User talk:Sminthopsis84/Archive 6

This is an archive of past discussions with User:Sminthopsis84. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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herbal tea

Hello, is the problem the "an" part? Would "a herbal tea" be okay? Because tisane redirects to herbal tea. If so I will use "a" from here on out and work on converting what I've already done to "a" instead of "an". Me5000 (talk) 15:40, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I think that would probably lead to long-term edit wars on all the pages, with people changing "a" to "an" and back again … Why don't you like "tisane", Agatha Christie's Poirot character's cute, no (and named after a leek, poireau, so he's a botanical character)? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:45, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I've never heard of the word tisane until now and considering the page is named herbal tea and not tisane, that is the most accepted term. What if I just removed the "a" and the "an" all together. Me5000 (talk) 15:56, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I see that that would work in some of the cases. To me, a herbal tea excludes those made with fruit, such as rose hips and hibiscus, and the word for all of these sorts of preparations is just "tea". A tisane is a more technical term encompassing both decoctions and infusions, so there may be reasons for using that term when the preparation technique is not accurately known. The pages associated with these matters are such a mess that I'll drop this particular aspect and concentrate what time I can spare on cleaning up the botany on the plants involved. Ethnobotany is not something that I know much about. Perhaps in the future, when wikipedia's coverage is rather better, we may get to a point where ethnobotanists will get involved with improving the accuracy of these statements and adding citations. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:57, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Euglossa dilemma

Thank you for making some helpful alterations to clarify this bee article. Another user has added a "not in citation given" tag to one paragraph which I consider to be in error. There is a discussion on the talk page. I feel sure you have access to the journal article cited and I wonder if you could check to see whether my statement in the article accurately reflects the source material, and remove the tag if you think it does. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 06:28, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

You are a brave person to tackle anything related to the front page! I'd personally vote to remove the DYK section and the wikicup entirely, because of the infighting over such tiny matters that results ("plant" versus "plant or faeces" is a minor matter, in my opinion). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:41, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for dealing with that so efficiently. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 14:17, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

You're welcome. Nice bee! Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:26, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Lilian Snelling

Thank you for fixing my biodiversity heritage library external link for Lilian Snelling. Please could you point me to a link explaining how I can do that for myself next time? Thanks. Diana Bassplayer (talk) 18:20, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Astartika (talk) 21:13, 7 April 2014 (UTC) Thank you!

Happy Pat day

	The green day
	Happy Saint Patrick day!! ......................................................................!!!!! Hafspajen (talk) 16:42, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

I almost forgot about those little stone-plants, nice of you to remember me of them, one of my favourite plants.Hafspajen (talk) 18:11, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

They are a delight. I have a batch of babies from seed, just 3 weeks old. So cute! Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:27, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Where do you keep them? these and Sorbus vilmorinii are my absolute favourites Hafspajen (talk) 19:25, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

.Hey, that was not much of an article. Hafspajen (talk) 19:26, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Those are interesting, they look as if they would have a strong perfume. The Lithops babes live inside an inelegant plastic bag, but hopefully they are too young to realize that it is ugly. Sorbus vilmorinii, wonderful, I didn't know that one; a candy-pink apomict, how perfect! Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:19, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

It starts out as rather red- vinered-coloured - and as time passes, they go pink and late in winter pale pink, the fruits will cover the tree branches as if it would been covered by pink-white pearls. The birds don't like it, so one can enjoy them for a while. Lovely tree. Hafspajen (talk) 23:59, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

We don't have much variety in Sorbus here, the only ones that people plant are S. aucuparia, S. pinnatifida, and occasionally S. intermedia. The native North American species are all rare with most of the wild trees being escaped S. aucuparia. People here understandably don't have much enthusiasm for the genus … I don't know if the interesting forms cannot grow here or simply haven't been imported. Probably, few gardeners realize that seeds from an apomict would come true, and that many of them are apomictic. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:59, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

But how weird. Canada should be like Sweden. Hafspajen (talk) 18:58, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's very weird. There are, or course, gardeners in Canada, but they don't seem to plant the same range of ornamental trees. Perhaps it is because there are few nurseries here, and there is a general belief that only a few species will grow. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:35, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Hafspajen for the image of herbicide-free perfection in a lawn! Dürer was fortunate to live amongst such bounty. I think I'll use that image on my user page at Commons! Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:54, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Was pondering about this differences between plant uses in Canada and Sweden. We had some plant-hunters, one Carl Skottsberg, and the other, Tor Nitzelius who was the director of the Gothenburg Botanical Garden, who brought back plants from China, Japan, Tibet and so on. He was called Tor Nitzelius, no article on him as far as I can see. He started planting those plants, at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences parks in Alnarp, Ultuna and so on to se if they managed well. Hafspajen (talk) 01:44, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

So perhaps we should translate the SV wikipedia page about him; it is very short though. Would you have access to more material about Tor Nitzelius? There is a list of specimens of his filed at Harvard. Sadly, there is no photo of Nitzelius park in Alnarp in commons.wikimedia.org. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:53, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

It's strange that gardening in at least this part of Canada is so limited in imagination. I've wondered if more happens in other parts, such as Atlantic Canada or the west. It is very hard to get an overall impression from a brief visit, and there are reasons for some of the deficiencies, for example Laburnum is usually very disappointing here because the weather becomes hot quickly in the spring and the flowers get burned; the same is true of tulips. There are Canadian plant breeders, plant collectors, and government plant-breeding projects that could use more coverage in Wikipedia, which might in turn help to inspire gardeners. Our friend PCW made a page about one of the important people, Georges Bugnet, and I wonder if there's a big difference in his influence in the west versus the east (his rose 'Thérèse Bugnet' is in all the garden centres out west). I've also seen what looks like more influence from California's Luther Burbank in British Columbia than here (everybody grows what I think could be his "thornless" raspberry). W. T. Macoun, Isabella Preston, and Charles Saunders (of 'Marquis' wheat) are Canadian plant breeders that I've thought about making pages about, but the standards for pages about people are high, and I haven't found much material about any of them. There must be great plant collections in Canada that I don't know about; I've seen more in Denmark than here, but that was thanks to a friend who knew them all well and took me around to see them there. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:53, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

I think you should plant your tulips in shady places, like 2 hour sun will do. I don't knoe where or hat you are working with but you should try to estblish contact with plant stations, Universities like above, bothanical gardens or plant schools in Norway, Sweden and Finland, you will surely get response. Hafspajen (talk) 15:28, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that would help. I'm in a bit of a backwater here, where people care only about native plants and vigorous weeds. This past winter has been terrible, it will be interesting to see if anyone has tulips that survived. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:36, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

They care only about vigorous weeds? You do put sand layer around your bulbs, like 2 inches, or? Hafspajen (talk) 16:26, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Weeds are good: did you know that Lonicera tatarica is loved by some cats that don't care for catnip (I'd upload a picture of the look on his face right now, but other editors would probably object)? I garden in sand, glacial till, on a south-facing slope, which, of course, doesn't help the bulbs to gather enough nutrients to grow well. The till in my garden is interesting stuff, with rare granite and limestone boulders in it, up to about 0.5 m across. A visitor once exclaimed "you need a proper garden!". Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:04, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Where is that slopeHafspajen (talk) 18:19, 4 April 2014 (UTC)^{Lonicera tatarica is big bush... or is it called weed}

Well, I won't be too specific about geographic location in wikipedia, but it's in a city in eastern Canada. Yes, we call them weeds, or weedy shrubs. Even "weed trees" grow around here. I guess it's a diminutive, presumably as endearment. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:25, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)(edit conflict)Well, we have Lonicera tatarica cultivars and use them in gardens, parks...

'Alba' - whit flowers', 'Angustifolia' , 'Arnold Red' - red, 'Freedom' from Minnesota Landscape Arboretum., 'Hack's Red' , Latifolia' , 'Lavsas' , LOTA , 'Lutea' - pink flowers, yellow fruits, MALMÖ , Nana' - pink flowers, 90 cm (small) 3 feet high, 'Rosea' - well, pikk - with pale pink; ÅSGULL Hafspajen (talk) 18:30, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

That's a long list. It is possible to buy named cultivars here such as 'Arnold Red'. They make the conservation biologists sound like a troup of Daleks, though: "Exterminate!". (They look a bit like Daleks too, in their bug suits.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:18, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Could the horticultural differences between Canada and Sweden be explained partially by cultural history? In his book Second Nature Michael Pollan studies the horticultural history of Canada's neighbour, the U.S., and to a European like myself, his observations are quite surprising. He describes how US gardens in the 19th century were used as a kind of moral exhortation - as people left farms to live in cities, gardens were used as a way of preserving "rural virtues", and this has persisted through to modern times ("No less than the nineteenth-century transcendentalists and reformers, we look today to the garden as a source of moral instruction"). He contrasts this with the European aesthetic approach: "So pious an attitude toward gardening undoubtedly would strike a European as absurd" ... "The issues in English [as opposed to American] garden writing are invariably framed in aesthetic, rather than moral, terms". He goes on to link this difference to the American perception of nature and culture being two things that are "fundamentally and irreconcilably opposed", so that Americans either "virtuously subdue [land] in the name of 'progress'" or they "place it strictly off-limits in wilderness areas". As a result, he argues, American culture cannot create great gardens ("A people who believe that nature is somehow sacred ... will probably never feel easy bending it to their will, and certainly not for aesthetic reasons." Of course I'm not going to make the mistake of equating Canada with the US, but I'd be surprised if cultural and historical factors were no less important than climate. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 22:55, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Do you think we Scandinavians walk around in buggshirts?

Well, I have to confess we have a lot more in common with the British gardening, with one exception - the British have ten times more cultivars then we have. Here nice sandy gardens [1] Second Nature by Michael Pollan is a very good book. Hafspajen (talk) 01:16, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Derek Jarman's garden, Prospect Cottage, Dungeness,

Here is Otto's plants http://www.stangby.nu/sortiment/ Stångby . ( see you need a login to be able too se the sortiment) Hafspajen (talk) 01:41, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Do you not wear bug suits in Sweden? Perhaps constant playing of those Sandvik musical saws keeps the biting insects at bay. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:42, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both for that! I haven't read gardening books in quite a while, and should do so again, and in contemplating why that is, I'm sure it has been through disappointment with the general clutter of poor garden writing. It is very nice to have that recommendation for a satisfying book. One of companies that I think of as representing the peak of American Gardening is White Flower Farm, whose catalogues from 30 years ago are gorgeous things, but their web site now looks rather ordinary. Smith & Hawken also used to be a favourite of mine, but are now gone. With a bit of persistence, it is possible to find fine garden tools and special plants, but I suppose that I have given up looking. I suppose that you have fake plants in Europe just as here, but I was disappointed in talking to an executive member of the local horticultural society last week who said "it's almost warm, it's about time for me to replace the Christmas wreath on my front door with my Forsythia wreath"; me: "oh, do you clip the twigs and make a wreath and have them bloom?"; hsc member: "no, it's silk".

Something that must relate to different attitudes to gardens is the fencing laws. This document (sadly not free access) discusses the early days of European settlement in North America. There was a major difference in the European and American laws in that an animal that damages crops in Europe meant punishment for the animal's owner. In North America, the crop owner was obliged to put up a fence. This meant that ruminant animals spread as a marauding force across the continent, destroying crops and consequently indigenous people's livelihoods. In the north it was similar except that the animals were kept inside for much of the year and were less destructive: "fences and hedges seem to have been rather rare in the emergent countryside of seventeenth-century Canada." Without fences, a garden must be very different. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:19, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

The garden of Tasha Tudor should be some good reading too.[2]..[3] Vermont, I think is her climate. [4] Hafspajen (talk) 00:52, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that; I hadn't heard of her. I probably won't start a major garden-reading binge, since there is so much reading required for other reasons (such as wikipedia editing). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:42, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Standard vs. example in taxonomy

Sminthopsis84,

You undid my edit of type, and your reason has left me curious. Could you direct me towards some reading on the transition between 'standard' and 'example' or summarize the theory behind the difference? I'm not challenging you, just very curious. From a naive outsiders view it seems, for example, that the example given of Canis lupus in the article is an example of how a standard (outside of any biological technical sense it might have) is used.

Much appreciated, and I apologize if I'm not using this talk page correctly, I have never used one before.

65.95.251.28 (talk) 22:23, 27 March 2014 (UTC) has no name yet.

Hi, I'll reply further on your (new) talk page. Most of us use a convention that new material is added at the bottom of a page, which is what happens when you click the "add new section" tab, and I'll move this there now, though it doesn't really matter where it goes. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:51, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Generations page (social science)

The info you included at the top of the page is about a hard science topic, the article in question is about social science. Why do you feel inclined to include your citation at the top? What is the point? Thanks. 172.250.31.151 (talk) 00:46, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

It's a hatnote, a navigational aid to help readers. As I found and corrected with this edit, the two topics tend to get mixed up. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 01:37, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Taraxacum kok-saghyz

Astartika (talk) 20:48, 7 April 2014 (UTC) Message from Astartika - I don't know how to get in touch with you and I'm not quite advanced in Wikipedia to know how people communicate here. However, the information that I deleted from the Taraxacum Kok-Saghyz page was deleted because the endemic area of that plant is only South-Eastern Kazakhstan, while Uzbekistan is located on the South-west of Kazakhstan. This is confirmed in this article. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10722-012-9848-0. The information about Uzbekistan put before Kazakhstan in the list, which should be in alphabetical order was added by unknown user from Canada. We suspect who that could be and we suspect that they pursue illegal commercial interest in this. By saying we I mean InExCB-KZ that was an advisor from Kazakhstan in the EU-PEARLS project (please www.ea-pearls.eu), the only project that has legal rights to use Taraxacum Kok-saghyz collected from Kazakhstan in 2009 that is confrimed by Government decree. This plant is in the red book of Kazakhstan as endangered plant and thus no Uzbekistan can be mentioned here. Please put back my corrections. Thank you.

