User talk:Jens Lallensack/Archive 1
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Parasaurolophus_crest_interior.jpg
Hi, I'm from the German Wikipedia. I like to use this Parasaurolophus picture for our Parasaurolophus article in the German Wikipedia (that is mostly a translation from the english one). I want to ask if I could upload it and the image description into the Wikimedia Commons? Thank you, --Jens Lallensack 22:13, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
- Hi Jens!
- It looks to be in the public domain (U.S. government image). You don't need my permission to upload a public domain image, but you're welcome to upload it. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 10:09, 2 November 2007 (UTC)
Hi Firsfron! I would like to update certain aspects in the Massospondylus article, if I'm allowed to. May I ask you to take a look for grammar and revert everything you are not happy about? Thanks, --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:14, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
- Hi Jens,
- You're absolutely welcome to do so! And I'd be glad to look over the grammar... I'm sure a few others are watching the article, too. Best, Firsfron of Ronchester 15:30, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
- I saw this because I have Firsfron's talkpage watchlisted, nice work! Fun to see that eve a featured article can be expanded that much. And I don't think you have to worry about "blowing it up", Tyrannosaurus is twice as long. So if you have more to add, please do. FunkMonk (talk) 14:50, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
- Thank you! Ok, I will try, but I would have to add a "Posture and gait" section. If the changes are not as optimal, please dont hesistate to revert it or to tell me. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:09, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
- I haven't reviewed all the changes (too late tonight), but what I've seen looks really good. Thanks for your work, Jens (and FM!) Firsfron of Ronchester 04:43, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
- I saw this because I have Firsfron's talkpage watchlisted, nice work! Fun to see that eve a featured article can be expanded that much. And I don't think you have to worry about "blowing it up", Tyrannosaurus is twice as long. So if you have more to add, please do. FunkMonk (talk) 14:50, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Hey Jens,
Just wanted to say thank you for all your work on Carnotaurus. I haven't even actually gotten around to reviewing the edits on Massospondylus (but I hope to soon). I don't have a lot of access to the papers in question, but will try to go through the articles as best as possible. Thanks again. Firsfron of Ronchester 05:57, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
- Hey Firsfron, I'm glad that I could help. I'm not ready with Carnotaurus yet, the expansion of the paleobiology section I'm currently working on is a bit tricky. Concerning Massospondylus Papers, no problem! Just wikimail me your e-mail-address. Best, --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:23, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Carnotaurus
The article Carnotaurus you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needed to be addressed. If these are fixed within 14 days, the article will pass, otherwise it will fail. See Talk:Carnotaurus for things which need to be addressed.
Zad68
17:17, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
Let me know when you're done
Hi Jens, let me know when you're done working on Carnotaurus and I'll update the status of the GA items. I expect that on my next look-through, all the GA boxes will be checked, and then I'll get someone to help me look it over before passing. Zad68
16:10, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
- I reviewed your latest updates, there is one last tiny issue, a "However" you can just delete, and we're done. I'll ask for that experienced reviewer to check it.
Zad68
18:37, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Carnotaurus
The article Carnotaurus you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Carnotaurus for comments about the article. Well done!
Zad68
21:16, 10 January 2013 (UTC)
- Congratulations, Jens! And thanks for all your work on this article. :) Firsfron of Ronchester 05:45, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
"smart quotes"
Hi Jens, I've noticed some of your content contains "smart quotes" or apostrophes instead of straight quotes. Can you explain why? Thanks... Zad68
14:46, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
- Hi Zad68, I'm sorry. I just didn't know that smart quotes are unwanted. Will not use them again. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
- That is right, smart quotes are not used, per WP:MOS. But my question really was--how did you get them into the article content in the first place?
Zad68
20:55, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
- That is right, smart quotes are not used, per WP:MOS. But my question really was--how did you get them into the article content in the first place?
- Which article do you mean? I do not know what your driving at. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:08, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
- (Let's keep this whole conversation here, I am watching your Talk page.) On Carnotaurus. Here is what I am driving at: I ran across your use of smart quotes in the article when I reviewed it. I am now worrying that you copied and pasted a word processor document into the article, which would explain the smart quotes. Most people who compose an article in the Wikipedia editor do not use smart quotes because they're very hard to enter--most people just use the straight quotes and apostrophes. I am worried that because the smart quotes indicate that the content may have been copied in from a word processor document that there are copyright issues. Can you comment on that? I just want to be sure...
Zad68
21:12, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
- (Let's keep this whole conversation here, I am watching your Talk page.) On Carnotaurus. Here is what I am driving at: I ran across your use of smart quotes in the article when I reviewed it. I am now worrying that you copied and pasted a word processor document into the article, which would explain the smart quotes. Most people who compose an article in the Wikipedia editor do not use smart quotes because they're very hard to enter--most people just use the straight quotes and apostrophes. I am worried that because the smart quotes indicate that the content may have been copied in from a word processor document that there are copyright issues. Can you comment on that? I just want to be sure...
- I'm at a loss. I still can't find any sentence in that article containing smart quotes or apostrophes? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:22, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
- that's because I took them out! :) Just asking how they got in there...
Zad68
21:31, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
- that's because I took them out! :) Just asking how they got in there...
- I think there should not be any apostrophs or smart quotes. I can't remember putting them in there manually (its not as complicated, though, since we have the new editor (go "special characters" -> "symbols")). I still can't find them, even in older versions. These are your changes. Have I missed something? Please help me with a diff or something like that. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:41, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
- I don't see any smart quotes in the material (either the revised version or the version submitted to WP:GAN. I'm puzzled by the worry that any material was copied and pasted from anything; Jens is the author of German Wikipedia's article on Carnotaurus, which he built very slowly between March 7th and May 7th, 2012. Further, use of non-standard keys would almost be expected on a non-English keyboard. As Jens is obviously German, with a history of edits to the German Wikipedia since August 2005, your worry is misplaced. Firsfron of Ronchester 06:33, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
- OK sorry folks, my concern is unfounded, just ignore me...
Zad68
13:52, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
- OK sorry folks, my concern is unfounded, just ignore me...
Some baklava for you!
Thanks for completing your first GA review--your work to keep Wikipedia running is much appreciated! -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:24, 8 July 2013 (UTC) |
Our Collaboration on Vulcanodon
Hi Jens, Our little collaboration paid off. Vulcanodon is now a G article. Nice work. If you ever have another collaboration you want done post a message on my talk page and I'll see how I can help. Reid,iain james (talk) 15:55, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
- Here's a userbox for you:
Code | Result | |
---|---|---|
{{User:Reid,iain james/Userboxes/Vulcanodon}} | Usage |
Reid,iain james (talk) 20:27, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
- Thank you, Reid,iain :) I'm glad that our collaboration worked so well. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:54, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
- Your welcome. Any other pages you want a collaboration on? Reid,iain james (talk) 16:07, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
- Also, if there are any specific userboxes you want see here and they can be made specially for you. Reid,iain james (talk) 21:42, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
- Thank you, Reid,iain :) I'm glad that our collaboration worked so well. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:54, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
Milky Way as GA
Thanks for your hard work for making the Milky Way a good article. You have done a great job. Megahmad (talk) 19:47, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
Vulcanodon location map, southern Africa
Hi, I replied to your request at the Map workshop. (and congratulations on the GA...) Begoon talk 12:12, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
Hi Jens, I thank you for taking up the review. Could you give me the information from Gluts encyclopedia and the first reference you noted on the GA review page? There is one question I have to ask, why did you quickfail it? I have fixed most of the comments accept for the ones involving the references. Thanks anyway. Iainstein (talk) 14:11, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
- Hi Reid,iain james, please send me a wikimail with your mail address, I will send you the sources then. I will help getting the article in good shape as time allows. So, why I have quickfailed it … I have only mentioned the most important points in the review. Most serious, a lot of the citations are fake. Reviewers feel be taken on a ride when being confronted with an article like this. Better no sources than faked ones. The article is full with this, here is another one: Cetiosauriscus was a relatively small quadrupedal herbivorous sauropod. It is estimated that Cetiosauriscus stood six meters high and was fifteen meters in length, weighing about nine tonnes.[1] I have read the source (Charig 1993), this information is not given in this source.
- According to Good article criteria, a good article has to be 1) well written, 2) verifiable, 3) Broad in its coverage, 4) neutral, 5) stable and 6) illustrated. No problem with points 4 to 6. But the article is not well written, as for example Cetiosauriscus is diagnosed by axially concave summits on the cranial and middle caudal neural spines. is a copy and paste from "The Dinosauria 2004". This is very serious, the "GA criteria" states that "If copyright infringements are found in a nominated article then it can be failed without further review". Also, it is not verifiable because of all the faked sources. It is not broad in its coverage as I pointed out in the review. The section "Description", for example, is very weak. Important information is missing (e.g., from which formation do the fossils come from?). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:48, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
- Thank you for illustrating your points. How do you wikimail? Iainstein (talk) 14:07, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
- Just to chime in, it is very hard to get an article up and running that hasn't mainly been written by oneself, and near impossible if one hasn't checked all the sources used for factuality. I'd suggest writing articles from scratch in the future, or work on taxa with little text in their articles to begin with. For example, though it looks pretty good on the surface, I've pretty much given up on Rodrigues Starling for now, because there is too much stuff I can't verify, and too much stuff that may be from sources that have nothing to do with the bird. FunkMonk (talk) 14:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
- Hey Reid,iain james, I have just uploaded the sources, see ([1]). (you would have to click on "toolbox" -> "Email this user" for wikimail). My words above may have been to hard, please note that I meant no offence but only wanted to explain why this article does not meat the GA criteria. FunkMonk is absolutely right, and besides, this genus is difficult to write about because there is no comprehensive modern revision. We have to fetch information from both newer and very old sources while being very careful with the latter. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:39, 14 October 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks Jens. Could you go through the article now that I have comprehended the comments. I am not sure what to add from "Gluts Encyclopedia" or what I got from "The Relationships of Cetiosauriscus stewarti (Dinosauria; Sauropoda): implications for sauropod phylogeny". Iainstein (talk) 22:45, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
- Yes, I hope I will have time this weekend. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 05:54, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
- Thanks Jens. Could you go through the article now that I have comprehended the comments. I am not sure what to add from "Gluts Encyclopedia" or what I got from "The Relationships of Cetiosauriscus stewarti (Dinosauria; Sauropoda): implications for sauropod phylogeny". Iainstein (talk) 22:45, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
Carnotaurus for FA?
You did some great work getting Carnotaurus to GA, have you considered getting it to featured article status? From what I can see, it's pretty close. FunkMonk (talk) 20:39, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
- Hi FunkMonk! Yes, I definitely had planned to submit it as a FAC. In my opinion it is complete. While it is short, there aren't any more points to add, so its coverage is as broad as it could be. To expand it we would have to into greater detail, but I think this way it is more reader friendly. I'm not sure if the language and prose is sufficient, though, I have not the abilities to evaluate and improve that. And I still think about removing the whole "In popular culture" section. The problem is, there are not enough sources to cover that topic completely. I fear that some of the books used in this section are self-published ones, but I was not able to find that information in any other sources. What do you think? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 07:55, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
- I think you could remove the pop section entirely. And I don't think it would be a problem to add more technical stuff to it, for example in the two last dinosaur articles I worked on, we just crammed as much into them as we could. I'll read through the Carnotaurus article and see if I find some problems. FunkMonk (talk) 17:45, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
- Great, thank you! I will do my best fixing all the issues if may find. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:33, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
- Just want to voice my support for taking this to FAC! It was the first GA review I had ever done and so I have special feelings for it. Please do let me know if it goes, I'd love to help support.
Zad68
15:36, 25 November 2013 (UTC) - Cool, I'll put a few thoughts down here as I go along, kind of like a second GA review. FunkMonk (talk) 18:43, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
- I think you could remove the pop section entirely. And I don't think it would be a problem to add more technical stuff to it, for example in the two last dinosaur articles I worked on, we just crammed as much into them as we could. I'll read through the Carnotaurus article and see if I find some problems. FunkMonk (talk) 17:45, 24 November 2013 (UTC)
- Does the intro really need a source for a very uncontroversial statement?
- fixed
- Maybe "exceptionally well preserved" is a tad too hyperbolic? Well preserved would be enough.
- fixed
- "As a theropod, Carnotaurus was highly specialized and distinctive. Besides having thick horns above the eyes, a feature unseen in all other carnivorous dinosaurs, a very deep skull sitting on a muscular neck characterized Carnotaurus as did small and possibly functionless forelimbs, and long and slender hindlimbs." Maybe when it was first discovered, but these features are now known to be common to all abelisaurs.
- well … most of these features are not autapomorphies. But the skull was shorter, the neck more muscular, and the forelimbs shorter than in any other abelisaurid. While Majungasaurus had very short hind limbs, some other abelisaurs such as Aucasaurus may also had had long hindlimbs.
- "Skin impressions that were preserved with the single skeleton" We already know there is a single skeleton, so it redundant to mention it more than once.
- fixed
- "rather than being covered by feathers." Do any of the sources even mention feathers specifically?
- yes, you can find a citation in the "skin" section.
- "nasal bones were sculptured" Seems a bit weird for something natural.
