User talk:Abyssal/Archive 6

Sepkoski

If you are using Peters' database of Sepkoski to create articles, please credit Peters. He has altered it from the original, and this requires annotation. Please do not cite Sepkoski alone, then link to Peters, but rather create a citation that includes both.

Are these articles bot generated or bot assisted in any way?

--68.127.233.138 (talk) 04:09, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

What modifications did Peters make? He lists them. You didn't read about the database before linking? Go to his homepage, click on the databases links, and follow to the front of the Sepkoski, then see what he made. Even if he didn't make any modifications you should have read all appropriate credits and credited what you are actually using, the derivative source, rather than implying you are linking to the original source. --68.127.233.138 (talk) 04:12, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

--Sepkiski's list, and I suppose even modified, is not the best or final authority for fossil genera in spite of its prevalent use. Genera contained within are taken from published sources and compiled with ages given in order to study extinctions and recoveries. It may be a good starting point but for true authority and complete taxonomy, closer to original sources are needed. Not to discredit his work, but I would simply use other references. JM (talk0 —Preceding undated comment added 22:02, 23 August 2009 (UTC).

I am using paleodb as the primary source and Sepkoski as secondary. Do you any others sources I should look into using? --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:15, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

I also asked if these articles are bot generated in any way. Are you gathering the data with a bot and creating articles? --68.127.233.138 (talk) 13:50, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

A bot is in the works, but it hasn't created any articles yet. Before that happens, it will have to seek community approval. I will drop you a note when that is ready to happen so you can contribute to the discussion. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:14, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Then to be clear, the long lists of species in the tables were not generated by the bot? Your discussions suggest that the tables were generated by using a bot to pull the data. --69.225.12.99 (talk) 21:47, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Correct, the lists themselves were not created by the bot. The bot will fill in the data (it is currently waiting approval), but it did not actually create the list. This diff provides an example of what the bot will do when it is approved. --ThaddeusB (talk) 22:39, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Response to Laramie Formation comment

Why did I undo what you did? I gave my reason before, which you apparently did not read. Here it is again verbatim: "Abyssal, I appreciate the time you have taken to "tweak" the taxa lists for the various geological formations. However, in doing so you really dumbed down the lists by removing the higher categories. This, and your restructuring the data into simplistic tables, has made the lists less valuable for people wanting to cut and paste the lists to their term papers, scientific papers, etc. Also, although it is nice that your support the inclusion of art to the paleo articles, they mislead Wiki readers into thinking more is known about what an animal looks like than is often the case. That plays into the hands of Wikipedia critics who say the information in the articles is misleading, wrong, simplistic, etc. If you really feel a need to use a generic illustration, then place it in the article about a taxon and link from the list rather than placing the art on the specimen list. Furthermore, your restructuring of the lists to added columns(such as "Description")often duplicates in a very substandard way the information found in separate articles. So what is the point? Anky-man 13:48, 4 September 2008 (UTC)" I have stopped contributing to Wiki since your dumbing down the articles makes my time wasted, and frankly I have a more important things to do. Anky-man 14:09, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Is Wikipedai really intended to be a source for cut and paste jockies? Rich Farmbrough, 16:06, 12 September 2009 (UTC).

Thanks

Thanks for the barnstar. I really don't like messing up other peoples work without what I see as good reason, which includes adding information to make an article more comprehensive and accurate. I'm in the fortunate postition of having prefessinal references readly available, and I'm glad to use my time to make improvements where possible. I know that both the Wiki List of Nautiloids and Wiki list of Ammonites has needed attention for some time.

Regards, JM talk 8/23/09 —Preceding undated comment added 21:48, 23 August 2009 (UTC).