Thank you, that's a very interesting article, and I've put back your changes. Clearly, more work is needed to get that article properly cited on the wikipedia page, replacing the older information. I'll see what I can do. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:03, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Astartika (talk) 21:16, 7 April 2014 (UTC) There will be more fresh information on this plant soon as there is a new project called DRIVE4EU has just been launched, so more info will come on www.drive4eu.eu. Our company will be growing this plan in its endemic zone in South East Kazakhstan. Thank you for the welcome, I promise to be a good contributor, at least in this topic. :-)

Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help find a resolution. The thread is "Talk:Leavitt Bulldog:What is the difference in the heads of the two breeds?". Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! EarwigBot ^{operator / talk} 19:48, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Also please try to convince Freedombulls to participate, this is much more constructive than an edit war, he blanked his page and deleted his userpage. I think he was missunderstanding this message. This is not ANI or something like that. Hafspajen (talk) 22:29, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear that Freedombulls is so upset, and assuming that this would be like an ANI is very understandable (I have no experience with DRN). Unfortunately, I really don't have time to work on wikipedia just now, and this is clearly a complex issue that will require considerable effort. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:46, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, I would say that this is very good place to solve problems, I have noticed several discussions solved very nicely, really. And it is NOT much work, you just make a statment of what you think (no moore than 200 words) and THEY will do the work. I am saying it because I have seen your work on the article and the article creation. You know about this subject. Hafspajen (talk) 22:49, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, I've been trying to figure out how the process works, and it seems to be a bit broken. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 09:20, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Really? How unpleasant. Weird. I never filled in anything but I have seen others do... Yngvadottir is an admin and also I think remembers some of this stuff, maybe we should ask for an advice. Hafspajen (talk) 12:20, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

I have to get to work today, so I filled in my summary even though that seems to perhaps be verboten … fingers crossed. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:48, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Don't think anyone will bite you for that...

Hafspajen (talk) 13:37, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Sustainocene

Hello, i noticed that you were critical about the addition of artificial photosynthesis at conscience, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Conscience#Sustainocene_and_artificial_photosynthesis.3F.3F Though, the user posts this stuff on many articles and there is currently a ANI dispute with the user and maybe you have an opinion on this topic? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Destructive_editing.2C_page_scope.2C_and_user_edit_warring_on_Sustainocene Thanks. Prokaryotes (talk) 05:13, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Almond

I reverted the edits due to suspected WP:REFSPAM. It's a relatively common practice for spammers to target deadlinks and use alternative sites to host the existing content. If you look at the edits, all contributions involve an added URL "nutrientbook dot com". There is also another editor (User:MarilynMBellJ) who is doing exactly the same thing, which means it's likely that this is a spam effort. -SFK2 (talk) 11:18, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. That particular example seems legit, in the sense that the site hosts articles on very different subjects as well. A person could be selective in which dead links they resurrect, but is that really any different from choosing, say, to add lots of material about Pokemon characters to wikipedia? The use of a citation for that point on the page has been accepted for a long time. Rather than fighting resurrection of the link, I think it would be better to consider whether the text with citation should remain, and to aim for a consensus on the talk page. I'm disturbed that Cluebot was involved in reverting those edits. I don't think Cluebot should be fighting that kind of battle. It sounds as if Cluebot has been hijacked by someone who is bypassing the consensus system. I'll have to start looking more carefully at all the Cluebot entries on my watch list. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:36, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Update: I posted about the incident on Spam Project page and the link has now been blacklisted [5]. -SFK2 (talk) 10:27, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. The additional evidence there is reassuring. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 10:53, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Copyedits

I checked MOS: Capitalize names of regions if they have attained proper-name status Starting sentences with "there" and ending with prepositions I find to be weak or incorrect; how did the meaning change?66.61.92.158 (talk) 14:59, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Where are you seeing the MOS entry about regions? I'm using MOS:COMPASS "Points of the compass (north, southwest, etc.), and their derived forms (northern etc.) are not generally capitalized: nine miles south of Oxford, a northern road. They are capitalized only when they form part of a proper name, such as Great North Road." The northern hemisphere is not a proper name, just a description, no more valid than the southeastern hemisphere (though easier to deal with when the earth rotates).

Botanical terminology is not something for the uninitiated to meddle with, so please stay away from technical plant descriptions unless you've put in at least a few months of intensive study of the matter and have a stack of reference books to hand. For example, Stearn's Botanical Latin states that the English word "serrate" means "saw-edges with sharp teeth pointing forwards". By changing that to "serrated" you lost specificity, which is a component of meaning, as if you'd changed "dachshund" to "dog".

Now, you might find starting sentences with "there" and ending with prepositions to be "weak or incorrect", but that just isn't so, as Winston Churchill famously fumed. You changed "there is not general agreement as to how many genera it should be divided into" into "no general agreement exists as to how many genera into which it should be divided". The new version is clumsy, the old one quite acceptable (though I'd change "not" to "no").

Your change is unnecessary, and makes more work for those of us who struggle to keep up with our watch lists. :(

It is not an improvement to change "there is a daffodil" into "a daffodil exists"; the former is more natural, the latter stilted. A more natural style is easier to read, though, of course, there are limits, and written English is different from spoken English.

Can you parse "as to how many genera into which it should be divided"? "How many genera" is a number, it doesn't naturally divide into the parts "how many" and "genera" so that you can refer to just the "genera" part. I'd accept "there is no general agreement about the number of genera into which it should be divided" because it doesn't cause such a brain-hiccup when just the "genera" part is the referent of the later part of the sentence. "as to how many … into which" is just too complex a construction of the little words that make up many idioms, so too much effort is required for the reader to understand it.

Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:52, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Antillean Piculet

I've been reading articles about woodpeckers, and am now reading the article about the Antillean Piculet. I've come across something that I find puzzling. It is in the info box at the right. There is a drawing of the head, wing tip and tail feathers of the Antillean Piculet, and the caption says, "latter two from above". Does that just mean that the latter two of the three drawings are from the Antillean Piculet? Then what about the first drawing, of the head? Or do you think perhaps there used to be a photo of this bird and that it somehow got deleted? CorinneSD (talk) 22:36, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I think it means that the drawings are of that part of the bird as seen from above, and you could clarify the caption accordingly. The first image, of the head, is a contrast because it is seen from the side. Some clarification like that is needed particularly for the tail because the downy feathers at the base look more like the feathers that many birds have underneath near their tails, but the small feathers above the tail apparently aren't as neat in this species as in some other birds. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:50, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh...thank you. I had not even thought of that, "as seen from above". I'll fix that. I'm surprised there isn't a photo since the bird is still living. In fact, I read in the article on Woodpeckers, in the first paragraph in the section Woodpecker#Distribution, habitat and movements, it is the only member of its group (genus?), so it is special among woodpeckers. CorinneSD (talk) 23:02, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't know if you'd want to get into this, but on one occasion I found a photo in Flickr and asked the uploader if they would be willing to donate it to commons.wikipedia.org. It might not work as well with a photo of a rare bird as it did with the not-so-rare fruit that I was asking about … Some photographers are happy to donate a low-resolution image which is then a little bit of advertising for them. Yes, woodpeckers are wonderful; Picoides pubescens have been making quite a racket recently where I am. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:16, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I saw a number of photos on Wikimedia Commons that were originally on Flickr. I don't think I can manage that kind of asking for permission and then transferring to Commons. May I ask you something? What is an easy way to get to all the photos in Commons? I've gotten to them in only two ways, both indirectly: through a link in the article about Wikimedia Commons to Featured and Quality photos, and through a photo that appears in an article. Isn't there a more direct way to get to Commons photos?

I had to look to see what Picoides pubescens was, and it got me to the article on Downy woodpecker, which I recognized right away because they are around here, too. I read in Downy woodpecker#Taxonomy that the Downy and Hairy woodpeckers, while looking very similar, are unrelated and from different genera, and are "a spectacular example of convergent evolution". At the bottom of the article on downy woodpeckers are some nice photos and a video with sound of a d. w. eating suet. CorinneSD (talk) 23:30, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Cool (though I can't play it because my java settings lock it out, which is slightly annoying but I don't think I'll risk changing the settings). What they are doing around here could perhaps be described as yodelling. The Hairy Woodpecker gave me quite a shock when I first saw one, just like a downy on steroids. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:45, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

The Lazarus taxon. [6], something for you two? Hafspajen (talk) 23:37, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Gee willikers, there are Lazarus cultivars, such as the Montreal Melon! Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:45, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Gosh, Montreal Melon?Hafspajen (talk) 07:24, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

I like this Monito del Monte (from Lazarus taxon article). CorinneSD (talk) 02:18, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

How cute... Hafspajen (talk) 09:38, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Very cute! (As one would expect for one of my relatives.)

I've been to Garden of the Gods, and it is quite a place, rather full of people, but really worth experiencing.

The Montreal Melon story is neat and different; it seems that W. Atlee Burpee bought a melon in St Anne's market and grew the seeds from it and selected a true-breeding lineage which he then sold seeds from. People could do more of that today, and the earlier step of selling good fruit that aren't necessarily all identical to one another. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:16, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Ah, that explains it (The Melon). Hafspajen (talk) 12:30, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, I hope that isn't a Monty Python reference. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:34, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

What's "Garden of the Gods"? CorinneSD (talk) 15:10, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

The photo above that Hafspajen added, here. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:34, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh, thank you. It doesn't look like a garden. CorinneSD (talk) 16:44, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

OH; it's ...symbolic talk ...Symbol, an object that represents, stands for, or suggests an idea, belief, action, or material entity. This little thing is eating that stic. Hafspajen (talk) 16:46, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

I know that whoever named that place in Colorado with the rocks must have thought it looked liked a large garden and possibly fit for gods. I'm just saying that to me, it doesn't look much like a garden. I don't think it's symbolic. I think it was a matter of scale, that it looked like an outsized garden. Regarding the little mammal, I looked closely at it and it doesn't look like it is eating anything. CorinneSD (talk) 17:01, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

But maybe it was about to eat that little green bamboo shoot. CorinneSD (talk) 17:03, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Might have thought about this picture above, when naming it. Somehow. Hafspajen (talk) 17:09, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

It looks sleepy. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:27, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Gazing... Hafspajen (talk) 19:56, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Not a bulldog

	A no Motive Barnstar
	No message... stop... a dog for you ...stop...hope you will like it...stop... Hafspajen (talk) 19:49, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! A lovely little animal! Which brings up that eternal question, how do human children learn what is a dog? It seems a nearly impossible task. The average human child must be quite brilliant. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 10:47, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

WELL, YOU GOT A DOG, AND START TALKIG TO IT. You say, hello, how are you. The dog sniffs, baks and say woff. Than you try to raise him on the back legs, the dog makes it clear that he prefers to stand on all four legs... You put a ball in the dogs paw, and tell him to carry it.. The dog will take in the mouth and chew it... sooner or later you will se the difference between your demands and the demands of this earnest dog. Simple experiments like this will show the difference for you...

Hafspajen (talk) 13:19, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Barley

I noticed in the article Barley that an editor changed the spelling of "Celiac disease" to "Coeliac disease" with an edit summary saying changed to "international spelling" of the disease. Well, U.S. American spelling is "Celiac disease", so "Coeliac disease" looks strange. Can both be used there? CorinneSD (talk) 14:41, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Corinne, a quite good reason for using the coeliac spelling would be that the World Health Organization uses it in their International Classification of Diseases, so it seems that people are standardizing wikipedia to that convention. Since it is linked from barley, one usually wouldn't put both spellings on the barley page, and the standardized spelling would be preferred unless Barley is definitely flagged as using US spelling as per WP:ENGVAR (which it isn't). Coeliac shouldn't be capitalized as it now is, though. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:18, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

O.K. Thanks. CorinneSD (talk) 20:35, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Tea

If you have time, could you look at the latest edits to Tea? The way it is left, now, sounds a bit odd. CorinneSD (talk) 15:02, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

That is about sugar not tea. It is not the negative effects of the tea, but the sugar. Hafspajen (talk) 15:30, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

The two recent additions this and this would, I think, also fail WP:MEDRS. It's hard to fight that sort of thing, though. Mostly, people keep adding stuff until someone chops it all out. The studies cited are primary literature in medicine, but in that domain it is better to use meta-studies, like this one. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:31, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Tea roses

Don't you think that this version of the article was better? Hafspajen (talk) 19:17, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

? Rose-hip tea can be very nice. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:56, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Weird that no mention of garden rose in article. Hafspajen (talk) 23:02, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Clickable at the end of the first paragraph and under Ornamental plants? Rainbow rose is no longer there. I don't think there is anywhere that discusses the cultivars used for greenhouse roses. Looking for miniature roses under Garden roses seems unlikely for a reader, though it does come up near the top of a search. I think we need a redirect for mini rose, which is a commonly used expression. Generally, there seems to be a huge amount of material that could be added. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:24, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, Sminthopsis!Hafspajen (talk) 23:26, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

HM: [7]Hafspajen (talk) 23:41, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Nearly half! Gosh! And I went to a Gesneriad show today. Probably am lucky to be alive. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:47, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

You are warned. Next time use bodyguards. Hafspajen (talk) 23:56, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Prickly roses, perhaps. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:14, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, baby guinea pigs squeezing through a bottomless cup, a portal from another dimension? Cute, whatever their situation! Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:52, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

ThisisallIgot
'Perle d'Or' is a yellow Cecile B
Brunner pouter (aka Cecil, nearly the right colour but whiter than Cécile).
Here Cecil does his best to demonstrate the high-centred form of a Hybrid Tea rose.
This maybe? ->It was also called buttonhole rose

Unless no spiders are involved... Hafspajen (talk) 15:16, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Good to continue this under the "Tea" heading, since there isn't a "Multiflora" heading available. 'Perle d'Or', lovely! I don't know what those "Improved Cecil Brunner" are, perhaps a seedling, very hot pink compared to Cecil/Cécile him/herself. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:30, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, indeed. Cecile Brunner is a very pale pink, with small small flowers. But we have no pictures...something like this Hafspajen (talk) 15:49, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and slightly scented, and likely to be picked at the bud stage by people passing by. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:59, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

What a pity the boutonniere photo doesn't state what the cultivar is. It certainly looks like CB. Might be a modern miniature, though. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:40, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes it cpould be. Before the miniatures times they were the nr 1 buttonhole roses. Hafspajen (talk) 16:48, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

I was trying to track down a good citation for "sweetheart rose" meaning something other than CB or 'Orange Sweetheart'. For a while around here, miniature rose breeders were selling "sweetheart size" plants that were, it seemed, seedlings that turned out to be bigger than they wanted for the miniatures. Perhaps that usage has either died out or is on the way out. It is used for another cultivar. Perhaps that isn't ready to be a disambiguation page. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:01, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Cécile Brunner (1880 — Ducher, France) - List of rose cultivars named after people Hafspajen (talk) 17:07, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Willow

I just started reading the article Willow. I found something that wasn't quite right grammatically and fixed it, but I wonder if you would mind checking the edit to make sure it is right. CorinneSD (talk) 00:35, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

It's not quite clear what resembles and what remains for half the summer. CorinneSD (talk) 00:37, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

I've tried to improve that, and added an illustration (but there's another sentence that beats me and would require some research to fix). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:41, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your work, but I still think this sentence contains some ambiguity:

"The leaf petioles are short, the stipules often very conspicuous, resembling tiny, round leaves, and sometimes remaining for half the summer."

