User talk:MtBotany

I do not have all the answers, but I will do my best to answer questions if you have them. If you think I am wrong, I am open to being convinced otherwise by logically supported, evidence based, succinct reasons. And as I state on my user page if you have a plant from the Southern Rocky Mountains or surrounding countryside that needs an article I will give it a higher priority on my list of things to edit. —🌿MtBotany

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2023, 2024, 2025

After reviewing your request for the "eventcoordinator" permission, I have temporarily enabled the flag on your account until 2026-01-31. Keep in mind these things:

• The event coordinator right removes the limit on the maximum number of new accounts that can be created in a 24-hour period.
• The event coordinator right allows you to temporarily add the "confirmed" permission to newly created accounts. You should not grant this for more than 10 days.
• The right allows you to be a coordinator for events created in the Event namespace (Instructions), which adds your event to Special:AllEvents

If you no longer require the right, let me know, or ask any other administrator. Drop a note on my talk page if you run into troubles or have any questions about appropriate/inappropriate use of the event coordinator right. Happy editing! ~ Jenson (SilverLocust 💬) 06:54, 24 December 2025 (UTC)

Happy New Year and Happy New WikiCup! The 2026 competition has just begun and all article creators, expanders, improvers and reviewers are welcome to take part. Even if you are a novice editor, we hope the WikiCup will give you a chance to improve your editing skills as you go. If you have already signed up, your submissions page can be found here. If you have not yet signed up, you can add your name here, and a bot will set up your submissions page within one day, ready for you to take part. Any questions on the scoring, rules or anything else should be directed to one of the judges, or posted to the WikiCup talk page.

For the 2026 WikiCup, the highest-ranking contestants will receive tournament points at the end of each round, and final rankings are decided by the number of tournament points each contestant has. This is the same scoring system that we had last year. If you're busy and can't sign up in January, don't worry: Signups are open throughout the year. To make things fairer for latecomers, the lowest-scoring contestants are no longer eliminated at the end of each round.

The first round will end on 26 February. The judges for the WikiCup this year are: Cwmhiraeth (talk · contribs · email), Epicgenius (talk · contribs · email), Frostly (talk · contribs · email), Guerillero (talk · contribs · email) and Lee Vilenski (talk · contribs · email). Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:38, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

	Pleasant Penstemons
	Your work on Penstemon articles helped inspire me to take on a more active role in the flower subject area. I have a few articles coming up that you'll hopefully enjoy. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 02:29, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks @Pbritti, they are an excellent and interesting flower. I think I need to buy my own copy of Nold's Penstemons using my Yuletide money rather than using inter-library loan or going to the Botanic Gardens so often. Maybe two copies. One for me and one for archive.org since they only have a mislabeled copy of The Explorer's Garden.

If I were going to pick the three most interesting western N.American wildflowers it would be penstemons, paintbrush flowers, and columbines. All three have the same propensity for complexity due to low genetic barriers to hybridization and a diversity of colors and forms from different pollination syndromes. I certainly watch your work on the columbines with great interest. And I was inspired to work on western red columbine this past year by seeing all the lovely plants blooming near Crested Butte. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 02:43, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Ok, so, funny story: I spent the better part of two months going on eBay, buying a copy of Nold's Penstemons, and getting The Explorer's Garden. I still have two (!) copies of that darned book. I finally found someone who was listing the book without the ISBN and who had photos of it on their dining room table. Mine is a bit worse for wear, but I'd be glad to digitize it and send it your way if you'd like. My copy of Lindgren and Wilde arrived today—I guess Amazon is doing it as a print-on-demand affair. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 03:20, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm astounded at our shared taste, by the way. As a Coloradan, I grew up surrounded by columbines, penstemons, and paintbrush. My parents briefly lived in New Mexico and picked up an affection for the red Indian paintbrush there. Geez, too funny. ~ Pbritti (talk) 03:24, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	Thank you for helping to defend those who can't defend themselves. This comment is one of the best comments of all of 2026 so far, even making the hair stand up on the back of my neck after I read it. Not sure what to say, really, except that it's good to know that you are out there. Viriditas (talk) 23:49, 21 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you kindly, @Viriditas, I am glad you found it valuable. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 00:46, 22 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi, this is an automated reminder as part of Global reminder bot to let you know that your permission "eventcoordinator" (Event coordinators) will expire on 00:00, 31 January 2026 (UTC). For most rights, you will need to renew at WP:PERM, unless you have been told otherwise when your right was approved. To opt out of user right expiry notifications, add yourself to m:Global reminder bot/Exclusion. Leaderbot (talk) 19:41, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

The first round of the 2026 WikiCup ended on 26 February. As some of you may have noticed, good article nomination reviews now receive 10 points, an increase from 5 points in the previous year, as per a consensus at WT:CUP. This point increase has been retroactively applied to all good article reviews for which competitors have claimed points in this round. Peer reviews, which continue to be worth 5 points, are now listed in the same section as featured article candidate reviews, rather than with good article reviews. Everyone who competed in round 1 will advance to round 2 unless they have withdrawn or been banned. No other changes to the round-point system have been made for this year.