Hi

You gussed correctly, I am new. I'll be editing dinosaur-realated articles most of the time, and also are you the user that created the "List of Dinosaurs" article? If so, excellent work. --Dinomaster10231 (talk) 16:32, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

Articles for deletion nomination of List of prehistoric foraminiferans

I have nominated List of prehistoric foraminiferans, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of prehistoric foraminiferans. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. J04n(talk page) 12:21, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Response went through

--69.225.3.119 (talk) 00:59, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

BAG and BOTS

I posted this asking User:Hesperian to get involved about the BAG drive-by approval process that may see your poorly thought-out bot, with unmonitored data, without community consensus, be approved for a trial run. --69.225.3.119 (talk) 01:37, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

List of marine gastropod genera in the fossil record

Hi Abyssal, I just wanted to say that there was a very good reason why the list had that title rather than the shorter "List of prehistoric marine gastropod genera" which is more or less how it started out. "List of prehistoric gastropod genera" I think was how it began. The thing is, that is that a very large number of the genera listed are still extant, still living and doing very well. Almost every genus of marine gastropod that's even been found in the Pleistocene is still alive and kicking. It's not at all like dinosaur genera, which are all extinct and so are genuinely "prehistoric". If it's OK with you I may change the title back again: User:JoJan and I spent quite some time discussing and refining to get to that title. But I wanted to let you weigh in on this if you would like to. Thanks and best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 21:55, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, I will take your no as a yes?! That was a joke, right?? Thanks. Invertzoo (talk) 22:05, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

OK, shame on you Abyssal, that was Abysmal... ha ha ha... Invertzoo (talk) 23:30, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

Is there a reason to not use the even shorter options of List of gastropod genera or even List of gastropods? --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:08, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Thought I would also give you a copy of what I replied to ThaddeusB:

Too be honest, these Seplowski lists are not very useful. We seriously considered deleting our list article altogether about a year ago, but instead we did a huge amount of work to turn it into something vaguely respectable-looking, but still I don't think it is a very useful list at all. It absolutely cannot be called a "list of gastropod genera", and it certainly cannot be called a "list of gastropods". It is not even remotely complete in either of those ways and is unlikely to ever become so. This is why:

The list contains only those marine gastropod genera that have been found in the fossil record. It includes no land or freshwater gastropod genera whatsoever, of which there are a very large number. It includes no sea slug genera whatsoever, of which there are many hundreds. It includes no species of any kind whatsoever. Many gastropod genera have been found in the fossil record, but countless thousands of minute or fragile shelled genera have never been found as fossils and probably never will be. Most genera that have no shells left no trace whatsoever in the fossil record. Even in terms of larger, more solidly shelled species, only a tiny fraction of all the genera that ever lived have been found in the fossil record, which is of course extremely patchy and incomplete by its very nature.

The list we have does however include a number of bogus genera which were first described as gastropods, but which are no longer considered to be gastropods, and which in many cases are not even considered to be mollusks!!

The list is arranged alphabetically, not by family. All in all it is not very useful at all to anyone who is interested in living gastropods. I am not even sure how useful it is to paleontologists who study gastropods.

I imagine many of these same objections apply to the other group lists from this same source. Sorry, but there you go... best, Invertzoo (talk) 18:16, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Since several different parties are involved in this discussion, I have centralized discussion to: User_talk:ContentCreationBOT. If you could direct further comments there, that would be helpful. Thank you. --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:29, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

Hadrosaurid diet barnstar

Thanks for the barnstar, Abyssal, but I haven't even gotten to the '80s yet! (actually, not a whole lot left to add; Galton on posture and cheeks, Bakker's Dinosaur Heresies, flesh out Weishampel's work, put in the '80s-90s consensus, and then integrate the recent stuff a bit). J. Spencer (talk) 16:11, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Table colors

Hi Abyssal, sorry been swamped with work this weekend so not much time for wiking. New colro scheme looks good to me. Could we make sure to reproduce the color key on top of each separate table to minimize reference scrolling in paleobiota articles? Dinoguy2 (talk) 16:58, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Is there any way to make the color key smaller? Or switch the colors so everything that generally falls under "valid true taxon, definitely in this formation" and "parataxon or uncertain provenance" are dark/washed out hues vs bright/light hues so it's easy to tell at a glance what's what? To be honest, not having memorized all the colors yet, I find myself constantly scrolling up and down in these articles. Dinoguy2 (talk) 18:54, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Looks great! As for colors, maybe even just making the current ones darker would work (keeping the valid taxa white). Maybe it's my brightness settings but they all tend to blur together on my screen. Dinoguy2 (talk) 22:02, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Looking good, should be pretty unobtrusive in table sections. Dinoguy2 (talk) 15:57, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Looks fine to me mate. I think you might be right that the color issue is my monitor settings so don't worry about that now, but it would be good to get some outside opinions on it. Dinoguy2 (talk) 21:26, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Hey, sorry about that. I did remove the purple/small text since I thought it was from the older version of the key rather than newer. I see it's in the new version now. As for Ricardoestesia... The problem is, formations include taxa, not names. Ricardoestesia is an alternate name for the same taxon represented by Richardoestesia. Junior subjective synonyms should be included as they're based on different specimens that were once thought to be different taxa. Junior objective synonyms like Richardo vs Ricardo were never thought to be distinct, just two names for the exact same thing (and in this case, a spelling error which is not even officially recognized as a "synonym" by any taxonomic body. As I said in the edit summary, biota tables are completely different animals from, say, List of dinosaurs. One lists names, the other lists taxa, and mixing the two gets confusing. Dinoguy2 (talk) 21:05, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Calverpeton