The way it is worded now, it is not 100% clear what sometimes remains for half the summer. I suppose it is just the stipules, but it's not completely clear. I propose a change to the construction of the sentence to something like this:

"The leaf petioles are short, and the stipules are often very conspicuous, resembling tiny, round leaves and sometimes remaining for half the summer."

I think adding and to create two complete clauses and removing the comma after leaves clears up the ambiguity. If I am not correct in thinking it is the stipules that sometimes remain for half the summer, the sentence can be revised so that it expresses the reality correctly. CorinneSD (talk) 15:52, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that would be much better. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:26, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Regarding that other sentence about which you had questions, I found a website with quite a lot of detailed information about the willow. It is www.mobot.org. It is the Missouri Botanical Garden's website. I clicked on "Plant Science" and then searched for willow, Salicaceae, and found a lot of information. It is so technical that I barely understand it, but you probably would. You might find the answer to your question there. CorinneSD (talk) 16:32, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

I'll have a look at that some time. APG is a great work, but doesn't get into as much detail about each genus, and there are now quite a few genera in Salicaceae, not just Populus and Salix as we botanists of more than a couple of years' experience remember it (wasn't Salicaceae in Violales just a while ago, but now it's in Malpighiales?? I'm not even sure.) That material about dissecting the buds is unusual. It's also very confusing as written and might require considerably more verbiage to make sense. A source that apparently gets into some detail about this (it talks about the prophyll structure of the bud) is George Argus's The Genus Salix (Salicaceae) in the Southeastern United States. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:26, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I don't know much about botany, but I am very interested in plants and trees, so I would read anything until it gets too technical and I begin not to understand it. I went to that website and read the one page that was visible. It said to read more I could download it for $29.99 or click on "Read more". Then I saw a window that said, "[Do you] think you have access to this library? Click..." Then I saw it was JSTOR, and I had just today seen at the top of WP pages that there are free accounts available to several on-line libraries including Oxford, Questia, and JSTOR. It said those accounts are for editors who regularly add content or verify information in articles. Are those accounts rare and reserved, or could someone like me who likes to read new things and maybe occasionally check for new information get one? CorinneSD (talk) 19:04, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

P.S. Is there any way I could get free on-line access to Oxford English Dictionary on-line? I am very interested in words, their definitions and etymology, and I would love to be able to look at OED, but right now can't afford a subscription. CorinneSD (talk) 19:06, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

I think you should definitely apply for one of those wikipedia accounts, you are definitely an experienced editor who checks content and verifies information! Some of us who also do that are affiliated with university libraries, so we don't need the free accounts.

About the OED, I don't know of any free subscriptions to that. I don't have it myself, though one of the university departments here has bought a subscription for their members (which I guess must mean that it's expensive).

That problem of thinking that you don't have access to something that you actually do have access to has intrigued me lately since a friend who works with graduate students in engineering told me that she's been appalled by how often they pay money for an article that they can get for free from the university library. There, the problem is apparently that the library provides two search methods, "article search" and the old-fashioned "journal locator". Youngish people who expect search engines to do everything for them rely on the article search. It doesn't show everything, not even close! So even when they have a complete citation with journal name, volume, and page numbers, these hapless students are paying on the order of $40 per article because they think the library doesn't have it. (There must be some such people who don't go on to graduate school because they can't afford the article fees!) Those engineering students still haven't been introduced to what else is in the library on paper ...

Here in Canada, university libraries are open to the public, so one can go and look at material on paper for free. That is true also of some US land-grant universities, and perhaps some that were originally privately funded. Is it possible that there could be such an institution near you? A charming librarian may be waiting to welcome you, I find that they can be delighted to meet someone who takes an interest in the material that they care for. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:32, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for the delayed response -- I've been busy with other things. Thank you so much for all your suggestions and your encouragement to apply for a free account to the on-line libraries. I applied to two. I saw that many other applicants to the science libraries had a background in science, medicine, or math. Oh, well. I'll just wait and see. CorinneSD (talk) 22:05, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

I hope you get one! By the way, you said that when you are reading scientific articles you stop at the point where you don't understand: if you have access to the whole thing a good rule of thumb is to skip the parts that are usually the least readable: the abstract, the materials and methods section, and the results section. Abstracts are constrained, often to just 250 words, so big words and elision are effectively encouraged. The most comprehensible parts are often the introduction and the conclusions/discussion. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 10:20, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

O.K. Thanks. I'll keep that in mind. In the WP articles I've read on science (for example, I've edited quite a few articles on the elements -- I just finished Nickel) -- minerals, mining, and plants, I can usually follow most of the article. It's the chemistry parts that I skip. CorinneSD (talk) 14:43, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Nice job. (Thank you particularly for changing "This is believed due to" to "This is believed to be due to".) What a wonderful tidbit: "Nickel was voted Allergen of the Year in 2008 by the American Contact Dermatitis Society". Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:04, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! I also liked reading that at one point a few years ago the U.S. nickel was worth more for its nickel and copper than its face value of 5 cents, so people started melting them down. (Then the price of nickel dropped and it went below 5 cents.) If you have nothing to do ;) , and you feel like doing a little more for this article, you can look at a series of questions I posted at User talk:Vsmith#Nickel yesterday regarding some unclear sentences. (I've been asking VSmith my questions when I edit the articles about the elements, minerals, and mining.) You could also review the many recent edits to Metalloid. (See the note I posted at User talk:Rothorpe#Metalloid.) I had gone through the article on Metalloid in detail a few weeks ago, and now an editor has made so many changes that I can't figure out if they're an improvement or not, and I'd appreciate your opinion (not that I feel proprietary about my edits; it's just that I thought I had left the article in good shape). CorinneSD (talk) 16:52, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

P.S. Re Metalloid, because of one incident of vandalism, those edits I was speaking of are about two to three edits back. They're by Parkly Taxel (or something like that). CorinneSD (talk) 17:01, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

P.S. I forget how to bring the discussion back to the left margin. CorinneSD (talk) 16:53, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

I think I'll skip the metallurgy discussion, thanks all the same. Presumably, these people had the page on their watch lists, so your touching it ignited their editing enthusiasm. I wonder what you are using to edit, I've turned off various fancy tools so often that I'm not sure what's available any more. In the basic editor that works with the raw code, one just moves back to the left margin by not typing any colons at the start of a paragraph. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:49, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

That's O.K. I have only checked "WikEd" in the Editing section after clicking on the Gadgets tab in Preferences. I really like it because it gives more editing tools (although I don't know what all of them are) but especially because, in Edit Mode, the text stands out because links and references are highlighted in lavender-gray, tags and notes to editors in salmon (pinkish-orange), and captions in lime green. It makes it very easy to focus on just the text. I know I could just not type colons, but I knew there was a way to draw a squarish line to bring the discussion back to the left margin. I found it just now on the Talk page of the Hinduism article. It is {{outdent}}or {{od}}. In the WP guide to editing, it also gives an option to add a number after a pipe, I guess the number of indents, but who counts that? {{outdent|4}} I'm glad I found that. I could never remember it. CorinneSD (talk) 23:42, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Quinoa

Do you feel like reviewing the latest edits to Quinoa by an IP editor? I'm not sure they're an improvement. For one, changing "though" to "and" is wrong, but I don't know about the botanical information. CorinneSD (talk) 14:22, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. If only copyeditors were people who first learned to write for meaning and then to copyedit. The good ones are worth more than their weight in gold. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:32, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

"there is no such thing as a pomegranate aril"

= your laconic "summary" when you changed the text of the pic in the Pomegranate article the first time. Since I've just come across a PhD thesis "Modified Atmosphere Packaging of pomegranate arils", I wonder what the guy was writing about. So, would you please answer Kembangraps' unanswered question "Aril = sarcotesta ?" ? It's been there since Jan. 31, 2013, and please also have a look at the same pic on the Aril page and the text of the article. Thank you. --Marschner (talk) 16:35, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I hadn't seen that page or the question, but have responded now. It's an interesting phenomenon, 2,260 in scholar.google.com for pomegranate together with aril. The papers seem to all be about processing the fruit, so it seems that people working in that area have latched onto that term. Botanists long ago agreed that it isn't an aril. A potential market niche: selling pomegranate products to botanists who previously weren't interesting in buying a package filled with non-existent product. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:04, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Since in a number of recent books, e.g. S. Hiwale, The Pomegranate ,2009 or Heber and Schulman, Pomegranates: Ancient Roots to Modern Medicine, 2006, etc.etc.. the pomegranates still have their non-existent arils - also, by the way, according to the German WP article (which was questioned by a lone doubter in 2009, whose remark has gone unnoticed ), you really ought to supplement the article with an explanatory paragraph. I don’t think your “there isn’t such a thing as an pg. aril”, hidden away somewhere in the history of the revisions, is sufficient, and why should anybody suddenly feel the urge to read an article on Sarcotesta? Food science people believe in pg. arils, and even though this may be fallacious superstition, they have plenty of followers. --Marschner (talk) 18:17, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I've added the statement there as well, and checked the pomegranate pages in a few languages (de, fr, da, sv, la, simple, ca, pt, eo). The Spanish and Aragonés, were already correct. I'll ask some friends to check some more languages. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:59, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

Swamp

What do you think of the latest edit to Swamp, in which an editor changed "scientific" to "theoretical-physics"? CorinneSD (talk) 14:15, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with it. It is a theoretical-physics concept. One relative of mine is professor in theoretical-physics, and this is exactly what it is, a theoretical-physics concept. Hafspajen (talk) 14:18, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's part of String theory. Rather like most of my clothes... PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 14:25, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh, you're right. I see now. I had only looked at the edit in Revision History and thought it had nothing to do with swamp (as in marsh, etc.). Now that I look at it in the article, I see that it is a re-direct to another article in which "swamp" is used in an entirely different sense. This should teach me not to look at an edit only in the revision history. Sorry to bother you. Physicists use some pretty strange words.... CorinneSD (talk) 14:41, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

PCW's clothes and "could be true if gravity were not an issue", mind-boggling. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:53, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Those are beautiful photos! Where is that "could be true" line from? CorinneSD (talk) 22:03, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, aren't they. Swampland (physics), middle of the first sentence. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:05, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh. Thank you. I hadn't bothered to read anything of that article. I just read the first paragraph. Did you see the next sentence? It ends, "the string theory landscape of vacua is vast". That's quite a phrase. I clicked on "vacua" -- it goes to false vacuum -- and tried to read the first paragraph. It looks like English, but I couldn't understand a thing. CorinneSD (talk) 22:56, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I would't bother about trying to understand what a theoretical physicist thinks. It can be so complicated that they don't understand each other either somtimes. But they are indeed very refreshingly eccentric and creative. List of theoretical physicists. Hafspajen (talk) 23:59, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

;-) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:32, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Ambery

I saw an edit to the article on Sandalwood. While looking at it I skimmed the section on Sandalwood#Fragrance. In the first paragraph of that section I noticed a term, "floral-ambery". Since I didn't know what that was, I searched for a WP article about it. There is no article specifically about "ambery", but I found it in an article on Fragrance wheel. You might like to read the comment I just posted on the Talk page of that article. Perhaps you can help clarify the term. CorinneSD (talk) 16:34, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Corinne, you are a blessing for the Wikipedia. Hafspajen (talk) 16:36, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! I just found some additional information, but I don't know what to do with it. (See the talk page of Fragrance wheel).

Yes, you are. I've just added some redirects for Amber scent and Ambery, so linking to them might the way to go. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:54, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! I added a note and a question at the talk page of Fragrance wheel (by the way, how to I make a link right to the talk page of the article?). Regarding this note from you, I guess I don't know what you mean when you say you added some redirects for.... What are redirects, and where are they? CorinneSD (talk) 17:17, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

What a beautiful glass bottle! (and I see the hearts). You're so nice. It kind of reminds me of the photo of blue amber I just saw in the article on Amber. I had never even heard of blue amber! CorinneSD (talk) 17:27, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Lovely. Hafspajen (talk) 17:28, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Wow, I'd never heard of blue amber either, or fluorescent amber. What a pity several species of Hymenaea are extinct, or I and no doubt many other people would be wanting to grow their seeds.

