In other words, you appear to have felt it appropriate to sub-divide Category:Flora of the Caribbean along country (political division) lines.
If this is so (and do correct me if I'm mistaken) why do we need categories for both "Plants of ..." and "Flora of ..."? Could we not just have one of them and categorise it within both the Category:Ecozones and Category:Plants branches of the category tree?
Just trying to make sense of all this and genuinely puzzled.
Problems? That there should be a problem should start here first, with the injured parties explaining their problem. I did not take a recent incident very seriously as it was a user demanding that I do the research they needed to do before deleting something and that was to me comical more than anything serious. If this Problem stuff is of great interest to you, could you check to see how many of those people started with an attempt to communicate here first and in that way, let me know how many of those problems are real? -- carol (talk) 15:57, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So the concerns raised aren't a problem? You call a user this "Also, does that frog dissection image in QI have anything to do with you personally? It is the only thing I can determine to explain certain behavior.[1]" --Kanonkas(talk)16:08, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Carol, I don't want to see blocks being issued because of disputes between two good contributors. May I suggest you get away from the keyboard for a while, cool down, and then accept my informal mediation on the matter? Commons doesn't have RfC or ArbCom or Mediation cabals, just a bunch of people with (mostly ;)) good intentions. I'd like to help, we can open a discussion page somewhere and just discuss and ask for input from the community (sort of an RfC but without formalisms). I will offer this to Bidgee too. Patríciamsg16:48, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate the intervention here. I have detailed my history with this user at User_talk:Rocket000#Are_you_patient_to_explain_to_not_delete_empty_species_categories.3F there is a tendency that if I attempt any communication it is immediately considered to be a problem and therefore difficult for me to take very seriously. This user deleted a deletion template I had applied and started a procedure for -- so the feeling that I have that the edits are aggressive and personal is difficult for me to get rid of.
I'm afraid he's not very much in a mood for mediation, at least not with me in it. We'll eventually sort it out on the administrator's noticeboard. Patríciamsg17:25, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Let me know when the "delete now ask questions about things later" people get to that part of the personality problem and to those personal issues. I have been deleting many a category lately, but I really did a lot to become familiar with the subject and with the problems of the uploading software and with similar but not equal sections of already existing trees before I recommended any deletion. I am with Rocket000 in not being interested in this thing unless it can start to address the real problem; the trigger this time was an attempt to communicate as it was the last time. I actually am not in need of mediation as I ask the questions before I request deletions. -- carol (talk) 17:39, 3 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Too bad the software is not functional yet and you have been reduced to bot-like list making; I have a strong belief that you should figure it out soon enough though! -- carol (talk) 14:55, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That is too fast, perhaps. The species listing template from wikispecies has been moved here ({{Species}} so it might be helpful to grab the wikispecies version, remove any that are red linked there and use that via a preview here because of what I saw in the first one that I checked: Category:Centaurea sphaerocephala. Wikispecies doesn't have an entry for that one yet so I removed the wikispecies template from it -- I stopped putting them on because I got really bored with checking that they exist there or not. The species template that I made for it worked without me looking it up (from the last division before the genus in the APGII navigation) and I chose that species because I could not find it at the site I was looking at but did find it at one of the European species name servers.
I did it manually, to learn about the categorisation system. It was too late at night, to check if the wikispecieslink was "blue or red", that is done now. I gave marks wikispecies has not yet an entry on ...., which may stimulate people to make such an entry. If they do they should convert my marks into active links. (You may undo these marks, if you don't like them).
I removed the wikispecies entry but also got an immediate method for manually placing links when they exist there, by using their template here but I already outlined how to do that. Software exists already that can do this function; that they are not using it right now is interesting. The wikispecies link here will always be "blue". They use a similar template system to the way the templates I am making work -- I have been thinking about when a new species classification system occurs and the task of adapting the existing templates for that. I can see what you are saying about just leaving it there and seeing if the wikispecies page is made.
Did you notice also that a possible solution of your problem of homeopatic parallel categories came up naturally in the process: see Category:Centaurea americana which contains page Plectocephalus americanus which page is in both categories Plectocephalus and Centaurea americana. Here the page is the link between the two category trees. No Plectocephalus nomenclature comes into the Centaurea cat-tree; no Centaurea nomenclature goes into the Plectocephalus cat-tree. There is thinking involved, I did this earlier on the problem of roads going from city to city (It was a too isolated case and I did not continue that). I was astonished to see that it comes out naturally in this biology case. What do you think of this role of pages as intermediates between trees? Does this disjunction (page name not equal to category name; there is freedom in page names, not in categorie names) sufficiently solve your double naming problem?
It would be nice if they were all named differently like that but they aren't many share the same names they were given when this stuff first started. I didn't know that this particular example was the homeopathic branch -- I would have suspected that the homeopaths use Centaurea also. I don't have my book with me to look that up; it is a reprint of an old book. I opted to not use that branch of medicine because I enjoy strong flavors and the requirement to give that up was too much. It was very interesting to learn about, however.
I am learining from this biology species organisation. What you have in wikispecies is similar to what people are doing by making infoboxes and navigation models. Putting up a similar system for geography should be wonderful. We need en:cadastre specialists for this. Greetings, Havang(nl) (talk) 07:54, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
United States is gridded; the information gets used kind of wrongly and it delivers flawed facts. They will make a study based on a county level (the next division after "state") and fail to take into account the edges of bordering areas -- I have seen this happen a few times. It is impressive to me how the feeling of ownership makes great flaws in the logic. Had the surveying and gridded system been put into place for reasons of greater reality, I think that the flaws would be considered more easily and managed more wisely and look less idiotic when used. All of that is just a guess though and it is easy to sit and notice when some prediction failed so I talk big right now about watching something that produced inaccurate information -- it is often easy to see what the wrong answer was and figure out how they got it. Much easier than knowing that the process/formula/guess/projection was wrong before it gets used. -- carol (talk) 09:09, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So that is part of the "Colonge and Aachen aren't build in one day", and we don't need to bother, if others do. Did you see the discussion Blaeu (19) and other cat things at User:Multichill talk page? Greetings. Havang(nl) (talk) 15:55, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am waiting for Multichills software to work in the time it takes software to work: User:Multichill/Category suggestions and User:Multichill/Sort categories. Unless your (nl) is an indirect lie; you two are discussing things that you have just "learned a little" about in a second language: taxonomy categories. The word "bot" and the word "cat" get abused here; so it would be nice to see the existing software have its ability to "undo" back (it has that ability) and for Multichills software to function in the time it takes software to function. Does that make sense to you? -- carol (talk) 17:28, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have no problem assisting anyone who is interested and would like to learn and help. Understanding the category system here -- possibly a more useful education for this would be to pick a country which has not had as much attention shown to it here as some of the others and make their category tree look like the more mature trees that start at the country level. Category:Germany the last time I looked was excellently managed. While I was working on Category:Ecozones it came to my attention that the category "Nature of" did not exist for several countries and I needed to make it and populate it. Often, there are images sitting at the country level that should go into categories. The English wikipedia way to do things is to obligate the second uploader of an image that belongs to a category to make the category but I suspect that the second person does not always understand these obligations and the category never gets made. (My guess for cause and effect only here). Pretend that you are the second uploader if these rules from other wikipedias have come here with you and help to clean up areas that are in real need of manual and human attention. -- carol (talk) 20:16, 9 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, CarolSpears, I saw, that you started your templates in the family Orchidaceae. You know, that I prepare this family as proposal for a clear and shortened taxonavigation for Genus and Species. Give me the chance to understand the templates. Thank you. Orchi (talk) 23:06, 13 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Does this mean that you do not prefer the taxonomy which includes subfamilies? I was in the middle of almost having all of the Malpighiales managed for three different taxonomies and am working on a family which seems to be much more complicated (more divided among the different taxonomies) than the Orchids. The software can actually satisfy people who prefer the not so complicated trees and those who prefer the more modern complication. Personally, I am not as familiar with the monocot web pages. If you need more templates for the orchids to help with your understanding of them (and to see if the information you need will be clearly displayed) -- I should be returning to work on those when my brain needs a refreshment from the more complicated set I am working on currently.
