Wikiwand AI

User talk:Invertzoo/Archive 56

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


ARCHIVE PAGE 56: August 2012

Archive 50←Archive 54Archive 55Archive 56Archive 57Archive 58→Archive 60

Attack of the snail!

Hi Invertzoo. Long time no see. I haven't had time for editing much lately, but I came across this article today of the snail you helped me identify a while back and it reminded me of you. Hope all is well! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19077138 09:19, 3 August 2012‎ Antarctic-adventurer (talk | contribs)‎

Hi Antarctic-adventurer! Yes I am good, thanks for asking. I always enjoy the summer months when the outdoor city pool is open at the end of my street. How are you? Thanks for the snail link. Those giant African snails are a serious problem wherever they get introduced. They cannot survive freezing winters, but anywhere tropical or subtropical is at risk from them. Your excellent photo from Bali is in the taxobox at Achatina fulica. I do hope that Florida gets the most recent introduction under control, but it sounds as if they may not be able to contain it this time around. The snail is a great problem to agriculture and horticulture, not to mention breaking the stucco off of houses (!), but as if all that was not enough, it carries a nematode parasite that causes a deadly meningitis in humans. Killer snails! Love to you, Invertzoo (talk) 14:21, 3 August 2012 (UTC)
Hi IZ, thanks for your spirited message, I am glad you are enjoying your summer. I have been in Switzerland and the south of France for my summer and am currently (and very rarely) back in Sussex to see my family. Back to Japan soon though again for me. I haven't been around for a couple of months on wiki, but I will get some time again before too long and will continue the job I started back in February of creating new nudibranch stubs. I noticed that there have been quite a few taxonomic changes in that particular area lately actually, although JoJan seems to be on top of everything. Enjoy the rest of your summer! Antarctic-adventurer (talk) 00:48, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
Nice to hear from you again A-A! Your traveling sounds really great; I love the south of France.Talking of Mediterranean climates, I am currently in Southern California visiting the in-laws. It's always great to get more nudibranch stubs, so thank you in advance! Once stubs are up then scuba people with underwater cameras can easily add images to the stubs as they get them. Yes, Jo-Jan puts a huge amount of work into keeping up with all the changes and updates on WoRMS. His work is invaluable; I don't know what we would do without him. I don't actually know who WoRMS has handling the nudibranch taxonomy, I hope they are keeping up reasonably OK themselves. You too, enjoy the last part of summer. Invertzoo (talk) 16:34, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 06 August 2012

  • Op-ed: The Athena Project: being bold
    At this year's Wikimania, I [Brandon Harris] gave a talk entitled The Athena Project: Wikipedia in 2015. The talk broadly outlined several ideas the foundation is exploring for planned features, user interface changes, and workflow improvements. We expect that many of these changes will be welcomed, while others will be controversial. During the question-and-answer period, I was asked whether people should think of Athena as a skin, a project, or something else. I responded, "You should think of Athena as a kick in the head" – because that's exactly what it's supposed to be: a radical and bold re-examination of some of our sacred cows when it comes to the interface.
  • News and notes: FDC portal launched
    On August 1, the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC) portal was launched on Meta. The FDC will implement the Wikimedia movement's new grant-orientated finance structure in accordance with the WMF board's recent resolutions. As a volunteer committee, the FDC will make recommendations to the WMF board on a $11.4 million budget for 2012–13.
  • Arbitration report: No pending or open arbitration cases
    Arbitrator Kirill Lokshin proposed a motion for a procedure on the alteration of an editor's previous username(s) in arbitration decisions to reflect their name change(s). ... The Devil's Advocate initiated an amendment request for the controversial Race and intelligence case.
  • Featured content: Casliber's words take root
    This week the Signpost interviews Casliber, an editor who has written or contributed significantly to a startling 69 featured articles. We learn what makes him tick, why he edits, and why he can write on everything from vampires to dinosaurs, birds to plants. He also gives some advice to budding featured article writers.
  • Technology report: Wikidata nears first deployment but wikis go down in fibre cut calamity
    The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering report for July 2012 was published this week on the Wikimedia Techblog and on the MediaWiki wiki, giving an overview of all Foundation-sponsored technical operations in that month (as well as brief coverage of progress on Wikimedia Deutschland's Wikidata project). ... At least one fibre-optic cable was damaged at the WMF's Tampa site on August 6, leading to a sharp downwards spike in traffic lasting over an hour and almost three hours of disruption for readers around the globe.
  • WikiProject report: Summer sports series: WikiProject Martial Arts
    This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Martial Arts. Since April 2004, the project has been the hub for discussion and improvement of martial arts articles, including all disciplines and national origins. The project maintains a variety of conventions for handling the names and descriptions of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian, Sikh, Filipino, Okinawan, and hybrid martial arts. WikiProject Martial Arts has spawned or absorbed several subprojects focusing on boxing, kickboxing, sumo, and mixed martial arts.

