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Pakistan / Republic of India POV pusher

Do you perhaps have time to deal with the rest of this guy's POV-pushing? Ucucha 12:42, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh dear ! I usually block this on sight these days. See User:First_Light/Fauna_vandalism#Nationalist_vandalism Shyamal (talk) 16:14, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Mottled Wood Owl image

I uploaded a fairly good image (Nkr hessarghatta bangalore perched Mottled wood owl.jpg) of Mottled Wood Owl that I had. Just letting you know as I am not sure how to insert it into the page as it is still a stub. Btw, what is best way to do this kind of notice? put it in the discussion page for that article? Thanks. Nanda ramesh (talk) 14:16, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

You've been Invited!

You have been invited to join and help WikiProject Insects in its most recent collaboration, Lepidoptera, which has finally been nominated for Good article, soon a reviewer will review and you are welcomed to help before and during the reviewing process as a member of the project. Your also welcomed to nominate yourself as an unbiased, reviewer for the article.

When you wish to help (which is greatly welcomed) you can get briefed and ask questions on my talk page or the WikiProject insects' talk page when you're ready!! Thank you for your cooperation.Bugboy52.4 | =-= 14:27, 28 February 2011 (UTC)


Thanks for the fixes and clarifications, I'll get to those tomorrow as It's midnight here and I was working on the next GAN for WP:INSECT. Would you be interested in being a reviewer for the article? Bugboy52.4 ¦ =-= 05:46, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
I will certainly add some review comments, but will have to recuse myself from reviewing it as I believe I have contributed to the article substantially in the past. Shyamal (talk) 05:56, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Request for comment

As a member of Wikiproject insects you maybe want to voice your opinion this discussion on the use of vernacular or scientific names in higher ranking taxa. Bugboy52.4 ¦ =-= 12:57, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to the Wikipedia Ambassador Program

Hi Shyamal!

Congratulations! Your application to join the Wikipedia Ambassador Program as an Online Ambassador has been accepted.

First off, two apologies. I'm sorry it took so long to accept your application; I've been traveling and have been almost totally off-wiki for about two weeks. And I apologize for the following info-dump. If this feels overwhelming and you're wondering how to get started or are wondering what's going on, please contact me.

If you haven't already done so, take a look at the Online Ambassador guidelines: Wikipedia:Online_Ambassadors/Guidelines

The "mentorship process" section lays out approximately what will be expected of you as a mentor. If you'd like, you can also volunteer to be the coordinating online ambassador for a class or two.

Please add yourself to the top of the list of available mentors, and note the number of students you think you'd like to mentor next term (it doesn't have to be a final answer, this is just to help with matching students and mentors once the students start getting active) and if you'd like to take on the coordination role for any classes note that as well: Wikipedia:Online_Ambassadors/Mentors (Don't add yourself to the lower "Additional online ambassadors section; that's for ambassadors-in-training and ambassadors who are already mentoring all the the students they want to take on.)

To coordinate between Online Ambassadors and Campus Ambassadors, we've been using a Google Group as a mailing list. It's not required, but almost all the ambassadors are on it. Would you like me to subscribe you? Email me with your email address if so.

You can catch with what's been going on so far with the first major message this term, with details about what the group should and shouldn't be used for: Wikipedia_talk:Ambassadors#Information_for_Ambassadors_about_January_-_May_2011_term

You can also check out the first two ambassador newsletters, which have more detail about what's going on right now. You'll get future editions delivered to your talk page.

If you use IRC, please consider adding #wikipedia-en-ambassadors and #wikipedia-en-classroom to your channel lineup.

Finally, please help us find more mentors! Because the number of students, and their involvement with mentors, is increasing so much for this term, we're going to need a lot of solid Online Ambassadors. Please take a few minutes to think of several other editors you know who would make good mentors, and invite them to apply the the Wikipedia Ambassador Program. The key things we look for are: regular activity (so that we can be confident they'll keep up with their mentoring role for the whole term), friendliness, and the ability to give detailed, substantive feedback on articles (both short new articles, and longer, more mature ones). You can point them to Wikipedia:Online Ambassadors for information on how to apply and what to expect.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 21:17, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

If you're ready to get started, I'm looking for someone to take over for the two students User:Rodhullandemu (now retired) was mentoring. Up for it?--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 20:34, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Sure. I have just watchlisted User:Goldmund_722 & User:Gardner.rw1. The only hitch is that they may not get a rapid response except for a brief period of an hour late in their evening from 8.30 to at best 9.30 PM (assuming they are in Indiana). Shyamal (talk) 01:30, 9 March 2011 (UTC)
Great! Please introduce yourself to them; I'll update the mentors page to list them as your mentees.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 14:52, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Barnstar


