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Wikipedia Signpost — 2 March 2009

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This week, the Wikipedia Signpost published volume 5, issue 9, which includes these articles:

Delivered by §hepBot (Disable) at 20:06, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for White-capped Albatross

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Updated DYK query On March 3, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article White-capped Albatross, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

thx Victuallers (talk) 19:51, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Birds March newsletter

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The March 2009 issue of the Bird WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.
This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 21:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Speckled Teal

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Regarding your edits at Speckled Teal, I was just about to revert as you did, just a quick note to say I've already tried to contact RedwoodsHermit, twice, but both times he/she removed my comments without reply. Cheers SpitfireTally-ho! 08:55, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Signpost — 9 March 2009

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This week, the Wikipedia Signpost published volume 5, issue 10, which includes these articles:

Delivered by §hepBot (Disable) at 00:54, 10 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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Thanks for uploading File:Climber on Granite.JPG. The image has been identified as not specifying the copyright status of the image, which is required by Wikipedia's policy on images. Even if you created the image yourself, you still need to release it so Wikipedia can use it. If you don't indicate the copyright status of the image on the image's description page, using an appropriatecopyright tag, it may be deleted some time in the next seven days. If you made this image yourself, you can use copyright tags like {{PD-self}} (to release all rights),{{self|CC-by-sa-3.0|GFDL}} (to require that you be credited), or any tag here - just go to the image, click edit, and add one of those. If you have uploaded other images, please verify that you have provided copyright information for them as well.

For more information on using images, see the following pages:

This is an automated notice by STBotI. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. NOTE: once you correct this, please remove the tag from the image's page. STBotI (talk) 19:03, 11 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

feedback

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From a quick look over (I'll give it more of one soon, just fell off a plane and am badly tired) the Physiology sections is somewhat superfluous. As a rule we don't tend to dwell too much on what makes a higher level taxa, such as a family or order, different from other families or orders on a species article. But your dedication to references is excellent, and I encourage that wholeheartedly. I like the idea of listing the known colonies of the species too. Sabine's Sunbird talk 06:24, 15 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]


The Wikipedia Signpost  — 16 March 2009

Delivered by §hepBot (Disable) at 23:59, 16 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Elephant bird

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I in turn take your point; if one goes direct to the Elephant bird page then other species are indeed redlinked (although the illustrated skeleton is of Aepyornis maximus). Having said that, it would require significant erudition on the part of the average editor to search from the latin name. Ideally, every red-linked species name should receive an article, even if only an encyclopedic stub. We could then abolish the redirect and let seekers follow the blue links; [[elephant bird could then be reconstuted either as a listpage or as a disambig. Failing that, we could make Elephant bird a list page anyway, and link the various species under the title, moving the present text to the title of Aepyornis maximus. some rewriting would be necessary, and I dislike list pages full of redlinks. If you really feel strongly I will re-delete the redirect, but my gut instinct is to leave it alone and see if the topic grows. But I am not dogmatic (or bloody-minded) about it. Let me know your further thoughts.--Anthony.bradbury"talk" 19:26, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Redirects

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Redirects are basically free, and if you made that mistake, why would you assume no one else ever will? I'm lead to believe, in fact, that deleting a redirect is more work on the server than just leaving it there forever anyways. But I'm usually of the line of thought "If one person made this mistake, why think that'll be the last time someone does?" WilyD 12:22, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

List of state ornithological agencies

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Hi. Thank you for taking the initiative to create a list of state bird groups. I hope the list encourages the development of articles about some more of the individual groups.

However, it is erroneous to call these "state agencies," as they are private nonprofit organizations. I took the initiative to rename the article to call them "organizations." For similar reasons, I movedList of Canadian provincial ornithological agencies.