- This is the official technical term. It is also used to describe the rough skull surface of crocodiles and temnospondyles, and is even used to describe molluscs (Sculpture (mollusc)).
- "today's emus and kiwis, which also have functionless forelimbs" Both have claws on the wings, and I've read the latter can use them to scratch themselves, so I'm not sure if they're entirely functionless? FunkMonk (talk) 20:07, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
- The source says: The part of the spinal cord that supplies innervation to the forelimb is reduced to the degree seen in emus and kiwis (quantified in Giffin, 1995), which have vestigial forelimbs that are not used even for display and hang uselessly at their sides (Davies, 2002). It is based on Davies, S.J.J.F. (2002). Ratites and tinamous. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shall we write "almost functionless" instead?
- "Originally, the right side of the skull was also covered with several fragments of skin – this was not recognized when the skull was prepared, and these fragments were accidentally destroyed." How was it known, then?
- I do not now exactly, the sources are a bit vague. I think they have found small pieces of skin after the preparation that were to small to reveal any information.
- "Scalation was similar in different body parts with the exception of the head, which apparently showed a different, irregular pattern of scales." How is this known, if the part about descruction is correct?
- fixed, I added another sentence.
- "Uniquely for theropods, there were large knob-like bumps running along the sides of neck, back and tail in irregular rows." Didn't Ceratosaurus have something similar?
- No, in Ceratosaurus these are osteoderms (bones, not scales).
- "and are only 72 to 69.9 million years old" "Only" is so relative here that it doesn't make sense.
- fixed
- "Carnotaurus is the only known carnivorous dinosaur with a pair of horns on the frontal bone." Perhaps mention (if stated in source) that horns are known in other theropods, just mainly placed on the lacrymal?
- I think those lacrymal horns are different because they are not directed laterodorsally as in Carnotaurus. I have modified the sentence a bit though.
- "Analysis of the jaw design of Carnotaurus" Again, weird word for a natural object.
- Well, you will be shocked: [2]. I do not know a better word that is as precise.
Thanks for all those comments! I hope I have sufficiently resolved or answered all of them. Anything else? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:16, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
- Looking good! If you write "almost functionless" or something like that for the arms, that would be nice. Source wise, there should be consistency on whether you write full first names, or only initial. And if anything can be expanded and elaborated, that wouldn't hurt! The intro could be expanded a bit, it should summarise the entire article. FunkMonk (talk) 23:58, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
- I have expanded the lead a bit, and added a few things I intentionally had left out before because I don't wanted to make things overly complicated. However, now I think its much better to have these things included :) I don't have any more ideas what to add; shall we submit it now? Could you please check the recent additions for grammar? Thanks, --Jens Lallensack (talk) 13:09, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
- I'm not much of a word smith myself, so maybe we could ask someone for a copyedit? And you should still make the citation style consistent, either have all first names, or only initials, not a mix. But yeah, I think it's ready then! FunkMonk (talk) 23:36, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
- The citation style is fixed now (I hope). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:24, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
- Ready for action! By the way, I think the term vestigial should be mentioned and linked in relation to the arms. "Functionless" and other words of that sort don't really do it justice. FunkMonk (talk) 22:49, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
- The citation style is fixed now (I hope). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:24, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
- I'm not much of a word smith myself, so maybe we could ask someone for a copyedit? And you should still make the citation style consistent, either have all first names, or only initials, not a mix. But yeah, I think it's ready then! FunkMonk (talk) 23:36, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
- I have expanded the lead a bit, and added a few things I intentionally had left out before because I don't wanted to make things overly complicated. However, now I think its much better to have these things included :) I don't have any more ideas what to add; shall we submit it now? Could you please check the recent additions for grammar? Thanks, --Jens Lallensack (talk) 13:09, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
- Looking good! If you write "almost functionless" or something like that for the arms, that would be nice. Source wise, there should be consistency on whether you write full first names, or only initial. And if anything can be expanded and elaborated, that wouldn't hurt! The intro could be expanded a bit, it should summarise the entire article. FunkMonk (talk) 23:58, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Finally it is submitted! Sorry for the delay, the past weeks I hadn't had any time. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:42, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
- Nice! But remember, these day the process can take months... FunkMonk (talk) 13:08, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
- Seems the FAC is going very well, hope it'll encourage you to take on more FAs! I'm sadly too busy to do so myself at the moment, but I'm happy to help out. FunkMonk (talk) 21:19, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks! Yes, I still have to translate some more stuff I have once written for the German Wikipedia. We may even get Opisthocoelicauda to this level, I hope I will have time soon to work on it. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 12:56, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
- Cool, I see there's no life restoration for that one. Coincidentally, I am currently working on a dinosaur design project for school, and I will have to draw a lot of titanosaurs and other animals in different styles to find out how I'm going to execute the project. So some of these "experiments" I'll donate to Wikipedia. So if you have some wishes for how I should draw Opisthocoelicaudia for the article, both pose and style wise, feel free to suggest here, then I'll give it a try. FunkMonk (talk) 22:12, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks! Yes, I still have to translate some more stuff I have once written for the German Wikipedia. We may even get Opisthocoelicauda to this level, I hope I will have time soon to work on it. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 12:56, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
- Wow, that would be absolutely great if you would draw a life reconstruction! Please see here ([3], Fig. 6 in the paper) for the most recent published skeletal reconstruction. And good luck with your project, that sounds interesting! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:38, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for the paper! What do you think the skull should be based on? Gregory S. Paul speculated the skull of Nemegtosaurus may belong to it... FunkMonk (talk) 17:47, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- There are only very few titanosaur skulls known. Opisthocoelicaudia may be closely related to Alamosaurus, but no skull is known for this genus. I would definitely use the Nemegtosaurus skull. This is a problem with the Opisthocoelicaudia article: One new fossil discovery showing that the Nemegtosaurus skull belongs to the Opisthocoelicaudia postcranium, and we have to rename the article because the name Nemegtosaurus has priority. Would be a shame since the name Opisthocoelicaudia is way cooler. This has not happen since O. was described in 1977, but still … at least we would not have to redraw the life reconstruction ;) --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:05, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Will do! Any colour scheme or pose you would prefer? FunkMonk (talk) 18:11, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- No preferences :) --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:24, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Just to comment, right now O. is considered to be an antarctosaurid, and I think at least 1 antarctosaurid (maybe Isisaurus) is known from skull material. That might be a good thing to note when you make the illustration. Iainstein (talk) 01:55, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- Well, Antarctosauridae is a taxon considered valid only by very few people. Just do a Google Scholar search after "Antarctosauridae" and see how many papers it findes containing this word (only two!). Nevertheless, when a paper has suggested Opisthocoelicaudia to be an antarctosaurid we may should add this info to the article; do you remember which paper? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:06, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- The only problem with the paper is, it doesn't actually say "Antarctosauridae". As defined, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036907 has Opisthocoelicaudia placed in Antarctosauridae. Fig. 1 is a cladogram, one of which I added to Ampelosaurus, and places O. in a clade with Isisaurus, Antarctosaurus, Argentinosaurus, and Alamosaurus. Holtz's appendix also places O. in antarctosauridae, but does not really give any information about it. Iainstein (talk) 16:15, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- This phylogeny is based on Curry Rogers 2005, and she named this node Opisthocoelicaudiinae (Alamosaurus + Isisaurus + Opisthocoelicaudia). No skull material is known for Isisaurus as far as I know, and the position of Antarctosaurus itself (the only one known from skull bones) is very unsure. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:33, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- The only problem with the paper is, it doesn't actually say "Antarctosauridae". As defined, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036907 has Opisthocoelicaudia placed in Antarctosauridae. Fig. 1 is a cladogram, one of which I added to Ampelosaurus, and places O. in a clade with Isisaurus, Antarctosaurus, Argentinosaurus, and Alamosaurus. Holtz's appendix also places O. in antarctosauridae, but does not really give any information about it. Iainstein (talk) 16:15, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- Well, Antarctosauridae is a taxon considered valid only by very few people. Just do a Google Scholar search after "Antarctosauridae" and see how many papers it findes containing this word (only two!). Nevertheless, when a paper has suggested Opisthocoelicaudia to be an antarctosaurid we may should add this info to the article; do you remember which paper? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:06, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- Just to comment, right now O. is considered to be an antarctosaurid, and I think at least 1 antarctosaurid (maybe Isisaurus) is known from skull material. That might be a good thing to note when you make the illustration. Iainstein (talk) 01:55, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
- No preferences :) --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:24, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Will do! Any colour scheme or pose you would prefer? FunkMonk (talk) 18:11, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- There are only very few titanosaur skulls known. Opisthocoelicaudia may be closely related to Alamosaurus, but no skull is known for this genus. I would definitely use the Nemegtosaurus skull. This is a problem with the Opisthocoelicaudia article: One new fossil discovery showing that the Nemegtosaurus skull belongs to the Opisthocoelicaudia postcranium, and we have to rename the article because the name Nemegtosaurus has priority. Would be a shame since the name Opisthocoelicaudia is way cooler. This has not happen since O. was described in 1977, but still … at least we would not have to redraw the life reconstruction ;) --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:05, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for the paper! What do you think the skull should be based on? Gregory S. Paul speculated the skull of Nemegtosaurus may belong to it... FunkMonk (talk) 17:47, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Wow, that would be absolutely great if you would draw a life reconstruction! Please see here ([3], Fig. 6 in the paper) for the most recent published skeletal reconstruction. And good luck with your project, that sounds interesting! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:38, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
- Added a sketch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dinosaurs/Image_review#Opisthocoelicaudia FunkMonk (talk) 21:54, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
- Is this free image[4] perhaps of the holotype? It is unlabelled, but I uploaded it here.[5] It is on a weird travelling exhibit that never seems to end, which makes many important specimens unavailable for study. I saw some of it in 1998. FunkMonk (talk) 21:20, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
Ampelosaurus images
Hi Jens, I realized that Ampelosaurus has many spaces with few or no images. Would it be possible for you to upload your images, except for the models, so I can add them to the article? Thanks in advance. Iainstein (talk) 23:31, 9 January 2014 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
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The Original Barnstar |
Congratulations on your FA for Carnotaurus! I'm happy to have helped it along and hope to see more great Dino FAs in the future! :) Zad68 07:08, 13 February 2014 (UTC)
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- Thank you!! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:19, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
Dino star
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The Dinosaur Barnstar | |
In addition to the work on Carnotaurus, you deserve a dino-specific star for all the work you've done on many other hitherto neglected dinosaur articles! FunkMonk (talk) 17:35, 14 February 2014 (UTC) |
- This one looks cool :) Many thanks! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:43, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
Kentrosaurus GA
Hello, would you be able to review Kentrosaurus? LittleJerry (talk) 02:02, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
- Hi LittleJerry, I wish I could, but unfortunately I have absolutely no time at all … I will not be able to do anything in Wikipedia until mid august. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:18, 28 June 2014 (UTC)
Glut
Hi, some rather interesting bits you're adding to Ankylosaurus, left me wondering about that Glut book. Does it generally go into detail about popular depictions of various dinosaurs? FunkMonk (talk) 03:26, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
- Hi FunkMonk! Yes, it often contains some interesting details about popular depictions. It is also quite helpful to find additional (older) sources. For example, it says that this article here (http://rmg.geoscienceworld.org/content/20/2/123.short) contains information on teeth referred to "baby" Ankylosaurus magniventris, with implications on feeding. Would be worth to add that; I will do a resource request. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:45, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
- Thanks, responded per email. Also wondering what those baby teeth are, and why they're not mentioned in the 2004 Carpenter paper...FunkMonk (talk) 16:10, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Amargasaurus
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Amargasaurus you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of IJReid -- IJReid (talk) 20:20, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Amargasaurus
The article Amargasaurus you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Amargasaurus for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of IJReid -- IJReid (talk) 14:01, 17 August 2015 (UTC)
barnstar
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The Diligent Librarian Barnstar | |
For exemplary service at the Resource Exchange, tirelessly delivering the reliable sources on which this encyclopedia depends, please accept this award.LavaBaron (talk) 17:18, 7 September 2015 (UTC) |
- Hi LavaBaron, thank you so much for the award, I'm very happy about it! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:33, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
Apatosaurs FA
Hi, would you be able to review Apatosaurus? LittleJerry (talk) 00:59, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
- Yes, I wanted to do this days ago, but I'm currently short on time. I should be able to finish a review the next few days. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 05:11, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
- Thank you. LittleJerry (talk) 11:20, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
Heterodontosaurus
Hi, I was going to expand Heterodontosaurus, but just saw that you had taken the German version to FAC. So I was wondering whether you would collaborate on it? In any case, I think I'll draw a new restoration of it which will probably benefit from your comments... FunkMonk (talk) 18:42, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
- Hi FunkMonk, yes, that would certainly be the most efficient. What is your plan? Shall I translate parts of the German article? Looking forward to your new drawing! Have to read your new Baryonyx article few days. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:32, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
- I was originally going to write it all from scratch, but if there are any sections you would like to translate, it would of course be very helpful! Usually when I've collaborated with someone, we divided sections between us. Anything you'd like to write in particular? I usually find history and classification interesting. FunkMonk (talk) 21:48, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
- If this is ok, I could do the "description" part, for a start. And perhaps parts of the paleobiology, some of that stuff took me quite some time, I remember. Lets see. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:05, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
- Sounds good! And there's no rush. FunkMonk (talk) 22:44, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
- If this is ok, I could do the "description" part, for a start. And perhaps parts of the paleobiology, some of that stuff took me quite some time, I remember. Lets see. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:05, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
- I was originally going to write it all from scratch, but if there are any sections you would like to translate, it would of course be very helpful! Usually when I've collaborated with someone, we divided sections between us. Anything you'd like to write in particular? I usually find history and classification interesting. FunkMonk (talk) 21:48, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
- By the way, this has a paper on Carnotaurus on page 11 not yet cited in the article you wrote: http://www.cimne.com/iacm/News/Expressions%2026.pdf It was just mentioned on the Dinosaur Mailing List. FunkMonk (talk) 05:19, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
Reference errors on 19 October
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Reference errors on 30 December
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A Dobos torte for you!