The Signpost: 13 August 2012

  • Op-ed: Small Wikipedias' burden
    In a certain way, writing Wikipedia is the same everywhere, in every language or culture. You have to stick to the facts, aiming for the most objective way of describing them, including everything relevant and leaving out all the everyday trivia that is not really necessary to understand the context. You have to use critical thinking, trying to be independent of your own preferences and biases. To some effect, that's all there is to it. Naturally, Wikipedians have their biases, some of which can never be cured. Most Wikipedians tend to like encyclopedias; but millions of people in the world don't share that bias, and we represent them rather poorly. I'm also quite sure that an overwhelming majority of Wikipedia co-authors are literate. Again, that's not true for everyone in this world. Yet we have other, less noticeable but barely less fundamental biases.
  • News and notes: Bangla-language survey suggests the challenges for small Wikipedias
    The Bangla language, also known as Bengali, is spoken by some 200 million people in Bangladesh and India. The Bangla Wikipedia has a very small active community of about ten to fifteen very active editors, with another 35–40 as less active editors. The project faces particular challenges in being a small Wikipedia, and Dhaka-based WMF community fellow User:Tanvir Rahman is working to understand these challenges and to develop strategies that can improve small wikis that have strong potential to expand their editing communities.
  • Featured content: On the road again
    Six featured articles were promoted this week, including Business US Highway 41, which was a state trunkline highway that served as a business loop in Marquette in the US state of Michigan.
  • Technology report: "Phabricating" a serious alternative to Gerrit
    Three weeks into a month-long evaluation of code review tool Gerrit, a serious alternative has finally gained traction in the review process: Facebook-developed but now independently operated Phabricator and its sister command-line tool Arcanist.
  • WikiProject report: Dispute Resolution
    This week, we interviewed the lively bunch at WikiProject Dispute Resolution. Started in November 2011 to study and discuss improvements to Wikipedia's resources for resolving disputes between editors, the young project has supplemented dispute resolution efforts currently handled at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard, Mediation Committee, and other venues. Over 40 editors have signed up to provide feedback, a variety of ideas have been proposed, and a manual for dispute resolution has been created.

Disambiguation link notification for August 19

Hi. In your recent article edits, you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

Santa Barbara shelled slug (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to Santa Barbara
Scaliolidae (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to Superfamily

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 03:59, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 20 August 2012

