Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs. 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.

Archive 1

Archive 2

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Archive 5

Which Class?

What class does Dinosauria belong to? DarthVader 10:12, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Archosauria. Spawn Man

Sauropsida according to Benton's classification scheme,which is the the one we're using according to this page.John.Conway 03:22, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Reptilia, actually (see List of dinosaur classifications). Archosauria won't work unless we change all the birds and crocodilians to Class Archosauria, and Sauropsida is only needed if defining "Reptilia" in a paraphyletic sense (which would include basal Synapsids). since basal synapsids are listed under Class synapsida, Reptilia=Sauropsida, and Reptilia is the more well-known name and widely used on reptile pages already.Dinoguy2 14:31, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Just to clarify, most dinosaur taxoboxes are now using Sauropsida for the class. I am not sure when this was decided, but it seems to be common usage now so I think we should run with it. Dinosauria is a superorder within Infraclass Archosauria within Class Sauropsida.

Hi:

Hi, I'm new to the group. Just thought I'd let you all know. I'll do my best with the dinosaurs, but someone may have to complete the taxoboxes for me, because although I can to the article, I'm not that good with species, phylum etc... Have a nice day...Spawn Man 00:58, 7 October 2005 (UTC) P.S. If you need anything done, just ask.

Have made 4 new dinosaur articles: Roar! Chomp! Snort! & Slash!. Worked on others & will continue to do so! Bye... Spawn Man 02:17, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Tyrannosaurus rex

. . . is a FAC! Banana04131 19:45, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Enlist help?

Hi, Just a friendly reminder that Dinosaur is a FAC. Please vote & leave comments here, Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. Plus, if you want to see it appear on the main page, don't hesitate to lend a hand to improve the article. Thanks, Spawn Man 22:42, 11 December 2005 (UTC).

Categorization

I suggest that no dinosaurs from now on should be placed in Category:Dinosaurs. Instead, they should be placed in two categories, one indicating the period in which they lived, and other indicating taxonomic classification. So for example, Tyrannosaurus rex would be in Category:Cretaceous dinosaurs and Category:Tyrannosaurids. GCarty 15:09, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, provided that enough is known about the dinosaur for the categorisation to be done accurately. Soo 19:12, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree as well, but I think getting down to family level might be too much. How about "suborder" categories like Theropod, etc.? Having a seperate category for each family might get out of control and be more trouble than it's worth to navigate, especially since many families only have one or two members.Dinoguy2 22:53, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

I think just use a little judgement. Tyrannosauridae is a large family so it's appropriate to have a category just for that. Other orders are less populous so need fewer categories. The exact line between the two is not that important provided it's reasonable. Soo 02:10, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Exactly. I have been using "Triassic/Jurassic/Cretaceous dinosaurs" and then a suborder/infraorder type category (Theropods/Prosauropods/Sauropods/Stegosaurs/Ankylosaurs/Ornithopods/Ceratopsians/Pachycephalosaurs). For primitive members we can use Ornithischia and Saurischia or even Dinosauria as categories, so that the category pages for the two big orders will just include the suborders as well as a few primitive members. I recommend using a third category for the bigger or most notable families/superfamilies (Dromaeosauridae/Tyrannosauridae/Hadrosauridae/Titanosauria/Carnosauria/Ceratosauria) but things like brachiosaurs or iguanodonts or coelophysids should just be covered by the sub/infraorders listed above. Ceratopsidae and Anklylosauridae are major families but are pretty well covered by Ceratopsia and Ankylosauria already. Ditto with stegosaurids and pachys.

Sheep81 11:06, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Article layout and other musings

During the process of creating stubs I've noted that my entries tend to be rather formulaic, which I think is a good thing for this encyclopedia, since one of the main critiques by the "establishment" is that we're lacking in article organization and basically need an editor to do that. I propose this quite journalistic layout:

Title: Generic name

First paragraph

Who?: Species name (holotype)

What?: Classification (anglicized terms)

When?: Time

Where?: Locality

How?: Type of remains, dates of the finding and the description, and taphonomy

Development

What does the name mean?