 The Barnstar of Diligence
I saw some of your work and am very impressed. I suppose its people like you that give credibility to Wikipedia abhishek singh (talk) 23:11, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks ! Shyamal (talk) 04:44, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Caps in bird names

I've just noticed the recent edits you made to the frontpage of WP:BIRD. However, it includes some misunderstandings. The three main possibilities used by IOC for group names are:

IOC group names almost always follow one of the above. The only exception are group names where it has been judged that the two words belong together, but would be too complex if joined into one word (e.g. Foliage-gleaner instead of "Foliage Gleaner" or "Foliagegleaner", and Shrike-flycatcher instead of "Shrike Flycatcher" or "Shrikeflycatcher"). Caps are not used if the latter half of the name is not used for the entire family.
This quite closely matches AOU (SACC are part of AOU, and follows the same rules), although they have been more willing to maintain hyphens than IOC (e.g. "Storm-Petrel" by AOU versus "Storm Petrel" by IOC). It also largely matches Howard & Moore and recent editions of Clements, which also have maintained hyphens for more species than IOC.
Consequently, the presently used example, Black-headed Cuckoo-Shrike, doesn't match the rules followed by *any* recent major authority: Cuckoo-shrikes are not shrikes and the entire family aren't Cuckoo-shrikes (also includes trillers, minivets). The only possibilities are therefore Black-headed Cuckoo-shrike (if judged that Cuckooshrike is too complex for a single word) or Black-headed Cuckooshrike (if judged that the two words can be combined). No recent major authority have rules that would result in Black-headed Cuckoo-Shrike. Based on HBW one might be mislead to think that "Cuckoo-Shrike" is used in HBW, but they actually use Cuckoo-shrike. Whoever wrote the wiki article for HBW just used caps everywhere in the descriptions of some volumes.
The presently used rule of WP:BIRD (never use caps after hyphen) is based on BOU and organizations/lists that, directly or indirectly, are related to BOU. HBW follows BOU rules.
This is potentially quite complex and I do understand if all this is a bit too much for the frontpage of WP:BIRD, but at very least the incorrect information (suggestion that IOC don't advocate caps after hyphen, that IOC and SACC differ notably in their approach to caps after hyphen, etc) and the problematic example (Black-headed Cuckoo-Shrike, not used by any recent major authority) should be removed. 212.10.83.201 (talk) 20:04, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Oops. Yes, seems like I misread the rule and used a bad example - I have made corrections, please check if they are satisfactory. Removing them may not be a good idea since capitals mid-way in the article title are already an eyesore for editors who expect uniformity in Wikipedia page titling convention and non-bird-project-editors are going to look up to see if there are any gross inconsistencies in the way the bird project works. Thanks for pointing this out. Shyamal (talk) 02:14, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Have also changed the HBW article case. Feel free to fix such problems when you spot them. Shyamal (talk) 05:53, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Marking articles students are working on

Howdy, Online Ambassador!

This is a quick message to all the ambassadors about marking and tracking which articles students are working on. For the classes working with the ambassador program, please look over any articles being worked on by students (in particular, any ones you are mentoring, but others who don't have mentors as well) and do these things:

  1. Add {{WAP assignment | term = Spring 2011 }} to the articles' talk pages. (The other parameters of the {{WAP assignment}} template are helpful, so please add them as well, but the term = Spring 2011 one is most important.)
  2. If the article is related to United States public policy, make sure the article the WikiProject banner is on the talk page: {{WikiProject United States Public Policy}}
  3. Add Category:Article Feedback Pilot (a hidden category) to the article itself. The second phase of the Article Feedback Tool project has started, and this time we're trying to include all of the articles students are working on. Please test out the Article Feedback Tool, as well. The new version just deployed, so any bug reports or feedback will be appreciated by the tech team working on it.

And of course, don't forget to check in on the students, give them constructive feedback, praise them for positive contributions, award them {{The WikiPen}} if they are doing excellent work, and so on. And if you haven't done so, make sure any students you are mentoring are listed on your mentor profile.

