08, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm actually not entirely sure what you're asking. Have you tried WP:CAT? --Aranae 05:49, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

DYK

On November 8, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Bushy-tailed Woodrat, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Blnguyen (bananabucket) 07:42, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I was merely the nominator. I repeated this message at User talk:JimBurd. --Aranae (talk) 04:19, 27 November 2007 (UTC)