What characteristics differentiate this animal from others? How long, tall, heavy is it? What are the peculiarities: trophic relations, etc.?

What is the importance of this find in our understanding of the pre-historic world?

I know most of the participants of this project have been following more or less the same guidelines as I present here. However I would think it very fruitful if we could decide on a standard article structure so the review of old articles could pass for more than just adding information: turning them into 'lawful' encyclopedia articles.

On other stuff... I was perusing through the Cretaceous dinosaur list and found the damnedest thing:

Oh, and the articles started with species names should have the specific epithet culled, even Tyrannosaurus rex. As I said, "standartize we must".

I agree. Individual species should not have their own articles. In fact, one of the projects (either tree of life or birds, which is a good model to follow) suggests that we only make entries for family-level taxa if all the sub-genera are stub quality or worse, and then bud off individual genera into their own articles as the info on the parent page is developed. So, if most ceratopsids, for example, don't have much in the way of an article yet, just make a page for Ceratopsidae with short blurbs on each genus and links to any that are already full blown articles, and work from there.Dinoguy2 20:52, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Tyrannosaurus (including rex)

IMHO it's about time to make Tyrannosaurus rex redirect to Tyrannosaurus, per general wikiproject naming guidelines, rather than vice versa as presently. Please give your pros and cons. -- Writtenonsand 12:35, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm torn on this. Yes, it should probably be moved to Tyrannosaurus, and yes, it discusses other 9possible) species of Tyrannosaurus other than T. rex. But Tyrannosaurus rex just has such a nice ring to it. Probably the best dinosaur name ever, and probably the only binomial name aside from Homo sapiens that everybody knows. That alone may warrent using the binomial as a title. Anybody else? Thoughts?Dinoguy2 18:23, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

If it's just for the ring of it that's no good reason, besides even if people use "tyrannosaurus rex" on the search engine they'll be accordingly directed to the pertinent genus. It's a win/win situation really as it doesn't trully matter.

So I'm for the moving of T. rex to Tyrannosaurus Dracontes 18:27, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough, I'll go ahead and move the page.Dinoguy2 20:06, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Genus authorship

Dunno if you guys have seen this page: Dinosaur Genera List - it gives the authors and dates of publication for every genus of dinosaur M Alan Kazlev 08:17, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

My Attempt:

Since Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs is becoming a bit dormant of late, I've decided to get it reactivated. I've started putting the following templates all over the show, & I'd appreciate if someone would try putting them on too. Remember, they only go on Dinosaur orientated artcle's TALK pages. Not the articles themselves.

So, finally, while I work on the project with a designer, in order to get more people, thus more pages, I would appreciate if you didn't move or shift (or stuff up for that matter) any of the work I'll be doing, like adding templates, protocols to the project page, etc etc. I'm hoping to get it up to the standard of The military history project. So, tell your friends to join up, or spam unknowing people & continue to do great articles. I no time, we'll have an awesome, professional project page! Spawn Man 03:48, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject Page Organization

Just so it doesn't seem like this re-organization thing is a one Spawn Man show, I thought we could use this space to suggest and discuss changs to the projc page layout, guidelines, etc. The first thing that comes to my mind--The sections Dinosaur Taxa Names (Species, Higher oder taxa) and Article titles seem to contain variously redundant, contradictory, and confusing information. In my opinion we need to replace these sections with some clear guidelines on usage. What constitutes a common name? When should common names be used? What should be used in pages for high-order taxa, common names (Ankylosaurids) or scientific names (Ankylosauridae)? We've already decided that thel owest order taxa for an individual enry should be genera and the pages should be named acordingly (Tyannosaurus instead of Tyrannosaurus rex), but this needs to be spelled out clearly along with the conditions to grant an exception (preoccupation, as in Mei vs Mei long, but what else, if anything?). We should also address conflicts with Wikiprojet Tree of Life, of which Wikiproject Dinosaurs is a member. That page states that common names be used in article titles, and scientific names if no common name exists. Thus the title of the article on Tyrannosaurus should really be Tyrannosaurs, assuming we approve a guideline which states "tyrannosaur" refers to the genus tyrannosaurus and not a hyothetical group Tyrannosauria as a whole (right now our page states that ankylosaur could refer to either Ankylosaurus or Ankylosauria, we need to decide which way we're all going to use that form on Wikipedia).