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7&6=thirteen (☎) has given you a Dobos torte to enjoy! Seven layers of fun because you deserve it.
To give a Dobos torte and spread the WikiLove, just place {{subst:Dobos Torte}} on someone else's talkpage, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. |
7&6=thirteen (☎) 21:42, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
- Cool, thank you very much, 7&6=thirteen! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:11, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
Thanks!
Thank you For taking up the GA review of Bluebuck. I and FunkMonk were sure no one would pick it up for months, as we two are the main reviewers at Biology GAN and neither could take this up. In fact we were preparing to hibernate :P But you came as the savior! Sainsf (talk · contribs) 13:08, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
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Amargasaurus
Congrats on the FA! I got to see a skeleton cast of this in person recently; it's an interesting critter. --RL0919 (talk) 01:09, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
- Thank you! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 05:48, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
- Yeah, good work, we want more! FunkMonk (talk) 10:06, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
Carnotaurus scheduled for TFA
This is to let you know that the Carnotaurus article has been scheduled as today's featured article for 25 April 2017. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 25, 2017. Thanks! Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:27, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
- Carnotaurus is now going to be featured on the main page on 22 April; had to do a last minute reschedule and as a result this has moved up. The new link for the main page text is Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 22, 2017. Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:06, 20 April 2017 (UTC)
Precious
Carnotaurus and other 'saurs
Thank you for quality articles such as Carnotaurus, Amargasaurus, Opisthocoelicaudia and Heterodontosaurus, open to collaboration, for FA and GA reviewing, for clear edit summaries, for your modest user page, - Jens, you are an awesome Wikipedian!
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:56, 22 April 2017 (UTC)
- Dear Gerda Arendt, thank you so much!! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:02, 23 April 2017 (UTC)
- A year ago, you were recipient no. 1641 of Precious, a prize of QAI! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 04:37, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
- Thank you for your share to Heterodontosaurus, "a small dinosaur which became quite important to the study of dinosaur evolution upon its discovery. It is notable for its eponymous teeth and primitive features, and for being the basis of a family of dinosaurs."! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:35, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
- Today, thank you for your share of Brachiosaurus, "one of the most iconic dinosaurs"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:27, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
- Many thanks! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 11:35, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
- Today, thank you for your share of Brachiosaurus, "one of the most iconic dinosaurs"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:27, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
- ... and today, Ceratosaurus, a "large meat-eater with nose horn"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:20, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
- Thank you again! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 07:48, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
- Two years now! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:23, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
- Thank you today for Trachodon mummy, "one of the most important dinosaur specimens ever found, had profound impact on the understanding of dinosaurs. The Trachodon mummy is one of a handfull of "dinosaur mummies", and is interpreted as the fossil of a natural mummy. The article combines history with cutting edge scientific research, and therefore is hopefully of interest for a broader audience."! - Yes, of interest ;) - I have a PR open, DYK? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:30, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
- ... and today, Ceratosaurus, a "large meat-eater with nose horn"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:20, 8 January 2019 (UTC)
- Today, thank you for you work on Spinophorosaurus, "a long-necked dinosaur which is notable for bearing spikes on its tail, and in being one of the most completely known members of its group from its time and place. We have summarised all available sources, including a German book about the expeditions that found the fossils, and the article therefore has a detailed and rather dramatic account of the discovery"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:52, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
- Thanks! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:06, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
- Today, thank you for you work on Spinophorosaurus, "a long-necked dinosaur which is notable for bearing spikes on its tail, and in being one of the most completely known members of its group from its time and place. We have summarised all available sources, including a German book about the expeditions that found the fossils, and the article therefore has a detailed and rather dramatic account of the discovery"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:52, 24 November 2019 (UTC)
- Three years now! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:14, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
- Thank you today for Opisthocoelicaudia, about "an interesting long-necked dinosaur from Mongolia, and a recent effort of the WP:WikiProject Dinosaurs"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:59, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
- ... and today for your share to Limusaurus, introduced: "This little dinosaur may seem inconspicuous, but there are many interesting aspects to it. All known specimens were found stuck in what appears to have been mud pits formed by the footprints of giant dinosaurs (which gave it its name). while it had teeth when juvenile, these were entirely lost as it grew up, a feature only known from a few other animals. Adults appear to have been herbivorous, though it belonged in a group of otherwise carnivorous dinosaurs. In addition, its unusual hands were also thought to have implications for bird evolution, but this idea has fallen out of favour."! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:42, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
- ... and today for Argentinosaurus, introduced last year: "The possibly largest known dinosaur. Argentinosaurus was described in 1993 by the important paleontologist José Bonaparte, who sadly passed away this week."! My first FA ever, invited generously by Brianboulton and Tim riley, Messiah (Handel), was first performed OTD in 1942, DYK? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:53, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks! Your FA looks impressive, though I have no idea at all about the topic (and therefore probably should read it). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 06:57, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- Go ahead ;) - The main article was mostly the work of the others, my contribution being pruning and correcting the myth that Bach composed the melody of Wachet auf (wake up). The article had too little about structure and music, so I wrote 4 supporting articles, He was despised. All this was in 2012. More recent production: Wie schön (how beautiful) based on the other hymn by Nicolai. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:57, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you today for your share to Podokesaurus, "about the first dinosaur discovered and named by a woman (Mignon Talbot in 1911), and also one of the first well-known small theropods discovered, which attracted international scientific interest at the time. Unfortunately, the only known specimen was destroyed by a fire, so it has become fairly obscure over time. All that will probably ever be known about the dinosaur is summarised here, so hopefully it can bring some attention to its historical importance."! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:33, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks! Though I really didn't do much for this article :) --Jens Lallensack (talk) 07:29, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks! Your FA looks impressive, though I have no idea at all about the topic (and therefore probably should read it). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 06:57, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
Achelousaurus
Vielen Dank für die Achelousaurus Artikel!--MWAK (talk) 18:56, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
- Gern geschehen :-) --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:04, 17 July 2017 (UTC)
Carnotaurus restoration
Hi Jens, there's currently a restoration of Carnotaurus on review[6], so since you wrote the article, I was thinking you probably have some input? It could maybe go in instead of the old restoration. FunkMonk (talk) 23:22, 8 August 2017 (UTC)
Amargasaurus scheduled for TFA
This is to let you know that the Amargasaurus article has been scheduled as today's featured article for October 22, 2017. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 22, 2017, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1100 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:19, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
- Thank you for a "spectacular dinosaur from Argentina"! (late sign:) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:32, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
- Besten Dank! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:07, 22 October 2017 (UTC)
Your submission at Articles for creation: Naturkunde-Museum Bielefeld has been accepted
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Winter War FAC
Hey Jens! A kind ping: I've addressed your FAC comments at Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Winter_War/archive2, thx again for reviewing! Manelolo (talk) 07:50, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Ceratosaurus
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Ceratosaurus you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of FunkMonk -- FunkMonk (talk) 16:01, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Ceratosaurus
The article Ceratosaurus you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Ceratosaurus for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of FunkMonk -- FunkMonk (talk) 16:21, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
Heterodontosaurus scheduled for TFA
This is to let you know that Heterodontosaurus has been scheduled as today's featured article for 12 May 2018. Please check that the article needs no polishing or corrections. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 12, 2018. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:40, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
A Barnstar for you!
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b1/Ga_barnstar.png/135px-Ga_barnstar.png)
Thank you for your work on evaluating articles that have been proposed for Good Article status. Many times, reviewers don't get noticed for their work. Reviewing an article and working with other editors to improve content takes effort. In addition, a commitment to put aside a block of time for the review is also needed to finish the process. I don't think most other editors realize what a service you are doing to improve the quality of content. What you do provides an incentive for the continuing improvement of content. You’ve put in the time and effort to improve content and therefore deserve recognition and appreciation.
The Very Best of Regards, Barbara ✐ ✉ 14:45, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
Many thanks, Barbara! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:37, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
Cleopatra FAC
Hello! I responded to your review over at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cleopatra/archive1. Thanks for initiating a review of the article! I hope that I can address all of your concerns where they may arise. Regards, Pericles of AthensTalk 22:49, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks! I'm still reading through the rest of the article, but so far there isn't really something to complain about! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 04:38, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
Ceratosaurus
Congratulations, and thank you for writing the article, Jens! Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:31, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
- Thank you very much, User:Axl! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 13:30, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
FA for Fawad Khan
Hi, I've recently listed Fawad Khan in FA candidates. I'll an honor for me if you consider reviewing it.Amirk94391 (talk) 04:04, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks, but actors are absolutely not my field (I barely know any of them by name). I wish you success though! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 05:02, 1 July 2018 (UTC)hi jens thanks for review of agriculture. am away for a few days with unsuitable de ice will reply as soon S I an Chiswick chap
Thank you
Thanks to editors like you who are willing to review articles such as North Cascades National Park and offer excellent suggestions, it is now a Featured Article! I've done now more than a dozen nominations and your detailed suggestions touched on the entire article. Persons willing to go that extra mile to do a review as you did are a rare breed here and I thank you.--MONGO (talk) 16:24, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks and congratulations for the FA; I am very glad too hear that, good to know that I was able to help! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 16:40, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
Ubinas
Greetings, at the risk of sounding like I am pestering I think I've addressed the last concerns you mentioned in Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Ubinas/archive1, including adding some more general information as well as the stage I and stage II distinctions. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 19:42, 23 September 2018 (UTC)
Thanks!
A rather grueling FAC, but finally made it to FA. Thanks for your feedback and support! - ☣Tourbillon A ? 13:31, 21 October 2018 (UTC)
Thank you
Hi Jens. Just to say thank you for taking on that GAN. I know it took a while, but it was good to have another pair of eyes looking through the article. A appreciate your effort on it. All the best, Midnightblueowl (talk) 11:22, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
- Thank you, Midnightblueowl, this is kind of you, and I am glad that I could be of help. It is a huge article, but excellently written throughout, and therefore a pleasure to read. Thanks for this immensely important contribution. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:32, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
I saw your wonderful work on the Stalin article and was wondering if you'd be so kind as to review the article for Elton John when I nominate it for GA in the near future.MagicatthemovieS (talk) 04:06, 10 November 2018 (UTC)MagicatthemovieS
- Thanks! Elton John is not precisely within my sphere of interest and not my taste of music, so I think that others might have more fun reviewing it. But please just nominate it; I will keep an eye on it, and if nobody takes the review, I will be thinking about it again! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 06:37, 10 November 2018 (UTC)
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Ways to improve Glossary of dinosaur anatomy
Thanks for creating Glossary of dinosaur anatomy.
A New Page Patroller Rosguill just tagged the page as having some issues to fix, and wrote this note for you:
Great work!
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Ceratosaurus scheduled for TFA
This is to let you know that the Ceratosaurus article has been scheduled as today's featured article for January 8, 2019. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 8, 2019, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.