About the redirects, I created two pages, one of which is Ambery, so if you click on that link here you'll end up at the section of the Amber page. Now if you go up to the top of the Amber page, you'll see "(Redirected from Ambery)" and you can click on Ambery in that message. This time it will take you to the redirect page that has the coding in it, but the actual coding doesn't show until you go into edit mode. You should now see the actual #redirect followed by where it goes, the "target". So if you enter [[Ambery]] on a page such as sandalwood it will transfer when someone clicks there. I hope this makes sense; as has been mentioned here before, I prefer to directly edit page code, so perhaps you are using an editing method that doesn't normally show the page code. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:42, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

(Hafspajen: I'm wondering which of CorinneSD's companions shown is you and which is me. That looks a bit like User:Gareth Griffith-Jones on Corinne's left.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:45, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

You made me blush, I am confused.

Hafspajen (talk) 18:47, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Sminthopsis, thank you for the explanation about the redirect, but I still don't understand why it was necessary to create that "page" called "Ambery". I don't understand why a link directly to that section of the Amber article is not sufficient for the mention of both "amber" and "ambery" in the Sandalwood and Fragrance wheel articles. CorinneSD (talk) 17:06, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

About the redirects called Ambery and Amber scent: Direct links could always be used in the articles. The function would be to help people searching for a phrase they don't understand, and also for people while they write material, to help them easily find something suitable to link to. Previously when one typed "amber scent" in the search box, three suggested pages would appear, Pino Silvestre, Al-Ali (tribe), and Ronan Keating, none of which would be of much help to someone who just wants to know what an amber scent is. I had thought those terms were subjective jargon that didn't have a real-world meaning. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:16, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

String theory image

On another topic, did you see today's featured article? It's about things to do with string theory. I wanted to ask you something about that article. There is an illustration a little ways down from the beginning. It's in Mirror symmetry (string theory)#Applications. The caption says, "Circles of Apollonius". In both the caption and the description that appears under the picture when you click on the picture, it says that there are colored circles around the black circles. On my screen, I don't see any colors. I see the black circles and then circles of just black lines. Is it just my computer? Do you see the colors? CorinneSD (talk) 17:06, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Yellow, pink blue and green circles, yes. Hafspajen (talk) 17:10, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

That's weird. When I clicked on the link to the article in the caption, in that article I could see the colors in all the illustrations. Then I went back to the featured article. I thought perhaps it was because I had set the zoom to 125% (to make articles easier to read), so I re-set the zoom to 100%. Then I could see all the colors in that illustration. When I increased the zoom percentage, I could still see all the colors. CorinneSD (talk) 17:43, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

HMmm. Weird. Hafspajen (talk) 17:46, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

About the image, do these look different on your computer?

Three black circles in the plane and eight additional overlapping circles tangent to these three. — Circles of Apollonius: Eight colored circles are tangent to the three black circles.

Figure 2: Four complementary pairs of solutions to Apollonius' problem; the given circles are black.

SVG files can be weird. A first step in debugging would be to restart you computer to see if the problem persists. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I think both look exactly the same... Hafspajen (talk) 20:39, 9 May 2014 (UTC)^sorry.

They look exactly the same to me, but there's material on the web about programmers having various problems with various browsers and SVG files. Corinne, what browser are you using? Firefox, Chrome? The coding for the first image has an alt= parameter that the second one lacks, so this is just an experiment to see if that might correlate with losing the colour. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:48, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Both look the same. Black and white. Zoom set at 125%. When I went down to 110% and then 100%, they stayed black and white. When I clicked on the first picture to enlarge it, it turned to color. When I went back to this talk page, they stayed in color, even when I increased the zoom to 125%.

I have Google Chrome. CorinneSD (talk) 20:51, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Four years ago, people were saying things like "I always end up using another browser to view such files from Wikipedia." about svg with Chrome. Would updating Chrome and downloading Firefox be reasonable experiments? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:58, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

This is the first time I've had any trouble seeing color in any WP picture or illustration. I switched to Google Chrome about a year ago after having some trouble with Internet Explorer, and I haven't had any problems with it. I'll stick with it for now. I looked at those image tests, and everything was fine. CorinneSD (talk) 21:07, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Corinne, you might try making an entry at Village_pump_(technical), that when you view the image embedded in the page html it shows in black and white, but when you go to the original image (clicking to enlarge it) it shows in colour. Somebody might know of a change to mediawiki software that could have this effect. They'll probably want to know what version of Chrome you are using. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea, and I will, but first I wanted to ask you if you think I should include a link to our discussion here about the illustration in today's featured article. If you do, I would like to ask whether you could make a new section for the discussion. That way, a tech would not have to wade through our discussion of ambery, amber, blue bottle, and blue amber to find it. I'll await your response before going to the tech page. CorinneSD (talk) 00:25, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Fine with me, at least. Hafspajen (talk) 19:42, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Image viewing

Here, where the voting is happening for Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates‎; there are some tests, they are to test your computer, at right side, just before the voting starts. Check them out, and tell me what you saw. look after: Is my monitor adjusted correctly? Hafspajen (talk) 20:55, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

By the way, in that picture of C in Wikiland, above, do you see a face in the tree stump behind the three figures? CorinneSD (talk) 21:09, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Ha, smart of you. You are also welcome to vote, it is for people with good taste and so, but you both qualify galantly... We need more votes. Hafspajen (talk) 21:16, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Vote on what? Where? CorinneSD (talk) 00:34, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Neat, thanks. My monitor was indeed malajusted for contrast. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:15, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I think it's great that you're organizing your talk page since so many topics have been mentioned, but now I don't see my question to Hafspajen about voting. Was that just a joke? CorinneSD (talk) 00:50, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, I goofed up the refactoring. I think it is all back now, though in different places. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:40, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

No, no serious. CorinneSD, step over to the enchanted world of voting for Featured picture , and take Sminthopsis with you. Here, Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates‎; on your way down the page take a quick check if your settings are right. Hafspajen (talk) 18:47, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, I liked more than one of the photos, but I just wrote "Support" and gave my opinion on one of them, the one with the potatoes. Then someone added a comment below mine saying "Oppose" and giving three reasons why: he thinks there should be much more detail and that the color is not good enough, and he doesn't like the fact that a bit of the metal grate on which the potatoes rest is showing. I hadn't even noticed that bit of metal! I guess other judges are much more discerning than I am. CorinneSD (talk) 21:11, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I think it was very courageous of you, and your oppinion was most wanted. We need more people because many nice pictures don't get promoted, just because there are not enough votes. It takes 5 support and lately we missed out on a couple because there is no interest in voting. If I would you I would go and put support on the ones I like. It is supposed to please everybody, not only the connoisseurs. Hafspajen (talk) 21:51, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

Hildesheim rose

Looks like this article from the main page will be vandalized, will you keep an eye on it? Thousand-year Rose, DYK, did you know... Some guy from Boston. Hafspajen (talk) 22:22, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Wonderful, as soon as one IP is blocked another pops up. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:07, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

No mention of the five brothers? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:13, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

..::Mmm, nice, never heard that one, five brothers... Hafspajen (talk) 23:15, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Why, it is sourced. [8] Hafspajen (talk) 23:20, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Rosa canina has a very peculiar breeding system, and I suspect that there was an authoritative source that says it is Rosa canina L. subsp. canina, and then listing some other subspecies that it isn't. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:29, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Now is an editor trying to remove the same thing, and the whole thing is sourced... I am reverting too much now. Hafspajen (talk) 23:26, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Here, it is the Germans who wrote this, from the Cathedral, they should know... http://www.domsanierung.de/en/1000-years-age-rosetree Hafspajen (talk) 23:28, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Tell me if this is correct or not? I know that there are many rosa canina types. Hafspajen (talk) 23:31, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

This document seems to seriously discuss the botany, but unfortunately doesn't show all pages online. It shows part of a letter from H. Christ:

Nur in Einem Punkt weicht unsere Hidesheimer Rose vom Typus, also von canina Lutetiana ab: und zwar durch den Ansatz doppelter Zahnung, welche deren Blättchen gar nicht selten zeigen. Dieses Merkmal im Zusammenhang mit den Spuren von Drüsen, welche bei ihr auftreten, nähert sie einer andern, in fast gleicher Häufigkeit bei uns vorkommenden canina-Form; der dumalis Bechstein, welche sich auszeichnet durch unregelmässige Doppelzahnung un zerstreute gestielte Drüsen an den Blattstilen und dem Rande der Kelchzipfel. Beide Formen: dumalis und Lutetiana, zeigen häufige Uebergänge, sodass es Standorte giebt, wo eine scharfe Grenze absolut nicht zu siehen ist, und man nich weiss, ob man die Rosen eher mit dem einen oder dem andern Namen bezeichnen soll. Unsere Pflanze hält nicht die genau Mitte, sondern liegt etwas näher bei Lutetiana; sie ist einer der vielen Rosen, die ich in der Correspondenz mit mienen Freunden als R. canina L. forma Lutetiana (Lem.) versus dumalem (Bechst.) zu bezeichnen mir stets erlaubt habe.

but Rosa canina forma lutetiana is a name that seems not to have been validly published (it isn't listed at ipni.org). There is a Rosa lutetiana Léman listed. There are also many rose names due to Christ. This is a problem; the list of Christ roses looks incomplete, for example, there is Rosa canina L. var. evanida (Christ) P.V.Heath, but there is no Rosa evanida or Rosa…var evanida or Rosa… forma evanida that could have been moved by P.V.Heath to make that name.

I think the best thing to do here is to say that it is R. canina and not one of the historical cultivated roses R. alba or R. gallica, just as the original source says. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 00:16, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

It is most seriously a canina, and the one with no hairy leaves. Hafspajen (talk) 00:38, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

These are ALL Rosa canina

Yes, I completely agree with the statement on the source "A definition of the single plant as a variety or subspecies is without meaning in view of the diversity of wild roses and the numerous hybrid forms as a result of hybridisation." They can mate with just about any rose, using only a small component of its genetic constitution (often 1/5 parts from the male parent, 4/5 parts from the female parent), so tracking their morphology is particularly difficult, the variation nearly infinite. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 00:53, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Wow! Such beautiful roses! Thanks for posting the pictures, Hafspajen. CorinneSD (talk) 00:56, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you are quite right, Sminthopsis84. Not one is like the other. Wish Drmies would see this, so he would understand how very different those roses can be, and all of them are called Rosa canina. To say that it is not necessary to describe this unic rose is simply stupid. Hafspajen (talk) 01:41, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, they're pretty, but I'm afraid I don't know why it's important that I see this, besides beauty. If this is about one of those edits, you know I can't say anything about actual content: you asked me to look at something as an administrator, and basically that goes no farther than judging whether something is intended as a positive or a negative edit. BTW, I'll get some clipping from the rosebush at our old house to see if I can transplant it. I think it may well be one of these. Pretend you're standing in front of a wall covered in such a rosebush. Where would you clip something, and what would you clip? A whole branch? Anything with leaves on it? Or with a flower? Drmies (talk) 01:46, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Cut the old branches from the bottom. And see that all of them are called "canina", and all of them are different. Hafspajen (talk) 01:51, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I see that but I don't understand why you're telling me. Why do I cut an old branch? Drmies (talk) 01:55, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

1) because all roses that are the same sort as the Thousand-year Rose, are different, see above, they look different. That is why it is not enought to say (as "someone" said, just say it is a rosa canina, it is enought, remove the rest ). Well, it is not enough.

2) You asked what to cut, Drmies, Pretend you're standing in front of a wall covered in such a rosebush. Where would you clip something, and what would you clip? Hafspajen (talk) 02:01, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

According to my RHS book on propagating plants, the general advice for taking cuttings from roses here in the UK is to take hardwood cuttings in late summer or early autumn, or softwood internodal cuttings in early or midsummer - though the latter technique requires more fiddling around with propagators and bottom heat. Personally I've had mixed results from hardwood cuttings, have never tried softwood cuttings, but have become quite good at T-budding - though that's a bit specialised. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 02:30, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

That sounds very complicated, but since this is almost early summer: what are propagators and bottom heat? Drmies (talk) 02:34, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh, my, now I got it, he was asking for cuttings... . And I was telling him how to prune. This Hildesheim rose goes on my nerves. Hafspajen (talk) 02:36, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

A propagator is basically a mini greenhouse, often the size of a seed tray. It keeps the atmosphere around cuttings moist (and warm). A plastic bag can do much the same thing, though it's less rigid and more difficult to prevent it touching the cuttings. Bottom heat is provided from underneath i.e. warming the compost, rather than the air. The cuttings should also be treated with fungicide to prevent rot and hormone rooting powder to encourage roots. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 02:50, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I find some roses much easier to propagate than others. For a wild rose, you might be able to get a piece from the bottom that has a bit of root attached. Some grow quite readily from the pieces of stem with buds from below a flower, potted and sealed in a plastic bag, then given quite good light. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 02:46, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Somebody said something about hormons, it was an Irish guy, a rose grower. Yes we have heat in cars. Hafspajen (talk) 02:53, 10 May 2014 (UTC).

A car can be an excellent propagator in cold weather, park it in the sun. Someone I know did that one year with vegetable seedlings on the back seat for a couple of weeks, travelling to and from work. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 02:57, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. That was an idea. Hafspajen (talk) 03:01, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I've only washed my van 2 or 3 times since I bought it in 2001, and now I've got some nice lichens that have propagated themselves on the roof..... PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 03:06, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

That is because gardeners always carry big amounts of earth on them everywhere. This is where your lichens came from. Hafspajen (talk) 03:08, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I once drove 12 miles to work with a Venus flytrap on my van roof; I'd placed it there the night before (in its pot) to catch some rainwater, then forgot about it the following morning, until I got out of the van at work, looked up and saw that I'd driven to work—up hills and round sharp corners—with a pot plant on the roof.... PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 09:03, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

THat was funny ... Hafspajen (talk) 13:28, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Did it catch many insects on the journey? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:54, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Did I read that Rosa canina is also called a dog rose? Why is it called a dog rose? Is it the same as a wild rose? CorinneSD (talk) 19:07, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Apparently Pliny, he said that the roots are god for mad dog bites... So Linné went I will call this a Rosa canina.. And people tanslated it from latin. Dog = canine. It is the most common wild rose, but here are others too. Hafspajen (talk) 19:22, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I see that Linné was Swedish. I didn't know who Linné was until I went to the article. We always called him Linnaeus. I didn't even know there were other versions of his name.