Summary:
You prefer a taxonomy which doesn't include subfamilies? - NO I created them
More examples should be available within a few days (unless things change here drastically which they haven't for years and years now) -- is that what you wanted?
Orchids are not so complicated, all taxonomy should be easy to display here.
Sorry is an interesting word to use. With four (now three) links to the gallery which is being a category with less information it seems like making that into a gallery with information that categories cannot provide would be the way to make it more notable without the link spam. My opinion only -- but if you have four (or three) arrows pointing to something that isn't that good, then you have four (or three) arrows pointing to something that isn't that good.... -- carol (talk) 16:48, 16 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I simply searched the web for "Black wattle" and it said Acacia mearnsii, but English wikipedia has a page that says that many of the Acacia in Australia are called this name. I am quite unqualified to determine the correct species for this tree. I not even able to identify it positively as an Acacia!
I did put the date into a more prominent location with the idea that it might help another person to identify it. It does seem as if it is just getting ready to flower. The photograph has a dreamy (unsharp) quality to it which will make identification even more difficult as it is not easy to see the leaves and their edges and other identifying features.
I would have really enjoyed being able to say confidently that it was a certain species (or genus even), but I just can't do it. I can suggest that "portrait mode" is not going to be the best camera setting for a photograph like this (I have plenty of "dreamy" photographs that I have taken that proves this...). -- carol (talk) 00:40, 27 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Carol, I noticed that you also have reservations about a category like "Plants of South Africa", because it is so large. I have been pondering splitting it into a smaller cat for e.g. cat:"Plants of the Western Cape", or even "Plants of the Cape Peninsula", but am undecided because even those would be enormous (Table Mountain alone has over 1 500 species recorded). Is there any point in such a category? My personal view is that it is best to leave them under the genus names and be done with it. Your thoughts? Andrew massyn (talk) 11:19, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Before 1 September 2008 the "Flora of" categories all ended at Category:Ecozones. Category:Afrotropic has an image map navigation applied to a map which separates the continent into smaller pieces, see Category:Southern Africa Biocountry. "Flora of" categories had all been subcategorized with "native species" to the best of my abilities. I expected that the images with those categories to be not necessarily natives. I started this when I made a few range maps and found that in the world map, I would highlight a country as small as New Zealand and as large as Russia or Canada and my maps looked kind of unequally weighted if a species was only found in a small area in the larger countries.
Feel free to ask User:Foroa what they thought they were doing when they merged the two trees. The interesting thing about that merge was that I was communicating with that person and the merge happened without any mention of it -- a newish administrator and one of the commons experts in the categorization tree, I am certain that a coherent and logical explanation or a plan for undoing the merge should be expected. -- carol (talk) 18:20, 28 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You could just have bioregion categories, geographic region categories, and location specific categories and put the species in each. Thats what we've been doing with 13,000 or so Western Australian plants. Though location specific are only for images taken at the location rather than the general species categories. Gnangarra14:40, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That was kind of the point of the original scheme which broke the planet into eight parts and then each of those into smaller parts, etc. -- that whatever areas could more easily be made into smaller and smaller parts depending on the available information. -- carol (talk) 17:13, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for being spiteful and belittling in both your comments in response to my query. Your second comment was entirely unnecessary — and unhelpful. Figaro (talk) 19:25, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What is very decent of the ja speaking and writing people is that they work with the 26 character set. The special characters for pronunciation purposes only work if the character is understood (at least I think that is what has happened here). The plant categories that I have been working on -- many of them have a translation table that in my opinion should appear before anything else, to make searching easier. Category:Styracaceae has this table. It seems like it would be nice for me, a non-speaking ja person who sometimes might search using the ja character set and for a non-en speaking ja person who might want to find the name of the category or gallery using the Japanese word. Some words do not translate very well, I suspect.
I appreciate your comments on the talk page there and it was in my mind to one day just move that categories contents to Kyushu from when we discussed it before and now I can include the name(s) written in the Japanese characters also.
I appreciate the good start that English wikipedia got commons started with, but there are some things that can be done differently for internationalization purposes and some of those things make it easier for native English speakers also. Thanks for your time, comments, thoughts.... -- carol (talk) 00:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This category is uncategorised; may-be you know what cat is needed or you may know someone who kowns what cat is needed. Greetings, Havang(nl) (talk) 15:25, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Changes were made to the template that added that "kind of" category to whatever was using the template. There are others like it. This is an apology for not following up on those after I made the change to whichever of the templates. -- carol (talk) 19:29, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the link. I really didn't know if png was capable of maintaining that information. I do know that gimp-2.5 can find the original jpeg compression settings and use that when resaving jpegs which should greatly reduce loss. -- carol (talk) 19:03, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
glad to have shown you the png stuff; i've been a fan of exiftool for years; i had the impression that the gimp merely reads the number used to compress the previous incarnation of the jpeg file and by default repeats the use of that number in the next compression; i would guess that there is nothing more sophisticated going on; if there is something more, do tell; as it is, i would load a high-quality (95%) jpeg and save it with the same quality, but any more reprocessing than that and i'd start to sweat; close inspection of a first-generation jpeg at 90% quality can be quite revealing Mashoo (talk) 20:23, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The person who added that ability to the jpeg plug-in said that before he started that it "could not be done". He also said that he looked at so many unpixel rendered jpeg files that he thought he was close to being able to draw it just from the information presented (an exaggeration for certain but such accomplishments often do not have a language also to describe them). I personally have no idea where all of this jpeg information is, I studied the formats enough to make a couple of user targeted web sites. Perhaps what I learned from Raphael about gimps jpeg plug-in is inaccurate but the fact that gimp-2.5 saves jpegs at the quality written into the jpeg file somewhat supports the rest of this information. When I first downloaded gimp, it was not available for windows. Many of the users and developers did not want it to be involved on windows and in my mind then, that seemed wrong with the sharing ideas found among the linux and gpl users then. Since that time, I so agree with them -- what a mistake. The intelligence levels of the users and users groups has plummeted and I personally see so much abuse of the software and perhaps the access on the direct satellite here (it is difficult to know who is messing up the old shows and even some of the new ones). They are using sound editing software also. I seriously blame windows users for this, the linux users do not think that people are so low in intelligence. -- carol (talk) 20:39, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And if this is happening for just the direct satellite that I am watching, then whoever is doing this has a mental challenge if they think I don't see and hear it. I will not watch the Simpsons anylonger as it is a "Madlib" and not a thoughtfully written television episode. Do you think that others cannot hear this? I honestly admit that not all of the changes have been bad. Some bird crap in an episode of Johnny Quest, that was really funny and I saved it, for example. But many of these things have been done as thoughtlessly and immaturely and without a classy sense of humor by people who I have not the words to describe.... -- carol (talk) 20:45, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
On the other hand, I think they are very relevant. I am wondering if the effort expended by others, which is considerable, to work with you, is worth it... really you ought to think about that. Your contributions are valuable, but carrying animus and speaking in riddles is not a good approach to working collegially. ++Lar: t/c21:05, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"On the other hand, I think they are very relevant. I am wondering if the effort expended by others, which is considerable, to work with you, is worth it... really you ought to think about that. Your contributions are valuable, but carrying animus and speaking in riddles is not a good approach to working collegially." -- ++Lar. Could you make your statements to be more understandable? -- carol (talk) 23:02, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK.
People work hard to work with you. But you seem to make things difficult for them. Although you have positive contributions, perhaps it's not worth the effort. You seem to be holding a grudge against one or more users. Don't do that. You seem to sometimes speak in riddles. Don't do that either. Try to speak more plainly.
OH! Perhaps what I do not understand is that I (User:CarolSpears in the case your understanding extends beyond what is useful) am being considered to have the privs here to delete and restore images, media, pages and categories? -- carol (talk) 23:24, 8 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am not aware that your name has been placed in nomination using the Commons RfA process. If it was, I am sorry, but I would oppose that at this time. ++Lar: t/c01:09, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
So, People work hard to work with you. But you seem to make things difficult for them. Although you have positive contributions, perhaps it's not worth the effort. You seem to be holding a grudge against one or more users. Don't do that. You seem to sometimes speak in riddles. Don't do that either. Try to speak more plainly. has the same meaning as I am not aware that your name has been placed in nomination using the Commons RfA process. If it was, I am sorry, but I would oppose that at this time.? This looks like a riddle, yet this is what I am being accused of and the "speaking in riddles" is the reason you would not support me in whatever meaning that English wikipedia style abbreviated and obfiscuated crapshoot is? Is this you answering my request to make your meaning more clear?