I think we also need to ennumerate some other rules of thumb we'e all been using and discussing on other talk pages, such as the use of Class Sauropsida (and what it links to: Reptile or Sauropsid? If the latter, shouldn't there be similarly seperate pages for the scientific term Aves and the vulgar term Bird?), the definition of Aves, etc. We don't want one article referring to Microraptor as an avan, and another referring to Hesperornis as a non-avian dinosaur, beause of different definitions. The use of "bird" is more problematic. What's a bird? An animal with pennaceous feathers? A flying/secondarily flightless feathered animal? A member of Aves? A member of Avifilopluma? Does it matter? Maybe we don't need a rule for this one at all. Just some food for thought anyway.Dinoguy2 20:47, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, actually it is a one man Spawn Man show. No one else has decided to re activate this decaying project? But if you want to help, then that's fine with me, as I'd like other people involved too. All I ask is that no one touches the work me & the designer are doing until we are finished, unless specifically contradicted by myself, such as placing the talk page banners on all things dinosaur. I'll be posting on this page & possibly other talk pages what everyone thinks about certain things that have been improved. So, to clarify with everyone about the order of things, I've made the following step by step list of the order of improvements:

1) Ideas by myself, designer or people who leave a message here or on my talk page, are put into action if found suitable.

2) I or the designer will play around with the new improvement to make it more usable.

3) I will ask everyone in the project for an opinion on the new improvement.

4) Finish improving the improvement & repeat list again from step 1).

So, that's about it. Any questions, please post it on here or my talk page... Spawn Man 23:57, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

New Improvement

As per step three (on the dinosaur project talk page), I promised to ask a general consensus about any new improvements made. So, I'd like everyone to give comments on the new talk page banner:

What does everyone think of it? It's meant to be placed on the talk page of dinosaur related articles, so everytime you edit an article, placing this there would make our job easier. So a few questions I'd like everyone to answer:

1)Does everyone like the picture? 2)Is the wording adequate? 3)Any other queries/problems?

I'll let you know when a new improvement arises... Spawn Man 00:03, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I like it. I think, as the main image on Dinosaur, the picture is ok. The only small issue in the wording is the inclusion of "other prehistoric life". Dinosauria alone is a massive, massive project, do we really need to bring pseudosuchia, synapsida, etc. into this? ;) Dinoguy2 00:17, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, there is no other project for that kinda stuff, but I totally agree. It was only there to make the banner seem more sophisticated any way.... Spawn Man 00:42, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

New Improvement 2

As per step three (on the dinosaur project talk page), I promised to ask a general consensus about any new improvements made. So, I'd like everyone to give comments on the new talk page banner:

This user is a part of WikiProject Dinosaurs, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of dinosaurs. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.

What does everyone think of it? It's meant to be placed on the user talk page or user page of members of the Dinosaur wikiproject, so placing this there would make our job easier. So a few questions I'd like everyone to answer:

1)Does everyone like the picture? 2)Is the wording adequate? 3)Any other queries/problems?

I'll let you know when a new improvement arises... Spawn Man 00:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC).

Looks good to me, and it's now on my talk page, although I wouldn't mind a better picture that clearly shows a dinosaur and not a dinosaurish orange blob. Do we have one of a Styracosaurus head? That would be sweet. Sheep81 10:35, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to send out a few pictures to your talks to see if you like any photos better.... Spawn Man 18:48, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Subprojects

I know there are not many active participants and we still have a lot of work to do just to clean up the dinosaur taxa entries, but to cut down on red links, eventually we might want to take on other related things like:

Dinosaur paleontologists
Dinosaur-bearing formations
Dinosaur-oriented museums?