I looked at the featured photo page and read the criteria and looked at the examples of problems in photos, and I think it's too complicated for me. There are too many minute issues that one must look for and comment upon. CorinneSD (talk) 20:05, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

He was called Linné by his Swedish folks, but he himself signed his papers as any academic of his time as Linnéus or Linnaeus... Oh, you just go I like this I don't like that. We all need common sense people who are not that technical. Hafspajen (talk) 20:19, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I've been assuming that featured photo voting would be as contentious as the featured article and DYK processes, where some people get all worked up and quite mean. Thanks for the photos, the mongoose is unlike any of the species I've seen, quite fox-like and elegant. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:58, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

More mongooses.

Think

What do you think about this edit? My English is not perfect but this doesn't sounds particulary good English for me. Hafspajen (talk) 23:26, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't see the reason for the word "household". I didn't read the article yet, though; may do so tomorrow. The only thing I can think of is that the editor is distinguishing between a family pet and a dog that is shown at dog shows. But I've never heard that word used to describe a dog. CorinneSD (talk) 04:13, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Quite so. Before the same editor put "domesticated" female dog in the caption. Now is "household" dog... Hafspajen (talk) 12:06, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that "pet" instead of "household" would make sense. The page seems to have rather too many uninformative captions on photos, and perhaps rather too many images. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:30, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Ah, most images are OK. (mine, you see...

) The unfortunate domesticated female is added by the author. Can't be helped, most dog articles are targeted by such photos, and I use to leave the in if they are sort of acceptable. But sometimes they came up with indeed with just pure bad pictures, and then we need to fight with them, and it ends up sometimes by the user being blocked. So I try to be generous. Both bad puppy images should probably removed, but then bladeor will suicide himself with edit war...

I thought about trying to remove some captions, but even that doesn't seem to work, for example "A Lhasa Apso head." could be needed, in case someone thought that was the other end of the dog.

It's a difficult breed to work with. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:42, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh, just go ahead and remove the captions or rewrite them, no problem. Here you can see what ardent pet owner can do, socking, [9] [10], [11]... Hafspajen (talk) 13:06, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Chow Chow‎; no captions at all, do you want to try your talent on captions? Hafspajen (talk) 13:20, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I've seen some of that behaviour because I watch Tortoiseshell cat; people can be amazingly persistent. It's funny how the chow chow demonstrating the thick fur around the neck actually seems to have lost much of the fur in that area, and how the one competing in an agility event is stepping over the tiniest of hurdles. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:53, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I expect that the domesticated dog will be back soon... hope this time it will be only a female and not domesticated female or houshold type female... Hafspajen (talk) 15:33, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

I think all but a few types of wild dog in Africa are domesticated, so there's no need to use that word. I'll get to the article later. Sminthopsis, I love your comment about the need to clarify which end of the dog is shown in a photo. CorinneSD (talk) 19:39, 12 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, quite so, it is just silly to say domesticated about a dog that is obviously domesticated. How about this one? Edible flowers Hafspajen (talk) 12:20, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I wouldn't want to see that article enlarged with references beyond the surveys that are currently cited there. It would be possible to expand it hugely, which would, I think, make it potentially a source of dangerous advice. It's close to being plagiarism now, though, and also has a list in each of two places, which seems unnecessary. Rather problematic.Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:52, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it is a duplicate. As far as I can judge, there is nothing dangerous on list, but references should be found. How about this one: Edible & Medicinal Flowers, google gooks. [12] Hafspajen (talk) 13:09, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I find its treatment of honeysuckle, Lonicera, page 44, rather alarming in view of this and this saying "do not use other honeysuckle flowers". Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:40, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

HM. I am not sure at all about exactly the flowers. And this say:Injecting fruit extracts... The only thing I found that the berries are mildly poisonous. Hafspajen (talk) 13:49, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Maybe this Lonicera should be removed? But then it may came back, and then with no warning. Hafspajen (talk) 11:57, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I think it probably is better to leave it. I was wondering if the flowers of Lonicera caerulea are edible, but can't find any mention of that. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:26, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

A real lookalike...

Hafspajen (talk) 21:19, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Conchita Wurst...

...is performing on TV across Europe tonight, hence the rash of friendly edits (sigh...) PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 20:09, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

I hadn't heard of her before. Nice that she made the cut. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:32, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Carpels, Locules

Thank you for undoing my erroneous edit. Wasn't thinking straight! SciberDoc (talk) 22:40, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for thanking me. Having a picture seems worthwhile, I think. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:30, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Mm

Thanks for thanking me for adding the picture. Hafspajen (talk) 12:10, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

It's a magnificent picture. I put it on Magnoliaceae as well because it demonstrates the spiral arrangement so nicely. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:15, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

I am happy that you liked because I really belive that it is a good picture. I have nominated it because I strongly belive that it is one of the best we have. And the petals are so clean and fresh. Hafspajen (talk) 12:18, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Done. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:23, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Hafspajen (talk) 13:15, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

You look very happy! Yes, it finally shows what so few magnolia photos do, that they can be very beautiful. (Yesterday I passed a yellow cultivar in full bloom and thought it was really quite ugly, the flowers looked green. The natural species can be so much more glorious.) I think it could make sense to make a cropped version of just the centre portion for the Magnoliaceae page, but am not sure how doing that would affect your nomination (perhaps something to do later). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:48, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Yellow? Ugh. Are they yellows too? We don't use any yellows owerhere. Magnolia stellata, soulangiana, kobus and some pink cultivars we have most, like Magnolia × loebneri 'Leonard Messel' and 'Merril' . Hafspajen (talk) 14:50, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Sort of like this. I think I'd rather plant something else. Do you grow Lonicera caerulea? I have plants just blooming for the first time and pollinating well. Now to find out if the fruit are worth eating. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:59, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Interesting. Oh, don't grow them, but I make gardens for other people. Maybe this is why I don't edit plant related things much. I am payed for do that, and I am not going to do the same thing here. Only if you pay me for that...

. If i woud make a garden for myself I would try to make it very colorfull in parts and very white somewhere, and lots of berries for the winter. Hafspajen (talk) 15:06, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

I grow various berries for me to eat. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:14, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

But my tastes are rather exhuberant. I want flowerbeds that are always blooming, and I want trees to eat fruits from. And wouldI put tomatoes in the flowebeds and strawberries too. Love lillies, delphiniums, roses, magnolias and blooming cherry trees, and taxus and evergreen bushes and ..hostas. And that plant that is called Brunnera 'Jack Frost' . Hafspajen (talk) 15:20, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

And birds and beetles, and yellow flowers in the shade, and blue flowers, and scented roses … Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:30, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

and white flowers under the bedroom windows so one can see that at night. And some Nicotiana alata probably and wathisname lilac flower that smells at night. .. To feel the smell at night... And a little house for house-bats. Hafspajen (talk) 18:48, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Magnolia 'Wada's Memory' is the one I usually go for - it has a nice loose naturalness about it... PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 18:59, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Lovely, now that's something I haven't met yet. Why don't we have that one? This one is normal.[13] Hafspajen (talk) 19:16, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

That 'Wada's Memory' is lovely. Most around here most are those stiffer "normal" ×soulangeana. I like the Magnolia stellata very much for a similar loose elegance; a couple of pink ones grow on my street. My little house for house-bats sadly doesn't have any bats; apparently they need an expanse of water nearby when choosing house sites (I'd have to tear up the road to achieve that for them). Another nice thing to plan for is Carpinus caroliniana where one can look down on it in the autumn, because the colour is all in the upper surface of the leaves. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:43, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

From the window? And how much water does a bat need? I think that a little fountain will make it. Hafspajen (talk) 19:20, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, from a window is nice. I hadn't thought of a fountain, having seen them swoop down to drink from the middle of large ponds. Many problems apparently beset most bat boxes. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:29, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

OK, I will construct an old church tower then... Hafspajen (talk) 19:55, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

It should be fun making holes in the brickwork to "oldify" it. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:03, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Your revert at Constitution of Bangladesh thanks

I think that was just spam, all his edits are from the same source. Dougweller (talk) 18:32, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing that. For some reason, I've been finding spamming hard to fight lately, and it is good to know that there are allies around. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:44, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Yukon

I wonder if you could look at the latest edit to Yukon. I noticed that you had edited the article fairly recently, so I thought you would be able to judge this edit. It seems an odd place to put that information. CorinneSD (talk) 22:25, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

It has been reverted by someone whose edits I generally have trouble with. I'm actually inclined to think it was not a bad edit because the "History" section as it now stands is rather a tangle of geological history and the history of human habitation. I wonder if it would be a good thing to try to specify in the lead section at History of Yukon that what is meant is human history. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a page that covers the geological history, which has separate pages for areas such as Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province, which don't respect modern political boundaries. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:56, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I asked Wilson44691, who is a geologist, what he thought. You might like to read his reply at User talk:Wilson44691#Yukon. Now, from reading both your comment and his, I realize the "History" section is mainly about human history. Wilson recommends removing two sentences about geology. I have two questions: (a) should the sentence removed by the editor you mentioned above be put back in, and, if so, where, exactly, and (b) should those sentences on geology be saved somewhere for an as-yet-unwritten article on the geology of the Yukon? Do you want to make any necessary additions and deletions? CorinneSD (talk) 23:24, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

So I've made some small edits at Yukon and at History of Yukon. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 01:46, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

All very good. CorinneSD (talk) 14:02, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Bangladesh pages

Lakhai Upazila, Habiganj District

Thanks. Please be informed that one Moin of Katihara and his associates including his elder brother Mukit continuously have been doing vandalism against Mukhlesur Rahman Chowdhury in the page of Lakhai, Habiganj and elsewhere. They envy him as they are from same area of Bangladesh and they are most hatred as killers, rapist, corrupt etc. Mukhlesur Rahman Chowdhury's unparalleled honesty and integrity has been proved through enquiry, re-enquiry, investigation and reinvestigation by government agencies. Mukit and Moin have criminal cases in Bangladesh and USA. They were involved in number of criminal cases including Kibria murder case of Habiganj and now they want to allege against an angel like statesman on it. They attempted on his life in Bangladesh and USA several times. Their user ID are Katihara, 72.68.240.190 etc. Please keep eye on them and do the justice on this. Regards, William 01.16, 25 May 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.144.241.108 (talk)

Hello. I have no personal knowledge of this situation, beyond the fact that pages about Bangladesh in wikipedia have few editors, and unfortunately that can lead to personal agendas being promoted here. These sorts of additions would be quickly reverted in parts of wikipedia that have more watchers. There are quite strong procedures that must be adhered to here about biographies of living people which is applicable to the page about Mukhlesur Rahman Chowdhury. On the other pages there is a problem with unsourced additions, and those can be deleted. Unfortunately, there is a general problem with not enough citations on much of the Bangladesh material, so that this sort of thing doesn't get deleted as quickly as it should. I will take a look at the pages you mention. Please be aware, however, that alleging criminal activity by wikipedia editors is also frowned upon here. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:11, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Pseudoscience

Alternative medicine is a form of pseudoscience, and, as such, comes under discretionary sanctions. Continuing to edit war in material supporting pseudoscience can result in editing restrictions and blocks.—Kww(talk) 17:48, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

No, at Lonicera japonica you are violating WP:FORUM, imposing your own opinion that all of Traditional Chinese medicine is "fringe science" and "folklore". That is cultural hegemony of a most unattractive sort, and is not appropriate in an encyclopedia. TCM cannot be said to be used by only a fringe group, it represents a large proportion of the alternative medicine practiced in the world. If you don't accept that Traditional medicine has a right to exist or be discussed here, then I hope that you never find yourself in the position of needing to rely on medicines derived from those traditions, such as aspirin, colchicine, codeine, L-Dopa, Ephedrine, Monocrotaline, Picrotoxin, Quinine, Reserpine, Scopolamine, Tetrahydropalmatine, and at least 100 other important medicines from just the herbal component of traditional medicine. How do you think "modern medicine" finds the hypotheses about treatments to test for effectiveness? There is no "this is science" statement in what you are expunging, the statement is "this is Traditional Chinese medicine", which is a true statement. Furthermore, you edit war and then threaten me with sanctions; hardly charming behaviour. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:37, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Traditional medicine has every right to be discussed in articles about traditional medicine. That does not include turning articles about other topics into large expositions about their relationship to traditional medicine.—Kww(talk) 19:30, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

True. That is not the case with this article. A simple explanation of how this plant is used in TCM is now missing, deleted by you. All that remains now are some names and a statement that the dried leaves and flowers are also used (as well as what, the reader might wonder). No information is there about how it is used, or in combination with what. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:33, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Just in case you're interested, see a long discussion about this issue at Talk:Seahorse#Medicine?. CorinneSD (talk) 20:07, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Wow, what a long discussion. It looks as if some people want to argue that only a treatment that is 100% effective could ever be termed medicine. Cough medicines would need to be renamed … Medicine itself would need to be renamed. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:17, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes. CorinneSD (talk) 21:57, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

Name of dandelion in Chinese

The meaning of the Chinese name of the dandelion plant, 蒲公英, is uncertain. There's an unattributed story on the Internet (involving a maiden afflicted with a condition in her breasts trying to commit suicide but was saved by a fisherman) purporting to be the origin of the name, but the veracity is highly suspect. The Chinese pharmacy work Compendium of Materia Medica (本草綱目), a highly important work in Chinese medicine published in the late 16th century, contains an entry on dandelion in volume 27 of the work (菜之二, "Vegetables, II"). The entry has the following text about the plant's name:

時珍曰︰名義未詳。孫思邈《千金方》作鳧公英，蘇頌《圖經》作仆公罌，《庚辛玉冊》作鵓鴣英。俗呼蒲公丁，又呼黃花地丁。淮人謂之白鼓釘，蜀人謂之耳瘢草，關中謂之狗乳草。按︰《土宿本草》云︰金簪草一名地丁，花如金簪頭，獨腳如丁，故以名之。

The author comments that the meaning of the name was unknown (名義未詳), and proceeds to give other names that have been used for the plant.