Do you think that anyone who has succeeded in that English wikipedia style abbreviated and obfiscuated crapshoot who speaks as you seem to now in riddles and indirectly and with no descernable goal and without the ability to speak plainly should continue as an administrator? -- carol (talk) 01:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The two statements are not in any way equivalent. I think my meaning is clear enough, and if you don't heed the advice you have been given, if you answer in more riddles, so be it. ++Lar: t/c02:23, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You have not established what your reason for coming to my talk page is. You started to commicate using acronyms which have no meaning to me (and perhaps should never be used in an international project, my opinion as gotten from discussion of this same communication problem in another international project). Previously you were unable to use your own words to explain what the task for oversighter here is. You asked me what your role is. At present, if you ask me a question, I will answer it. -- carol (talk) 02:51, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
OK. Here's one, then: "Why should you not be blocked indefinitely, for disruption and tendetious editing?" Take your time, answer carefully. ++Lar: t/c03:13, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Disruption -- I asked a person requesting privileges to make deletions here the reason they were pasting spam around here a few days more than a month ago. The question went unanswered. There have been deletion of images here for very questionable reasons -- what has been disrupted, btw?
Tendetious -- this is not a word. I am enjoying what I am doing because 1)nothing like this can be found on the web, 2)software cannot accomplish this as precisely as a real being can and 3)for whatever reason, I have been attached to a rotten monkey who knows only how to order food from restaurants. To ban me for no actual reason or even a real word would be 3a)not productive and 3b)not of this century of the "rules" which brought me to this terrible, horrible and wrong place and 3c)it is the last "real thing" that is within reach.
Watching your talk page I do feel I need to comment. Your behaviour borders on the offensive frequently - your "irrelevant" archive is, to me, mildly offensive for example.
You seem to wish to argue, take issue with, irritate etc so many people on Commons & all in the name of the fact that they have done something wrong in your eyes.
These people are ones who do not fall out with others & are respected by the vast majority of the community here. I do feel that you must allow yourself to consider the possibility that the problem may be in your approach rather than in everyone else's which seems increasingly to be your stance. This is a collaborative environment where we must try and work with all the people who contribute here - I'm afraid I cannot accept that so many of these people who I know, like & respect can be as troublesome as you seem to feel they are. Please consider this carefully or I'm afraid I see trouble looming. --Herbytalk thyme15:19, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's time to stop harassing and to give Carol the occasion to show that the signals have been understood. No further digressions, let's all turn to wikithings again. Havang(nl) (talk) 18:25, 9 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, I have Liné1 and Foroas talk pages on my watchlist, and i have seen your recent communications with those two user instances (to put it in your terms). It is clear from what is written that you are very upset. I feel sorry for you, that the flora of/plants of thingie is still causing you so much pain. A few remarks, which I do not have the time to backup with links and difs right now:
Foroa did not the user instance responsible for the merge, which you dislike so much. Foroas asked for a few category moves, but those were unrelated to a global merge and on request from users.
As I understand the global merge was done by Siebrand. At least this user instance wrote "Manual merge", when I asked, and there is no track record in the bot commands showing a request for a global merge.
I have initiated at least three threads on the Village pump and elsewhere to discuss and settle guidelines for the differences between flora of and plants of. As far as I recall you participated in all of them. None of the discussions lead to any conclusion. It was my impression that in each case you actually detoured the discussion into other directions like relentlessly repeating "dismembering categories", actions done by a few user, who had nothing to do with the discussion.
I feel sorry that it seems like you have an entirely different view of the situation, and that you find it necessary to interact in such sarcastic phrases with other users (at least that is how I perceive it).
I enjoy seeing your great work on the taxonavigation templates and all the enourmous category work you are doing. You are building up a lot of knowledge in a neat system.
It was Siebrand who provided the link that showed it was Foroa who was involved in that merge. Please pass your sorrow of my understanding of this situation onto that talk page.
No you are mixing two events together. Let me list the order of events.
2008-06-30 I initiate a thread about the categorization of species in area specific categories with the goal of reaching some consensus on the subject. You manage to detour the discussion altogether with your relentless mentioning of completely unrelated "category dismembering" by a few users. Thread ends with no consensus.
2008-07-01 I intiate a thread on the confusing aspects of the coexisting Plants of and Flora of categories. There is consensus that only one of those categories are meaningful. It is however not determined which one. The thread is stranded on my repeated requests to you to provide some examples clarifications of open issues.
2008-07-25 Bossi starts a new thread asking for directions about how to categorize plant images. You seems unwilling in the discussion to even consider how Plans and Flora could meet. Again the thread is stranded without any clear consensus.
2008-09-1 I was quite puzzled about the origin of this undiscussed move and asked the bot operator, Siebrand what had initiated the move- I was told that it was a manual move. I interprete that as a move being initiated by Siebrand independent of the bots command list. Later, Foroa has repeatedly stated that he had nothing to do about it and was frustrated about the move himself
Are you seriously thinking that this is some kind of conspiracy, that Fora is not telling the truth here? there is no evidence in the edit history of pages of your claims. If so, I'd like to see a diff.
So, I am placing my sorrow of your understanding of this situation on this talk page again. And don't say you have not been involved in the discussions. You just did not show any interest to collaborate towards a common solution.
So here we are. The merge has been done long ago. It was frustrating for those close to it, but it is such a long time ago now that an undo of that merge is completely unrealistic. Perhaps it is time to just move on, and fix problems when they are seen instead of trying to revert to the old system, where the two views of the world did not speak together. -- Slaunger (talk) 20:08, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I go to Foroa whenever any attempt I have made to repair the situation (I have faith that the maintainers of the original "Plants of" categories had some purpose or some guideline they were following for all of those years of construction and maintenance -- my inablility to determine what it is no proof that it doesn't exist, especially when compared with the often aggressive management of them) and restore the original tree are undone. This is the only time that I approach Foroa with my problems with this. It has now turned into a once again aggressive maintenance of something no person can define. You now make it seem as if Foroa is simply aggressively defending something that this user is frustrated with and boldly standing in the way of it being undone. Does this make sense? -- carol (talk) 00:18, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Foroa is trying to work for a consistent category system, where we stick to "Flora of". That it became "Flora of" and not "Plants of" was brute force imposed on us in a manual merge by a bot operator. In a company context, I see it as being analogous to one of those unpopular management decisions, where, after months of discussions forth and back leading to nowhere, some manager makes a decision and carries it out because we got to move on and because a decision is needed. Personally I wouldn't say the particular choise was qualified, it was much like tossing a coin. the main point is that someone had the courage to toss that coin such that we get moving. After some time the dust settles and the organization adapts to the new situation because that is needed to make the organization work. So instead of fighting that decision and trying to revert something, which is irrevertable (what would be the point of having a "Plant of" category here and there?), let's make "Flora of..." work for all users instead.
Now, it seems like, in your opinion, that "Plants of" categories are still needed in some cases? Could you give a specific example of where you see a problem in having just "Flora of"? I'd like to understand why that is so. -- Slaunger (talk) 06:36, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, interesting analogy -- how much does Foroa gain from volunteering to aggressively maintain a wrong merge made by what is apparently the bot owner who owns(?) this stuff? I voluntarily attempted to leave the "Plants of" categories alone out of respect for the years of people maintaining them and the idea that there must have been a purpose and a guideline beyond aggressive gallery and category watching. I keep this assumption, respectfully until one of those user instances can honestly reply with a report of what they were actually doing beyond the aggression and the constant watch and the maintenance of that tree. Foroa has no free will in the voluntary actions or is there another system in place that I am unknowing of? Any bot that can be run without a responsible person operating it should be deactivated. MultiChill has been extremely involved in the merge -- my suggestion to just say no to any substance which are not being managed well was met with a very cold reception there. Do you consider this to be wrong advice?