The article Calverpeton has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Probable hoax. No hits in Google News, Books or Scholar.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the Proposed Deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The Speedy Deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and Articles for Deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Fences&Windows 03:18, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah. The reason I had trouble finding anything was that it isn't called Calverpeton. The name of the species is Galverpeton ibericum, with a 'G'. Here is the describing paper: [1]. Why did you start an article on this species without knowing the correct spelling or presenting the original description? Fences&Windows 02:01, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Because Abyssal was probably using this site to reference the list of extinct amphibians. It'd be nice to present the original description, but this isn't always possible since some papers are very hard to find, or expensive to obtain. And, despite your phrasing, it's not as if Abyssal knew that the spelling was incorrect when he started the article. Also, it's a genus, not a species. Thanks for catching the typo, though, Fences. Firsfron of Ronchester 02:22, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

No controversy here, I don't think. Just a typo in the source. No biggie. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 02:34, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I've added some sources. The type specimen, and only specimen, was named Galverpeton ibericum, so there's no need to correct me re: genus vs species. I don't mind stub creation, but they should all have at least one good source to verify the content. Web page lists may not be reliable. Fences&Windows 02:47, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

The article is shaping up very nicely due to your efforts, Fences. Please continue your excellent research and additions to this article. Firsfron of Ronchester 05:46, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

"Name"?

I know the scientific name should type in Name. But i see lots of scientific name in wikipedia were type in "Name". Why?

Is that official rules that Nomen nudum, Nomen oblitum, Nomen dubium should type in "Name"? or it is just a wikipedia rules? User:Devilfish1962 01:43, 26 Nov. 2009 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Bio-star
		I award you this barnstar for making several quality stubs about geologic formations in a row. I dream of horses If you reply here, please leave me a {{Talkback}} message on my talk page. @ 19:07, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Idea

It's a very good idea, but it sounds like a massive undertaking. I have my hands full trying to improve info for general-audience articles, essentially transcribing data from whole sets of papers is a bit beyond me personally. But I'd definitely try to help in a limited capacity. Dinoguy2 (talk) 19:45, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like a very useful concept, and, as Dinoguy notes, a massive undertaking. I know that there are a few parallels out there (The Theropod Database for specimens and bibliographies of theropods, the online Dinosaur Encyclopedia 10.0, Tracy Ford's Paleofiles, the Glut encyclopedia series), however a wiki format would have two major advantages: these are the work of single individuals and only stay as up-to-date as the individuals can manage; and, aside from the Theropod Database, all of the others cost money. The Open Dinosaur model is probably the basic plan; wonder if they would be interested, or if they'd prefer to focus on their project. J. Spencer (talk) 00:09, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

It was there for ages and i was going to right something else but when my computer froze up i err started pressing buttons, i probally killed it then, but yes it is a good idea though like i siad i wont be able to help (i dont know about stuff like that) Spinodontosaurus (talk) 16:53, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

Images on article

I noticed you voiced your opinion in the discussion page of the article List of alleged alien beings. I have added my answer to the removal of my images and I would like to invite you to read it. Thanks

Thanks on your support for the inclusion of the images. --Camilo Sanchez (talk) 00:11, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

List of prehistoric barnacles

Here, you restored a largely empty table, in place of a much more frugal list in columns. I can see that the table format might be useful when the cells are filled with their intended data, but while it only contains generic names, I really can't see the point. I hope you won't mind that I have turned it back into a list, at least until more data is added; your seemingly hasty revert also undid other unambiguously beneficial changes, like adding Category:Barnacles, and pointing the link for the genus Verruca away from "verruca". --Stemonitis (talk) 00:24, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Terms