Additionally, some aspects of this article (and the Canadian article) are inconsistent with Wikipedia policy and guidelines. (Now that you've been engaged with Wikipedia for a couple of months, it's a good time to get better acquainted with the details of policies and guidelines.) A significant concern is that the articles are currently set up as weblinks directories -- something that Wikipedia is NOT (also see Wikipedia guidelines on external links). The organization websites can be linked as references, but only internal links (to other Wikipedia articles) should be included in the text of an article. Furthermore, there are some style issues, in that boldface should not be used in the manner done in these lists -- see Manual of Style for more information. I've made some changes to the U.S. article, but I'm afraid that more are needed. --Orlady (talk) 15:23, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you that these websites are the types of links that may be appropriate to include in articles, either as references or in an external links section, per WP:EL. However, item 2 inWP:EL#Important points to remember states: "External links should not normally be used in the body of an article. Instead, include appropriate external links in an "External links" section at the end and/or in the appropriate location within an infobox or navbox." Words linked within the article text (or list text) should point to other Wikipedia resources, not to external websites. List of wealthiest charitable foundations, List of British professional bodies, and List of cystic fibrosis organizations are examples of organization lists that appear to be consistent with the Wikipedia external linking guidelines. --Orlady (talk) 15:56, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As a general rule, contributors are advised to rely on Wikipedia policies and guidelines rather than "it's done this way in other articles I found". There are plenty of noncompliant articles in Wikipedia, including List of ornithological societies, but I carefully selected examples that follow the guidelines, including one list article that is a featured list -- and thus is supposed to exemplify Wikipedia's best list-making work. Everyone, particularly new contributors, does things that don't comply with guidelines, and Wikipedia will not collapse because it has content that doesn't fully comply with its guidelines. However, I have found that things go better when we become familiar with policies and guidelines -- and try to follow them. Wikipedia policy specifically discourages creation of articles that exist primarily to be lists of external links (see WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files). On the other hand,WP:LISTS is a guideline on the appropriate uses of lists. Furthermore, both logic and the Wikipedia guidelines on linking (particualrly WP:Linking#Piped links) indicate that we should "make sure that it is ... clear what the link refers to without having to follow the link." Thus, a link named "Alabama" should not lead to "Alabama Ornithological Society." For some examples of list articles that have incorporated external links in the list without confusing the user with misleading labels, see List of museums in Colorado, List of herbaria in North America, List of linguistics conferences. --Orlady (talk) 16:46, 21 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry that my eagerness to "fix" these articles has upset you. The List of state ornithological agencies article came to my attention because I had created the two existing articles about state ornithological organizations (the only blue links in the whole list). I was pleased to see your interest in building this topic, but I also saw some issues with the list article, and I wanted to (1) start making changes to resolve those issues and (2) make sure that you were aware of the policies and guidelines relevant to these types of lists. List articles and embedded lists that consist primarily of external links (like this article) often get deleted (or nominated for deletion) because they don't comply with guidelines on external linking -- for a recent example of this, see the recent edit history for Citizen science (specifically, this diff). I thought I could help a good contributor become a better contributor by alerting you to the relevant guidelines and policies. In my experience, it takes a long time to become familiar with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and even the most experienced user (a characterization that does not apply to me, by the way) may sometimes discover aspects of the guidelines that they didn't know about before. A cursory examination of your contributions history led me to conclude that you are an experienced contributor in article space but had not yet had very many run-ins with the "rules" of Wikipedia, so I thought I was making a straightforward statement when I advised you that "it's a good time to get better acquainted with the details of policies and guidelines."
In your most recent post on my talk page, you quoted extensively from WP:EL. Apparently we choose to emphasize different things in our reading of that guideline. Be that as it may, in my experience at Wikipedia I have found that the vast majority of contributors here place more weight on statements like "Long lists of links are not acceptable" than on the fact that the word "normally" appears in the middle of "External links should not normally be used in the body of an article."
I'm interested in your comment that "It is pretty apparent, that when the article is titled 'List of state ornithological organizations', and then the states are listed, that the hyperlink probably will take you there," as that's not "pretty apparent" to me. When I see the name "Alabama" followed by the name "Alabama Ornithological Society," and both names are hyperlinked, I would expect the second link to take me to "Alabama Ornithological Society," but I would not expect the "Alabama" link to do so. On the other hand, if the link appeared on the links list of a website or in a website directory (such as theOpen Directory Project, where I am a long-time contributor), I can see that logic. However, it is my understanding that list articles in Wikipedia are first and foremost articles, and that links in list articles should follow the same rules that apply in prose articles. In a prose article (for example, in a hypothetical article about birding in the southern U.S.), I don't believe that anyone would expect a hyperlink labeled "Alabama" to point to "Alabama Ornithological Society." --Orlady (talk) 01:28, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia SignpostWikipedia Signpost: 23 March 2009

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Delievered by SoxBot II (talk) at 04:52, 24 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia SignpostWikipedia Signpost: 30 March 2009

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Delievered by SoxBot II (talk) at 20:51, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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