I think the taxa entries should clearly be the #1 priority though. Sheep81 11:13, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, especially for the paleontologists, since there are a lot of unliked or redlinked authority names in the taxoboxes.Dinoguy2 16:11, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

That's what dinosaur related means, anything related to dinosaurs. We actually have quite a lot of freedom on the subject, so we can actually do all the things mentioned aboved. If we had time, we could change the name of the project to "Prehistoric Life" & have an offshoot called "Dinosaur project". This might draw more attention to the projetc as it covers a wider range. Lets face it, altough most people love dinosaurs, most have no real idea about them & usually get their information solely from Jurassic Park. Real dinosaur knowledgables are hard to come by. Spawn Man 18:46, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

New photos proposed for templates?

Well, above are a few photos that could replace the exsisting template photo. Please feel free to suggest more photos on the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dinosaurs talk page. Spawn Man 19:00, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I like the rex skull. It is the most familiar dinosaur by far, and usually the one people think of first. Plus, I think it will show up better on the little tiny box since it takes up a larger portion of the picture. The current picture is great at normal size but when shrunk it is a bit hard to tell what it is. At least to me. Sheep81 16:54, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed.... Spawn Man 22:02, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Looks great now! Again, in my opinion. Sheep81 02:40, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree, looks much better.Dinoguy2 03:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

New improvement 3

As per step three, I'm informing you that... A new userbox has been created!! Please give comments and feedback (not including the picture, which may be due to change).

This user participates in
WikiProject Dinosaurs.

I will inform on arrival of more improvements. Spawn Man 19:23, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

All your boxes have looked just fine to me so far.

New addition to project

After I took a look at how many missing dinosaur pages there are, I've decided to officially sign on board. I might as well, since I just created about 50 small dinosaur stubs (from the list of dinosaurs page, which looks awfully red).--Firsfron 01:32, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I've done what I could for the day. I've created or expanded several hundred dinosaur pages, although admittedly most of them are quite stubby. At least they're all categorized.

In terms of categorization: I created a few new categories. I wouldn't let myself stick prosauropod articles in the sauropod category (it just didn't seem right! If the category had been Sauropodomorphs, it would have been different), so I built a new category for them, and moved out a few prosauropod articles into the new cat. I also added cats for Pachycephalosaurs, since I had already created articles for four or five pachys, and thyreophorans, which had no cat at all. I didn't break Thyreophorans down further because we'd be left with two (or four) groups, with a few early members that didn't belong in any of the categories, and would be left with no cat.

You can find a full list of my contributions on my contrib page Special:Contributions/Firsfron. I'd appreciate feedback (positive or negative).--Firsfron 02:30, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Well done on all your work! It realy helps if you even start a stub, as people are more willing to expand on one than create one. All we need now for the stubs are a few taxoboxes... See the Tree of Life wikiproject if you need any information on them, as I'm not tat informed about them. Thanks, Spawn Man 23:25, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement, Spawn Man. Today I was less busy than yesterday, but I still managed to create a few new categories and add stub articles (or redirects) for another 47 dinosaurs. I was able to compare the red links on List of dinosaurs with the red links on Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs/missing page, and add another 22 dinosaurs to the List of Dinosaurs page, which have been overlooked so far. It's pretty easy if you use the list of dinosaurs page to create the stubs: anything left red on the Missing Dinosaurs page that really is a dinosaur, is something that needs to be added to the LoD page. All this means is that the 863 dinosaurs we originally had, are now actually 888 dinosaurs. I expect to have over 1,000 before we're done. :)--Firsfron 03:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's looking very un-reded. Good job. I'll contact another one of the members on here, Sheep81, who could possibly start a collaboration between the two of you & start adding to the stubs you're creating.... Spawn Man 02:00, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the continued encouragement, Spawn. Sheep is good. He/she obviously works hard on the project. I like your suggestion, but I don't want to disturb him/her with the stub project. I'm sure Sheep will get around to my stubs eventually. I have asked on the bots page if it was possible to add an infobox to each dinosaur stub automatically. That would save us a lot of time: we would just have to fill out the data itself. Meanwhile, I'm comparing the List of Dinos page with the Missing Dinos page, and coming up with some strange ommissions (on both pages). And the categories need a lot (lot!) of work. Why are there so few of us?--Firsfron 04:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Cause people suck..... Spawn Man 22:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC). BTW, don't worry bout bothering Sheepy, although he says he's busy, he should be open to accepting information on tasks...

