User talk:Elaphe1011

Welcome!

Hello, Elaphe1011, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Aboutmovies (talk) 07:41, 24 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative names

Hallo Elaphe1011, I've just come across Ungaliophiinae while stub-sorting.

If you add a synonym in bold, as you did with "Ungaliophiidae", it should be the target of an incoming redirect from the alternative name. I've created one now for Ungaliophiidae.

Please also remember to add a "References" heading and template so that the references are shown tidily rather than listed at the very end of the article.

I was also a bit puzzled by "booid snakes" as this term doesn't seem to be in Wikipedia! Is it another spelling used for Boidae along with "boids" and "boioids"? If so would it be worth adding to that article, and making a redirect? Or was it a typo?

Thanks. PamD 15:17, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your email. I've added a redirect from the term booid snakes, as it's the synonym you'd used in your article so presumably is a term people might well use, and I've added a note which I hope is correct to the new article which is the target of the redirect. And so the encyclopedia grows, with willing editors creating more and more articles to help, clarify, fill in the gaps, etc! Thanks. PamD 19:38, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

And in reply to your question, the best way to reply to a talk page message is to answer it on the same page, which keeps the conversation together for the benefit of participants and any onlookers. If you want to be sure that the other person sees your reply, and you think they may not have "watch-listed" your talk page, then start it with eg {{ping|PamD}}, which then raises an "Alert" (the little symbol of a bell at top of page) to let them know there's a reply. Email is usually only used if there are matters which shouldn't be seen by all and sundry: in general it's useful for a conversation to be visible to other editors. PamD 20:12, 24 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks for your help @PamD:. Your redirect term is good. Is this the right way?Elaphe1011 08:54, 26 April 2017 (CET)

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Slow down

I have just reverted a number of your recent edits. I may have to revert more. While you may be an expert in your field, Wikipedia articles must be verifiable using reliable sources. I don't know if you attempted to do this or not, but my own checks showed no support for your edits in the citations given in those articles. There are a variety of possible methods to show that claims made in articles are verifiable, but one of the best is inline references, as used in most taxonomic articles. Please provide such references for the sort of wholescale changes you are attempting to make. Lithopsian (talk) 20:43, 13 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Lithopsian: Hi, thanks for your message. I can easily add more references, including in-line, supporting my changes, but not unless you tell me which changes you reverted. I only saw that you changed 'Dipsadidae' back to the redirect page. Sorry about that, after reading the documentation I realized that I didn't move the page properly. One additional wrinkle is that most of the information supporting the changes is given in figures in the articles, so it's difficult to say exactly where in the text a particular piece of information is from, because it's best viewed by looking at the tree. I've gone through and tried to make my changes better referenced. If you think I could use more/better/more detailed referencing somewhere, please use citation needed or/and tag me.Andrew M. Durso (talk) 05:02, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Do you use a watchlist? Typically, any page you edit will go into your watchlist, then a quick check of the watchlist will show you if anyone has been editing "your" pages. Also, an actual undo or revert should flag up one of the little notification icons at the top (or somewhere, depending on theme) of the page. Unfortunately, complex reverts or simply re-editing an old version may not produce the notification. My contributions page shows recent changes to Caenophidia, Dipsadidae, Dipsadinae, and Alethinophidia that are likely to be of interest. There were more that needed work, but I'll leave them for later.

It isn't a problem if information is in a figure like a cladogram, so long as it clearly supports the information in Wikipedia. Ideally, information is available from multiple independent sources, or from secondary or tertiary sources. Wikipedia is pretty big on not relying on only primary sources, but it is often done for scientific subjects. People may get antsy about cutting edge changes to long-standing positions, so the latest and greatest isn't necessarily what makes it into Wikipedia if it is controversial and not yet widely adopted. You can always describe new research in the text if it isn't in widespread use yet. Lithopsian (talk) 14:06, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Lithopsian: Thanks. As you can almost certainly tell, I'm rather new to some of the Wikipedia editing tools. I will set up a watchlist for these pages, and I think I managed to locate all the reversions & suggested changes you had made for Dipsadidae, Dipsadinae, and Alethinophidia. I created a move page discussion for Dipsadidae/Dipsadinae, since I agree it's a big change. I also went through all the other pages that I changed in an attempt to better reference the changes that I made.

Of course there is always debate about scientific topics, and some changes are likely to change back. The changes I'm making now reflect the consensus of the field over the past 10 years. There are plenty more changes that will likely become more well-supported in the future, but for now I'm limiting myself to only changes that I've personally seen repeatedly in numerous analyses, from different authors and using independent data. And, my other goal is improving consistency among the pages (for example, if the page for the infraorder provides one taxonomy, than the page for the superfamily should agree with that taxonomy. This wasn't the case before, and unfortunately it requires making a few rather drastic changes like the Dipsadinae one).

Finally, we have good reason to believe that several long-standing positions in snake taxonomy were wrong, based on data from DNA. If certain changes are not yet widely adopted, it's primarily (IMHO) because books and sources like Wikipedia don't mention them, partially out of well-intentioned caution and partially just because of the natural time-lag. There isn't anything scientifically controversial about the changes I suggested, but they can seem controversial to people who are used to using the old names. It's a re-occurring debate in taxonomy, and it can get very philosophical. I'll try to make a point of describing the rationale and the results of the newer research in the text where it isn't in widespread use yet, but I also want to maintain a friendly and approachable style for non-technical readers.

Thanks for your advice! Andrew M. Durso (talk) 05:02, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good. The main reason for using page moves instead of just pasting page contents over an existing redirect is attribution. The contents of a page are likely to be due to many edits by many editors. Pasting the whole lot into a different page in one go loses that and makes it look like one editor created it from scratch. Wikipedia is keen to keep the attribution and have it easy to see. There are procedures to copy attribution history when necessary, but the page move is the preferred method. Unfortunately, most users can't do it if the new page title exists and has a non-trivial history of its own. If the move is obviously necessary and desirable, then there is a quick technical request that will get it done by an admin. The full move process is where the change may be opposed, or at least needs some discussion - what seems obvious to one editor may actually produce novel and better approaches after discussion. Where possible you can also be bold and just do the move, but be prepared to have a discussion rather than an edit war if someone just reverts it. Lithopsian (talk) 14:26, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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Copying licensed material requires attribution

Hi. I see in a recent addition to Tick you included material from a webpage that is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. That's okay, but you have to give attribution so that our readers are made aware that you copied the prose rather than wrote it yourself. I've added the attribution for this particular instance. Please make sure that you follow this licensing requirement when copying from compatibly-licensed material in the future. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 17:37, 29 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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