Unfortunately, thanks to the banishment of paraphyletic groups those are the best you're gonna get I'm afraid. Dinoguy2 (talk) 01:20, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Categories

Hi Abyssal,

I'm not sure that categories like Category: Formations with 3 dinosaur genera are a good idea. It would require updating constantly, as new finds are made, and it also makes it look as if only that number of dinosaurs are found in that formation. It also strikes me as overcategorization. Was this discussed anywhere? Firsfron of Ronchester 03:32, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, understood. Well, good luck. Here's a link to how to hide maintenance categories so readers don't see them. Happy editing, Firsfron of Ronchester 03:43, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

No, no... thank you. ;) Firsfron of Ronchester 03:50, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

2010 Table

I like it! One thing I was thinking about when looking at the 2009 table, is maybe it would be useful to break them down into newly described species and a separate table for new names for previously described taxa (reclassified species as opposed to new species). It was a bit jarring to see the fairly old drawing of Zanabazar up there alongside Anchiornis etc.! Dinoguy2 (talk) 14:32, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

A bunch of dinosaurs listed in 2009 were put there from their online pre-pront versions of the papers, hence there are a lot of stragglers. Online-only doesn't count as published, and there isn't even a solid guarantee that some of these things will hit print in 2010 at all. Same thing happened with Aerosteon, for example. Published online in 2008, wasn't in print till 2009, so we had to change the authority date. Technically all names are nomen manuscriptum until they're in print, until such a time as the ICZN etc. start recognizing online publications as valid. Dinoguy2 (talk) 18:48, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

No, they usually don't make retroactive changes to the code for that very reason. Actually I don't know why journals do online pre-print at all. It's a very very bad idea for taxonomy. If a paper comes out tomorrow naming some hadrosaur Beishanlong, the authors of the ornithomimid are screwed. This is almost exactly what happened with Ultrasaurus and even Epidendrosaurus. Dinoguy2 (talk) 18:57, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi Anyssal, I don't see why we can't mark extant taxa, if it's a predominantly extinct fauna (mark extinct if the other way around). Is the heart symbol standard? It looks odd to me, but I guess equally as odd as the cross for extinct. Dinoguy2 (talk) 00:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

User:Progorgonops12

Hi, I saw the welcome you left on this user's page. I had noticed him yesterday while patrolling new pages, as he created an attack page and another nonsense page. Looking back over his previous contribs I found a lot of paleontology articles where he had removed lines from infoboxes, changed genus names and other text, and so on, always without explanation. I've reverted the majority of it, but I'd appreciate if someone who knows more about the area could look at a few of those contributions and determine whether they were useful or just vandalism. Thanks—  Glenfarclas  (talk) 23:36, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Signpost interview

Hi Abyssal, User:Mabeenot is writing an article for The Signpost and wanted to do an interview with WP:DINO editors. The interview questions are here. Since you're a prolific editor on the project, I thought you might want to comment. Firsfron of Ronchester 08:56, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Range templates

I just reverted your addition of a fossil range template to Oryzomyini, because with only an arrow at the very right it didn't seem to add much useful information. Perhaps we could make a separate template to show only the Cenozoic or so, which would allow us to show more detail in these fossil ranges? Ucucha 20:06, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Sol

No, I just forgot. Here it is. -RadicalOne•^{Contact Me}•_{Chase My Tail} 03:43, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Non Free Files in your User Space

Hey there Abyssal, thank you for your contributions! I am a bot alerting you that Non-free files are not allowed in the user or talk-space. I removed some files that I found on User:Abyssal/List of dinosaurs (draft). In the future, please refrain from adding fair-use files to your user-space drafts or your talk page.

• See a log of files removed today here.

• Shut off the bot here.

• Report errors here.

Thank you, -- DASHBot (talk) 05:04, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Fossil Plant Articles

I've started several palaeobotany stubs on Alethopteris, Neuropteris, and Annularia, mainly because I have great pictures of them from the State Museum of Pennsylvania. You seem like the type that could contribute effectively to them, or know someon that would want to. I hope you can contribute. Jim Stuby (talk) 03:00, 13 March 2010 (UTC)