We also suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors on the day before and the day of this TFA. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:55, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
Just a heads up that I have addressed the concerns at the GAC. Any further review is also welcome. Kaiser matias (talk) 23:39, 24 December 2018 (UTC)
- Passed it; congrats for the GA! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 10:31, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
![]() |
Austral season's greetings |
Tuck into this! We've made about three of these in the last few days for various festivities. Supermarkets are stuffed with cheap berries. Season's greetings! Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:44, 25 December 2018 (UTC) |
- Thank you, Cas. Looks awesome! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 10:31, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
First round of GA review edits for Paleoart
Hi Jens, thanks again for your helpful comments in reviewing the Paleoart article for GA status. I've just now completed all of your suggestions on the article to the best of my ability, though there is a small handful of items I'm unsure of. For these, I've commented in response to your suggestions with some questions, mainly about sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Paleoart/GA1#GA_Review Thanks for your help! -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 01:27, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
- Sorry to bother, but I am wondering if you might have time to get to this soon—I have upcoming real life obligations in a few days that might delay the process if there are further major revisions that need to be made. I was hoping to finish the review before then. Thanks for your time! -Ferahgo the Assassin (talk) 17:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
- Sure! Thanks for the comprehensive improvements, I think the article made a big step forwards. I left two more points, but promoted now anyways, as the criteria are more than fulfilled. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:04, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
"Unnamed specimen from Brazil"
Hi, do you have the name of the formation of that specimen? Would be good to add to the articles and also to that formation, or a new entry on the to-do list. I have been working on the Neuquén Basin, cleaning up the existing formations first, before starting the work on the Mendoza Group. Cheers, Tisquesusa (talk) 18:19, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
- Added it: Itapecurú Formation. Never heard of that one though. If you want to put it on your to-do list, that would be wonderful. Thanks, --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:25, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
- Hmm, I thought that means the formation was misspelled, which happens often with Spanish and Portuguese names, especially of indigenous origin, like this one, but it is misspelled in the book then. We have the Itapecuru Formation, and the name derives from Itapecuru Mirim. See pt-wiki, it is not with an accent in this case. Tisquesusa (talk) 19:04, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
- Interesting, corrected! Thanks, --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:24, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
- Hmm, I thought that means the formation was misspelled, which happens often with Spanish and Portuguese names, especially of indigenous origin, like this one, but it is misspelled in the book then. We have the Itapecuru Formation, and the name derives from Itapecuru Mirim. See pt-wiki, it is not with an accent in this case. Tisquesusa (talk) 19:04, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
Genetically modified organism
I just wanted to drop a personal note of appreciation for your review of this article. It can be a bit hit and miss with reviewers and this was definitely a hit. Especially considering the controversial nature of the topic. Thanks to you it has improved in ways that it wouldn't have with just me and the regular editors. Thank you. AIRcorn (talk) 07:52, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
- Thank you very much, I'm very happy about how the review went and how thoroughly everything was addressed, thank you very much for all the good work on this important article. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 09:32, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
DYK for Bajadasaurus
On 4 March 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Bajadasaurus, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Bajadasaurus had elongated neural spines on its neck, thought to have been used to deter predators? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Bajadasaurus. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Bajadasaurus), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Amakuru (talk) 00:02, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Bajadasaurus
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Bajadasaurus you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of FunkMonk -- FunkMonk (talk) 10:41, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Bajadasaurus
The article Bajadasaurus you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Bajadasaurus for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of FunkMonk -- FunkMonk (talk) 12:02, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
GA review of Bernard Gui
Hi Jens, thank you so much for very kindly and promptly reviewing my GA nomination for Bernard Gui. Just a heads up to let you know that I've made all of the recommended changes. Thanks again! --Etiennedebourbon (talk) 15:32, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
DYK for Spinophorosaurus
On 13 March 2019, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Spinophorosaurus, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Spinophorosaurus had spikes on its tail, unlike most other sauropod dinosaurs? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Spinophorosaurus. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, Spinophorosaurus), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
— Amakuru (talk) 00:02, 13 March 2019 (UTC)
A barnstar for you!
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The Special Barnstar |
Thank you for the work you do reviewing articles for GA as well as significantly expanding and improving articles yourself. I'm particularly impressed by your work on Brachiosaurus! SkyGazer 512 My talk page 13:58, 21 March 2019 (UTC) |
- Thank you very much, SkyGazer 512! Although for Brachiosaurus I can only take part of the credit, it was an very successful collaborative effort of our wiki project where a number of people made significant contributions. Thanks again, --Jens Lallensack (talk) 03:01, 22 March 2019 (UTC)
My credentials
I know that I have appeared out of nowhere on the BRG-34 GA review. I want to state here that my background (parts on my User page) includes a doctorate in nutritional biochemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and until recently retired, 14 years as an expert science consultant to U.S. companies in the dietary supplement industry. David notMD (talk) 09:42, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
Talk:African humid period/GA1
Greetings, noting here that I posted something for you on the Talk:African humid period/GA1 page. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:13, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
- Yes, I'm sorry for the delay, will continue as soon as possible. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:17, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
For diligent reviewing
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The Barnstar of Diligence | |
By the authority vested in me by myself it gives me great pleasure to present you with this barnstar in recognition of the huge amount of reviewing you do. It seems that I can hardly look at a FA without discovering that you did a review for it. Long may it continue. Gog the Mild (talk) 21:43, 27 April 2019 (UTC) |
- Thank you so much for this, Gog! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 03:59, 28 April 2019 (UTC)
GA nom for BGR-34
Are there any issues still outstanding? David notMD (talk) 02:17, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
- @David notMD: Sorry for the delay, real life got me occupied. I passed it now! Thank you for your contributions to this article. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 11:44, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
- Your contributions to GA are highly appreciated. P.S. I added the GA button to the top of the article page. David notMD (talk) 11:56, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
- Thank you! Usually there is no need to add the GA button manually; a bot will do that after a while. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:31, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
- Your contributions to GA are highly appreciated. P.S. I added the GA button to the top of the article page. David notMD (talk) 11:56, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
WikiProject Tree of Life Newsletter
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg/100px-Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg)
- April 2019—Issue 001
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Tree of Life newsletter!
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- WikiCup heating up
Tree of Life editors are making a respectable showing in this year's WikiCup, with three regular editors advancing to the third round. Overall winner from 2016, Casliber, topped the scoreboard in points for round 2, getting a nice bonus for bringing Black mamba to FA. Enwebb continues to favor things remotely related to bats, bringing Stellaluna to GA. Plants editor Guettarda also advanced to round 3 with several plant-related DYKs.
- Wikipedia page views track animal migrations, flowers blooming
A March 2019 paper in PLOS Biology found that Wikipedia page views vary seasonally for species. With a dataset of 31,751 articles about species, the authors found that roughly a quarter of all articles had significant seasonal variations in page views on at least one language version of Wikipedia. They examined 245 language versions. Page views also peaked with cultural events, such as views of the Great white shark article during Shark Week or Turkey during Thanksgiving.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/Daily_pageviews_in_English-language_Wikipedia_for_nine_bird_species.png/330px-Daily_pageviews_in_English-language_Wikipedia_for_nine_bird_species.png)
- Did you know ... that Tree of Life editors bring content to the front page nearly every day?
* ... that Dippy is the most famous dinosaur skeleton in the world? (1 April)
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:24, 7 May 2019 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Trachodon mummy
Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Trachodon mummy you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Gog the Mild -- Gog the Mild (talk) 20:20, 21 May 2019 (UTC)
Your GA nomination of Trachodon mummy
The article Trachodon mummy you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Trachodon mummy for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Gog the Mild -- Gog the Mild (talk) 18:21, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
okay
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Suskityrannus_skull.png/220px-Suskityrannus_skull.png)
this is good enough? --Bubblesorg (talk) 17:12, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
- Yes thanks, that would be a great addition to the article! If you want to improve it further, you could crop it more tightly (the thumb views in Wikipedia are tiny enough already); also the text is not really needed when used in the article (we have the figure captions for this, which are better readable and more accessible; removing the text would allow you to crop it even more). --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:49, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
Okay. Yeah i will just keep to text however unless its extremely harmful. --Bubblesorg (talk) 21:13, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
May 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg/100px-Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg)
- May 2019—Issue 002
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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- Fundamental changes being discussed at WikiProject Biology
On 23 May, user Prometheus720 created a talk page post, "Revamp of Wikiproject Biology--Who is In?". In the days since, WP:BIOL has been bustling with activity, with over a dozen editors weighing in on this discussion, as well as several others that have subsequently spawned. An undercurrent of thought is that WP:BIOL has too many subprojects, preventing editors from easily interacting and stopping a "critical mass" of collaboration and engagement. Many mergers and consolidations of subprojects have been tentatively listed, with a consolidation of WikiProjects Genetics + Molecular and Cell Biology + Computational Biology + Biophysics currently in discussion. Other ideas being aired include updating old participants lists, redesigning project pages to make them more user-friendly, and clearly identifying long- and short-term goals.
- Editor Spotlight: These editors want you to write about dinosaurs
Editors FunkMonk and Jens Lallensack had a very fruitful month, collaborating to bring two dinosaur articles to GA and then nominating them both for FA. They graciously decided to answer some questions for the first ToL Editor Spotlight, giving insight to their successful collaborations, explaining why you should collaborate with them, and also sharing some tidbits about their lives off-Wikipedia.
1) Enwebb: How long have you two been collaborating on articles?
- Jens Lallensack: I started in the German Wikipedia in 2005 but switched to the English Wikipedia because of its very active dinosaur project. My first major collaboration with FunkMonk was on Heterodontosaurus in 2015.
- FunkMonk: Yeah, we had interacted already on talk pages and through reviewing each other's articles, and at some point I was thinking of expanding Heterodontosaurus, and realised Jens had already written the German Wikipedia version, so it seemed natural to work together on the English one. Our latest collaboration was Spinophorosaurus, where by another coincidence, I had wanted to work on that article for the WP:Four Award, and it turned out that Jens had a German book about the expedition that found the dinosaur, which I wouldn't have been able to utilise with my meagre German skills. Between those, we also worked on Brachiosaurus, a wider Dinosaur Project collaboration between several editors.
2) Enwebb: Why dinosaurs?
- JL: Because of the huge public interest in them. But dinosaurs are also highly interesting from a scientific point of view: key evolutionary innovations emerged within this group, such as warm-bloodedness, gigantism, and flight. Dinosaur research is, together with the study of fossil human remains, the most active field in paleontology. New scientific techniques and approaches tend to get developed within this field. Dinosaur research became increasingly interdisciplinary, and now does not only rely on various fields of biology and geology, but also on chemistry and physics, among others. Dinosaurs are therefore ideal to convey scientific methodology to the general public.
- FM: As outlined above, dinosaurs have been described as a "gateway to science"; if you learn about dinosaurs, you will most likely also learn about a lot of scientific fields you would not necessarily be exposed to otherwise. On a more personal level, having grown up with and being influenced by various dinosaur media, it feels pretty cool to help spread knowledge about these animals, closest we can get to keeping them alive.
3) Enwebb: Why should other editors join you in writing articles related to paleontology? Are you looking to attract new editors, or draw in experienced editors from other areas of Wikipedia?
- JL: Because we are a small but active and helpful community. Our Dinosaur collaboration, one of the very few active open collaborations in Wikipedia, makes high-level writing on important articles easier and more fun. Our collaboration is especially open to editors without prior experience in high-level writing. But we do not only write articles: several WikiProject Dinosaur participants are artists who do a great job illustrating the articles, and maintain an extensive and very active image review system. In fact, a number of later authors started with contributing images.
- FM: Anyone who is interested in palaeontology is welcome to try writing articles, and we would be more than willing to help. I find that the more people that work on articles simultaneously with me, the more motivation I get to write myself. I am also one of those editors who started out contributing dinosaur illustrations and making minor edits, and only began writing after some years. But when I got to it, it wasn't as intimidating as I had feared, and I've learned a lot in the process. For example anatomy; if you know dinosaur anatomy, you have a very good framework for understanding the anatomy of other tetrapod animals, including humans.
4) Enwebb: Between the two of you, you have over 300 GA reviews. FunkMonk, you have over 250 of those. What keeps you coming back to review more articles?
- FM: One of the main reasons I review GANs is to learn more about subjects that seem interesting (or which I would perhaps not come across otherwise). There are of course also more practical reasons, such as helping an article on its way towards FAC, to reduce the GAN backlog, and to "pay back" when I have a nomination up myself. It feels like a win-win situation where I can be entertained by interesting info, while also helping other editors get their nominations in shape, and we'll end up with an article that hopefully serves to educate a lot of people (the greater good).
- JL: Because I enjoy reading Wikipedia articles and like to learn new things. In addition, reviews give me the opportunity to have direct contact with the authors, and help them to make their articles even better. This is quite rewarding for me personally. But I also review because I consider our GA and FA system to be of fundamental importance for Wikipedia. When I started editing Wikipedia (the German version), the article promotion reviews motivated me and improved my writing skills a lot. Submitting an article for review requires one to get serious and take additional steps to bring the article to the best quality possible. GAs and FAs are also a good starting point for readers, and may motivate them to become authors themselves.
5) Enwebb: What are your editing preferences? Any scripts or gadgets you find invaluable?
- FM: One script that everyone should know about is the duplink highlight tool. It will show duplinks within the intro and body of a given article separately, and it seems a lot of people still don't know about it, though they are happy when introduced to it. I really liked the citationbot too (since citation consistency is a boring chore to me), but it seems to be blocked at the moment due to some technical issues.
- JL: I often review using the Wikipedia Beta app on my smartphone, as it allows me to read without needing to sit in front of the PC. For writing, I find the reference management software Zotero invaluable, as it generates citation templates automatically, saving a lot of time.
- Editor's note: I downloaded Zotero and tried it for the first time and think it is a very useful tool. More here.
6) Enwebb: What would surprise the ToL community to learn about your life off-wiki?
- FM: Perhaps that I have no background in natural history/science, but work with animation and games. But fascination with and knowledge of nature and animals is actually very helpful when designing and animating characters and creatures, so it isn't that far off, and I can actually use some of the things I learn while writing here for my work (when I wrote the Dromaeosauroides article, it was partially to learn more about the animal for a design-school project).
- JL: That I am actually doing research on dinosaurs. Though I avoid writing about topics I publish research on, my Wikipedia work helps me to keep a good general overview over the field, and quite regularly I can use what I learned while writing for Wikipedia for my research.
Get in touch with these editors regarding collaboration at WikiProject Dinosaurs!