Rockets bot empties categories which have that {{Seecat}} unless it is marked with {{Nobots}}. The species that I put into there had "Plants of South America" that had been put there from the merge. It also had areas of smaller divisions of South America which were the original "Flora of" categories.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category%3APlants_of_the_United_States&diff=15367836&oldid=15352857 Another one. I can find no online sources that says that a species can be found in the United States and I put species back into "Plants of" categories when they were already subcategorized into the original smaller divisions. I am not certain how much time it will take for the ToL people, the whoever instigated the merge and most certainly the volunteer Foroa to determine what it is they are doing but they violate their own over-categorization suggestions when they do this. Once again, I am not confident in my understanding of what included a species, genus, tribe into a "Plants of" categories to simply remove it. I am confident enough to know that it is (with the exception of some overlap) not anything I have seen online at the botany sites. I had an example of the "Flora of Europe" being Lebanon, and a few other locations that did not include Spain or Denmark or Germany -- I can possibly dig that out for you if you need it. The one thing that I know about the Plants of categories is that they do not map into the Flora of categories. -- carol (talk) 07:15, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You do not have to dig up more history concerning the flaws and errors that may have existed in old Plants of categories. Such errors should just be fixed. I would have loved to dig more into the details concerning this, but I am busy preparing for a trip. I hope to be able to get back to you in in 8 days or so, if you can wait, or feel it could have any value. Best wishes, -- Slaunger (talk) 21:15, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The initial thread about using big letter started perhaps a little sarcastically -- this is after the initial insult when I first saw the style used and then the second insult when I saw it again after the initial insult had subsided -- perhaps it was even the third response where after seeing the style used where it would be happened upon. The way that my using it was reacted to it is difficult to understand that it had been used not as an insult by that user initially. Since I was not the first to use it, it should safe to assume that the intentions of the user of it (Liné1) can be gathered from the reaction to it?
What does not make sense is to repeatedly state on Foroas page that he was responsible for the merge. He wasn't. I am sick and tired of seeing you claim that over and over again. There are no facts supporting that claim.
Concerning Plants of categories, there were no fixed written policy about how they should be organized. They were organized differently depending on which category it was. In some categories, plant species were places there, in other cases, like Category:Plants of Greenland, each image of a plant observed in Greenland was categorized to that category as well as placed in the relevant species gallery (when that was what the ToL guideline said) and, later in the species category. In other cases a mix of the two was used. So the system was inconsistent, and for repository users it was completely illogical why there should be both categories and what the difference should be. Therefore a merge was logical. I do not agree with how the merge was done (no consensus prior to the merge) and I do not agree with what the main name ended up being. But now it is done, and it is meaningless to even think of reverting it at this stage. Far too much work has gone into it later. Therefore there is absolutely no point in repeatedly trying to go back to an inconsistent system, and there is absolutely no point in repreatedly demanding an administrator to account for how an old system worked. There is a point, however, in simply moving on and let the new system work for both eco-regions and political regions. -- Slaunger (talk) 04:20, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote in those really large letters an honest offer to show Liné1, the user of those really big letters, how to repair instead of just warn or insult -- whatever the intention was.
And yes, the templates are starting to look and work well -- very much due to Liné1 showing me the differences between the systems and explaining what the papers failed to do (nested outline format has been around for a very long time and I am (mostly was but still a little presently) frustrated with the offsite paper which did not use it.
So, my success was not completely my own and let me know what Siebrand has to say about your sorrow for what I was told and shown. -- carol (talk) 15:02, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sarcasm is not useful on Commons.[2] Without visual clues, it is often impossible to tell if a comment is meant to be taken literally or not, even when there is no language barrier. Most of us do not know you well and have no means of guessing whether you are being serious or not. In this instance, if I'd known how to correct the problem, I would have done so and removed the Liné1's warning.[3] I might have left a comment to that effect on Liné1's talk page with a link to the diff of my edit. If not, I would have left a direct request or suggestion on Liné1's talk page with a link the diff of his edit. If he was unable to respond to your concern, perhaps someone else who watches his page might help. Your initial comment on his page was unlikely to be understood by anyone watching his page.[4] You didn't provide a diff or sign your comment. It was probably not understood by Liné1 since his edit was almost two months earlier and likely forgotten. I still don't know what you think should be done at Template:Rhamnales. Also, you've made Liné1 afraid of you.[5] Please avoid sarcasm and be direct. Walter Siegmund(talk)18:27, 20 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The sarcasm was only equal to a warning left at the template and not with the author. The message that was left at the template could have been left with a choice of many many moods or intentions. I simply copied a style and then learned about how negative it was/is. Afraid is a strong word for this in my opinion. Could you assign a word for genuine offer to show how to repair problems regardless of the style choice for the words? -- carol (talk) 00:21, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Carol, I don't have anything to add to my comment. I tried to be as clear and direct as possible and I provided diffs for almost every sentence. Perhaps you are attempting to elicit an amusing response from me again.[7] You can do better.[8][9] Please. Walter Siegmund(talk)17:01, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed some very nice distribution maps for some senecio species. My compliments on making them! May I ask what your source for their distribution is?
I probably have some more senecio species pix on file, if i can identify them, would you be able to make maps for their distribution too?
It has been a while since I made distribution maps. My sources were almost always EURO+MED or GRIN. After attempting to put the 3rd political division map of Russia onto the svg of the world map (which is both impressive and sometimes difficult to use as almost every little island is on it) and failing this attempt I asked one of the commons map makers if they might consider assisting with a map which divided some of the larger countries into smaller sections. Russia, China, Mexico, Canada, United States, Brazil and Australia are examples of areas which were too large to be useful for the distribution maps. My dislike of my distribution maps is what started Ecozones.
That is more answer than you were looking for, but I am honestly not happy with my maps. The EURO+MED database was very nice for distribution (and quite possibly more reliable than GRIN) with the exception that they use somewhat cryptic area codes. The Australian sites have distributions on their pages but it is often unclear if the species is native or introduced unless it is considered to be an invasive introduction. Heh. I think that line of thought all started with Jacobaea maritima. Plants have been almost as interesting to follow the scientific study of as they used to be for me when I was gardening and trying to plant only useful species.... -- carol (talk) 05:39, 23 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No documentation since most of what the templates are doing is documented at metawiki in the templates stuff at meta:Help:Template and meta:Help:ParserFunctions. I used a lot of {{#if:}} and {{#switch:}} as well as getting a lot of assistance from User:Rocket000. That is the wiki part of the classification, and I am not certain that I am expert enough with wiki templates to provide the same kind of help that I received from Rocket.
The classifications come from online sources, the APG II paper and for Cronquist I am building backwards (and might not be always accurate) and Strasburger is from de.wikipedia. I have found the APWebsite to be cumbersome to use and have been using the alternative site listed in that article.
Hi Carol. I noticed you wrote a doc about making imagemaps in GIMP (though I'm afraid it went a bit above my head), and was wondering if you might help out with figuring out how to get from GIMP to Imagemaps that use the wikimedia extension (or perhaps a free vector program if you know of one... I use MacOSX).
I want to experiment with a garden design project on wikiversity, where people could create plant combinations either in the garden or using pots, and then submit pictures that you can "mouseover" to get links to information about the plants used. --SB_Johnnytalk13:34, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I use the output from GIMP's plug-in. Simple search and replace, simple enough that it can be scripted and also (perhaps) the opposite of what the wiki-software does to render the html, heh.
Using the plug-in: it has simple selection tools and when an outline of an area is closed (or double mouse clicked) a dialog shows up that has text boxes for the different image table attributes and instructions. I tend to just use the "alt" attribute for what the name of the area is so I can recognize it in the html output. Remembering where the output was saved is part of the task as the save dialog is not so robust as it is in other gimp plug-ins or the main app.
The output looks like Image_talk:Afrotropic-Ecozone-Biocountries-IM.svg#Partial HTML Markup and to make the wiki markup from that it is simple search and replace "<area shape="" just gets removed, "" coords="" replaced with a space, "," replaced also with a space (in the list of coordinates/numbers), " href=" is replaced with " [[" or " [[:Category:" and " />" with "]]". This "write-up" of the regular expression replacement is more confusing perhaps since I enclosed the strings with quotations.