Given the stature of the Compendium in Chinese medicine, any purported explanation needs to be treated with appropriate skepticism. My Web searches did not turn up any other explanation for 蒲公英. --173.49.9.51 (talk) 01:51, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

It sounds as if a statement could be made (with citation, of course) that the meaning was unknown to the 16th century writers of the compendium. Then watchers and discussion on the talk page could defend it against other dubious material. I wonder, though, if it should be on the Taraxacum page, or at Taraxacum officinale. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:45, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Muraad Kahn and his socks

Can you post some more evidence of his disruptions to the long post I made? The community will ask for proof before accepting a case. Aditya^{(talk • contribs)} 12:09, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Decorative arts

I made a few edits to Decorative arts, mostly to the section "Decorative" and "Fine" arts, which I thought had been excessively wordy. I wanted to continue working on the remaining paragraphs, but hesitate to begin because I find them obtuse. They seem to be written for other experts; they are not very clear and not very interesting to read, and I wouldn't know where to begin. The entire article seems to be lacking citations (and there are tags to that effect at the top of the article). See also two questions I posed to Rothorpe about the first paragraph of the article at User talk:Rothorpe#Decorative arts. I just wondered if (a) you want to work on the article, or (b) you know of an editor who is knowledgeable in this field who could improve the article. CorinneSD (talk) 19:21, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Strangely, I haven't interacted with editors other than Hafspajen who I've been aware have an interest in fine or decorative arts. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:41, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Wayuu people

I have just finished reading the article on Wayuu people and have made a few edits to improve clarity. More work needs to be done, especially in the section on Religion. I'll continue working on it tomorrow. But I have a question: there is a picture of Pedro Messía de la Cerda, Viceroy of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, but I don't see either him or that viceroyalty discussed anywhere in the article. Shouldn't the connection to the Wayuu people be made clear?

Also, I know for a fact that the people are also called the Guajiro or Guajira people, but nowhere is it explained why there are two names for this people. This name is not discussed at all. CorinneSD (talk) 03:33, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Found this, which makes clear that Guajiro is not their own name for the area or themselves. "En el mundo anasü se ubica el universo social, donde existen tres categorías de seres humanos: los wayúu, que según el mito de origen son "los hombres, personas como nosotros de nuestra misma raza", los alíjuna, término con el cual se define al extranjero: "llamaréis ALÍJUNA a todos los extraños e intrusos que no sean de vuestra raza" (Paz Ipuana, 1972:198) y los kusína, término utilizado para designar a los indígenas no wayúu. En la contemporaneidad, el principio mítico es corroborado por voces expertas como las del maestro Miguel Ángel Jusayú, quien afirma que: "El indígena es un ser viviente compuesto por un cuerpo y por un espíritu. En muchos aspectos es diferente del alijuna (gente no indígena), al kusina (aborigen de otras tierras), al parróuja (indígena añú), al fantasma, al irracional y al vegetal. En lo colectivo, el waiu habita en la extensión de tierra, que el alijuna ha denominado la Guajira que debería llamarse Júmain Waiú, Tierra de Waiú" (Miguel Ángel Jusayú, 1999).""

I wasn't able to find anything that says what Spanish expedition or map maker named Guajira Peninsula. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:16, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. If I have time, I'll look also. One has to notice, though, that the "gua" of "Guajira" is pretty close to the "wa" of "Waiuu", and perhaps Spaniards called it the way they heard "Waiuu". When I was little, I lived near there and often saw the Waiuu walking around in those flowing dresses, with large, colorful wool pom-poms on their sandals. CorinneSD (talk) 15:21, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

I left a note with some questions regarding this article on Kwamikagami's talk page because he is a linguist, but if you're interested, you might try to answer them. CorinneSD (talk) 15:51, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Lilium

I was looking at the latest edit to Lilium when I noticed that a photo of one type of lily -- the first one in the section "Classification of garden forms" -- a kind of pale greenish-yellow lily -- looks kind of dark to me. Is it just my screen, or does it appear dark to you, too? CorinneSD (talk) 22:18, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes it does, and not a good choice of parts to be in focus. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:14, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

An editor just re-arranged the Lilium article, as he says, according to WP:PLANTS. I just don't remember seeing a plant article with such a large table so early in the article, with most of the text after it. CorinneSD (talk) 15:33, 12 June 2014 (UTC)CorinneSD (talk) 15:36, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

@CorinneSD: hi, that was me. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Template, which we try to follow in plant articles. I do agree though that the large table is a bit odd. It might be better to have a separate article "List of Lilium species", as we do in other cases (see Category:Lists of plants). I'd like to see the Lilium article improved, but I'm not sure of the next steps. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:46, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

The article seems to need quite a lot of small prods as well. It's sad that the fundamental classification is in an inaccessible article, so people use terms like "oriental lily" without knowing what they mean. A separate list of Lilium species would be helpful, and perhaps it could include a way of listing those cultivars that belong to each species, for those that aren't interspecies hybrids (Lilium lancifolium clearly needs work on cultivars). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:00, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

@Peter coxhead: Please be assured that I wasn't meaning to be critical of you or your edits. I just share my thoughts about articles with editors who are more knowlegeable than I am in that area, such as Sminthopsis84. I'm happy to help, mainly with proofreading and copy-editing. I defer to your and Sminthopsis' knowledge regarding plants. CorinneSD (talk) 00:26, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Corinne, your efforts to actually read so much text and critique it are enormously valuable. I tend to work on single paragraphs, simply because wikipedia is too big to read it thoroughly. (Also, in order to give others a chance to respond before I put in a lot of edits on one page.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:00, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Nutmeg

In case you don't have Nutmeg on your watch list, just thought you might be interested in a comment just posted at Talk:Nutmeg that accompanies changes you suggested at Talk:Nutmeg#Confused in 2012. CorinneSD (talk) 15:16, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Neat! Thanks for letting me know. I saw that @Peter coxhead: made that excellent split, but had forgotten that back in 2012 I had found too little support for such changes and thought them unlikely to succeed. More power to WP:PLANTS! Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:26, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

(EC) :I assume you probably would approve of splitting the article on nutmeg into one article on the spice and at least one other on the plant. If so, then perhaps you would like to review the edits made to the article that is now just on the spice. I see that the editor changed "Nutmeg is a dioecious plant" to "Nutmeg trees are dioecious plants". I prefer the singular to the plural for this definition-like sentence. If "Nutmeg is a dioceious plant" is not right, then perhaps "The nutmeg tree is a dioceious plant" would be all right. What do you and @Peter coxhead: think? CorinneSD (talk) 15:28, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

I think I'd side with "Nutmeg trees are dioecious plants". The other version is analogous to "The human being has two sexes", but I'd prefer "Human beings have two sexes". Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:39, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

O.K. I know you know the subject better -- much better -- than I do. I guess I had forgotten what "dioecious" means. CorinneSD (talk) 15:46, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

:-) … light work. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:48, 6 June 2014 (UTC)

Hafs

I added a comment and a picture at User talk:Hafspajen, but I couldn't get the picture inside the blue area. Can you do that for me? CorinneSD (talk) 19:57, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

I tried, but it seems that the text needs to expand to reach the bottom of the picture. Adding another picture on the left doesn't do the trick. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:31, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

Can you find a suitable poem to insert? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:33, 8 June 2014 (UTC)

I found a poem that kind of goes with the picture I posted and even with Martinevans reply about the shoes. It's called "Sorrow" and it's by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Can I post it there? Do I have to give a citation if it's just on a talk page? And how do I make the indented lines? CorinneSD (talk) 00:07, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

abaca

Not meaning to step on your toes, as I do appreciate help especially with copy editing; however when you made your most recent edit to this article, you incidentally broke the {{harvnb}} template, involved in the citation you added. If you already know this, I apologize, but I, like you, have been editing Wikipedia for a while and did not know all the details of the harv family of templates until recently, but anyway, when you change the author name in the template, change it also (so that it matches) in the citation template as they link. again, if you already knew and you just forgot, I apologize. But thanks for helping on the article as it could always use more citations. One more thing, I won't make this a point of contention but was the author switch that important? it seemed better to me, to throw the word "botanists" in there as that is what the "name verfied by" used. the plural of service was inaccurate and thanks for catching that. Anyway, if you see fit to change it back and re-add botanists, great if not , no problem. Just so you know why, I threw that word in there. Thanks again for your time. speednat (talk) 21:13, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

Decorative arts

What do you think of the latest edit to Decorative arts? It's a new definition. CorinneSD (talk) 00:21, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

That seems okay to me. There are wikipedians who apparently feel that the phrase "the term" must never appear in a wikipedia article. I guess it must have something to do with carving out wiktionary's domain. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 10:58, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Baskets

I've been looking for a picture of a regular basket with a handle and can't seem to find one. I've looked at Commons (searched "basket") and at several WP articles. I looked at the article Nantucket Lightship Basket and was astonished that there was not one picture of one of those baskets! It's a very distinctive basket. (But I don't think that's the kind of basket for which I need a picture.) How could I find a basket for that article? Can we just upload any photo from Google Images? I wouldn't know how to do it even if it were permissible. CorinneSD (talk) 17:45, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Commons is sadly limited both by how many photos people have donated and by how much work has been done to categorize them. Entering "category:baskets"does better than just plain "basket", which diverts you to a gallery that someone made by that name. But still, many of the baskets have something inside and may also be inadequately categorized. I haven't gone into copyright matters in detail, but this photo has Creative Commons Attribution license 2.0, and I believe that putting it into Commons is fine, as long as the description gives the details about where it came from and who made the original photo. For example, this photo was uploaded to Commons by someone other than the originator. Once you have a copy of the photo on your computer, if you click "upload file" in the left-hand column, the instructions are quite easy to follow. I'd suggest trying it with just one photo, to see if anyone complains about how you did it. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:46, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! I like the picture of the Nantucket Lightship baskets, but I don't want to upload it to Commons, I want to add it to the Wikipedia article. That's not the same thing, is it? Do I first have to upload it to Commons before I can add it to the WP article? The other two photos are nice. I'm looking for a photo of a basket to post at Joshua Jonathan's talk page, latest (or almost latest) comment, where he replies to someone, confusing "brackets" with "baskets" -- I don't know whether he has confused them knowingly or unknowingly. CorinneSD (talk) 20:03, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, do load pictures to Commons, then use them in Wikipedia. The upload wizard gives you code at the end, though it is probably just as easy to copy it from some wikipedia page with a picture. It is possible to load pictures into Wikipedia, but then they get tagged to be moved to Commons. Eggs and brackets, hmm, hope they don't fall off and break. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:11, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

One more question: do I need to have an account on Commons, that is, do I need to register on Commons separately from what I've already done on WP, in order to upload pictures? CorinneSD (talk) 23:14, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, as far as I can tell from this page, there is no criterion of experience before you can upload to Commons (nothing like the autoconfirmed criterion here). The first thing to do is to look at your preferences here on wikipedia, under the tab "User profile". Does it say "Global account status: All in order! Your account is active on 103 project sites."? If not, you might want to look at this help page, or just try clicking something that looks likely, perhaps it shows "Manage your global account" or something about signing up for a global account. P.S. Have you managed to get a copy of a picture from Flickr? That might not always be easy, I've sometimes resorted to taking a screen image. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:55, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it says "Global account status: All in order! ..." Why Flickr? What is Flickr? Does the picture have to be from Flickr? CorinneSD (talk) 15:16, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Just that this photo is from flickr. I think you should be able to upload to Commons. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:47, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

P.S. Hafs is back! CorinneSD (talk) 15:17, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

Yay! Thanks for letting me know. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:47, 13 June 2014 (UTC)

So what were you two up to nowadays? Hafspajen (talk) 18:00, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

I think we are trying to get CorinneSD confidently adding lots of pictures to Commons. Advice from you would probably be very helpful. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:22, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, that bot. Didn't noticed you answered. What is the problem? (I am not a bit good at uploading pictures) Hafspajen (talk) 19:29, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

I looked at that picture of Nantucket Lightship Baskets to which you provided a link, above. I couldn't find it on Henry Z's photo stream (collection of photos on Flickr), though. How can I find it? I did a search and saw many other photos of both Nantucket Lightship baskets and other kinds of baskets, but I don't know how to find the licensing or restrictions regarding the use of a photo. Where do you find that information? CorinneSD (talk) 20:58, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, as far as I know, it is something in the corner you need to look for... But I have to admit those things are bit of a challenge for me. Hafspajen (talk) 21:01, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Where did you get all of those wonderful landscape pictures from? CorinneSD (talk) 21:12, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, it is not me who is uploading them, they are on commons. You put dawn meadow for example on the search in commons. That will give you like 100 pictures? or more. Hafspajen (talk) 21:26, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh. Thank you. Sminthopsis, can you answer my questions, just above? CorinneSD (talk) 21:53, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

On the link that shows that photo, on the right, lowish down, there's something that looks like a chili pepper in a circle, with the text "Some rights reserved". Clicking on that, takes you to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ where the license is briefly explained. Further down there are three dots in a row, and clicking on them leads to a way to download the picture. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:40, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Baskets four styles
Baskets - Danforth Museum - Framingham, MA
A set of traditional hand woven native Indian Nuu-chah-nulth peoples' baskets
Baskets for sale in the island of La Réunion, east of Madagascar
Straw hats and baskets for sale at the Luangwa turn-off on Great East road, Zambia.
Storage basket, Pomo people (indigenous people of California), Honolulu Museum of Art
Trinket Basket, Makah people, Northwest Washington, late 19th to early 20th century, twined and plaited bear grass, sedge, cedar bark
Nootka Makah baskets - Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History

Some of those baskets have knobs on. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:40, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

I think that's a British expression. Most of these baskets look Native American.