I see a few new faces have joined us on the project. It already looks like they've added several articles. What a relief. Now if we only had 1,000 more contributers: one for each dinosaur. The LoD page is up to 1,086 dinosaurs, and I keep finding new ones. The MD page is hopelessly outdated now. I had just finished blueing out letters A and B when I found a fresh batch of 200 dinosaurs not currently on either list. Our work will never be done. Say, how much do we get per article? ;)--Firsfron 00:22, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Not sure if you use it, but the definitive list of dinosaur genera is George Olshevsky's, which can be found here. I'll work on a few articles tonight, but honestly if I had to pick between a well-known genus to write about, and say... Brachypodosaurus, it isn't a hard decision. Thanks a lot for creating stubs though! There were definitely a lot of missing dinos. If I write one article a day, it will only take me, let's see... 3 years to write them all! Heh. Sheep81 01:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, now I see that site is listed in the external links at the bottom of the LoD... so never mind that question. Sheep81 01:38, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

The DinoGeorge list is good, but it's not totally complete. I've found quite a few dinosaurs that are not on that list. So...you're working on Brachypodosaurus right now? ;) Just kidding. I know Brachypodosaurus isn't very thrilling, but I'm hoping someone will eventually work on it (and its 500 other sibling stubs). Many of the "articles" can simply be created by redirecting to other articles. That isn't so tedious, until you're doing hundreds of them, that is... ;)--Firsfron 03:58, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? Please post your suggestions here. Cheers, Shanel 20:19, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

New tasks

I've successfully created an open list of tasks on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs main page for those who would actually like to know what to do with their time on the project. Add tasks as you wish, not too long though! Add your name to tasks you wish to be part of & that's as complicated as it gets... Thanks, Spawn Man 23:26, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

List of dinosaurs standards

Are we including every name ever published in any sort of media? Cause a lot of the names on there were just published in newspapers or tossed around on the internet, and were never formally scientifically published (nomen nudum). It doesn't particularly matter to me, just wondering. Sheep81 01:33, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, it is important to have a list of all of them. If people are searching for a particular dinosaur, we want them to be able to find it, even if the status of the name isn't official. I've several books which only refer to dinosaurs by their discovery name, because the dinosaur hadn't yet been fully described in a scientific publication. We can always redirect the informal name to the scientific article (which is what I've been working on for a few days). The redirect function works well to send readers to the pertinent article. Several genera have never been fully published; we should list them on the LoD page, even though they have not been formally published, because even partial information is better than no information at all. We don't need a complete article for dinosaurs with duplicate names, but a redirect, from the name it was informally known as, to the main scientific article, is a good idea. Just my two cents. --Firsfron 03:31, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Works for me. Maybe we could have some sort of note on the LoD page for dinosaurs which are not officially named, or only italicize valid names. Alternatively, when an invalid name redirects to another page, perhaps there should be some sort of mention on that page as to why it redirected there. Just tossing ideas around. This is all going to be a lot of work! Sheep81 03:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree on all of those suggestions (and had already considered a few of them)--I think they are good ideas. The problem is implementing all of them. Our hands are full as it is. The italicization is pretty important, but I was hoping we could get some sort of bot to do it. It's just too much to add italics to 1,000 articles. On redirecting: of course there should be a mention of why the reader was redirected. However, I feel this is a down-the-road project. Right now, we have no idea how many pages will redirect to Apatosaurus, for example. So until we've got all the redirecting done, it makes more sense to add a note saying 'Apatosaurus was also known as ...' at the end, so they all can be included at the same time, instead of many edits to each article. Again, just my two cents.--Firsfron 04:07, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed in all respects. Consensus gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. :) Sheep81 21:54, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I will not rest, I will not stop, I will not eat anything but my keyboard