Also, with one of the maps I made here, I had a problem in that I forgot to wikify the comments -- I had to get assistance even, heh.
Let me know if you have specific questions or need more details. It was kind of learn as I go when I did this. The plug-in has shaped selection tools which are perhaps more robust than a regular garden layout needs but ultimately, only straight lines or uniform ellipse can be selected. -- carol (talk) 22:06, 25 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ah ok :-). That's actually a bit easier than I thought, though it of course makes me wonder if the extension couldn't be amended to accept commas as well as spaces for easier editing. I'll send you a link when I have something.
If you don't mind, may I copy your comment above to Wikibooks and/or Wikiversity? Both have GIMP resources, and both are in pretty poor shape (v:GIMP, b:GIMP). I'm looking at inkscape as well for making schematic maps for the same sort of project (unless you can recommend something better for that). --SB_Johnnytalk10:52, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, you can copy anything that I write about GIMP anywhere. It is worth mentioning also that the image map plug-in does not work on scaled images (definitely not svg but also maybe not the others) which is the reason I uploaded two versions of the maps I made -- the image map sized ones have IM in the name somewhere. Allowing comas would be nice, but it is one of the easiest parts of the conversion. One thing I never attempted that might be worth an experiment with is using regular image map mark-up within <nowiki> tags. And I have no idea how closely the inkscape coordinates match html page coordinates. My feeling is that they don't match at all, but upon more pondering, I start to think that this is possibly a case where my feelings (once again) make no sense.... -- carol (talk) 11:10, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, Firefox 2.2? Perhaps you could also check it in Netscape 3? I am running Minefield 3.1b2pre from the day before yesterday -- it doesn't seem to be able to open new pages via linked image but other than that it doesn't seem to be hurt from the 27 deleted files and 200+ changes in the source and that might have been fixed since my build from yesterday which I still need to install. With the classic skin it looks fine here but I am using this years software....
My bf template is not as mature as the others....
You got this screengrab on 5 July 2008 and then reverted it on 12 August 2008 and mention it now on 8 November 2008?
To be very honest, I really thought that there would be more people like me who are unable to rank their own photography skills and dubious of such rankings anyways that the template would have gained more use and perhaps been repaired. Especially when you add to that mix a ranking system which counts the votes of people who prefer downsampled over thoughtful and careful renovation. -- carol (talk) 08:49, 8 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You know whatelse(?), recent builds of this browser fail on certain web pages which gave me cause to use w3m and my user page looks fine there as well -- would you like a screen shot of this? -- carol (talk) 03:51, 11 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Carol, yes, my equipment is somewhat outdated, as is myself ;). The screenshot in question however would look the same if done today (I checked just now, as I did before I notified you, thistime, which I just did to [a] just let you know, but not at all to [b] blame you ;). So, there is obviously some shortcoming of FF2.2.
Concerning any technical stuff, I'm a 99.99% nut, so I even hardly understand what you're talking about, above. It was really just to let you know that people with low-standard equipment would see a display which very probably is not intended by you.
In case you want to show me another screengrab, you can just overwrite mine, if you like to: Thisone was+is intended to be a kind of "throwaway" for special occasions, which might be deleted either after its history is "pretty long" or after it is otherwise not useful any more. Best, --Wolfgang (talk) 12:14, 15 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I deleted it as I don't see how it meets the inclusion guidelines for this project, as it is simply a description of a website. As for the links - as you can tell by looking in my logs I'm doing several deletions of this type (out of project scope pages / gallery pages containing no images) and find it easiest to delete them first, and then go through the delinking process, as that can be accomplished with script assistance. There is no deadline, so I have no ETA to give you. Anyhow, if you believe the page was in the scope of the project, I'd be happy to restore it for you. - Rjd0060 (talk) 04:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was almost unable to get this same page deleted after I moved it from a "/place" to a different "place" here and it was only linked to about eight different pages and categories. EIGHT! For this reason, the deletion of the page without first delinking seems to be two separate sets of standards and I am being required to maintain a much higher set. If you could comment about the truth or fallacy of this "seemingly" situation, I would appreciate it.
The page offers some explanation for one of the taxonomy trees that is in use here. It existed before I became active here. It was originated and authored by the tree of life people. There are other pages like this one which have not been deleted. None of these reasons guarrentee that the page is within the scope, however systematic biology is within the scope as is the categorization and gallery-ization of the thousands of plant images.
To be honest with you, I am unhappy with the name of the document and could furnish many reasons to delete it. It is linked on all of those categories and pages due to my efforts to work with the ToL people.
The difference between the eight linked pages that prevented the deletion of this document previously compared to the more than fifty linked pages (and other) that did not prevent its deletion this time is of enormous interest to me. Thanks in advance for the explanation. -- carol (talk) 05:29, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Interestingly enough, the eight links that I was held accountable for were when the document in the taxo-navigation template namespace and the links to it were not in any taxonomy navigation. {{Taxonavigation/APWebsite}} <-- like that. Eight!!, not 50+ that were all within taxonomy navigation. Perhaps my instinct/desire for consistency just starts at this naming of these template thingies.... -- carol (talk) 16:46, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I moved it so that it would be consistent with the other Taxo-navigation templates. Do you have actual knowledge or even an experienced guess would be welcome here about the reason for the inconsistency and the problem lying only with that one single document (which was not a document before 29 September 2008. I suspect the reasons for these things are very closely related to the problems I had and the problems that still remain with this documents name. -- (willing to trade-in suspicions for a knowlegible guess or the experience of the involved...) carol (talk) 15:45, 14 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate that my words have been simply moved there. Missing from the discussion is EncycloPetey. The inclusion of that user might perhaps lead to the authoring of consistent introductions to all of the systems which are not articles but enough for here. I can appreciate what a good discussion of something can or should do, but my experience with it has been not so positive as my expectations were. I read somewhere on a user page right before I started to get very involved with the plant categories a suggestion that if there is a good idea to just do that idea and then present it. At that point, I started to do things that I considered to be good ideas but also only things which could be easily undone. (I have a list of the categories I moved and some on those list need to be moved back due to shared names which others had researched, as an the example of this.)
Petey has ability/understanding/knowledge of the subject compared to what I have which is a simple desire for consistency and a growing understanding of where all this stuff can be found. I would ask Petey myself, but I have been banned from that talk page for reasons I am not sure enough of to not repeat again. For all I know, Petey might also have a name for that document that would not offend my senses as much as "APWebsite" does -- a web site that does not seem by design to want to be an online reference. And see, there you are, my refusal to look anything up on that site due to the lousy interface is such a not so good reason to have a problem perhaps. That being said, I am crediting that site when I am actually using that other link which is to a web site that by design wants to share information online. So many opinions from me about the way the information is presented, heh. Even I don't care about reading such opinions!!! -- carol (talk) 19:25, 15 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, someone seemed angry. Sometimes anger is justified -- there should be better ways to communicate it, however. -- (she said after spending five years with much justifyable anger and all attempts to communicate it reasonably having been advantage taken of....) carol (talk) 15:37, 16 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I don't really like this image, and I wanted to replace it with several others. Are you able to identify flowers to the point where you could reasonably approve or disapprove of replacement photos? Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 06:19, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To answer this question with a yes or a no, the answer would have to be no. I am sorry about this also; the real kind of sorry where I was sorry about this before you asked even. I am confident like this with the plants that grew natively from the area where I lived for forty years and spent my own time and resources to identify them. My expertise in botany now is in things that anyone can find online -- even most of the images I have been renovating and attempting to restore colors to, I am using photographs of the actual plant if they exist online. Worse than what I have just described about my identification abilities Image:Big Merry Bells-Bellwort.jpg is a plant I am very familiar with and a native of my home, yet I only knew this as its common name and I was able to identify its species name due to some really well written descriptions that were available online.