  • Op-ed: Wikimedians are rightfully wary
    The Wikimedia Foundation sometimes proposes new features that receive substantive criticism from Wikimedians, yet those criticisms may be dismissed on the basis that people are resistant to change—there's an unjustified view that the wikis have been overrun by vested contributors who hate all change. That view misses a lot of key details and insight because there are good reasons that Wikimedians are suspicious of features development, given past and present development of bad software, growing ties with the problematic Wikia, and a growing belief that it is acceptable to experiment on users.
  • News and notes: Core content competition in full swing; Wikinews fork taken offline
    The Core Contest is a month-long competition among editors to improve Wikipedia's most important "core" articles—especially those that are in a relatively poor state. Core articles, such as Music, Computer, and Philosophy, tend to lie in the trunk of the tree of knowledge; by analogy, featured-and good-article processes generally attract more specialist topics out on the branches.
  • In the news: American judges on citing Wikipedia
    In the Utah Court of Appeals this week, the majority opinion in Fire Insurance Exchange v. Robert Allen Oltmanns and Brady Blackner relied on Wikipedia for the basic premise of their legal opinion, and included a concurring opinion devoted solely to the issue of citing Wikipedia in a legal opinion.
  • Featured content: Enough for a week – but I'm damned if I see how the helican.
    Thirteen featured articles were promoted this week, including pelicans, which are a genus of large water birds comprising the family Pelecanidae, characterised by a long beak and large throat-pouch. They have a fossil record dating back at least 30 million years and are most closely related to the Shoebill and Hammerkop. These fish-feeders have a patchy relationship with humans: the birds are sometimes persecuted and sometimes feature in mythology.
  • Technology report: Lua onto test2wiki and news of a convention-al extension
    New embeddable scripting ("template replacement") language Lua received considerable scrutiny this week when it began its long road to widespread deployment, landing on the test2wiki test site on Wednesday (wikitech-l mailing list). ... the fourth in our series profiling participants in this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC) programme.
  • WikiProject report: Land of Calm and Contrast: Korea
    This week, we spent some time with WikiProject Korea. Started in September 2006, WikiProject Korea covers the history and culture of the Korean people, including both countries that currently occupy the Korean peninsula. This task has proven difficult with North Koreans notably absent from the Wikipedia community due to tight control over access to external media. The project is home to over 16,000 pages, including 15 pieces of Featured material and 66 Good and A-class Articles.

Re: FM gastropods

Hi Susan, the stats bot has been down since Aug 7. That may explain the reason why the FM numbers are not getting updated. See here for updates. — Ganeshk (talk) 22:01, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

The bot is working now and has updated the FM numbers. — Ganeshk (talk) 15:05, 26 August 2012 (UTC)
Featured pictures/Animals/Molluscs and Commons:Featured_pictures/Animals#Bivalvia have some Bivalve FM listed. — Ganeshk (talk) 02:10, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
FMs are currently not showing on the Bivalves statistics. I made a template change yesterday to allow featured images. They will start showing after the next assessment bot run. — Ganeshk (talk) 11:57, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for August 26

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that you've added some links pointing to disambiguation pages. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

Mediterranean mussel (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to Washington State
Potamilus ohiensis (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)
added a link pointing to Specie

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:17, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 August 2012

  • News and notes: Tough journey for new travel guide
    Wikimedia editors have been debating a community proposal for the adoption of a new project to host free travel-guide content. The debate reached a new stage when a three-month request for comment on Meta came to an end, with a decision to set up the first new type of Wikimedia project in half a decade. The original proposal for the travel guide unfolded during April on Meta and the Wikimedia-l mailing lists, centring around the wish of volunteer contributors to the WikiTravel project to work in a non-commercial environment.
  • Technology report: Just how bad is the code review backlog?
    Developers were left one step closer to an understanding of the code review outlook this week after the creation of a graph plotting "number changesets awaiting review" over time. The chart, which also shows the number of new changesets created on a daily basis, reveals a peak in the number of unreviewed changesets in mid-July, followed by a short drop. The current figure stands at approximately 219 unreviewed changesets.
  • Featured content: Wikipedia rivals The New Yorker: Mark Arsten
    This week the Signpost interviews Mark Arsten, who has written or contributed significantly to ten featured articles; most have related to new religious movements, and some have touched on other controversial or quirky topics. Mark gives us a rundown on how he keeps neutral and what drives him to write featured content; he also gives some hints for aspiring writers.
  • WikiProject report: From sonic screwdrivers to jelly babies: Doctor Who
    This week, we hopped in a little blue box with a batch of companions from WikiProject Doctor Who. Started in April 2005, the project has grown to include about 4,000 pages about the world's longest-running science fiction television show, its spinoffs, and various related material. The project is the parent of the Torchwood Taskforce and a child of WikiProject British TV and WikiProject Science Fiction. With new Doctor Who episodes airing this week and a 50th anniversary celebration around the corner, we thought now would be a good time to inquire about the famed Time Lord.

Related Articles

Timelines

Top Qs

Fact Checks