Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Plants/Stub to Start drive
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Temporary stats log
[edit]This got put out quick and looks great! I want to get started working on this right away. If no one objects, I'm going to add a temporary list of improved articles under the stats section, just to track progress manually until a wikidata solution or something else is developed. Thanks again Eewilson for your work on this! Fritzmann (message me) 22:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
- Thank you! You go right ahead. Preface that it is manual and if or when an automated solution is implemented, it will replace this... or whatever. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 22:49, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Inconsistencies
[edit]There are some inconsistencies with the formatting suggested in this drive and the guidelines given at WP:WikiProject Plants/Template. I suggest bringing this drive into concordance with the existing template. Abductive (reasoning) 07:54, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
- Hi Abductive. Thank you for reading it and making the suggestion. It's great to have fresh eyes on it. Could you reply here with the inconsistencies you have found so that I can address them? – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 14:44, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
- I haven't forgotten to respond to this, but it will take me a while. I will say this; there is a reason why people don't just make Start-class plant articles; the description. Take for instance my most recent stub, Carpinus kawakamii. To get to Start-class I would have to take this description from the Flora of China;
Trees; bark dark gray. Branchlets brown, glabrous or sparsely pubescent. Petiole 0.8-1.5 cm, sparsely pubescent; leaf blade ovate-lanceolate or oblong-lanceolate, 4-5 × 1.8-2.5 cm, abaxially sparsely villous along veins, adaxially sparsely pubescent when young, glabrescent, base subrounded or subcordate, sometimes unequal, margin regularly and doubly serrate, sometimes simply serrate distally, apex acuminate or caudate-acuminate; lateral veins 10-15 on each side of midvein. Female inflorescence 4-6 × 2-2.5 cm; peduncle ca. 1 cm, densely pubescent; bracts semiovate, 1.8-2 cm, densely pubescent adaxially, outer margin irregularly coarsely dentate, without basal lobe, inner margin subfalcate or straight, entire, with ovate, inflexed basal lobe ca. 3 mm, apex acuminate; veins 5, reticulate veins prominent. Nutlet broadly ovoid, ca. 3 mm, sparsely resinous glandular, densely villous at apex, 6-ribbed. Fl. May-Jun, fr. Jul-Aug.
- and paraphrase it without plagiarizing it, while turning it into full, readable, understandable sentences with appropriate wikilinks to the more obscure glossary terms. I have only done it twice, as I did with Iberis amara. Abductive (reasoning) 09:32, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- That (in Iberis amara) is a good description, and it certainly could be in a Start-class article. But, it is one that would be required for a C-class article. The Stub-to-Start drive participants are using the assessment guidelines from the Plants project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants/Assessment#Start guidelines. These existed – they were not created for the purpose of this effort.
- There are multiple ways to write a species article, and each of us has a style we like. Certain elements are important, and it can be hard to look at someone else's style and consider it acceptable if it varies significantly from our own. The Taxon template is a guide that gives us something to follow for the ideal article. The ideal article with all of the elements of the Taxon template far surpasses a Start-class article. I have written some of those. They take time and research. That's not bad, but it's not the purpose of this drive.
- A result of imperfectly improving a Stub-class article is to get it to the next step so that it answers a few basic questions about the subject. It is expected that it will leave much more to do. That's not a bad thing. It is the natural progression of the encyclopedia. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 10:38, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- A few years ago, I was given the impression by the more experienced plant guys that to get to Start, a description was required. There is a philosophical consideration. For instance, I have created over 100 articles on species in the genus Prunus. All of these are small trees with white flowers that blossom in the spring, and produce a drupe. And most are obscure species found only in the wild. Thus, the description needs to help the readers distinguish between these species in the manner of a identification key (I used Mariana Yazbek's). Which means some text about axillary buds, leaf stipules, or grooves in the stones, which ends up approaching a full species description. Abductive (reasoning) 19:48, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- Abductive, it might be best for something like this to stick with what is written on our assessment page rather than what we have each grown accustomed to doing. I could personally toss in other items for each class, but that would not be effective and it would make me act like I'm "the boss". Finding the piece on the assessment page that describes what should be in an article for each class was very helpful. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 00:02, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not saying to change the written guidelines on what constitutes a Start-class. I'm just providing a perspective on why relatively few Stub-class articles on plants naturally just grow into Start-class without somebody being very intentional about it. User talk:BilledMammal is beside himself with the poor state of species stubs, such that he recently made huge lists of User:BilledMammal/Species (one sentence) (22,564 members), User:BilledMammal/Species (two sentence) (so large it times out), and User:BilledMammal/Species (three sentence) (34,327 members) stubs. So I hope that this drive will make a dent in the 200,000 or so extremely short species stubs. Abductive (reasoning) 01:09, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- Ahhh, okay. I see. Yes. I agree. Fortunately, there are only a little over 61,500 plant project stubs, and I don't know how to tell how many of them are species. I hope that this drive will do more than just get plant species articles turned from stub to start (a huge part of it). It could also help people to understand that adding the details needed to make an article better than a stub isn't that hard. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 01:24, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- I estimated that there are 80,000 plant species articles on Wikipedia. POWO currently accepts 359,892 species. 04:14, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- How did he pull those queries? – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 01:25, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- I think he's handy with Wikimedia tools. Abductive (reasoning) 04:14, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- Ahhh, okay. I see. Yes. I agree. Fortunately, there are only a little over 61,500 plant project stubs, and I don't know how to tell how many of them are species. I hope that this drive will do more than just get plant species articles turned from stub to start (a huge part of it). It could also help people to understand that adding the details needed to make an article better than a stub isn't that hard. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 01:24, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not saying to change the written guidelines on what constitutes a Start-class. I'm just providing a perspective on why relatively few Stub-class articles on plants naturally just grow into Start-class without somebody being very intentional about it. User talk:BilledMammal is beside himself with the poor state of species stubs, such that he recently made huge lists of User:BilledMammal/Species (one sentence) (22,564 members), User:BilledMammal/Species (two sentence) (so large it times out), and User:BilledMammal/Species (three sentence) (34,327 members) stubs. So I hope that this drive will make a dent in the 200,000 or so extremely short species stubs. Abductive (reasoning) 01:09, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- Abductive, it might be best for something like this to stick with what is written on our assessment page rather than what we have each grown accustomed to doing. I could personally toss in other items for each class, but that would not be effective and it would make me act like I'm "the boss". Finding the piece on the assessment page that describes what should be in an article for each class was very helpful. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 00:02, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
- A few years ago, I was given the impression by the more experienced plant guys that to get to Start, a description was required. There is a philosophical consideration. For instance, I have created over 100 articles on species in the genus Prunus. All of these are small trees with white flowers that blossom in the spring, and produce a drupe. And most are obscure species found only in the wild. Thus, the description needs to help the readers distinguish between these species in the manner of a identification key (I used Mariana Yazbek's). Which means some text about axillary buds, leaf stipules, or grooves in the stones, which ends up approaching a full species description. Abductive (reasoning) 19:48, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
- and paraphrase it without plagiarizing it, while turning it into full, readable, understandable sentences with appropriate wikilinks to the more obscure glossary terms. I have only done it twice, as I did with Iberis amara. Abductive (reasoning) 09:32, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
I need to be handy with the Wikimedia tools. – Elizabeth (Eewilson) (tag or ping me) (talk) 05:42, 18 October 2024 (UTC)