Thanks! --Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:14, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Illlustration by Henry Dresser

Do you think you might have an idea what work this illustration is from? Totodu74 got it from oiseaux.net, but it would be good to have more information on it. —innotata 15:38, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

It may be some edition of Dresser's Manual of Palearctic birds (the one on BHL does not have these plates) but he most certainly either used the art of J Wolf or J G Keulemans. Dresser was not an artist. Will see if I can find more. Shyamal (talk) 08:20, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
It seems likely that the source was "A History of the birds of Europe. Including All The Species Inhabiting The Western Palaearctic Region." Dresser's obit mentions that this 8 volume work had 633 plates by Keulemans and Wolf. Shyamal (talk) 02:00, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
The index volume is on the Internet Archive, and here's Passer. I don't recognise any of the Passer species as synonyms for ammodendri, but there are plenty that aren't in Summers-Smith's synonym list. Will keep looking; Totodu74 has pointed out some more similar images (see my talk page). —innotata 02:32, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Your GA review

I really appreciate your quick, thorough and knowledgeable review of The Origin of Birds (book). Thanks for helping me get it to GA status. Cheers, Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 05:17, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

You are welcome. Thank you for the great article! Shyamal (talk) 06:30, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Vector request

Hello, long time no see! I've got a project for you, and this time it's not a strange, shapeless fish! Would you mind tackling this request for a comparative illustration? You seem like the right man for this job. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 02:28, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Will try. And have you managed to find a bit of time for the bird measurements template ? Shyamal (talk) 02:42, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
I've started on it; you can see a little bit of fumbling around in my sandbox.It'll need quite a bit of cosmetic touchup yet, but it looks like it may serve as a functional prototype for now. Feel free to play with it and let me know if you find any bugs aside from the obvious cosmetic issues-- in fact, let me know if that's even close to what you want. Once I'm done with this last semester things should slow down again so I can concentrate on things like that. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 05:39, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
It is looking quite good ! Just the unit conversions and collapsing seem to be lacking. When some parameters are not filled in, it would be good if the are no blank lines, but I suppose thats cosmetics. No urgency. Only need to know when to delete that draft SVG file. Shyamal (talk) 08:01, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, that's a cosmetic issue I'm aware of. I've got it saved to my desktop; go for it. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 03:35, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter: 21 March 2011



This is the third issue of the Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter, with details about what's going on right now and where help is needed.


Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 22:27, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

BOLD Systems

A while ago we discussed the DNA 'barcoding' website BOLD Systems, which was showing up in Creative Commons searches for commercially available content, but which didn't give information on copyright on the pages where the image can be seen. Now it does, as I noticed on seeing File:Clarias stappersii.jpg. A lot of images are released under free licenses, for sparrows some images of study skins in the Royal Ontario Museum, such as the image at right of a Southern Grey-headed Sparrow. I'm guessing you'll want to look through a lot of different organisms; but it's not easy to navigate the images, so here's what I've found: you should link to the taxon page, which gives the license, and the full-size image page (I'd also recommend using the "licensereview" template on Commons). You get to the image pages by right-clicking on the images on the taxon pages, which gives you a page like http://www.boldsystems.org/pics/_w300/BROMB/BROMB566-07_-_156908V%2B1274982072.JPG, a reduced version of the photo. Removing the "/_w300" gives you the full size image. Hope you find some great images there! —innotata 21:55, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks interesting, a pity they don't include the specimen label metadata on many of the images. Shyamal (talk) 01:38, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
That's a great resource! They got some nice rice rat and bat images that I'll want to upload. It seems that when you look at a page for a higher taxon (e.g. Mammalia), it shows the alphabetically first image for each subgroup that has any images. Ucucha 02:39, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
I was just thinking you would want to see this too..
As for the metadata, yes, that's a pity, but many but not all of the skins show the whole tag; I should add the information on them. —innotata 18:26, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Mentorship

Thank you for your kind offer Shyamal. I would greatly appreciate your help. My apologies for not getting back to you sooner. I was on vacation for about a week, and since then I have had a number of projects pop up. I am working in a group with two other student on the "nonpoint source water pollution regulations" page. Since my last entry, the page was moved by my classmate, and an article page has been created. It is still mostly an outline, but there is a great deal more substance than before. We will be working on it a lot over the next three to four weeks. If you have any comments during that time, I would certainly appreciate them. Here's a link to what we have so far: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpoint_source_water_pollution_regulations

Thanks! Gardner.rw1 (talk) 18:55, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Some appropriate category, stub & talk page template for these articles would be nice. AshLin (talk) 02:08, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Sources

Thanks for those, I'll have look later today Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:20, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd actually seen the Samoa article, if you split pealii, it adds nothing new. What about the image? At the moment there's not really room for another. Actually, I'll crop the image into three and upload them all, since cyanovirens has no image, and johnny jump up only has a male Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:14, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Mentoring