Well, actually, that's all a lie to get your attention to: The Big New Section On The Project Page!!!!!!. Yes, you may have noticed above the tasks section the section named "The Big 20". The new section is there to provide you with the main dinosaurs that we should be focussing on to get to the main page! After one of the articles is featured, I will remove it & add a new one to the list. It may take a while, but with all our help, it should be a breeze! They're all pretty well known, so finding info on them shouldn't take too long to find. Basically, go to town on the twenty dinosaurs until they're awesome. Contact me if you need anything else. Spawn Man 09:16, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the Big 20 is a really good idea, as it helps to focus our efforts, and I know that you are only trying to move the project forward, but I think statements like "Everyone's waking hours on the project should be spent worrying about how this task, the main task, is going" do something of a disservice to the other tasks that we have ongoing. I agree that the Big 20 should be our Main Task, but let's not allow it to completely overshadow everything else. A little moderation would be good. Soo 11:36, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

It was only an overemphasis on the idea, not to be taken to heart at all..... However, as I pointed out, how can the project be taken seriously if none of the main articles are up to even good status? Spawn Man 03:44, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Stubs

The majority of dinosaur articles seem to be sub-stubs. This can discourage people from expanding the articles (red links are a good way to advertise that an article is needed on a topic, and some people prefer creating their own articles), and gives a very poor impression of the dinosaur coverage in Wikipedia (since it's hard to find the real articles).

I recommend actively focusing on expanding them to the level of the "ideal stub" (at the very least, 3–10 short sentences).

-Pat | 68.84.34.154 21:06, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good, but as there are >1,000 articles about individual dinosaurs, it could take awhile. Sheep81 21:13, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

You sure do have a lot of buts sheepy.... Spawn Man 22:45, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

People may get a "very poor impression of the dinosaur coverage in Wikipedia" because the dinosaur coverage on Wikipedia is very poor. We're slowly rectifying, that, but it will take time. There's no way 1,000 articles of "3-10 short sentences" are going to spring out effortlessly. It takes time, people. Until we have time to get to each article, the sub-stubs are better than nothing. 68.84... says some editors "prefer creating their own articles", but that's not really even the spirit of Wikipedia: we're here to build an encyclopedia together, not "claim" articles, or leave articles red in the hopes that someone will write a full-length article. --Firsfron 04:39, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

A few, strong articles are vastly more useful than over a thousand articles that could easily be summarized in a list. We're not a dictionary: The focus should be on raising articles to good or featured status, or at the very least raising them to the minimal level required for stubs, with a good summary, references, and hopefully more than the bare minimum of 3 sentences.

The Big 20 list is the right idea, but its too large and unfocused. A model similar to the collaboration of the week might be a good idea. A new article to focus on every month would help keep interest up, and prevent the dilution of the limited pool of contributors involved with the WikiProject over a large number of equally-important articles. It also has the benefit of being more inclusive. Editors can work on their favorites and hope to get some collaborative help, even if it doesn't fit in the arbitrarily-chosen top 20 (and there are certainly some important dinosaurs missing from the list, such as the Hadrosaurus foulkii).

And while it's a secondary topic that has little to do with focusing on good articles (or at least articles meeting the basic standards of a stub) instead of stubs, to a certain degree we are here to claim articles. Most high quality articles are primarily written by just a few people, and in the case of non-marquee topics, that often degenerates to just one. A sense of ownership is even more important for maintenance: High quality articles remain high quality articles because one or more experts in the topic keep a watch on the articles, and continually revert vandalism too stealthy to be caught by the generalists who patrol RC, reword new content to a NPOV or help wikify it or incorporate it smoothly into the rest of the article, add new content and references based to reflect the current literature, and do general maintenance like updating links.