- Marine life continues to dominate ToL DYKs
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Sent by DannyS712 (talk) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) at 03:44, 4 June 2019 (UTC)
June 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg/100px-Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg)
- June 2019—Issue 003
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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Project name | Relative WikiWork |
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Cats | 4.79
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Fisheries and fishing | 4.9
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Dogs | 4.91
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Viruses | 4.91
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ToL | 4.94
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Cetaceans | 4.97
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Primates | 4.98
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Sharks | 5.04
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All wikiprojects average | 5.05
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Dinosaurs | 5.12
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Equine | 5.15
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Bats | 5.25
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Mammals | 5.32
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Aquarium fishes | 5.35
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Hypericaceae | 5.38
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Turtles | 5.4
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Birds | 5.46
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Australian biota | 5.5
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Marine life | 5.54
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Animals | 5.56
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Paleontology | 5.57
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Rodents | 5.58
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Amphibians and Reptiles | 5.64
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Fungi | 5.65
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Bivalves | 5.66
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Plants | 5.67
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Algae | 5.68
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Arthropods | 5.69
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Hymenoptera | 5.72
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Microbiology | 5.72
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Cephalopods | 5.74
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Fishes | 5.76
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Ants | 5.79
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Gastropods | 5.8
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Spiders | 5.86
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Insects | 5.9
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Beetles | 5.98
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Lepidoptera | 5.98
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- Spineless editors overwhelmed by stubs
Within the Tree of Life and its many subprojects, there is an abundance of stubs. Welcome to Wikipedia, what's new, right? However, based on all wikiprojects listed (just over two thousand), the Tree of Life project is worse off in average article quality than most. Based on the concept of relative WikiWork (the average number of "steps" needed to have a project consisting of all featured articles (FAs), where stub status → FA consists of six steps), only seven projects within the ToL have an average rating of "start class" or better. Many projects, particularly those involving invertebrates, hover at an average article quality slightly better than a stub. With relative WikiWorks of 5.98 each, WikiProject Lepidoptera and WikiProject Beetles have the highest relative WikiWork of any project. Given that invertebrates are incredibly speciose, it may not surprise you that many articles about them are lower quality. WikiProject Beetles, for example, has over 20 times more articles than WikiProject Cats. Wikipedia will always be incomplete, so we should take our relatively low WikiWork as motivation to write more articles that are also better in quality.
- Editor Spotlight: Showing love to misfit taxa
We're joined for this month's Editor Spotlight by NessieVL, a long-time contributor who lists themselves as a member of WikiProject Fungus, WikiProject Algae, and WikiProject Cephalopods.
1) Enwebb: How did you come to edit articles about organisms and taxonomic groups?
- Nessie: The main force, then and now, driving me to create or edit articles is thinking "Why isn't there an article on that on Wikipedia?" Either I'll read about some rarely-sighted creature in the deep sea or find something new on iNaturalist and want to learn more. First stop (surprise!) is Wikipedia, and many times there is just a stub or no page at all. Sometimes I just add the source that got me to the article, not sometimes I go deep and try to get everything from the library or online journals and put it all in an article. The nice thing about taxa is the strong precedent that all accepted extant taxa are notable, so one does not need to really worry about doing a ton of research and having the page get removed. I was super worried about this as a new editor: I still really dislike conflict so if I can avoid it I do. Anyway, the most important part is stitching an article in to the rest of Wikipedia: Linking all the jargon, taxonomers, pollinators, etc., adding categories, and putting in the correct WikiProjects. Recently I have been doing more of the stitching-in stuff with extant articles. The last deep-dive article I made was Karuka at the end of last year, which is a bit of a break for me. I guess it's easier to do all the other stuff on my tablet while watching TV.
2) Enwebb: Many editors in the ToL are highly specialized on a group of taxa. A look at your recently created articles includes much diversity, though, with viruses, bacteria, algae, and cnidarians all represented—are there any commonalities for the articles you work on? Would you say you're particularly interested in certain groups?
- Nessie: I was a nerd from a time when that would get you beat up, so I like odd things and underdogs. I also avoid butting heads, so not only do I find siphonophores and seaweeds fascinating I don't have to worry about stepping on anyone's toes. I go down rabbitholes where I start writing an article like Mastocarpus papillatus because I found some growing on some rocks, then in my research I see it is parasitized by Pythium porphyrae, which has no article, and how can that be for an oomycete that oddly lives in the ocean and also attacks my tasty nori. So then I wrote that article and that got me blowing off the dust on other Oomycota articles, encouraged by the pull of propagating automatic taxoboxes. Once you've done the taxonomy template for the genus, well then you might as well do all the species now that the template is taken care of for them too. and so on until I get sucked in somewhere else. I think it's good to advocate for some of these 'oddball' taxa as it makes it easier for editors to expand their range from say plants to the pathogenic microorganisms of their favorite plant.
- My favorite clades though, It's hard to pick for a dilettante like me. I like working on virus taxonomy, but I can't think of a specific virus species that I am awed by. Maybe Tulip breaking virus for teaching us economics or Variola virus for having so many smallpox deities, one of which was popularly sung about by Desi Arnaz and then inspired the name of a cartoon character who was then misremembered and then turned into a nickname for Howard Stern's producer Gary Dell'Abate. Sorry, really had to share that chain, but for a species that's not a staple food it probably has the most deities. But anyway, for having the most species that wow me, I love a good fungus or algae, but that often is led by my stomach. Also why I seem to research so many plant articles. You can't eat siphonophores, at least I don't, but they are fascinating with their federalist colonies of zooids. Bats are all amazing, but the task force seems to have done so much I feel the oomycetes and slime moulds need more love. Same thing with dinosaurs (I'm team Therizinosaurus though). But honestly, every species has that one moment in the research where you just go, wow, that's so interesting. For instance, I loved discovering that the picture-winged fly (Delphinia picta) has a mating dance that involves blowing bubbles. Now I keep expecting them to show me when they land on my arm, but no such luck yet.
3) Enwebb: I noticed that many of your recent edits utilize the script Rater, which aids in quickly reassessing the quality and importance of an article. Why is it important to update talk page assessments of articles? I also noticed that the quality rating you assign often aligns with ORES, a script that uses machine-learning to predict article quality. Coincidence?
- Nessie: I initially started focusing on WikiProject talk page templates because they seem to be the key to data collecting and maintenance for articles, much more so than categories. This is where you note of an article needs an image, or audio, or a range map. It's how the cleanup listing bot sorts articles, and how Plantdrew does his automated taxobox usage stats. The latter inspired me to look for articles on organisms that are not assigned to any ToL WikiProjects which initially was in the thousands. I got it down to zero with just copypasta so you can imagine I was excited when I saw the rater tool. Back then I rated everything stub/low because it was faster: I couldn't check every article for the items on the B-class checklists. Plus each project has their own nuances to rating scales and I thought the editors in the individual projects would take it from there. I also thought all species were important, so how can I choose a favorite? Now it is much easier with the rater tool and the apparent consensus with Abductive's method of rating by the pageviews (0-9 views/day is low, 10-99 is med, 100-999 is high...). For the quality I generally go by the ORES rating, you caught me. It sometimes is thrown off by a long list of species or something, but it's generally good for stub to C: above that needs formal investigation and procedures I am still learning about. It seems that in the ToL projects we don't focus so much on getting articles to GA/FA so it's been harder to pick up. It was a little culture shock when I went on the Discord server and it seemed everyone was obsessed with getting articles up in quality. I think ToL is focusing on all the missing taxa and (re)organizing it all, which when you already have articles on every anime series or whatever you can focus on bulking the articles up more. In any event, on my growing to-do list is trying to get an article up to FA or GA and learn the process that way so I can better do the quality ratings and not just kick the can down the road.
4) Enwebb: What, if anything, can ToL and its subprojects do to better support collaboration and coordination among editors? How can we improve?
- Nessie: I mentioned earlier that the projects are the main way maintenance is done. And it is good that we have a bunch of subprojects that let those tasks get broken up into manageable pieces. Frankly I'm amazed anything gets done with WikiProject Plants with how huge its scope is. Yet this not only parcels out the work but the discussion as well. A few editors like Peter coxhead and Plantdrew keep an eye on many of the subprojects and spread the word, but it's still easy for newer editors to get a little lost. There should be balance between the lumping and splitting. The newsletter helps by crossing over all the WikiProjects, and if the discord channel picked up that would help too. Possibly the big Enwiki talk page changes will help as well.
5) Enwebb: What would surprise the ToL community to learn about your life off-Wikipedia?
- Nessie: I'm not sure anything would be surprising. I focus on nature offline too, foraging for mushrooms or wild plants and trying to avoid ticks and mosquitos. I have started going magnet fishing lately, more to help clean up the environment than in the hopes of finding anything valuable. But it would be fun to find a weapon and help solve a cold case or something.
- June DYKs
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sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:29, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
Congratulations from the Military History Project
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Military history reviewers' award | |
On behalf of the Military History Project, I am proud to present the The Milhist reviewing award (2 stripes) for participating in 7 reviews between April and June 2019 Peacemaker67 (talk) via MilHistBot (talk) 03:05, 4 July 2019 (UTC) Keep track of upcoming reviews. Just copy and paste |
New message from Serial Number 54129
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Message added 17:46, 6 July 2019 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
No worries, I forgot about it for a week! :) ——SerialNumber54129 17:46, 6 July 2019 (UTC)
Tree of Life Newsletter
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg/100px-Tree_of_life_by_Haeckel.jpg)
- July 2019—Issue 004
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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The WikiCup, an annual editing competition, is now in its fourth round. Casliber, consistent participant since 2010 and winner in 2016, is currently dominating Group A with 601 points. Largely responsible is the successful Featured Article nomination of Masked booby. The other remaining Tree of Life participant, Enwebb, is participating in her first ever WikiCup. In this round, she has a grand total of...5 points. But with the recent Featured Article nomination of Megabat, she stands to gain 600 points if successful. As it stands, though, it appears that at least one ToL editor is headed to the fifth and final round of 8 contestants, which begins September 1. Thus far, all participants in the WikiCup have generated 17 Featured Articles, 116 Good Articles, 16 Featured Lists, and 57 Featured Pictures. The Good Article Nominations backlog has been reduced as well, with 286 Good Article Reviews. |
For this month's editor spotlight we're joined by Charlesjsharp, a longtime contributor to Wikimedia Commons with a plethora of featured pictures on English Wikipedia. 1) Starsandwhales: How long have you been editing Wikipedia, and how did you get interested? How did you begin your journey of photographing wildlife?
![]() 2) S&W: Over the years, you've taken photos of many different organisms from birds to insects to big cats; you have an extensive list of favorite images. Which animals have been the most exciting for you to photograph?
3) S&W: Many articles under ToL have requests for people to add images that can go unanswered. What can the community do to improve the coverage of different organisms on Wikipedia, especially when it comes to images?
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4) S&W: What advice would you give to people new to photographing wildlife?
5) S&W: What would the Tree of Life community be surprised to learn about your life off-wiki?