Sminthopsis: When I look at a photo on Flickr, where exactly do I look to see the licensing and permissions for, or restrictions on, the use of the photo? I didn't see that when I looked. CorinneSD (talk) 23:44, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

Not sure if you saw my response above. You might be seeing something different on the screen from what I see. Unfortunately, it isn't possible to attach a screen image in wikipedia email, so I can't point at what I mean. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 00:07, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't see your response, above, until you pointed it out. Thank you. I saw the circle with the chili pepper in it. I had already saved that picture to my computer and almost uploaded it to Commons, then changed my mind because there is an image of a woman behind the baskets which makes it clear that these baskets are very small, probably made as souvenirs. Since the real baskets are quite a bit larger, I wanted a picture of a real basket. I didn't find any I liked on Flickr. I found some on Google Images, but I wasn't able to find any that had that license. In fact, I couldn't find any license information on any of them, except that on some I saw "If you would like to purchase this photo,...".

I have a question: is Flickr somehow connected to Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons? You said above that I could click on the three dots to upload the photo from Flickr to, I assume, Commons. Sorry to be asking so many questions. I just want to learn. CorinneSD (talk) 00:47, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Generally , most images are free on Flickr (as far as I know). It might be a connection, meaning a bot that helps uploading pictures, but I am no good at this. I have a better idea. Calling in the expert; = Crisco 1492, can you answer on Corinnes questions? Hafspajen (talk) 09:41, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

When I signed up for Flickr, the default setting was "all rights reserved", and quite a few Flickr users have that, perhaps because they haven't thought about the issue of sharing with people they don't know. An expert on this would be great, I know nothing about how to systematically find or make use of pictures, except sometimes getting lucky with a single photo. Clicking on the three dots loads (up or down, whichever) the picture to your computer from the Flickr server. You can then load it to Commons. I had to scroll down a bit to find the three dots. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:08, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

The vast majority of images on Flickr are all rights reserved, and even some that are not all rights reserved cannot be uploaded to Wikipedia. Anything which has an "NC" or "ND" clause, for instance, is not considered free enough for Wikipedia. On Flickr's new design, we can see the copyright just under the "eye" which shows how many views an image has received. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:28, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! The image we were discussing has Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0). It sounds as if that licence would be okay, but Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-ND 2.0) or Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Canada (CC BY-NC 2.0 CA) would not be okay. Interesting. It is easy to forget that people might take an image from Commons and use it for commercial purposes. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 13:09, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Told you that I don't know this kind of things. Thanks, Crisco!! Hafspajen (talk) 13:26, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Baskets, continued, and uploading pictures

I decided to start a new section. That last one was getting too long.

@Crisco 1492: Thank you for the information. But what about pictures from Google Images? I often see great pictures there, but I haven't been able to find the licensing information for those pictures. Where do I look for it?

Also, could somebody please tell me again how to get to Commons from Wikipedia? I know you told me once, Hafs, but I don't know where it is, and I can't remember what you told me. CorinneSD (talk) 17:35, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Also, of course, thank you Sminthopsis for your thoughts, above. CorinneSD (talk) 17:36, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Corinne. You're very welcome, of course. In my browser, I just type commons, and it fills in the url as http://commons.wikimedia.org Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:44, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Well, getting to commons, this time it will be more difficult. There is this big black page coming up now, whenever you click on a picture. Before it was enough to just click on one picture and then click on the little blue commons symbol, and you were there. Now you have to digg around a lot under the picture, below the black field, to find your way down. I don't know if there is a fast way any more. Try Sminthopsis technique. Hafspajen (talk) 17:45, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, I got the article Commons comming up. Hafspajen (talk) 17:49, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I just remembered that I had asked for help on this with the "helpme" template about a week ago. I got an informative reply from Huon. It's at User talk:CorinneSD/Archive 7#How do I access Wikimedia Commons?. But the link Huon provided that says "Commons:Main" only helps when you click on that link. Sminthopsis, I didn't realize Commons was a whole separate website. I thought there would be an easy link from WP to Wikimedia Commons (the pictures, not the article on it). I guess you have to search for the link at the bottom right hand corner of a picture (the big black picture of the new Media Viewer), as Huon explains. CorinneSD (talk) 17:59, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Corinne, you are gem. I disabled the blasted thing. (disabled the Media Viewer). Did you two disabled it yet? Hafspajen (talk) 18:08, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Tried to put a picture on your page that will stay, and in the caption is the link to commons. Decorative solution. You may change them as often you want - the file- to something else... Hafspajen (talk) 18:29, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Very decorative! Good idea. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:35, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you so much! And I like the picture you chose, too. I am still thinking about whether to disable Media Viewer. I don't like that black screen. I like seeing the pictures in an article as I read, not all at once as in a slide show, as you can in Media Viewer, and I don't like seeing a blurry picture and waiting for it to become clear. I'll probably disable it. CorinneSD (talk) 19:28, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. Just blurry pictures and a lot of waiting for it to become clear... Not much changed for the better and one loose all the information that was easily accesible before. Hafspajen (talk) 19:33, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree. CorinneSD (talk) 20:05, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I have disabled it now for a few hours now, and feel much better. Hafspajen (talk) 21:22, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

I just disabled it. CorinneSD (talk) 21:38, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, my favourite link just now is Wikipedia:Media_Viewer#How to turn it off. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:34, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

- Well, if you are going to miss it, just put it back again... How is going with those baskets? Hafspajen (talk) 21:52, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Sminthopsis, would you move Przewalski's Horse to Przewalski's horse? It is hardly appropiate, I think. .

It has been moved, no? Not by me. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:34, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Man, I didn't ASk you to move it. What I meant (unclearly) is that do you think this was a good idea? Hafspajen (talk) 23:38, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh. No, I don't like upcapitalizing this kinds of names, but fighting against Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Animals, plants, and other organisms is a lost cause. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:41, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Why? Hafspajen (talk) 23:45, 15 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, because there's such a huge number of pages that would be affected, and the matter has been "settled by consensus". I think the same people are involved in stating that WP:COMMONNAME should be favoured over WP:FLORA, the latter of which says that scientific names of organisms are to be preferred because they are more meaningful (less ambiguous). Making text ambiguous and hard to read seems to be an enjoyable sport for some people, people who see little matters like capitalization and punctuation as elitist nonsense. At least there doesn't seem to be a counter-argument when we italicize scientific names (though many are inserted without italics). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 10:06, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Why sould WP:COMMONNAME should be favoured over WP:FLORA? I don't agree. All encyclopedia are using it. All books all everything. Hafspajen (talk) 10:12, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Indeed. :-( There's now a little item in WP:FLORA Don't confuse WP:COMMONNAME with common name which deals with some of the problem, the people who think that a name listed as a "common name" means that it is often used, which it doesn't. It's the usual problem, loud people winning arguments (oops, that should read "consensus-seeking discussions"). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 10:29, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, all this bullshit was pulled out by one editor,  SMcCandlish - who is a lawyer and is interested in history. In the real world, the English language has developed conventions for naming species and conventions for capitalising proper names. His attempt to over-simplify how English actually deals with those issues is what has caused these problems, and he is fighting for it all what he can. Real-world professional standards should trump false Wikipedia standards when it comes to things like this. I firmly believe that accepted titles developed by a professional, governed outside community should be preferred to the mess that is MOS. Hafspajen (talk) 11:05, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

There's also something that I encounter here in north America, would-be spelling reformers. A colleague of mine doesn't use capital letters except in rare formal occasions (perhaps once a year), and there are people who spell through as thru, and many other things. I think there are several systems, so their individual efforts in real life may be ignorable. (I'm at a conference in Montreal now, won't have much time for wiki-ing, am currently wondering whether recent spelling reform in France has made any impact here. No evidence so far, all old spellings, but perhaps new pronunciations, Joliette pronounced as Joliet, for example. My high-school French was very different.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:43, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I didn't even see these last few comments until today. I just wanted to add regarding attempts to reform English spelling, that I don't like them. The traditionally, that is, presently, accepted spellings, while they may not match pronunciation in all cases, preserve links to other words and to their etymological roots. CorinneSD (talk) 15:19, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree. And I also think that the argument that the traditional spelling doesn't match pronunciation is generally a regional thing: there's such much variation in how people pronounce words that somewhere or other it is likely to be a good match (perhaps "pluff" for "plough" might be an exception). A Californian once explained to me how he pronounced pa, paw, poor, pore, etc. and I was stunned, it was an internally consistent system that had no resemblance to any I'd come across before, and I can't possibly reconstruct it now. His homophones were entirely different subsets from my homophones. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:38, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Another argument for keeping current spelling is that any new set of spellings would become obsolete within another fifty years because pronunciation keeps changing. Pronunciation varies so widely in the U.S., and I believe also in the British Isles, and probably also in Australia, that it is astonishing. I'm always amazed when I hear people from another region speaking English; sometimes I understand what they're saying, sometimes it's very difficult. CorinneSD (talk) 18:56, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

One good aspect of television might eventually be that more people come to understand that their own speech isn't "unaccented" and that people who pronounce a word differently are not idiots who must be corrected. I've started a one-person campaign to ignore all films that are re-makes for a different audience, such as British or Australian films remade with American and Canadian actors and altered vernacular. (However it is challenging to delimit this campaign because, for example, Danish sounds very much like English, so I ought to be able to learn to understand it too and not need a translated version.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:23, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree with your first statement, but you've got two things new to me here: I didn't know that films were re-made to suit the audience like that. I think that's silly. The other thing is also new. I never heard anyone say that Danish sounds like English. I've heard Danish spoken, and it sounds like a slurred Swedish to me. I don't think it would be easy to learn Danish. CorinneSD (talk) 19:39, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps it's partly folklore that films and tv are often dubbed to change accents rather than for other technical reasons, but there are unsourced statements at Darby O'Gill and the Little People that "Several of the original Irish actors' accents ... were deemed too difficult for American audiences to understand" and at Dubbing (filmmaking) about the Star Wars character Beru Lars, portrayed by Scottish actress Shelagh Fraser. TV re-makes are fairly common, I think, e.g., Rake (U.S. TV series) and Life on Mars (U.S. TV series). Indeed, learning Danish seems to be extraordinarily difficult. I had the good fortune once to just sit and listen to a group of people chatting for about an hour. Nobody even tried to instruct me, they all assumed that no English speaker has any hope with Danish, which I think is probably true. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:01, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Which is strange, because the origin of English in or around the Frisian islands is very close to Denmark. I think, today, English and Dutch are the closest. Re the movies: I have seen some Irish movies or television programs, and I do have trouble understanding some of the actors. CorinneSD (talk) 15:08, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

I have only the vaguest notions about history of languages, which I've noticed is an interest of yours. It seems very complicated, with German so close to Denmark, and "Danish" influence on French. The Danish people I visited seemed genuinely hurt that English people talk about Danes as cruel invaders, and were quite comforted to hear that I'd read that Harald Hardrada was king of Norway when he invaded England (he seems to have been rather less than a nice chap). Sminthopsis84 (talk) 15:19, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Seahorse

I saw an edit to Seahorse in which an editor changed a caption under a photo of roasted(?) seahorses for sale from "in China" to "in Japan". Then today, another editor undid that edit and removed any mention of a country from the caption, saying that there is no information where the photo was taken. I decided to look into it. I clicked on the picture and saw that it was taken by gin_e, who has posted more than 1,700 photos to Flickr. I went through all of her photos to see if I could find that one. I didn't see it, but I saw that most of her photos were taken in Japan, just a few in Korea, and it looks like none in China. (She has some very interesting photos, by the way, if you want to take a look.) Then I put in "seahorses" in the search for Flickr to see if I could find that photo, and I went through hundreds of photos of seahorses and seahorse jewelry (many of the photos quite beautiful), but didn't find it. Maybe gin_e removed the photo because it shows seahorses for sale as food, and seahorses are endangered. I don't know if you know of a way to find that photo to determine where it was taken. But even if you don't want to undertake that search, you might still enjoy those photos taken by gin_e (and the ones of seahorses), on Flickr. CorinneSD (talk) 00:05, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Asked the photographer. [14]. Maybe we will get an answer, depends if the person is still active and around or not. Hafspajen (talk) 10:07, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, I found it, it IS China. See here, down on the page, it say China. Hafspajen (talk) 10:14, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for that (very effective impetus for my resolve to be vegetarian). The original in flickr does indeed seem to have been removed, as clicking on the Source=Mmm, yummy! gets a page not found message. The photographer's work is impressive and varied; showing quite an interest in cities. In the past, apparently, flickr users with the free accounts were limited to a certain number of photos, now the limit is by total storage space. Perhaps that one was deleted to make way for newer photos. People who I know who use flickr mostly use it to share images with friends, so older photos might be often deleted. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 10:25, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Those Chinese will eat anything, except for old car decks. (And I said down on the page, to spare you all from all that.) Hafspajen (talk) 10:42, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, my God! How can people those things, that is, animals? I'd rather be a vegetarian. CorinneSD (talk) 15:26, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

They are hungry..? Hafspajen (talk) 16:49, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

They can grow beans. CorinneSD (talk) 18:16, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Very sensible. I would mail it to the Chinese embassy ... Instead of all that disgusting stuff they gobble... But they probably prefer old boots and stewed cats anyway. Hafspajen (talk) 18:35, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Reviewer granted

Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on pages protected by pending changes. The list of articles awaiting review is located at Special:PendingChanges, while the list of articles that have pending changes protection turned on is located at Special:StablePages.