Have a close look at the flower in the lower-left and what I presume is a pale embryonic sprout, labelled 10. There's a substantial loss of detail in these in your restored version. Adam Cuerden (talk) 11:14, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for pointing that out. I restored them to the little line drawings that I am somewhat certain they started life as. That is another thing I have been considering -- is it shading or is it bleeding of color when a color print was made of a black and white line drawing that was included on the same page as a color image. The printing process is different for both where the original would allow several different mediums. The prints that are here from Flora de Filipinas don't have bleeding problems however, the image rarely mixes even a little color on the line drawing diagrams.
I "repaired" the problem. It is nice to have some communication about this also; communication which is not a vote and communication which is not some weird media delivered suggestion diffused through several layers of technology that even I have to admit is improbable. -- carol (talk) 06:22, 22 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was very confident that a relatively low-resolution scan such as that one was eminently replaceable later, if I or someone else ever managed to get hold of the original book, which would also provide information on the colours, etc, that wasn't available from guesswork. Adam Cuerden (talk) 13:40, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Despite the fact that you withdrew your Divine Comedy plate and that I am using a different definition of this word, my question now is "did your confidence divine a timeframe in which the replacement scan would become available?" The commercial world will perhaps need extra time for the old inks to be redefined to panotone equivalents also? My confidence was simply that the paintings of plants started life looking as much like the plant which was the subject as possible. The conditions in which books age are not infinite but the number of those ways is probably in the same arena with all of the monkeys it would take to accidentally reproduce Hamlet.... How confident are you? -- carol (talk) 14:13, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Carol, it took a moment to parse your statement. But it was remarkably inappropriate. If you dislike me that much, polite distance is easy to maintain. Please refrain from distracting interference in serious discussions. If you insist upon participating in a manner that is indistinguishable from trolling, the community is likely to handle it as trolling. Durova (talk) 21:20, 23 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To require the belief in magic yet doubt that belief from others -- who is the troll? I don't believe that you have a magic histogram tool and I am sorry that you have people who believe in that who are active here. I also do not believe that that judge saw fairies but I think that he has as much right to make those claims here as you have for your magic stuff. Meanwhile, I await a more verbose response from Adam about color restoration.... -- carol (talk) 09:24, 24 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Stop playing word games, Carol. Your answer shows that you know perfectly well what this is about. The next time it happens I will seek a user block. Durova (talk) 00:40, 26 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There is no dislike involved, please lower yourself esteem a few notches if you are thinking that I ask questions or require consistency from only those I have a decided "feeling" about. There are also no word games involved -- it is two similar tales, both of people who require faith and one of those people gets to question the other. My questions actually pertained to the kind of business which is conducted here (image reliability) and my idea that an answer should have been given to questions regarding the actual business that is conducted here seems to be more valid than any perception any person has of self-importance or of petty likes and dislikes of fellow users. I would rather my friends, enemies, acquaintences and those I have yet to attempt to communicate with would simply answer questions, especially when they pertain solely to claims being made which do affect the reliability of images that are stored here. So much more simple to provide the answer, and until one is provided, I have no other option than to believe that you believe in algorithmic magic.... -- carol (talk) 03:26, 27 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"Flora of the Republic of the Congo" used to be "Plants of the Republic of the Congo". If you could find out who caused the merge, it will be much easier to work through things. Until then and since the Plants of categories did not actually map into the Flora of categories, perhaps these two can remain separate? -- carol (talk) 09:21, 24 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see, it's one of those plants/flora things. I'm not really familiar with the issue so I think I'll leave this one alone. A description for each category would help distinguish them; I note that too many categories have no description, and often add one myself, even if it's stating the obvious. Richard001 (talk) 23:59, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please do not remove legitimate warnings from your talk page or replace them with inappropriate content. Removing or maliciously altering warnings from your talk page will not remove them from the page history. You're welcome to archive your talk page, but be sure to provide a link to any deleted legitimate comments. You can archive your talk page automatically with MiszaBot. If you continue to remove or vandalize legitimate warnings from your talk page, you will lose your privilege of editing your talk page. Thanks. abf/talk to me/18:50, 26 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
This is an interesting situation. User:ABF is an administrator who answers questions. The warning is (I guess) to not ask another administrator questions unless I am certain she can answer them or perhaps those who are thinking that the complaint is valid could put in their own words what the complaint is here and what makes it valid. -- carol (talk) 17:54, 27 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Basically you can remove a warning from your talk page if you've read it - you don't even have to archive it. I'm not sure where ABF got the idea that you have to preserve them, but I'm fairly sure it's not a mainstream one. Richard001 (talk) 23:55, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the note; you'd really need to check with Epibase, who made the move. I was just doing a little clean-up work to make Epibase's redirection clearer. Nomenclaturally, A. gibbosa is technically the correct name, but its basionym Capparis gibbosa has been recommended for rejection in the interests of nomenclatural stability (Brummitt, R. K., 2004. Report of the Committee for Spermatophyta: 54. Taxon 53: 814). However, as far as I can tell, this has not actually been concluded yet. It looks likely that the species will be formally restored to A. gregorii in the future (presumably at the next International Botanical Congress) by rejection of the earlier but previously neglected name; for this reason, I don't think the redirect category should be deleted, so that it can easily be brought back into commission as/when this happens. Hope this helps - MPF (talk) 09:47, 27 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The kind, experienced, honest and quick response is something I am always looking for.
Some of the species are very clear, the images match the description and most of the flora databases manage them similarly. There are others which are just not that way and ways to determine the species and what is going on and what the name is now are interesting and kind of indescribable for any kind of logic I am familiar with. Usually I go with the flora which is the most local to where the species is native but not always (an example of the logic problems I have encountered while trying to make things work here). The paintings and line drawings of species which are old enough to be here but have no photographs of them online when searched for with the given name are a problem I am having often. So, the way in which others determine the current name or the most accurate is extremely useful to me. I thank you. -- carol (talk) 17:51, 27 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"there is often a text in the left corner of some of the images I work on. The text that is on the current image is "R. Garcia B". Hi Carol, you posted this on Ayacop's talk page - can you tell me which image you were referring to? ciao Rotational (talk) 10:35, 27 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, you do good work at commons plant categories.
a Systematik of Strasburger never existed. it was a idea of User:Brya to use it. in german wikipedia we use a mixture of APWebsite and old Edition of Strasburger. Reason was that we need German Words in german Wikipedia and Strasburger has. but Strasburgers old Editions dont followed APG in higher Systematik. Now in new Editon 2008 the editor-team of Strasburger use APWebsite Systematik completly, and in the next weeks (need much time) we will start in german wikipedia to change that all to APWebsite Systematik. so please dont give that Strasburger thing in the commons categories. sorry for my not so good english, i hope you will understand. thank you. greetings from germany. --BotBln (talk) 19:18, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever template that I have that claims to be Strasburger, most of them have been put there with information I found at de.wikipedia. I think that the taxonavigation template can be changed to display a different name and point to a different document. My templates should be somewhat easy to change via a software script. What is the name of the taxonomy that is in use at German wikipedia? -- carol (talk) 19:40, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
My observations of the taxonomy at de.wikipedia is that almost every family followed the taxonomy used by GRIN which is a United States government web site. With the exception of the family Rubiaceae. Even the genus which were listed for each family seemed to be exact matches of the genera in the lists at that web site per family. All of this makes me extremely interested in seeing the Strasburger document. -- carol (talk) 20:20, 29 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
German wikikipedia dont use a Systematik used at any other place. they decided in 2004 to create a own. so its german wikipedia systematic. and at university the students are often told "use one of the three common systematic but dont use wikipedia. its really so its a mixture: family and order of APWebsite and all what is higher of Strasburger edition 34. and in edition 34 and 35 the editor-team dont change to APG Systematics but Strasburger has no own Systematic, they try to use one common. But now german wikipedia will change that soon, maybe it cant be done to end of this year. The new edition 36 of Strasburger followed totally APWebsite (not APG II). But now Strasburger fixed there maybe the APWebsite of First Part of 2008. Thats the problem of Print Media. and Strasburger have new Edition not every year. so the systematic of Strasburger 36 is now exactly APWebsite so there is no reason for a Strasburger template. And Strasburger never had own Systematik, it just got by User:Brya that name and Brya used that de.wikipedia construction of 2004 and that never was part of Strasburger. Now Strasburger use exactly APWebsite Systematik and de.wikipedia will follow as soon as possible. and: no template dont need different name because de.wikipedia will use APWebsite Systematik soon. there dont have to be two templates for same systematik. and de.wikipedia is no sientific forum that has authority to create own Systematik, but actually there is a own de.wikipedia mixture with no (or call it two different) sientific background. but that need no further discussion it will be away in some weeks. No ars-grin is not the used for family at de.wikipedia it is used for genus only (it dont exist a ars-grin systematik). At family article look at Rubiaceae: „Quellen“ (means main information used in article): "Die Familie der Rubiaceae bei der APWebsite (engl.)" that is what is most important, GRIN is at „Weblinks“ (that means: for forther informations). im editor at de.wikipedia for plants, we use APWebsite for family and Order. but in few weeks we will follow APWebsite higher than Order as much as possible. So please, please dont put that Strasburger-template of a sientifically never existing systematik in new articles. --BotBln (talk) 10:51, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
If it is a necessity to say that the exact overlap between the information at GRIN and at de.wikipedia is an accident or is a coincidence -- then "okayfine" (<--American-english slang in this case meaning "this is not the real issue" or "whatever"), it is an accident or a coincidence.