* An example of cumbersome code: getting the layout of my responses to your questions. So dated, and no online spellchecker. |
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Sent by ZLEA via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:59, 1 August 2019 (UTC)
Hi Jens, I was wondering if you're still interested in collaborating on Argentinosaurus. (Sorry for the delay in asking, my prediction about being ready to start in mid-June seems to have been pretty inaccurate.) It seems like the Colossosauria paper's finally been official published ([7]), so we could use that as a starting point for expanding the article. --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 15:03, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
- Sure! Currently I'm quite busy in real life and struggle to get back on track here in Wikipedia, but I should definitely be able to free some time. How do we split the work? We need content on the anatomy, and yes, that Colossosauria paper is important. Then we do need to do a deep search for sources, to get every relevant information there is about these few bones! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:09, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
- My editing situation is pretty much the same :) . I (re)wrote the majority of the paleoecology section, so I'm thinking of going over and revising it (I did something similar with Confuciusornis, and was quite surprised with how much more I was able to add). I'm also thinking of going over the classification section, since Argentinosaurus has been known to science for quite some time, it'll be interesting to see how our understanding of Titanosauria has changed over the years (also, looking back, I think that adding the Volgatitan paper wasn't the best idea ever, seeing as that it added one taxon to a prexisting study that was already cited). I don't have access to this paper ([8]), so I may not be very well-equipped for writing the description section, as it apparently re-orders the dorsals. As for the discovery and paleobiology sections, I guess I could go either way. Is there anything that you want to work on in particular? --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 12:02, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
- Sounds good. Ok, then I would work on the description section first. I also just sent you said paper for your records. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:00, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
- Wow, thanks for the paper! I see it states that the holotype contained a seventh dorsal, so I'll have to update the skeletal diagram again soon. --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 00:15, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
- I wouldn't edit the position of any of the dorsals. So far there have been 3 published interpretations of the dorsals, the original paper, an abstract by Novas & Ezcurra, and a paper on titanosaur laminae by Salgado & Powell, with different interpretations of each. Right now I think the "consensus" of the two latter papers is that the "second" dorsal of Bonaparte & Coria 1993 is actually the most posterior of the described dorsals. IJReid {{T - C - D - R}} 16:23, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
- Sorry, I should've stated it more clearly - the holoype apparently preserved seven dorsal vertebrae, not six as the skeletal currently shows. --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 18:43, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
- I wouldn't edit the position of any of the dorsals. So far there have been 3 published interpretations of the dorsals, the original paper, an abstract by Novas & Ezcurra, and a paper on titanosaur laminae by Salgado & Powell, with different interpretations of each. Right now I think the "consensus" of the two latter papers is that the "second" dorsal of Bonaparte & Coria 1993 is actually the most posterior of the described dorsals. IJReid {{T - C - D - R}} 16:23, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
- Wow, thanks for the paper! I see it states that the holotype contained a seventh dorsal, so I'll have to update the skeletal diagram again soon. --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 00:15, 15 August 2019 (UTC)
- Sounds good. Ok, then I would work on the description section first. I also just sent you said paper for your records. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 14:00, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
- My editing situation is pretty much the same :) . I (re)wrote the majority of the paleoecology section, so I'm thinking of going over and revising it (I did something similar with Confuciusornis, and was quite surprised with how much more I was able to add). I'm also thinking of going over the classification section, since Argentinosaurus has been known to science for quite some time, it'll be interesting to see how our understanding of Titanosauria has changed over the years (also, looking back, I think that adding the Volgatitan paper wasn't the best idea ever, seeing as that it added one taxon to a prexisting study that was already cited). I don't have access to this paper ([8]), so I may not be very well-equipped for writing the description section, as it apparently re-orders the dorsals. As for the discovery and paleobiology sections, I guess I could go either way. Is there anything that you want to work on in particular? --Slate Weasel (talk | contribs) 12:02, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
- Sure! Currently I'm quite busy in real life and struggle to get back on track here in Wikipedia, but I should definitely be able to free some time. How do we split the work? We need content on the anatomy, and yes, that Colossosauria paper is important. Then we do need to do a deep search for sources, to get every relevant information there is about these few bones! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 19:09, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Edmontosaurus mummy AMNH 5060 scheduled for TFA
This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for September 24, 2019. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 24, 2019. Thanks!—Wehwalt (talk) 08:55, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
August 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- August 2019—Issue 005
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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![]() ![]() Guest column by Thomas Shafee (Evolution and evolvability), Editor in Chief of WikiJournal of Science
Firstly, WikiJSci can be a complementary system for FA review (getting external review, input, and validity). When an Wikipedia article is nominated (via WP:JAN), journal editors go out to non-Wikipedian academics and researchers who have published on the subject on the last five years and invite them to give feedback comments (e.g. Peripatric speciation and Baryonyx). The resulting changes can then be integrated back into the Wikipedia article.
Getting more editors involved in Wikipedia is always a high priority. WikiJSci can also be a way to encourage new people to contribute articles (especially on missing/stub/start topics). An example of an article that was written from scratch by a group of non-Wikipedians is Teladorsagia circumcincta. This not only resulted in a new Wikipedia page on an underdeveloped topic, but introduced the idea of Wikimedia contribution to a group of people who had previously never considered it.
The journal can be a way to get multimedia content reviewed or encourage contribution. The same approach could be easily adapted to sounds (e.g. frog mating calls) or videos (e.g. starfish feet motion). It also allows for tracking of those images in new articles via Altmetric (this example has >200, which is bananas). There aren't any biology examples in WikiJSci yet, but the sister medical journal has published a few summary diagrams, photography, and image galleries. Examples include this gallery by Blausen Medical or the diagram of cell disassembly during apoptosis.
For those interested in other Wikimedia sister projects, there's also broad scope for interactions with the WikiJournals. Perhaps peer reviewed teaching resources could be useful to sit alongside sets of Wikipedia articles and be integrated into Wikiversity courses (like this or this)? Can sections of Wikidata & Wikispecies be peer reviewed? What are the potential avenues for integration with WikiCite, WikiFactMine, Scholia, etc.? Currently, WikiJSci is aiming to be very flexible and try out different formats so long as they can be externally peer reviewed. For more info, see the 2019-06-30 Signpost article and the current sister project proposal. |
1) Enwebb: You're very prolific with DYKs, with over 2,000 nominations credited (in fact, I'll highlight which DYK nominations this month were yours below). What made you become so involved in this part of Wikipedia? Why should Tree of Life editors nominate articles for DYK?
2) Enwebb: I noticed that your DYK nominations reflect a diverse array of flora and fauna, from trees, marine invertebrates, birds, fishes, and mammals. How do you decide what to work on?
3) Enwebb: Which of your Wikipedia accomplishments are you most proud of?
4) Enwebb: What motivates you to keep contributing? What's your 10,000 ft view (pardon the non-SI) of the community and Tree of Life?
6) Enwebb: How did you first become interested in natural history?
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September 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- September 2019—Issue 006
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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5
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Tree of Life subprojects and task forces by start year and whether currently considered active or not This month saw a vanishingly rare occurrence for the Tree of Life: a new WikiProject joined the fold. WikiProject Diptera, however, is also unusual in being a classroom project. Whether or not this project will stay active once the semester ends remains to be seen. It does not bode well, however, that WP:WikiProject Vespidae—a creation from the same instructor at St. Louis University—faded to obscurity shortly after the fall semester concluded in 2014. WikiProject Vespidae is defunct and now redirects to the Hymenoptera task force of WikiProject Insects. Since 2014, the Tree of Life has seen a string of years where one or zero projects or task forces were created. The only projects and task forces created since then are WikiProject Animal anatomy (2014), Hymenoptera task force (2016), Bats task force (2017), WikiProject Hypericaceae (2018), and now WikiProject Diptera (2019). The year 2006 saw the greatest creation of WikiProjects and task forces, with fourteen still active and the remaining six as "semiactive", "inactive", or "defunct". |
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October 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- October 2019—Issue 007
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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By request from another editor, this month I wrote an overview of ways that content is featured on Wikipedia. Below I have outlined some of the processes for getting content featured: Did You Know (DYK)What is it: A way for articles to appear on the main page of Wikipedia. A short hook in the format of "Did you know...that ___" presents unusual and interesting facts to the reader, hopefully making the reader want to click through to the article How it works: The DYK process has fairly low barriers for participation. The eligibility criteria are few and relatively easy to meet. Some important guidelines:
The process for creating the nomination is somewhat tedious. Instructions can be found here (official instructions) and here ("quick and nice" guide to DYK). Experience is the best teacher here, so don't be afraid to try and fail a few times. The last few DYK nominations I've done, however, have been with the help of SD0001's DYK-helper script, which makes the process a bit more streamlined (you create the template from a popup box on the article; created template is automatically transcluded to nominations page and article talk page) Once your nomination is created and transcluded, it will need to be reviewed. The reviewer will check that the article meets the eligibility criteria, that the hook is short enough, cited, and interesting, and that other requirements are met, such as for images. If you've been credited with more than 5 DYKs, the reviewer will also check that you've reviewed someone else's nomination for each article that you nominate. This is called QPQ (quid pro quo). You can check how many credited DYKs you've had here to see if QPQ is required for you to nominate an article for DYK. Good Article (GA)What it is: A peer review process to determine that an article meets a set of criteria. This adds a How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Anyone can nominate an article—you don't have to be a major contributor, though it is considered polite to inform the major contributors that you are nominating the article. The article is added to a queue to await a review. In the ToL, it seems that reviews happen pretty quickly, thanks to our dedicated members. Once the review begins, the reviewer will offer suggestions to help the article meet the 6 GA criteria. Upon addressing all concerns, the reviewer will pass the article, and voilà! Good Article! Advice to a first-time nominator: Look at other Good Articles in related areas before nominating. If you're unsure about nominating, consider posting to the talk page of your project to see what other editors think. You can also have a more experienced editor co-nominate the article with you. Featured Article (FA)What it is: An exhaustive peer review to determine that an articles meets the criteria. This adds a How it works: You follow the instructions to nominate an article, placing a template on its talk page. Nominated articles are usually GAs already. Uninvolved editors can nominate, though the article's regular editors should be consulted first. Several editors will come by offering feedback, eventually supporting or opposing promotion to FA. A coordinator will determine if there is consensus to promote the article to FA. For an editor's first FA, spot checks to verify that the sources support the text are conducted. Advice to a first-time nominator: The Featured Article Candidate (FAC) process is a bit intimidating, but several steps can make your first one easier (speaking as someone who has exactly one). If you also did the GA nomination of the article, you can ask the reviewer for "extra" feedback beyond the GA criteria. You can also formally request a peer review and/or a copy edit from the Guild of Copy Editors to check for content and mechanics. First-time nominators are encouraged to seek the help of a mentor for a higher likelihood of passing their first FAC. Good and Featured Topics (GT and FT)What it is: It took me a while to realize we even had GT and FT on Wikipedia, as they are not very common relative to GA and FA. Both GT and FT are collections of related articles of high quality (all articles at GA or FA, all lists at Featured List). GT/FT have to be at least 3 articles with no obvious gaps in coverage of the topic, along with other criteria. For GT, all articles have to be GA quality and all lists must be FL. For FT, at least half the articles must be FA or FL, with the remaining articles at GA. How it works: Follow the nomination procedures for creating a new topic or adding an article to an existing topic. Other editors weigh in to support or oppose the proposal. Coordinators determine if there is consensus to promote to GT/FT. Advice to a first-time nominator: There are very few GT/FT in Tree of Life (5 GT and 11 FT). Most of the legwork appears to be improving a cohesive set of articles to GA/FA. |
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Ohmdenosaurus
The tibia measures 40 or 42 cm according to various sources. Dinosaurs: The enciclopedia (Pag 632) cites 40 cm...but the upcoming Dinosaur Facts and Figures, the Sauropods and other Sauropodomorphs cites 40 or 42 cm (And that´s a problem, since it is a non released link). Carrano cites 405 mm on the 1997 work The evolution of dinosaur locomotion: functional morphology, biomechanics, and modern analogs (Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy). Wild (1978) also cites 405 mm, even if he extrapolates 4 m(Beware with that! it is an especulation of the author)...Those 2 are the main cites. I ask Rubén Molina Pérez from EoFauna, Co-AUTOR of The Dinosaur facts and Figures, who calculated it, using Rhoetosaurus and Tazoudasaurus. The reconstruction was deleted when it has nothing to do with the description theme and respects the Eusauropoda grade, and more important, is legally updated, please return it. The scale is also accurate following the sizes provided by wild and Carrano.
-User talk:Yewtharaptor 05/12/19 —Preceding undated comment added 15:40, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
- @Yewtharaptor: Ok, these are sources for the tibia length, but what about the rest of the paragraph you added, especially the body length and weight estimates? Where do they come from? And why are you adding sources that do not mention anything about the topic? Regarding the image (which was previously deleted on Commons due to copyright infringement): This means you asked the artist for permission? This is much appreciated, thanks. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:22, 5 December 2019 (UTC)
November 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- November 2019—Issue 008
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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News at a Glance |
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Class is in Session in the Tree of Life |
In an interesting turn of events, this month's guest column is by my alter-ego, Elysia (Wiki Ed): *Puts on Wiki Education hat* Hi everyone, I'm Elysia and I work for Wiki Education. You may know me as Enwebb. I got a request last month to let you know how Wiki Education is intersecting with the Tree of Life subprojects. As one of Wiki Education's major goals is to improve topics related to the sciences, leading to our Communicating Science initiative, we end up supporting quite a few in the biological sciences. Here are the TOL-related courses active this term: What is the impact of student editors in Tree of Life? ![]() Altogether, these 16 courses have 347 student participants. As the end of the semester hasn't come yet, these numbers are still growing, but these students have:
Some of our best student work this semester (of any kind, not just biodiversity) has come from Agelaia's Behavioural Ecology course—you may remember this as the course that created WikiProject Diptera. The students have several Good Article nominations, including Dryomyza anilis, Anastrepha ludens, Aedes taeniorhynchus, Drosophila silvestris, Drosophila subobscura, and Ceratitis capitata. And while long-term participation from students is low, there's always the chance that we'll discover a Wikipedian. I had never edited before my Wikipedia assignment in 2017 and I'm still here nearly 20,000 edits later! After I poked around in the beginning of the semester, I had the realization that not many people write Wikipedia, and very few of those have a special interest in bats. If I didn't stick around to write the content, there was no guarantee that it would ever get done. Why are species articles suitable for students? Writing about taxonomic groups is a great fit for students, as it keeps them away from areas where new editors traditionally struggle. The notability policy is generous towards taxa, and there is little danger of a student's work getting removed for lack of notability; this is to be expected when students write biographies. Students may struggle with encyclopedic tone for biographies and stray towards promotional writing, but this is much less common when writing about a shrew or algae! Additionally, we're never going to run out of species to write about. Students have a bounty of stubs and redlinks to pick from. Creating a new article or expanding an existing one also takes a fairly predictable structure, with plenty of articles that students can model after. Don't students just create messes for volunteers to clean up? Our sincere hope is that, no, they don't, and we take several steps to try to minimize the burden on volunteer labor. With automatic plagiarism detection, alerts when students edit a Good or Featured Article, and notifications when students edit an article subject to discretionary sanctions, we try to stay ahead of problems as much as possible. We also review all student work at the end of each term. Ian, Shalor, and I are always happy to receive pings alerting us to student issues that need to be addressed. |
November DYKs |
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December 2019 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- December 2019—Issue 009
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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News at a Glance |
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Editor Spotlight: Plantdrew |
We're joined this month by long-time editor Plantdrew, who's currently engaged in streamlining the taxonomic structure of Wikipedia articles via the automated taxobox system. How did you become a Wikipedian? What are your particular interests (besides the obvious of "plants")?