Being granted reviewer rights neither grants you status nor changes how you can edit articles. If you do not want this user right, you may ask any administrator to remove it for you at any time.

See also:

Wikipedia:Reviewing, the guideline on reviewing
Wikipedia:Pending changes, the summary of the use of pending changes
Wikipedia:Protection policy#Pending changes protection, the policy determining which pages can be given pending changes protection by administrators. — MusikAnimal ^talk 18:07, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Congratulations! CorinneSD (talk) 18:17, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

'Congratulations!Hafspajen (talk) 18:34, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Nice. Now I can go back to improve upon a couple of edits that I couldn't work on before because of not having that status. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 22:50, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

And what can you do now that the average can't? Hafspajen (talk) 23:29, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Some pages like this one have an anti-vandalism setting so that edits from non-auto-confirmed editors are marked as "pending" until someone with reviewer rights accepts them. I saw such a pending edit which I would have like to accept, and then improve upon, but I didn't have that permission, so I asked for the permission. It's not a common thing, but there was such an edit somewhere some time ago that I also wanted to improve upon, and didn't ask for the permission then because it seemed such a rare thing. Now I don't remember where it was, to go back and fix it. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 23:54, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Sounds exiting. Hafspajen (talk) 00:08, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

The painting you added at the right, "The Travelling Companions", is a beautiful painting! CorinneSD (talk) 17:17, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Painted by Mr Egg.... Hafspajen (talk) 17:25, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that. What the poor guy must have gone through as a kid with that name.... CorinneSD (talk) 17:28, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Mmm. Humpty Dumpty, how's going? or Ooops, you almost became an omlette... Hafspajen (talk) 17:32, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes...or various first names. CorinneSD (talk) 17:34, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Corinne WHY aren't you voting at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates‎? Because you really pic up everything that is beautiful like a radar. Hafspajen (talk) 17:39, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Because I forgot about it. I need reminding every once in a while. I also forget how to get to the place to vote. CorinneSD (talk) 17:51, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates‎. Corinne, do you have a watchlist? You just put everything on the watchlist that you wan't to remember. Hafspajen (talk) 18:06, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes. I have almost 500 pages on my watch list. CorinneSD (talk) 21:58, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Gosh. Twice as much as I have!!!! Hafspajen (talk) 22:04, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

I've enjoyed looking at the pictures at WP:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for the link to the museum with Curlionis's paintings. I looked at all of them. They're very interesting. I like Thor and the one right after it, Fantasy Castle, and others. CorinneSD (talk) 00:04, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Have you seen our article? Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis... Hafspajen (talk) 08:14, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

This is amazing, thanks. Internet fails me for a while, and I come back to find these pictures and discussion going on here. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 19:11, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

What was the matter? Hafspajen (talk) 19:40, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Conference organizers provided passwords and such, but nobody could use the wi-fi. As we say in French, the wiffy was iffy. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 20:26, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Aah, those niffy-es. Hafspajen (talk) 21:41, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Apologies, edit conflict

Our edits for Stamen overlapped and although I had similar motivations to yours for changing items such as the etymology, I had a different approach, because most of the material of the lede was IMO inappropriate anyway. So I moved it. There was too much to reconcile, so nearly all of your changes got replaced. Feel welcome to zap whatever you reckon is inappropriate. JonRichfield (talk) 17:07, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, that's much better; so nice to have a simple, readable summary at the start of the page. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 17:21, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for taking it that way; I was feeling very guilty! :) JonRichfield (talk) 18:45, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

No need to feel guilty! As you say, our approaches were the same, but my edit was a quick thwack, and yours took more of the page into account. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:53, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Solenostemon

It looks like Solenostemon might be sunk into Plectranthus. The Plant List has the type species of Solenostemon, Solenostemon ocymoides, as Plectranthus monostachyus. This seems to be based on A new rheophytic species of Plectranthus L'Hér.(Labiatae) from the Gulf of Guinea: BJ Pollard, A Paton - Kew bulletin, 2001, but I can't get the full text of that article at home. The Coleus article is caught up in this situation too. Plantdrew (talk) 02:52, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

The relevant bit of the article is only this:

"Morton (1962) separated Solenostemon from Plectranthus primarily on the morphology of the lateral and anterior calyx lobes, based on examination of west African species. Keng (1978) and Hedge et al. (1998) did not recognise Solenostemon, placing it in synonymy under Plectranthus. In material from continental South East Asia, Suddee (pers. comm., 2001) has found a morphological continuum of lateral calyx lobes in the Plectranthus/Solenostemon group and thus also considers Solenostemon a synonym of Plectranthus. Recent morphological and molecular studies of material from East Africa and SE Asia confirm this (pers. comms., Paton, Suddee 2001)."

There seems too much reliance on "pers. comm." to use this to make a change in Wikipedia. Presumably Suddee and/or Paton published their work after 2001, and it's these papers we need. (Have sent Plantdrew more by e-mail.) Peter coxhead (talk) 09:34, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it's a bit shaky. However, it could well be time to merge the two genera. The species I added, Solenostemon sylvaticus, based on TPL, is spelled Solenostemon silvaticus by WCSP, so that one remaining species seems to be a phantom. WCSP lists Paton, A.J., Bramley, G., Ryding, O., Polhill, R., Harvey, Y., Iwarsson, M., Willis, F., Phillipson, P., Balkwill, K., Lukhoba, C., Otiend, D & Harley (2009). Lamiaceae (Labiatae). Flora of Tropical East Africa: 1-430. [as Plectranthus autranii]. IPNI lists the species as Solenostemon sylvaticus, described by Agnew, 1974, in "Upland Kenya Wild Flowers: A Flora of the Ferns and Herbaceous Flowering Plants of Upland Kenya". I don't have access to that book to check the maddening question of how the species name is spelled. Tropicos lists both spellings with the same citation, so that seems unlikely to be correct. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:48, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Durian

Do you like the change just made to the article on Durian? I don't know whether the parentheses were there before because I was just looking at the Revision History, but then I looked at it in the article, and I didn't like what it looked like. I don't think there should be a sentence in parentheses so close to the beginning of an article. Regarding the subordinate clause beginning "although..." that the editor changed, I kind of like the subordinate clause, but I'll leave that up to you. CorinneSD (talk) 00:41, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I don't think that was helpful material to be right at the start of the article, so I've moved it down to a taxonomy section. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 01:19, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

@Ceoil: I appreciate your telling me this, but I think Ceoil should have informed Victoria that he had asked me to review the article and should have told me where to put any comments I had. I thought the tag with the note right after it right at the location where I had a question would make it easy for him to address the issue and make any necessary changes, then delete the tag and the note. As I told them, the article was quite well-written, but there were a few things that were unclear and a few errors (which I corrected). They may be good writers and knowledgeable about art history, but I have taught writing for twenty-seven years, so I can quickly spot errors and ambiguous or unclear sentences. If the errors are corrected and the ambiguities are cleared up, the writing goes from good to excellent. CorinneSD (talk) 14:52, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, they crawl... red currants, as caterpillars... Yes, apropos caterpillars, we had a very interesting discussion here on a

spider...Hafspajen (talk) 12:24, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Hafs -- Thank you for posting these three still-lifes. They are gorgeous. What a treat for the eyes! I agree that the sugar-crystal-coated confections look a little hard to eat, rather crunchy. And the one with the cherries, strawberries, gooseberries, and a few currants -- it's interesting that the currants are not mentioned in the title of the painting. It looks almost as if the currants were added as an afterthought, but, strangely, one's gaze goes directly to the currants. Where do you find these kinds of images? CorinneSD (talk) 15:17, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

I was looking after some Trompe d' oeil or Trompe-l'œil or images to nominate at feath. pictures, and I happened t run into these... Hafspajen (talk) 15:25, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Perhaps the artist would have called it something different, or given it no title at all, and an art critic gave it that incomplete title. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:11, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Hahahahaa, pretty much as thing are nowadays at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates... Oh, put down that masterwork, stop chewing on it so, will you... Have you took a look at the nominated spider? What do you think? and CorinneSD, you forgot about us now for a while, we need you... Hafspajen (talk) 16:33, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

CorinneSD? Hafspajen (talk) 23:26, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, I think it is rather incredible that photos and the illustration of this spider are here at all. They are so tiny that getting a good number of pixels in a photo of one is probably unlikely. They also live in a small geographical area, and weren't scientifically described until quite recently. It's a pity that the illustrator made those mistakes with the anatomy. People make mistakes all the time with flowers, even big common flowers like lilies that you'd think they could get an actual example of to use as a model, or actually look at the model they are using. At least one botanical conference that I went to had a "botanical art" exhibit associated with it in the corridors that was rather horrifying for a botanist to look at. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:28, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Yes, they are quite incredible... And what colors! Amazing, really. Hafspajen (talk) 18:46, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Hafs, I guess that was a reminder to vote at Featured Picture Candidates, so I went there and looked at all the photos, and I voted for some. What picture were you talking about regarding a spider? I didn't see any picture of a spider. CorinneSD (talk) 00:21, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! we need a woman's eye on that page. Otherwise it will be a just lot of birds, diagrams and buildings only. No spider? Here ->spider... Long way down on the page maybe.. . Hafspajen (talk) 00:28, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. I just re-read your comment, above, and saw the link to the spider, then looked at it. What a beautiful spider! I can't believe that is a drawing. Is that really a drawing of the spider? Incredible. If there's an article about that spider, I'm going to read it. What was that other thing, a flying something, under the water? CorinneSD (talk) 00:49, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

A Mediterranian fish. Hafspajen (talk) 01:13, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, also, regarding that photo of a person sitting on the ground holding a stick to which, apparently, another person is holding while sitting in mid-air, I have a book by Alexander Cannon in which he describes seeing a person lifted up and held in mid-air by a Yogi. But for some reason, I don't think this is the same thing. If you look closely at the hands and the legs, I think you will notice that the hands don't look real, and the legs don't look natural. The person on the ground is wearing a scarf across the face so that you won't notice that the other "person" in the air is also wearing a scarf across the face, possibly so that one won't notice that it's not a real person. What do you think? CorinneSD (talk) 00:54, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

A video of a similar trick. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 12:33, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, you are probably right. Hafspajen (talk) 01:13, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I just realized that that's a kind of tromp l'oeil. Did you mean to convey that by placing it near the tromp l'oeil paintings? If you did, that's quite clever. CorinneSD (talk) 01:17, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, it is you who is clever. Because indeed it is some kind of tromp l'oeil...

Hafspajen (talk) 01:23, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Feedback on Desiccated Thyroid Extract Wikipedia page

Hi! You previously helped me with an issue for the Stevia article (thank you). I am reaching out to you for some assistance regarding how to name a particular section on the Desiccated Thyroid Extract article. Could you please take a look at the information under the section named "Medical Uses?" I made an edit to create a new section named "Criticism and Controversy" and the edit was reverted citing that Wikipedia discourages naming a section in this manner. In my opinion, the content under "Medical Uses" is more appropriate under a different content suggestion. What do you suggest is more compliant and useful to the reader? I read on your talk page that you are open to assisting new editors. Would you have time to provide me with guidance? I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you!

Presto808 (talk) 00:04, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi again. I see that the editor who reverted you has replied at their talk page. It seems that apart from using that style of heading, your plans for the page meet with approval. Does that answer your questions? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:43, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Sminthopsis84. Yes, for the time being. Until next time, thanks for your help! Presto808 (talk) 00:20, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

:-) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 10:32, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Bangladesh

Hi. Would it be possible to consider a major cleanup and improvement of the Bangladesh article by the experts here? And bring it in line with a featured country article status. There are many Bangladeshi users now who can help. But the article is not getting any better.--Rainmaker23 (talk) 14:29, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi, it's good to see you working on that article. I'm sorry to say that I try not to get involved in bringing pages to FA status, because I've found that process to be very fraught, and I don't have enough time to get involved in that sort of thing. I will add it back to my watch list, though, and might be able to help out with the occasional edit, and perhaps advice on how to counteract some types of disruption. That page has been extremely contentious in the past; I don't know how long you have been watching it, but there were people in the past who were very close to being topic-banned, i.e., prevented from making any further edits on Bangladesh-related topics. I hope that is no longer the case. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 14:53, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

About a year ago I went through the entire article and made a number of edits to improve syntax, word usage and punctuation. I even left a few questions regarding unclear issues on the talk page. Over the year I have seen many changes to the article. I made a few comments regarding photos and other issues on the talk page but found other editors were too busy arguing among themselves to respond to my comments. So I haven't touched the article in months. CorinneSD (talk) 15:47, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Oh, that's good to hear that you worked on it. Yes, arguing among themselves is part of the problem, and an earlier problem was seriously slanted material from at least one Pakistani editor, which, naturally, inflamed tempers. I'm working on a different, rather large project at the moment, but when I can get the time, I'll look back in the history to find your contributions, and try working up from there. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 16:52, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

It needs to be restructured and rewritten on many fronts. It just doesn't do the minimum justice to the country. At least the economy section should be more broad and professional. And most importantly the introduction. It's a mess. I wish someone who specializes in such prose can write it again with inputs from us all.--Rainmaker23 (talk) 21:28, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I'll be glad to help. I think Sminthopsis is more familiar than I am with the way a lead section should look, but after Sminthopsis has worked on it (or while Sminthopsis works on it), I'd be glad to read both the lead and the rest of the article through again. CorinneSD (talk) 22:24, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

,

Could you please help to add the right latin names that I added to this article? I am not great at birds-names. Hafspajen (talk) 19:58, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

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