Hey Shyamal! I am working on a class assignment in my environmental law class and we are trying to expand some important law cases here on wikipedia. I am absolutely new to the whole wikipedia editing field. It would be great if you could be my mentor and assist me on the "how to's" of wikipedia and basic editing. Thank you and looking forward to working with you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hle37 (talk • contribs) 04:11, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Done. Go ahead, let me know if you have any trouble, will watch over your talk page and edits. Shyamal (talk) 03:21, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Hello

Hi Shyamal,
I'm working on a Mediawiki-based biodiversity database focusing on Indian biodiversity (ProjectBrahma.org), aimed at increasing community participation and awareness about India's biodiversity. The website has a component with one page for each species found in India, wherein we dynamically collect information from several sources such as Encyclopedia of Life, NCBI Taxonomy, Wikipedia, Pubmed and so on, making each page an exhaustive source of information about that species. The site is still in beta phase and many issues need to be sorted out.

Given your enormous contributions to biodiversity-related topics on Wikipedia, I'd really like to pick your brains and get some advice on how to make Brahma Project more user-friendly, more useful and more participative. Please contact me at thebrahmaproject at gmail dot com after you get a chance to look at the website. Hoping to have significant communication with you in the coming days and months...Thanks!

Gaurav
Veryhuman (talk) 19:35, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Gaurav, you can contact me here or via email (email this user link on the left) if you want to. I had a glance at your website. Is there a plan to differentiate it from other Indian projects like http://indiabiodiversity.org/ http://www.bisindia.org/ http://www.ibin.co.in/, http://ifoundbutterflies.org/ apart from global projects like GBIF, ebird (birds only), www.arkive.org ... ? Some of those Indian projects have been around for nearly 10 years and have made use of considerably large amounts of funding and at least a few websites have already vanished. Of course like most other Indian government exercises, the primary aim of these organizations in making these databases certainly is *not* as a service to others (and that is the impression one gets as an outsider attending a couple of gatherings of folks involved). Even as a secondary objective, they largely miss out on the spirit with which such endeavors should be undertaken. There is considerable scope for collecting and consolidating primary data and being a high-traceability secondary source, however aggregators are largely doing a disservice by dropping citations, plagiarising, violating licenses and being out of date with sources. Shyamal (talk) 02:27, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Deletion review

Hi, I'd like you to reconsider your deletion of Andy Lehrer. The article you deleted was, as far as I know, entirely different from the one that was deleted before and I've been told that deleting an article is not a bar on creating a new, different article. Also, I think even if the article remains deleted then a redirect is valid. If you don't agree with me how do I go about having the deletion reviewed by a third party? Dimany (talk) 20:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

You may create a deletion review by adding an entry to Wikipedia:Deletion_review using the template 
{{subst:drv2 |page=Andy Lehrer |xfd_page= |reason= }} ~~~~
- the redirect was inappropriate (redirects are primarily for page title alternatives) and the recreated articles by a number of Single Purpose Accounts were all on the same subject and the deletion was for lack of notability, the wording does not have to be the identical. An earlier deletion was for use as an attack on a Canadian subject. Shyamal (talk) 02:30, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Water Rail

I was thinking about working up the Water Rail stub. I note that Rasmussen splits indicus. Can you please email me the text, if there is enough to justify it, or let me have the page number if there's not much else, I don't get the impression that this is a generally accepted split, IOC and Robson (Thailand) don't split, although Davidson (Malaysia) does. Do you think it's reasonable to keep it as a ssp for the purposes of Wikipedia? Thanks, Jimfbleak - talk to me? 08:43, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

I think keeping them in a single article should be perfectly fine especially given that little probably differs apart from the distribution and some morphometrics. Have sent you mail, let me know if it reaches. Shyamal (talk) 14:44, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the additions, I'm tempted to move the Fauna of British India refs to the taxonomy section where they are first mentioned, any views? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 18:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
Fine with me. Shyamal (talk) 01:54, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum

Hello, I understand that you have used images from my website. I would be willing to provide you with information for images of other species. In addition, I have uploaded high resolution images of others. One example is the Abyssinian Ground Thrush, Zoothera piaggiae.

link--https://picasaweb.google.com/109346894814732066704/BritishMuseumCataloguesBirds# — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mmslouis (talk • contribs) 21:24, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer. I think Jerdon's Courser plate and a few Sri Lankan bird plates come from your collection as works like Seebohm's "The geographical distribution of the family Charadriidae, or, The plovers, sandpipers, snipes, and their allies" (1888) are not yet on the Internet Archive www.archive.org/biodiversitylibrary.org . If the work is demonstrably in public domain, do consider putting it up on commons.wikimedia.org . Any chance that you have access to plates from Jerdon's "Illustrations of Indian ornithology" (1845-47) ? Shyamal (talk) 02:39, 10 April 2011 (UTC)


Hello, Yes the image from Jerdon's Courser is mine. Unfortunately I have not come across Jerdon's work. I have tried a hand at editing some pages--more difficult than I thought, yet so far have had some success.