-Pat | 68.84.34.154 13:13, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Alas, Hadrosaurus was no. 21. Spawn Man 00:56, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

If I have the time, I'm still going to work on it ;) -Pat | 68.84.34.154 14:36, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

We are not here to claim articles, 68.84. Wikipedia is a collaborative effort, and I disagree with your claim that "Most high quality articles are primarily written by just a few people". I haven't seen references to back that up, and as I look at a random sampling of good articles (Oxyrhynchus, a featured article with dozens of contributers; Galileo Galilei, same; and Enigma machine, same), I can't help but think that your claim is largely unfounded.

You claim that "A few, strong articles are vastly more useful than over a thousand articles that could easily be summarized in a list." While that's true, it ignores the idea of people building up the articles after they're created. Which is something that happens at Wikipedia. That's the nature of this encyclopedia. Wikipedia has been around since 2001. Leaving these articles uncreated for the past five years hasn't helped create them. It's certainly possible that creating them will help the ball get rolling. And in several instances, this is already the case.

You cite violation of policy, and claim the article on Breviceratops is a violation. But once the article is built up, it won't be a violation. I find it irritating that someone who doesn't actually work on the project is someone who wants to detract from what we're doing. If you think Breviceratops is a violation of WP policy, by all means, fix it. The current single sentence can easily be expanded to three sentences by anyone.

The stated goal of this project is to create a half-way decent stub article for every dinosaur. We're not going to get there by leaving articles red, because the articles have been uncreated for the past five years. Your way, leaving the articles red and uncreated, hasn't really worked: a thousand dinosaur articles remained uncreated. Give us some time, here (more than a few days, at least!), and see if the articles don't improve. It just takes time.--Firsfron 22:46, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Personally I prefer to write decent-length stubs, but if other people want to write ministubs then that's up to them. Soo 14:29, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Your Podokesaurus is an excellent example of a large stub/small article. On the other hand, Breviceratops is just a dictionary definition, which is actually a violation of policy. -Pat | 68.84.34.154 14:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the compliment, but the comparison is not entirely fair. The nature of dinosaurs is that we know very little about an awful lot of them. The Breviceratops article could definitely be enhanced but there are plenty of others where a couple of sentences is about the best we can do. Certainly the amount of info available on Podokesaurus is well above average. I just try to include as much of the obvious information as possible, and stick in any additional interesting facts I encounter during research. Soo 15:38, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

There's a policy somewhere in our parent project (Tree of Life) that says subjects should be covered from the top down. In other words, if you don't have a ton to write on each individual member of a family, just add a little info on each member to the page for that family, and branch off into a seperate (genus) article when enough info accumulates to warrent one. If we adopted this poilcy it would certainly cut down on the number of stubs. One solution to the current proliferation, then, could be to simply copy all the info from stubs into their respective higher-order taxa pages, and make the stub a re-direct to that entry. Thism ight involve more editorial work, but would be a little less overwhelming than trying to *expand* every stub out there into a full-fledged article which, as Soo said, is just impossible given the fragmentary nature of most dinosaur species. A lot of current stubs simply re-state info that's so general it could apply to the entire family or order anyway! Dinoguy2 18:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I dunno, Dinoguy. You raise some good points. But I disagree that a lot of current stubs simply re-state info that's so general it could apply to the entire family or order. Since I've included "location" in most of my own stubs, and seen it used in almost every other article, and since that's not something that the rest of the family or order usually share, I don't think that statement is fair. I'm not overwhelmed by the current project, but am happy to work on the articles. I don't see it as overwhelming, but I do see having to copy all of the stub info and move it back into taxa pages as a big set-back, taking considerable time, and really overwhelming, especially since it will eventually be moved back anyway.--Firsfron 23:08, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Take a cooler guys. Honestly, you're getting in a bunch about articles on little known dinosaurs. I think we should keep the stubs. If you guys all know as much as you say you do, then boosting up a one paragraph stub to a three or even two paragraph stub shouldn't be that hard?