Round 1 was competitive. Three contestants scored more than 1,000 round points, and the top 16 contestants all scored more than 300 round points. The following competitors scored more than 800 round points:

• Bgsu98 (submissions) with 1,467 round points, largely gained from 1 featured article, 5 featured lists, 15 good articles, and 42 FAC and GAN reviews;
• Olliefant (submissions) with 1,246 round points, largely from 4 featured lists, 9 good articles, 2 featured topic articles, 4 did you know articles, and 75 FAC and GAN reviews;
• Generalissima (submissions) with 1,095 round points, largely from 3 featured articles, 6 good articles, and 5 did you know articles;
• MCE89 (submissions) with 848 round points, largely from 1 featured article, 8 good articles, 1 did you know article, and 32 FAC and GAN reviews; and
• Rollinginhisgrave (submissions) with 838 round points, largely from 1 featured article, 8 good articles, 1 did you know article, and 14 FAC, GAN, and peer reviews.

The full scores for round 1 can be seen here. During this round, contestants have claimed 7 featured articles, 16 featured lists, 2 featured-topic articles, 168 good articles, 13 good-topic articles and more than 50 Did You Know articles. In addition, competitors have worked on 14 In the News articles, and they have conducted nearly 700 reviews. The tournament points table will be updated within the next few days.

Remember that any content promoted after 26 February but before the start of Round 2 can be claimed in Round 2. Invitations for collaborative writing efforts or any other discussion of potentially interesting work is always welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Remember, if two or more WikiCup competitors have done significant work on an article, all can claim points. If you are concerned that your nomination—whether it is at good article candidates, a featured process, or anywhere else—will not receive the necessary reviews, please list it on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. If you want to help out with the WikiCup, feel free to review one of the nominations listed on Wikipedia:WikiCup/Reviews Needed. Questions are welcome on Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, and the judges are reachable on their talk pages. Good luck! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove your name from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:57, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

Hey, I was wondering if you would like to work with me on getting Aquilegia coerulea to possibly even FA in time to run as Today's Featured Article on 1 August (the 150th Colorado Day, or sesquicentennial of Colorado's statehood). I would be more than willing to follow your lead on whatever your vision is for the article, simply supplementing and assisting with the nomination process(es). If you don't know if we could get to FA by June, I'm satisfied aiming for GA to have this run as a DYK. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 18:09, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

I've never done a FA review before, but I'm willing to give it a try. I suspect the article is somewhat quirky right now because I did so much of the work on it. Though I have an ego, I'm mostly about giving people information about plants that is interesting and/or exciting so I'm happy to work on changes that would make the article better in the eyes of a wider audience. Aiming for Colorado Day is an excellent idea. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 18:46, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

I was actually trying to hunt for more bits of information about Colorado columbine when I started coming across a bunch of neat names that I could not leave out of Aquilegia canadensis. Hopefully I won't get distracted too far off the path through the "forest of all knowledge" this time. 🌿MtBotany (talk) 18:50, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Excellent to hear! I'll send you some basic ideas on the first steps we can take sometime this week. Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 21:24, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

I've been a tad busy, but I wanted to relate some ideas regarding next steps for Aquilegia coerulea. I think our best shot at getting it ready in time for Colorado Day is to skip the conventional PR→GAN→FAC process and go straight for an FAC once we get the article to a state we're confident in. That should be a bit easier, since there's two of us and you're very well acquainted with Plantipedia. To get it to a state that looks good enough to stand before FAC, I'll invest some time this coming week in reading through the full article, making marginal corrections and noting anything that might be worth discussing on the talk page. There's no rush on you replying to any of my comments or changes (and I give you complete free-hand to wholesale revert me without the concern of insulting my pride). My preference is to co-nominate the article as an FAC sometime before the end of March, maximizing some free time I have before a new work project kicks off. If you have any concerns or want to ask any other editors for additional input on our mission, let me know! Hope that you are well (and, if you're out in the West, I hope you enjoyed some of that snow!). Best, ~ Pbritti (talk) 17:59, 8 March 2026 (UTC)