However, I have looked at your list of "to do." Megalaima zeylanica--see Legge, Ceylon, on my website, http://sites.google.com/site/mmslouis/johngerrardkeulemans%281842--1912%29%3Aillustr — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mmslouis (talk • contribs) 00:33, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Egyptian Vulture

Please contribute to the discussion of the identity of this vulture at Bird 1147. Snowman (talk) 10:46, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Referencing from the same source

I'm trying to figure out how to reference a source that has already been used. When I make more than one contribution using the same reference a list of the same reference appears multiple times in the reference box. How can I go about avoiding this? Hope this makes sense. Hle37 (talk) 23:38, 15 April 2011 (UTC)Hle37

Thanks for the reference advice, I finally worked it out. I didn't realize writing and editing on wikipedia could be this confusing.

I am trying organize the layout of the page to look similar to other court cases that include the side box. I was going to copy the code that was found in supreme court cases but realized it wouldn't work since the Kivalina case is currently being appealed to the 9th circuit court of appeals. At first I was going to just copy a picture on a regular side box but the layout didn't look right, is there a template for district court cases?

Thanks Hle37 (talk) 04:35, 19 April 2011 (UTC)Hle37

request for move

Dear Shyamal, I just made a mistake and need your support.
I moved the content of the Indo-Chinese leopard article to Indochinese leopard, which I created. Also, I switched contents of Indian Leopard and #REDIRECT Indian leopard. But wasn't aware that this erased the edit histories. Therefore, would you please delete the pages Indochinese leopard and Indian leopard, so that I can move the respective contents as per protocol. Sorry for the inconvenience caused! -- BhagyaMani (talk) 16:05, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

A bit late but this seems to have been fixed. Shyamal (talk) 02:19, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Am afraid that so far it hasn't been fixed. Chipmunkdavis merely undid my copy paste move of the Indo-Chinese leopard article, and then sent me a note. The Indian leopard copy paste move hasn't been detected by anybody yet. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 06:51, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Got it this time. Shyamal (talk) 08:25, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Great! The Indian is perfect now. What I had in mind with the other one is change the title to Indochinese leopard, i.e. without hyphen like Indochina, Indochinese tiger ... And then place the redirect in the Indo-Chinese leopard article. But that's not so very important — I kept the word unhyphened in the text. --BhagyaMani (talk) 19:43, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Moved for consistency, although I am not sure about the name convention in this case. Shyamal (talk) 01:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Again great ! Re naming convention see Lon Grassman's article. Pocock, Ellerman and Morrison-Scott, and MSW3 only use trinominal. -- BhagyaMani (talk) 12:38, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Water Rail

Hi, thanks for images and other additions. Do you have access to this or this? Apart from the lead, is there anything significant missing? "Predators and parasites" and "Status" are a bit thin, but that's all I can find without listing population trends country by country. When this is eventually ready for FAC, do you fancy co-nominating? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 17:56, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Neither paper accessible to me - but you can request them on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Resource_Request. My contributions have really been minimal so will help out when you nominate it. Regarding content, hope you have tried all the standard queries google1 google2 biodiversitylibrary Shyamal (talk) 02:30, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
OK, I'm still looking for stuff, just checking really because you sometimes can access stuff I can't, thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:11, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
I can get the articles Jim asked for, so I've dropped a note on his page. —innotata 01:52, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. I am looking for a few papers myself - for Scaly-breasted Munia
  • M. Moynihan and M. F. Hall (1954) Hostile, Sexual, and Other Social Behaviour Patterns of the Spice Finch (Lonchura punctulata) in Captivity. Behaviour 7(1):33-76 jstor
  • vigilance-group size

Shyamal (talk) 02:14, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The second one is from an at least mostly open access journal [1] I'll e-mail you the first. —innotata 13:20, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter: 22 April 2011



This is the fourth issue of the Wikipedia Ambassador Program Newsletter, with details about what's going on right now and where help is needed.