What projects are keeping you busy around the 'pedia at present?
What's your favorite plant?
What's your background like? How did you come to have a special interest in biology?
What's something that would surprised TOL editors about your life off-wiki?
Anything else you'd like us to know?
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December DYKs |
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Argentinosaurus
Hello, Jens Lallensack. This is a courtesy notice that the copy edit you requested for Argentinosaurus at the Guild of Copy Editors requests page is now complete. All feedback welcome! Cheers, Baffle☿gab 01:01, 21 January 2020 (UTC) |
Great, thank you very much! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:04, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
2020 in archosaur paleontology
My edit moving several studies from this page to 2017 in archosaur paleontology, 2018 in archosaur paleontology and 2019 in archosaur paleontology was inspired by recent discussion on the talk page of the Wikiproject Paleontology. One of the conclusions of that discussion seems to be that the studies that have both an advance online version and the print version of the publication, and do not name new taxa, should be listed in the article corresponding to the year of the first publication. The studies removed from this page all had their advance online version published online in 2019, 2018 or even 2017, so I moved them to the relevant articles.--Macrochelys (talk) 17:45, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
- @Macrochelys: My bad, I somehow thought that you moved stuff back to the general article "20** in Paleontology". Never mind. Thanks for doing this work! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 22:16, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
January 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- January 2020—Issue 010
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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News at a Glance |
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Vital Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The vital articles project on English Wikipedia began in 2004 when an editor transferred a list from Meta-Wiki: List of articles every Wikipedia should have. The first incarnation of the list became what is now level 3. As of 2019, there are 5 levels of vital articles:
Each level is inclusive of all previous levels, meaning that the 1,000 Level 3 articles include those listed on Levels 2 and 1. Below is an overview of the distribution of vital articles, and the quality of the articles. While the ultimate goal of the vital articles project is to have Featured-class articles, I also considered Good Articles to be "complete" for the purposes of this list. Animals (1,148 designated out of projected 2,400)
Plants, fungi, and other organisms (510 designated out of projected 1,200)
Many articles have yet to be designated for Tree of Life taxonomic groups, with 1,942 outstanding articles to be added. Anyone can add vital articles to the list! Restructuring may be necessary, as the only viruses included as of yet are under the category "Health". The majority of vital articles needing improvement are level 5, but here are some outstanding articles from the other levels:
· Abiogenesis
· Sexual dimorphism |
January DYKs |
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February 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- February 2020—Issue 011
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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News at a Glance |
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The spread of coronavirus across Wikipedia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
With the outbreak of a novel coronavirus dominating news coverage, Wikipedia content related to the virus has seen much higher interest. Tree of Life content of particular interest to readers has included viruses, bats, pangolins, and masked palm civets. Viruses saw the most dramatic growth in readership: Coronavirus, which was the 105th most popular virus article in December 2019 with about 400 views per day, averaged over a quarter million views each day of January 2020. Total monthly viewership of the top-10 virus articles ballooned from about 1.5 million to nearly 20 million.
![]() From October 2019 – December 2019, the top ten most popular bat articles fluctuated among 16 different articles, with the December viewership of those 10 articles at 209,280. For January 2020, three articles broke into the top-10 that were not among the 16 articles of the prior three months: Bat as food, Horseshoe bat, and Bat-borne virus. Viewership of the top-10 bat articles spiked nearly 300% to 617,067 in January. While bats have been implicated as a possible natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2, an intermediate host may be the bridge between bats and humans. Pangolins have been hypothesized as the intermediate host for the virus, causing a large spike in typical page views of 2-3k each day up to more than 60k in a day. Masked palm civets, the intermediate host of SARS, saw a modest yet noticeable spike in page views as well, from 100 to 300 views per day to as many as 5k views per day. With an increase in viewers came an increase in editors. In an interview, longtime virus editor Awkwafaba identified the influx of editors as the biggest challenge in editing content related to the coronavirus. They noted that these newcomers include "novices who make honest mistakes and get tossed about a bit in the mad activity" as well as "experienced editors who know nothing about viruses and are good researchers, yet aren't familiar with the policies of WP:ToL or WP:Viruses." Disruption also increased, with extended confirmed protection (also known as the 30/500 rule, which prevents editors with fewer than 30 days tenure and 500 edits from making edits and is typically used on a very small subset of Wikipedia articles) temporarily applied to Coronavirus and still active on Template:2019–20 coronavirus outbreak data. New editors apparently seeking to correct misinformation continuously edited the article Bat as food to remove content related to China: Videos of Chinese people eating bat soup were misrepresented to be current or filmed in China, when at least one such video was several years old and filmed in Palau. However, reliable sources confirm that bats are eaten in China, especially Southern China, so these well-meaning edits were mostly removed. Another level of complexity was added by the fluctuating terminology of the virus. Over a dozen moves and merges were requested within WikiProject Viruses. To give you an idea of the musical chairs happening with article titles, here are the move histories of two articles: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
Awkwafaba noted that "the main authorities, WHO and ICTV, don't really have a process for speedily naming a virus or disease." Additionally, they have different criteria for naming. They said, "I remember in a move discussion from the article then called Wuhan coronavirus that a virus name cannot have a geographical location in it, but this is a WHO disease naming guideline, and not an ICTV virus naming rule. ICTV may have renamed Four Corners virus to Sin Nombre orthohantavirus but there are still plenty of official virus species names that don't abide by WHO guidelines." |
February DYKs |
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March 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- March 2020—Issue 012
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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News at a glance |
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A new WikiProject responding to the pandemic | ||
The newest Tree of Life WikiProject is about a taxon that is dominating the headlines, Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, and its many effects. We interviewed Another Believer, the founder of WikiProject COVID-19. This interview has been edited for length. Find the full interview here.
Number of participants of WikiProject Covid-19
Thank you to Another Believer for your time, both in this interview and in this project. Interested readers can join WikiProject COVID-19. And please stay safe and healthy out there. --Awkwafaba |
March DYKs |
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Amazing and surreal
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The Special Barnstar | |
I was clearing out my watchlist and I noticed that you were the main writer behind taking Trachodon mummy (which has since been renamed), an article I created and submitted to WP:DYK as a high schooler thirteen years ago, to GA and FA status! That is awesome. I remember when I created it I thought it might never amount to anything more than a stub. I learned so much more reading it just now! bibliomaniac15 04:31, 8 April 2020 (UTC) |
- Thank you very much for creating this article; it gave me the inspiration to expand it, first for the German, and finally also the English version. I' glad you enjoyed it. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 15:19, 8 April 2020 (UTC)
April 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- April 2020—Issue 013
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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News at a glance |
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Tree of Life's growing featured content | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Inspired by a March 2020 post at WikiProject Medicine detailing the growth of Featured Articles over time, we decided to reproduce that table here, adding a second table showing the growth of Good Articles. Tree of Life articles are placed in the "Biology" category for FAs, which has seen a growth of 381% since 2008. Only two other subjects had a greater growth than Biology: Business, economics, and finance; and Warfare. Percentage Growth in FA Categories, 2008–2019, Legend: Considerably above average, Above average, Average Below average , Considerably below average, Poor
*subset of natural sciences Unsurprisingly, the number of GAs has increased more rapidly than the number of FAs. Organisms, which is a subcategory of Natural sciences, has seen a GA growth of 755% since 2008, besting the Natural sciences overall growth of 530%. While Warfare had far and away the most significant growth of GAs, it's a clear outlier relative to other categories. |
April DYKs |
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May 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- May 2020—Issue 014
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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News at a glance |
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Interview with Jts1882 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This month we're joined by Jts1882, who is active in depicting evolutionary relationship of taxa via cladograms. Part of this includes responding to cladogram requests, where interested editors can have cladograms made without using the templates themselves. How did you come to be interested in systematics? Are you interested in systematics broadly, or is there a particular group you're most fond of? As long as I can remember I’ve been interested in nature, starting with the animals and plants in the garden, school grounds, and local wood, and then more general wildlife worldwide. An interest in how things are classified grew from this. I like things to be organised and understanding the relationships between things and systems (not just living things) is a big part of that. Biology was always my favourite subject in school and took up a disproportionate part of my time. My interest in systematics is broad as I’d like to comprehend the whole tree of life, but the cat family is my favourite group. What's the background behind cladogram requests? I see that it isn't a very old part of the Tree of Life Well I can’t take any credit for the cladogram requests page, although I help out there sometimes. It was created by IJReid and there are several people who have helped there more than me. I think the motivation is that creating cladograms requires a knowledge of the templates that is daunting for many editors. It was one way of helping people who want to focus on content creation. My main contribution to the cladograms is converting the {{clade}} template to use a Lua module. The template code was extremely difficult to follow and had to be repetitive (I can only admire the efforts of those who got the thing to work in the first place). The conversion to Lua made it more efficient, allowed larger and deeper cladograms, plus facilitating the introduction of new features. The cladogram request page was recently the venue for discussion on making time calibrated cladograms, which is now possible, if not particularly user friendly. What advice do you have for an editor who wants to learn how to make cladograms? The same advice I would give to someone facing any computer problem, just try it out. Start by taking existing code for a cladogram and make changes yourself. The main advice would be to format it properly so indents match the brackets vertically. Of course, not everyone wants to learn and if someone prefers to focus on article content there is the cladogram request page. Examples of cladograms Jts1882 has created, showing different proposed clades for Neoaves
Do you have any personal projects or goals you're working towards on Wikipedia? As I said I like organisation and systems. So I find efforts like the automated taxobox system and {{taxonbar}} appealing. I would like to see more reuse of the major phylogenetic trees on Wikipedia with more use of consensus trees on the higher taxa. Too often they get edited based on one recent report and/or without proper citation. Animals and bilateria are examples where this is a problem. Towards this I have been working on a system of phylogeny templates that can be reused flexibly. The {{Clade transclude}} template allows selective transclusion, so the phylogenetic trees on one page can be reused with modifications, i.e. can be pruned and grafted, used with or without images, with or without collapsible elements, etc. I have an example for the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group classification (see {{Phylogeny/APG IV}}) and one for squamates that also includes collapsible elements (see {{Phylogeny/Squamata}}). A second project is to have a modular reference system for taxonomic resources. I have made some progress along this lines with the {{BioRef}} template. This started off simply as a way of hardlinking to Catalog of Fishes pages and I’ve gradually expanded it to cover other groups (e..g. FishBase, AmphibiaWeb and Amphibian Species of the World, Reptile Database, the Mammalian Diversity Database). The modular nature is still rudimentary and needs a rewrite before it is ready for wider use. What would surprise your fellow editors to learn about your life off-Wikipedia? I don’t think there is anything particularly surprising or interesting about my life. I’ve had an academic career as a research scientist but I don't think anyone could guess the area from my Wikipedia edits. I prefer to work on areas where I am learning at the same time. This why I spend more time with neglected topics (e.g. mosses at the moment). I start reading and then find that I’m not getting the information I want. Anything else you'd like us to know? My interest in the classification of things goes beyond biology. I am fascinated by mediaeval attempts to classify knowledge, such as Bacon in his The Advancement of Learning and Diderot and d’Alembert in their Encyclopédie. They were trying to come up with a universal scheme of knowledge just as the printing press was allowing greater dissemination of knowledge. With the internet we are seeing a new revolution in knowledge dissemination. Just look at how we could read research papers on the COVID virus within weeks of its discovery. With an open internet, everyone has access, not just those with the luxury of books at home or good libraries. Sites like the Biodiversity Heritage Library allow you to read old scientific works without having to visit dusty university library stack rooms, while the taxonomic and checklist databases provide instant information on millions of living species. In principle, the whole world can now find out about anything, even if Douglas Adams warned we might be disinclined to do so. This is why I like Wikipedia, with all its warts, it’s a means of organising the knowledge on the internet. In just two decades it’s become a first stop for knowledge and hopefully a gateway to more specialised sources. Perhaps developing this latter aspect, beyond providing good sources for what we say, is the next challenge for Wikipedia. |
May DYKs |
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Enwebb (talk) 19:40, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
April–May 2020 GAN Backlog drive
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The Invisible Barnstar | |
Thank you for completing 3 reviews in the April–May 2020 GAN Backlog drive. Your work helped us to reduce the backlog by over 60%. Regards, Harrias talk 08:09, 11 July 2020 (UTC) |
June/July 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- June and July 2020—Issue 015
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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News at a glance |
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Categorizing life with DexDor |
DexDor is a WikiGnome with a particular interest in article categorization, including how organisms are categorized.
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June DYKs |
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July DYKs |
![]() Life reconstruction of Pterodactylus antiquus
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Delivered on behalf of Enwebb (talk) 16:33, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for September 18, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 18, 2020. Congratulations on your work!—Wehwalt (talk) 18:51, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
August 2020 Tree of Life Newsletter
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- September 2021—Issue 016
- Tree of Life
- Welcome to the Tree of Life newsletter!