I haven't been using APWebsite, my "feeling" and experience is that this collection of systematic scientists do not want to be a resource for systematic taxonomy due to the way they designed their web site. I have been using http://www.uniprot.org/taxonomy/ and calling it APWebsite in another situation I was in that required an "okayfine" from me. That website was designed to be a reference and it has been a good reference; not all of the genera are there and they are using names of genera that GRIN has declared to be synonyms.
The template functionality is much stronger than I imagined when I first saw them. Having the taxonavigation template know if there is a gallery available when used with a category and change the color of the url to indicate that is one of those functionality things that is perhaps not obvious when looking at the documentation and examples. The template that "knows" when a category is containing no images or galleries is (to me) another super-function. I think it should be easier than is first obvious to update that template to react to "auth=Strasburger". I call my abilities with the templates those of a beginner because I compare my abilities with the expert that assisted me. Perhaps this assistant will be available here in the next month because of the holidays and these problems can be managed more quickly.
Is there a way to let me know here when the family article is edited at de.wikipedia? The elimination of the reflection of de.wikipedia taxonomy here will require the elimination of several subfamily categories and complications in many of the templates -- where there was a different organization of the genus between the subfamilies/tribes. Editing the templates is not so difficult so if it can be a shared task I would be in favor of this. I enjoy the peaceful part of showing different taxonomy compared to the discussion that happens when one is chosen. That discussion is very much not the purpose of the Commons as I understand the purpose to be.
I am sorry for two qualities of mine. I only speak and write English and the version of English I use is fairly native. I am really glad to be able to use this abuse of English with the person managing the plants information at de.wikipedia. Thanks for the time you are spending and the information that you have and are sharing with me. If I can have more of that, I think it would be time and information well spent. -- carol (talk) 18:42, 30 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The Team of APWebsite is preparing APG III. That is necessary because APG II is much to old (2003). APWebsite has no information for Genus. it only have there a link to other mobot Website that includes Genus Lists for Families but that other mobot Website is not "up to date" will say they have to old informations there. APWebsite is for Orders and Family information and that includes how many Genus are in that Family but is no source for Genus-Lists. - it would be fine to chance template to: no more the never existing Strasburger thing, it really came out of User:Bryas head, and he used the contruction of the de.wikipedia mixture of Strasburger and APWebsite, never been used in any Botanical Media (it never existed sientifically), Strasburger is for all Botany, that book cant have a own Systematic it used parts of common Systematics. And now the new Edition of Strasburger use APWebsite only. Ok please no more template with the Strasburger thing (i cant call it a systematic because it never existed). All other has much more time in the next year 2009. by the way im not the person managing the plants-articles at de.wikipedia im one of them. no part of wikipedia is for one user. The subfamilies at de.wikipedia follows APWebsite. APWebsite is the Main information at wikipedia for family and orders and so it need a dominant presentation in commons. --BotBln (talk) 10:30, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am very new to systematics when compared to my understanding of web pages. I have no problem using "APWebsite" for systematics for which I have very few opinions. That web site (not the information it contains) is all wrong for being a reliable and useful online resource. I am eager for the day when information that is from the ToL here is reliable and their documents also. No new Strasburger templates and I will leave a note for the template expert and start to try to figure out how to any instance of the taxonomy navigation template with "classification=Strasburger" display something else or nothing at all. And yes, the wikipedia is not for one user -- but some stand out via a willingness to communicate, graceful recognition of mistakes made by themselves & others and simply knowing what they are talking about. Thank you for communicating this problem with the templates to me. -- carol (talk) 10:54, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
For an equal amount of support and oppose votes gets eight days for more votes. When the vote is not equal, only two days (48 hours) are given. I voted that way because I wanted to restore the tie so that the image would not disappear from the page so quickly but when I took another look at everything, I voted too late. That is also the reason I did not mark it with the "Promotion". QICBot removes candidates from CR the same day they are marked with the decision but waits for a while to remove it from the date headed galleries above (sometimes or up to 71 hours and 59 minutes).
When I first started to "manage" QIC, it was not unlike playing tetras with images falling into CR although the stacking part is kind of lost. I also thought that it was similar to Space Invaders and started to "shoot" the images before they landed in CR. Lycaon was often a reliable foe for that game. I suggested that the style sheet be changed so that with each new entry the margins would shift a few pixels to one side for a given amount of pixels/entries and then shift to the other side, thus creating what has to be the worlds slowest space invaders game.
I am curious what you think of that image review page and if it reminds you of anything like it did me. Nice work there, btw. -- carol (talk) 09:59, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, except that I was wrong about the time part and that vote does count. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. da.... -- carol (talk) 10:02, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It was correct, the vote does not count. The last vote was on 30 November and my vote was on 3 December. The time difference was wrong. -- carol (talk) 10:08, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your explanations! I had noticed the wrong time difference (although you're right, it was between a comment and a vote, not between two votes) but what I was unsure about is the difference with, for instance, the VI closure rules. With VI candidates, voting can be closed after 48h/4days/7days, but it remains open as long as nobody actually closes it (therefore, a vote after 48h might be counted). Here it is not the case, apparently. In the VIC page, a template tells the reviewers when a nomination can be closed (the template takes into account the various periods depending on the nature of the votes. Maybe that kind of thing could be introduced here (when QICbot moves nominations to CR for instance), in order to make rules more obvious and to avoid mental calculus :-). Maybe it's not necessary, maybe it's a gadget, maybe it would invite more reviewers to take part in the process. --Eusebius (talk) 12:27, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the rules for QIC are much much much more simple than VIC. I watched them build that: the talk, the proposals, the template construction -- I have not read the results (the rules). VIC started to seem very complicated. In the simplicity of the time suggestions (except for the bot, it is all suggestions) for QIC, Alvesgaspar and Lycaon held me to within 10 minutes when I tried to change a support to an oppose once. I am pulling this out of my memory and perhaps the 10 minutes is an exaggeration -- but it was kind of fun in hindsight and while it does seem that suggestions like this are adhered to for some more than others, I still enjoy the simplicity. Rules and procedures -- the more simple they are, the easier they are to remember and follow. The more simplicity there is in the structure, the more complicated individuals (the humans) can be (I just pulled this idea out of my rearend, I humbly request permission to withdraw this claim if necessary...). -- carol (talk) 12:49, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the problem but I do not know what is the right solution.
I think that Flora of Brazil and Flora of Brazil Biocountry are redundant; so one of them should be erased. I think also that some division is required since a plant can be found in some part of Brazil but not in the other. In a first movement, all plants are part of Brazil Biocountry and then someone could sub-categorize them according to regions, states or eco-systems.
What country has a good definition of this category so it could be used as an example?