Delivered by EdwardsBot (talk) 16:37, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Water Rail

I'm going birding for a couple of days to escape THE WEDDING. I've got as far as I can with Water Rail, exhaustive list of parasites, checked for dabs, been through the refs etc, and I'd like to take it to FAC when I return. Would you mind reading the lead section to see if there's anything missing that should be there, or grammatical/style errors? thanks, Jimfbleak - talk to me? 05:54, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Will do. We birders certainly are a quaint bunch! Happy birding. Shyamal (talk) 10:09, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
thanks for tweaks, I'll have a couple more read-throughs an then throw it to the wolves. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:46, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

error

Dear Shyamal, I need your admin help again: some other user - Jgreeter - created my user page unintentionally. How can I undo this ?
I deleted his note that he apparently meant to put on my talk page. But that is not the same as undoing the creation of my user page. I would appreciate if this can be undone. --BhagyaMani (talk) 15:37, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Replied on your page. Shyamal (talk) 16:00, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Overview of article

Our project for the article is just about done, if it's not too much could you go over the article and check to see if there are any areas we should work on or any missing sections we should add? I know I still have some adjustments to do but the due date is this saturday and I wanted to give you enough to edit. Again, thank you for the help we truely appreciate it! Hle37 (talk) 23:04, 2 May 2011 (UTC)Hle37

Have added comments to the talk page of the article. Shyamal (talk) 02:12, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Please help assess articles for Public Policy Initiative research

Hi Shyamal/archive20,

Your work as an Online Ambassador is making a big contribution to Wikipedia. Right now, we're trying to measure just how much student work improves the quality of Wikipedia. If you'd like contribute to this research and get a firsthand look at the quality improvement that is happening through the project, please sign up to assess articles. Assessment is happening now, just use the quantitative metric and start assessing! Your help would be hugely appreciated!

Thank you, ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) (talk) 17:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

W Purkiss

He's not in any of my entomology sources so I will have to try artist directories but I can't do this until I go to the museum in a week or two.I see you have been on some bird trips. Me too but less exciting species.Warm regards RobertNotafly (talk) 14:39, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Robert. In case you have such a directory of artists, please do also look up the birth and death dates for Miss Maud Horman-Fisher who did illustrations of lepidoptera and anisoptera in the PZSL volumes around 1885-1895. Shyamal (talk) 03:18, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

The Photographer's Barnstar
All those animal images you are adding - excellent. Thank you. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 13:15, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the image upload of Tent tortoise and Karoo cape tortoise! Any other turtles (full list Category:Turtle articles needing photos) would be welcome. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 13:15, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

You are welcome. I am trying not be too bird chauvinistic with those chromolithographs from the 1880-90 period but I have skipped some fossil bones, anatomical images and some less-visually-appealing-taxa but if you know the species you should try and do a search on http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org which might lead you to PZSL or other major taxonomic description oriented journals of the time. See how good the results are for example here Shyamal (talk) 13:36, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Another Balanophoracea

Dear Shyamal,

I have just identified another species of this family, which I have found in Northwest Thailand, as Balanophora fungosa.
The plants are very similar. I guess that the picures above, which I have classified as Unidentified Balanophoraceae, are of another Balanophora species or even possibly of the same species.

Best regards, --Réginald alias Meneerke bloem (To reply) 09:26, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the confirmation. Shyamal (talk) 16:45, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Frohawk illustrations

Illustrations by Frohawk can't be on Wikimedia Commons (he died in 1946, so his works are public domain in the U.S. but not the U.K.) so I've put those you just uploaded on Wikipedia, like his others (you can see all of them at Special:ListFiles/Innotata). —innotata 16:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Oh too bad. Thanks ! Shyamal (talk) 02:58, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Testudo fiski

Hello, Shyamal. You have new messages at SunCreator's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Regards, SunCreator (talk) 12:29, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Unidentified Balanophoracea

Dear Shyamal,

The Balanophoraceae from Coorg is for sure a Balanophora species.
I have found a very similar species in Thailand, which I have identified as Balanophora fungosa (see: An underground jackfruit).
I guess the plant, which you have found in the Western Ghats, is a Balanophora indica (Syn. Balanophora fungosa subsp. indica).

Best regards, --Réginald alias Meneerke bloem (To reply) 10:50, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Does not seem like there are any other species in that region, but seems like there are several varieties in this list.
  • Balanophora fungosa J.R. & G. Forst. subsp. indica (Arn.) Hansen var. indica
  • Balanophora fungosa J.R. & G. Forst. subsp. indica (Arn.) Hansen var. minor (Eichl.) Hansen
  • Balanophora fungosa J.R. & G. Forst. subsp. indica (Arn.) Hansen var. agastyamalayana Viswanathan, Prem Kumar & Ramesh
  • Balanophora fungosa J.R. & G. Forst. subsp. indica (Arn.) Hansen var. tirunelveliensis Viswanathan, Prem Kumar & Ramesh

Shyamal (talk) 11:32, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Said that too soon, seems like there is also B. polyandra, but it looks quite different. Shyamal (talk) 11:34, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Curcuma mangga

A tag has been placed on Curcuma mangga, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done for the following reason:

It has nothing to do with its subject; it uses information from one source, which only discusses the species family (Zingiberaceae), and the Curcuma genus, not Curcuma mangga - and that is all that's in this article, except the first, very brief paragraph.

Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not meet basic Wikipedia criteria may be deleted at any time.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, contest the deletion by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion," which appears inside of the speedy deletion ({{db-...}}) tag (if no such tag exists, the page is no longer a speedy delete candidate). Doing so will take you to the talk page where you will find a pre-formatted place for you to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the page meets the criterion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the page that would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, you can contact one of these administrators to request that the administrator userfy the page or email a copy to you.

I'm sorry Shyamal, but something is really wrong with this article. If you can improve it, and save it, please do. Hamamelis (talk) 13:06, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Have found upon examination that the species name is a junior synonym of Curcuma amada. Have moved it there, it certainly had gathered a lot of extraneous and off-topic stuff. Shyamal (talk) 14:14, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
Have removed the speedy, hope that is fine with you as all biological taxa are intrinsically notable. PS: It seems like a taxonomic mess, and both amada and mangga may actually be distinct although both have the characteristic mango taste/odor. Shyamal (talk) 14:19, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
I did a double-click double-take when I first realized you were the author. But it appears upon a closer look at the history, all the extraneous info was added by a single author with only 4 edits to his/her credit, all done on a single day in August 2oo8. Not vandalism, just misguided I think. Thank you for handling this with such good grace. You did a bang-up job on the move to C. amada! Thanks, Hamamelis (talk) 20:31, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Another source of old illustrations

I've found another source for old illustrations, which doesn't seem to be used much: biolib.de, run by Karl Stüber. Some plant photographs by Stüber are licensed under the GFDL, so they are at commons:Category:Photographs by Kurt Stüber, but the only illustrations currently on Wikimedia Commons I can find are those in commons:Category:Thomé, Flora von Deutschland. The site is sorted by species name, and by the books and their information. —innotata 18:00, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, looks good and will certainly be useful for some taxa. The resolution of the images in BHL is however higher and the information in the text alongside makes it more useful for study. Shyamal (talk) 09:06, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador sweatshirt

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Cheers, Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 19:43, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Nicobar Pigeon

Hello, would you confused Nicobar Pigeon = Nicobar à camail and Liverpool Pigeon = Nicobar ponctué? In fact, in french Nicobar is a vernacular name for birds such some doves and pigeons, and not only a name for the islands where those birds can be found. Thereby a Nicobar ponctué would be a Punctuated Pigeon ;) Totodu74 (talk) 21:24, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah ! ok, that is interesting ! My mistake. Shyamal (talk) 01:19, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

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Cinereous Vulture

This revert was unwarranted. If you want to skip the page numbers, that's fine, but don't remove the improved referencing itself. I wasn't disputing anything factual, either. 110.139.190.67 (talk) 07:56, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, it appeared as if references were being removed. Do register yourself so that editors will consider your edit history in revert decisions. Shyamal (talk) 08:01, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm aware that some of the filters are incorrectly tagging edits as 'references removed', however, that's not what's actually happening. Are you going to revert back? also, I'm not interested in registering an account. Huh? do you see that I caused the citation bot to create that template before I edited it?
re: Could you check your usage of cite doi please ? it should be followed by the pipe | and not / resulting in subpages of the template. Shyamal (talk) 08:06, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
The bot created it, and it's correct. 110.139.190.67 (talk) 08:09, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for self-reverting; I've continued, cutting the widths, as you did, and fixed the iucnredlist link. 110.139.190.67 (talk) 08:30, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for improving the article. Shyamal (talk) 08:31, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
You're welcome. ;) 110.139.190.67 (talk) 08:34, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Screaming Hairy Armadillo

The DYK project (nominate) 16:02, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Cattle Egret

The link you gave came up with a "Not Found". The information can, of course, be re-added, but the fact that two of us were misled/confused by the deleted text suggests that it needs a bit more explanation if it's put back in. Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:46, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Done, a search for endothermy and birds will provide more information. A similar note on White Storks at http://www.ardeola.org/files/519.pdf Shyamal (talk) 17:09, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
Incidentally, the developmental timer starts ticking only after first incubation. So you can keep a freshly laid chicken egg in the refrigerator and give it after a week to a broody hen and the egg will hatch fine. This is sometimes a mechanism by which the clutch hatches synchronously. Shyamal (talk) 17:11, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Franquet's Epauletted Fruit Bat