All it takes to get an article rolling is one contributor. For example; me. This project was inactive when I came along. But after I spammed a few people & posted a few sign posts places, all you guys came running along. If I hadn't done that, you guys wouldn't have the oppurtunity to argue about which stubs should stay. So, consider the once inactive dinosaur project as a stub. Get my point??!!?

Plus, I honestly don't like creating an article on my own, even though I do. Honestly, who's played one of those scary computer games? You're on your own, monsters are leaping out at you, your running out of ammo. Then some marines join you. You feel so much better that they're there helping you out. Think of it like editing an article. If you're the sole editor, you have no idea if you've done a good job, or if it's going to get the "game over" (a.k.a. "speedy delete"). You feel like you've failed if it gets deleted. You lose confidence & you move on to something else. Now, if someone else comes along, spruces it up, makes it more than a stub, then it's great. For example, (& yes, I know I go on about it alot) the Dinosaur article I got to the main page. Honestly, I did no research practically for it at all. It was all already there. All I did was join it & add to it. So that's why having a stub there, with other contributors, is better. People feel safer & if you go down, then you're not in it alone. Plus you've got a basic starter & you need to do minimal work to get it up to around a few paragraphs.

So my final verdict is that we should keep the stubs so others may contribute to them, as it is a start. As someone up there said (too many posts it's hard to keep track!), that not creating them hasn't helped them get any better? I mean what's to be afraid of if you leave it as a stub? It'll get worse?! You have everything to gain & nothing to lose! If someone really wanted to create their own article from the stub, surely the'd be able to delete the one paragraph & start from scratch, as Sheep81 did with a couple of dinosaur articles. Spawn Man 00:56, 13 March 2006 (UTC). P.S. If I don't get an Oscar for that heart warming speech, I swear I'll create a dinosaur article called, Stuffallofyouwhinersasaurus!! Thanks....

Just a couple? Heh. Sheep81 01:46, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I constantly forget to rub everyone's ego... :). Spawn Man 04:35, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Woah, woah. I said *could be* a solution. Just throwing that out there. I do think that budding articles off more genral articles might be a good guideline, but the easiest thing to do on all fronts would be to limit that kind of thing to new artciles, not already-created stubs. Especially for small groups or groups that are very similar, like Epidendrosaurus (which really covers scansoriopterygidae), and ornithomimidae (which covers ornithomimosauria, ornithomiminae, etc). This policy already seems to be in place for subfamilies in general, actually. Maybe we should put that in writing (no subfamily pages, and lump superfamily taxa or equivelent as needed).Dinoguy2 05:08, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with ideas. :)--Firsfron 06:38, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I think we need to stay flexible. Our primary aim should be to create good articles. Nothing else. If there is enough to say about a single subfamily that you can write a strong, well-referenced stand-alone article on it, then I don't see any reason to lump it back into a higher taxa. On the other hand, if you run across a bunch of related stubs and want to write a new article using them as a base, then that's great too. As long as it makes a stronger article, it's improving the coverage of dinosaurs in the encyclopedia. But the new article should be an improvement and expansion, not just a simple cut and paste organizational change. I've seen articles damaged and destroyed by well-intentioned attempts to adhere slavishly to guidelines.

For the moment, it's probably a good idea to hold off on creating new stubs: They are of limited value, and they are obscuring all the good articles. But we don't need to start deleting them. And having a secondary aim of improved targeted articles is also good, but it shouldn't stop anyone who wants to work on a more obscure corner. It all helps the encyclopedia grow. The rest of the taxa can catch up later.

-Pat | 68.84.34.154 14:36, 13 March 2006 (UTC)