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Hoax taxon sniffed out after nearly fifteen years |
Cross posted from the Signpost ![]() On August 7, WikiProject Palaeontology member Rextron discovered a suspicious taxon article, Mustelodon, which was created in November 2005. The article lacked references and the subsequent discussion on WikiProject Palaeontology found that the alleged type locality (where the fossil was first discovered) of Lago Nandarajo "near the northern border of Panama" was nonexistent. In fact, Panama does not even really have a northern border, as it is bounded along the north by the Caribbean Sea. No other publications or databases mentioned Mustelodon, save a fleeting mention in a 2019 book that presumably followed Wikipedia, Felines of the World. The article also appeared in four other languages, Catalan, Spanish, Dutch, and Serbian. In Serbian Wikipedia, a note at the bottom of the page warned: "It is important to note here that there is no data on this genus in the official scientific literature, and all attached data on the genus Mustelodon on this page are taken from the English Wikipedia and are the only known data on this genus of mammals, so the validity of this genus is questionable." Editors took action to alert our counterparts on other projects, and these versions were removed also. As the editor who reached out to Spanish and Catalan Wikipedia, it was somewhat challenging to navigate these mostly foreign languages (I have a limited grasp of Spanish). I doubted that the article had very many watchers, so I knew I had to find some WikiProjects where I could post a machine translation advising of the hoax, and asking that users follow local protocols to remove the article. I was surprised to find, however, that Catalan Wikipedia does not tag articles for WikiProjects on talk pages, meaning I had to fumble around to find what I needed (turns out that WikiProjects are Viquiprojectes in Catalan!) Mustelodon remains on Wikidata, where its "instance of" property was swapped from "taxon" to "fictional taxon". How did this article have such a long lifespan? Early intervention is critical for removing hoaxes. A 2016 report found that a hoax article that survives its first day has an 18% chance of lasting a year.[1] Additionally, hoax articles tend to have longer lifespans if they are in inconspicuous parts of Wikipedia, where they do not receive many views. Mustelodon was only viewed a couple times a day, on average. Mustelodon survived a brush with death three years into its lifespan. The article was proposed for deletion in September 2008, with a deletion rationale of "No references given; cannot find any evidence in peer-reviewed journals that this alleged genus actually exists". Unfortunately, the proposed deletion was contested and the template removed, though the declining editor did not give a rationale. Upon its rediscovery in August 2020, Mustelodon was tagged for speedy deletion under CSD G3 as a "blatant hoax". This was challenged, and an Articles for Deletion discussion followed. On 12 August, the AfD was closed as a SNOW delete. WikiProject Palaeontology members ensured that any trace of it was scrubbed from legitimate articles. The fictional mammal was finally, truly extinct. At the ripe old age of 14 years, 9 months, this is the longest-lived documented hoax on Wikipedia, topping the previous documented record of 14 years, 5 months, set by The Gates of Saturn, a fictitious television show, which was incidentally also discovered in August 2020. How do we discover other hoax taxa? Could we use Wikidata to discover taxa are not linked to databases like ITIS, Fossilworks, and others?
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Spotlight with Mattximus |
![]() This month's spotlight is with Mattximus, author of two Featured Articles and 29 Featured Lists at current count.
I think I have a compulsion to make lists, it doesn't show up in my real life, but online I secretly get a lot of satisfaction making orderly lists and tables. It's a bit of a secret of mine, because it doesn't manifest in any other part of my life. My background is in biology, so this was a natural (haha) fit.
This experiment was just to see if I could get any random article to FA status, so I picked the very first alphabetical animal species according to the taxonomy and made that attempt. Technically, there isn't enough information for a species page so I just merged the species into a genus and went from there. It was a fun exercise, but doing it alone is not the most fun so it's probably on pause for the foreseeable future. Note: Aporhynchus is the first alphabetical taxon as follows: Animalia, Acanthocephala, Archiacanthocephala, Apororhynchida, Apororhynchidae, Apororhynchus
I would recommend getting a good article nominated, then a featured list up before tackling the FA. Lists are a bit more forgiving but give you a taste of what standards to expect from FA. The most time consuming thing is proper citations so make sure that is in order before starting either.
My personality in real life does not match my wikipedia persona. I'm not a very organized, or orderly in real life, but the wikipedia pages I brought to FL or FA are all very organized. Maybe it's my outlet for a more free-flowing life as a scientist/teacher.
The fact that wikipedia exists free of profit motive and free for everyone really is something special and I encourage everyone to donate a few dollars to the cause. |
August DYKs |
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Delivered on behalf of Enwebb (talk) 17:10, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
Süntel Formation
Hi Jens, I have created the Süntel Formation article, which I thought was long overdue. I know that in your capacity as an academic you have done research at the Langenberg Quarry which is the main locality for this formation, just thought I would let you know. Kind regards. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:01, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
- Nice, thank you for the article! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:50, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
October 2020 GAN Backlog drive!
![]() | October GAN Backlog Drive As you have taken part in previous GAN Backlog drives, or are a prolific GAN reviewer, you might be interested to know that the October 2020 GAN Backlog Drive starts on October 1, and will continue until the end of the month. |
-- Eddie891 Talk Work 16:24, 30 September 2020 (UTC)
ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message
In appreciation
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By the authority vested in me by myself it gives me great pleasure to present you with this barnstar once more in recognition of your unceasing efforts to improve and promote articles on dinosaurs. It is appreciated. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:03, 28 November 2020 (UTC) |
- Many thanks, Gog, you are too kind! Thank you, --Jens Lallensack (talk) 18:27, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
Beaver
Hi, would you be able to return to FAC. LittleJerry (talk) 15:36, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
- Yeah sorry, I left you my notes so far, will hopefully be back soon with more. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:59, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
New message from Jo-Jo Eumerus
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Message added 10:02, 30 December 2020 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:02, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
In appreciation
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The Reviewers Award | |
By the authority vested in me by myself it gives me great pleasure to present you with this award in recognition of the thorough, detailed and actionable reviews you have carried out at FAC. This work is very much appreciated. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:15, 28 January 2021 (UTC) |
Average FAC reviews per FAC nomination of 8.6! Way to go. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:15, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you, Gog, this is very kind of you! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:52, 28 January 2021 (UTC)
Argentinosaurus scheduled for TFA
This is to let you know that the Argentinosaurus article has been scheduled as today's featured article for April 13, 2021. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 13, 2021, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.
For Featured Articles promoted recently, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.
We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:16, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
Argentinosaurus
Hello, I just wanted to briefly thank you for your work on today's featured article. As a native of the Neuquén Province, it was something pretty cool to see on the main page. Amazing job!--GDuwenHoller! 20:46, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
- Thanks, happy to hear that! We wrote two more from Neuquén Province that had already been on the main page: Carnotaurus and Amargasaurus. Another one, Bajadasaurus, is currently at WP:FAC. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 23:27, 13 April 2021 (UTC)
Precious anniversary
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Four years! |
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On Earth Day, singing Psalm 115 ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:18, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
Thank you today for Bajadasaurus, introduced: "A quite spectacular dinosaur, described only recently." - I found yesterday's Main page spectacular, with 4 bolded names I brought there, all in memory: nominating the TFA, the pictured DYK, and two under Recent deaths. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:10, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you, and thanks for all your good work,too! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 07:21, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you and the team today for Acamptonectes, introduced: "This article is the first "official" WP:WikiProject Palaeontology collaboration, and the first FAC about an ichthyosaur, a group of prehistoric marine reptiles which were convergently similar to dolphins. Having been named relatively recently, not much has been published on it (not even a size estimate), so most info available about it is summarised here."! - Modest DYK contribution on the same page Protestant Church, Borgholzhausen, a place of memories - more on my talk. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:20, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
Promotion of Bajadasaurus
Criteria for the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mammals
Hi and good afternoon @Jens Lallensack:, the question for the criteria that i responded back to you was including mammals that became extinct/extirpated earlier than 1500 AD in each country or any kind of region in either Ancient History, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman Times, or whatever timeframe but early in written history specifically. If that ever gets established to which i hope for, then the one you said about keeping the cut-off date which is 1500 AD for the list of mammals articles will never be the old criteria ever again and instead, the "new" criteria would include mammals that formerly inhabited certain types of regions or countries during either the Iron Age, Bronze Age, Ancient History, Post-classical times, Roman Times or whatever timeframe but early in written history and then you would have no choice but learning to adapt with the change. The question to you is why would you support for the cut-off date for 1500 AD? You know i'll tell you something, i don't like when one says that he or she is supporting for that particular date and i feel that there needs to be a significant change and the criteria too if you will, if that ever happens one day like i said, then too bad you would be out of luck. Sorry for sounding a little mean but anyways i hope that the answer that i responded to your question at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mammals helped a lot. Best Regards. -- Animalworlds314 (talk) 21:32, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
- Will answer on the WikiProject page. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:40, 5 June 2021 (UTC)
GAN Backlog Drive - July 2021
Good article nominations | July 2021 Backlog Drive | ![]() |
July 2021 Backlog Drive:
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:31, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
Bajadasaurus scheduled for TFA
This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for 31 August, 2021. Please check that the article needs no amendments. A coordinator will draft a blurb - based on your draft if the TFA came via TFA requests, or from an existing blurb on the FAC talk page if one has been posted. Feel free to comment on this. We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks and congratulations on your work. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:01, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
This is to let you know that the above article has been scheduled as today's featured article for September 18, 2021. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 18, 2021. Congratulations on your work!—Wehwalt (talk) 13:53, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
I'd appreciate a third party opinion on the esoteric debates forming in Kwami's review
This could go on forever. Serendipodous 18:27, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
Heh. Turns out I was wrong. Serendipodous 19:12, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
Turtle peer review
Would you be able to do a source spotcheck staring with the section "Distribution and habitat"? Thanks. LittleJerry (talk) 00:48, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
- OK, will try to free some time and have a look. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 06:28, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
- So do you think it is ready for re-nomination? LittleJerry (talk) 20:24, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
- I personally think it is, yes. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 21:34, 25 September 2021 (UTC)
Frederick the Featured (maybe, that is...)
Now that we are done with the Featured article review, I feel it is okay to share my feelings about the process with you. I just want to say that I really appreciate you taking the time to be a Featured Article reviewer for this article. I want to say, that I appreciate your detail and thoughts. The Frederick article is chock full of those kind of biases, but I try to be conservative in trying to respect the various editor's particular emphasis (e.g., Ritter had three very large sections on the talk page spread over three years). Besides wanting to respect previous editors, removing Droysen, Ranke and Ritter was easy.
I also want to let you know that a bit of my resistance to going into the last years of the Seven Years Wars was to a certain extent, the editing of the military narrative up to that point had wiped me out. I more enjoyed editing the policy section. But for the military writing, I wasn't sure I was up to tackling more. What I had done seemed easy as I saw it more editing, including narrative smoothing, aligning assertions with citations, and finding accessible citations (of course!). But you provided the push to do I, and I agree it was needed. Your insistence made it easy to provide a balance, and I did enjoy doing that! And the review allowed some diffusion responsibility so the de-lionization without necessarily having to engage in an intense edit war. And, more importantly, it does add a certain needed completion to Frederick II's Seven Years War saga, allowing a great number of the battles listed on the map to be mentioned, cited, and linked.
In addition, I wanted to you for your early willingness to compromise on the Bachelor's theses. I recognize that they are not at the level of an article, but here's why I'm committed to them. They are accessible, each struck me as well-written and often as good- and perhaps better researched- than some of the standard biographies. They have a level of detail on minute topics that one can't easily find online, and their assertions seemed well-supported by research. I definitely see the point that they can't stand alone as a citation to support a Wikipedia assertion. But they do strike me as good work that deserve a bit of kudos and provides a resource for interested readers. So, I very much appreciate your willingness to agree to let them stay.
And finally, thank you for your jumping to clean up the small errors (spacing, wording, punctuation) that you saw near the end. (Yesterday, I wondered if those anonymous corrections were yours too. If so, thank you again!) As you can tell, fine copy editing is not my strength, though I'll do what is needed. Again, I appreciate your help, your review, and your overall thoughtfulness. Other reviewers are fortunate to have you constructively critique their work. I know this article, a most likely most you spend the time with, is better because of your role as reviewer. Appreciatively Wtfiv (talk) 21:11, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
- Thank you so much – though I think that it is you who deserves all the kudos for working on such an important article. But I am glad that my review was useful. Note, though, that the point with the Bachelor theses was not mine, but that of Nikkimaria. They will be asked in the end to take another look, so it can be that they pick this up again. Best, --Jens Lallensack (talk) 17:01, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
- Absolutely! If Nikkimaria or other colleagues have issues. I'll do what I can to address their concerns. Like you, they are all seasoned FA reviewers, and this is what the review is for. But I really enjoyed what I sense was your passion for accurate, reliable, and fair information. Without this Wikipedia couldn't continue to be what is is. Returning my compliment back to you: I just want to reiterate- even at the risk of appearing awkward- thank you so much. I see the work from your end! It's a deep sense of "care". Thanks, too, for your reply! Wtfiv (talk) 04:11, 18 September 2021 (UTC)