Materialscientist (talk) 00:02, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks Shyamal — I've been looking for a Pink-headed Warbler pic for ages! MeegsC | Talk 12:25, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

It seems like adding 19th Century illustrations acts like a good catalyst! Shyamal (talk) 13:54, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Egyptian Vulture && White-rumped Vulture

re: diff && diff

I disagree with this approach to the {{cite doi}} template system, which is all about making complex citations more maintainable by keeping them separate and by seeking to share them between multiple articles. On a practical level, you should have subst'd instead of simply switching to {{cite journal}} and having the bot flesh them out because the bot misses stuff that I had manually migrated into the templates, such as links to free copies of the papers and the repair of outright errors.

You seem to be responsible for a great many of the bird articles here, and I'm not specifically focused on such articles other than short-term. I was going to do the last seven inline cites that remain in White-rumped Vulture ("In the Indian subcontinent"), but I'll leave this field to you. fwiw, Cas, who you must know, liked the "doi thingies". 110.139.190.67 (talk) 05:29, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, I think it calls for a larger discussion on the use of database style transclusion. As I mentioned, it is rather impractical to have to watchlist hundreds of doi pages in addition to the articles. I hope you understand. Technically, yes, it is rather interesting but unless it is accompanied by policy changes, protection for template subpage spaces and other changes, it seems to be rather premature to do these conversions. You are of course welcome to do the research and improve articles, but the slog work you are doing should ideally be done by bots once there is an overwhelming consensus on citation techniques to be followed. Shyamal (talk) 05:33, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
Additionally, if sharing between articles is an aim then using quotations from the references "<ref name=Example2006a>{{Cite doi|10.1146/annurev.earth.33.092203.122621}} "A sample quote"</ref>" makes it run into problems. A quotation for one article may be irrelevant to another. Shyamal (talk) 05:37, 2 June 2011 (UTC) PS: not a valid objection. Shyamal (talk) 06:06, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
The quote concern is moot; quotes that would be shared would go in the doi subpage and those specific to an article would go in the article just after the template invocation. See the documentation. I (edit conflict)'d with your strikeout. 110.139.190.67 (talk) 06:10, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

I've left notes for Casliber and Smith609 (the developer of the citation and doi bots). The {{cite doi}} seems to have thousands of subpages for specific dois and pmids:

You have orphaned some dozens of templates, and lost a lot of cite-detail that is in them and is not in the re-flesh the bot did. Meh; I'm done with vultures, anyway. As you prolly realize, I'm not an inexperienced editor. I've been here a very long time and have made more than 50,000 edits. The core intent here was to illustrate how much the article text can be decluttered by moving the cites out-of-line; for example:

See the many paragraphs that amount to three-quarters citation text and one-quarter prose. That, at least, remains. Bots are tools for rote work, but much of this sort of work really has to be done by hand to be done properly. And, as everyone eventually learns on these projects, everything you do erodes due to the other participants. It's all sandcastles on the beach. 110.139.190.67 (talk) 06:10, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

moar: Egyptian Vulture#Footnotes. The Most of the footnotes no longer properly link to the cited references further down; another mechanism lost in the orphaning of the templates. 110.139.190.67 (talk) 06:16, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Will fix at some point unless someone does so in the meantime. In any case need to spend many more hours on researching the subject literature again. Shyamal (talk) 06:36, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

African Crake

thanks for adds. I did actually search archive.org, but missed both these Jimfbleak - talk to me? 09:52, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

You are welcome. Glad you found them useful despite their age. Shyamal (talk) 10:32, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Manipur Bush Rat

Materialscientist (talk) 16:02, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

{{birdbox}}

Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 00:37, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Super! Thanks, let me post it to the bird folks and see how they see its usaubility. Shyamal (talk) 01:03, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
Good luck! If there's any part of it needing changed, let me know! Now that I've finished my job search I have time to work on code again! Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 02:12, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Black Bishop

Materialscientist (talk) 18:04, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

resource request

Hi Shyamal,

I've responded to your request at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request. You can find links to the three articles you requested at that page.

Best, GabrielF (talk) 14:24, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Lepidoptera Indica etc

I see you are uploading right now.Gratifying to see your image being used too. In a recent addition of Antenna (RESL) there were several commons images in an article by Dick Vane-Wright and I have seen many more elsewhere. I have had some very interesting news recently re the (now) species group Leptidea.My e-mail (so long defunct) is now . Once I have yours again I'll write more.Very best regards Robert Notafly (talk) 15:00, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Great to hear. Will mail you soon. Shyamal (talk) 15:18, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
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