Dear 'Carol'. Why should I bother either of those users? Why should I risk getting into a protracted discussion, you timewaster, you should have followed the guidelines; the variant and new name can be offered on the talk pages of the articles it affects and the users who took the time to upload it. I advised the first when I upgraded it, what has the second to do anything!? The image is degraded, you removed information, and you tendentiously reverted to your own preference. If you revert it again, I will not be posting about it here - consider this a firm and last warning. Faithfully, Cygnis insignis (talk) 13:19, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hundreds of images that received similar cleaning is hundreds of reasons. I am not certain the reason you are engaging in the protracted discussion and I do not want to know those reasons. This is a firm suggestion to look at the contributions of User:Finavon, also to talk to the original uploader (who I discussed how to manage cleaned images with) and to explain what you are going to do about consistency and the hundreds of cleaned images which were uploaded by others compared to whatever thinks you can give a (heh) firm warning here. -- carol (talk) 19:42, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Cygnis: 'Tis true. I told Carol that I have no objections to her uploading cleaned versions over the top of any images I upload, so long as any originals that merit keeping are uploaded under another title.
Carol: You have missed something here. I uploaded a crappy original. With my permission, Cygnis uploaded a better original over the top of my crappy original. You have now uploaded a cleaned version over the top of my crappy original, with my permission; and you have uploaded my crappy original under a different name. That is all good. But in the process you have also uploaded over Cygnis's better version, without his permission, and without making his better version available under another title.
I have now uploaded Cygnis's better original over the top of my crappy original, at the other title. Possibly Cygnis will now be willing to permit the reinstatement of your cleaned version at the original title. I believe the community extends to him the right to be unwilling, in which case we will have to take our lumps and find a new title for your cleaned version.
Believe that the community extends the right to.... but that community does not give individuals these "rights" and seemingly does not work together to repair a wrong and if they give these "rights" they only give them to a few and I would like to see that which qualifies one person to get these and another person not get these. Where is the consistency and the consistency and also, where is the consistency? It is a discussion of "rights" or "rites"? -- carol (talk) 00:52, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest, I don't really have a feel for the conventions here. But I was under the impression that uploading over someone else's work is like tail-gating: there's nothing wrong with it unless there is a clash, in which case it is automatically your fault. (That is a crap analogy, so please don't try to stretch it any further.) But let us wait and see what Cygnis has to say. Hesperian05:20, 11 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I was disappointed. I lost so much of the color when I removed the background color. I certainly wouldn't mind if one of the experts would give some pointers here on how to do a nicer job with this. I included the jpg in this gallery because I am of the opinion that png makes much nicer thumbnails than jpg do -- at least for these images that started life as a painting. -- carol (talk) 23:53, 12 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, nice to have you more obviously around again. I have no idea what to think of that except that it is always interesting when google doesn't respond.
While I see if I have any thoughts to share, any ideas what it is about a black-hole on Woburn Road that causes google to not respond? -- carol (talk) 16:31, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
When it does respond (assuming you've got whatever plugins/java etc that is needed to look at google street views), you should be looking at a suburban street outside a school. But for some reason, best know to google (or more likely they haven't noticed), you can drive along about 1km of this road and only see a fairly featureless, dark space - you can turn through 360 degrees and see the edge of some thing, you can look up and down and see little more. You can turn down side streets and see them perfectly well, you can look back at Woburn Road and see it perfectly well, but as soon as you 'drive' back onto it, you're back in the black hole. My best guess is that they put some sort of covers over the cameras overnight and neglected to remove them, or maybe someone was playing a prank on them ... --Tony Wills (talk) 21:44, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"Flora of" categories when they are subdivisions of larger political divisions[edit]
I usually do not work in 'Nature of', 'Flora of' sections but I wanted to categorize a plant in California and to my surprise category:Flora of California was not part of Category:Flora of the United States (directly or indirectly). I was trying to fix that for California and other states that had the same problem.
I would propose the following connections between 'Flora of' and 'Nature of' categories within US:
I think this would make it easier to navigate between existing categories. However the last thing I want to do is the break current organization, so if this is a bad idea for some reason, than please explain why, or point me to some schema layout document. Greetings --Jarekt (talk) 15:41, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
carol, what I proposed is just a schema of how to connect existing political categories. We have them and they should be connected, so people can navigate them. It can be organized in more than one way, so political and ecozone based categories coexist. I agree that political categories do not make much sense from biological point of view, but they can be cross-linked with other country/state categories. In above schema Category:Ecozones based regions within US would be in Category:Flora of the United States by region (if region is not a correct term than lets use different term - Ecozones?). --Jarekt (talk) 04:24, 26 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Your ideas are very good.
I have been waiting for the merge of the "Plants of" categories into the "Flora of" categories to be undone. The anonymous merge can and should be reviewed by administrators who are not anonymous and the reversion completed. It should not be difficult to revert such a merge and if it is, the ability to make such a large change without concensus and without responsibility should be disabled. I was not able to determine what the "Plants of" categories contained. The "Flora of" categories contained subcategories that were native species and images that were taken at that location. The scheme seemed to be as simple as the needs of the science of botany allowed it to be.
I understand the existing scheme problem. The scheme was adopted from the encyclopedias when the image server was created. It gave a good start to the image server but it also presented some problems as (in my opinion) the category scheme for articles is not as predominant of a need as a category scheme for a collection of individual images. Articles interlink more often than individual images have the oportunity to. The differences between a gallery and an article is very large also (even though they have the same "wiki-page" name.
Before the merge, I was asking (sometimes rudely but after asking the same question politely several times, "rude" is sometimes attempted as "polite" has only shown to fail or go unanswered) what the "Plants of" categories contained. I asked this question because I was unable to determine a single scheme for the categories and other problems like a category called "Plants of Africa" but the category Category:Plants by continent does not exist. There was no category for "Flora of Africa" in the original scheme which came from the category Ecozones. It is useless for the science to say that a plant is from Africa as the area is too large and there are no plants that grow everywhere on that area. The scheme I used divided that continent and placed it into 2 of the 8 zones. That big land mass which contains Europe (also not a political division), the Arab peninsula, India, Russia and China was divided very much -- I admit to not remembering the continental breakdown of this area right now. The divisions are more natural and contain subdivisions which are more equal in area and climate than the lines which are compromises between policy and diplomacy has created (the countries). The crossover is how the information is gathered. Often via government or university which answers to political lines. Africa is not a political division, however. There are other examples, this one example is really easy to understand and see the some of the problems that were to be had by the "Plants of" categories. The merge made the "Flora of" categories also not make sense and increased problems from perhaps 5 to 10% into unknown proportions.
I was collecting all of the "Flora of" categories (not just for the United States but for all locations on the globe with those first level political divisions) into "Nature of that country/province" categories along with the "trees of", "fish of", "animals of" and similar to keep them in the tree for the area but separate from these other categories of which the category scheme is still a mystery to me.
I asked you to think about this when you removed a "Flora of" category from one of the "Nature of" categories. Also, they are not all on my watchlist -- as you noted earlier in this exchange.
I have been responsible for groups of people in my past. This responsibility seems to sometimes demand that I admitted to making a mistake or not knowing the answer to a question (in times where there was no immediate need for a decision to be made -- like not life and death). I have also been in groups of people who have had someone not me who was responsible (team leaders, managers, etc). My respect for them increased when they asked my opinion, admitted error, worked to correct mistakes.
The anonymous merge of the "Plants of" categories into the "Flora of" categories really should be reverted and the discussion of what is actually contained within those original "Plants of" categories either be acknowledged or determined or admitted that it was a scheme which did not work very well for the kind of images which were contained within them.
This long explanation was an attempt to explain the history which created the "Flora of" categories -- I could not determine what was in the "Plants of" categories and their contents varied by region. Then the merge which first involved User:Foroa and then was accomplished anonymously and maintained manually and with bots by User:Foroa, User:Lycaon, User:Multichill and the bot -- these were in my watchlist so there might have been others. At least, these users were not anonymous but at least one of them admitted to wanting to make the commons to be more consistent and not liking the anonymous merge. Then I complained about anonymous and thoughtless actions by users with the privilege to take anonymous and thoughtless action.
Thoughtless obedience has a terrible history among the species. I try not to make a practice this. I find it interesting to be alone with this attempt. I am angry and it makes communicating about these problems (even to innocent people) very difficult. Thank you for your patience -- carol (talk) 00:39, 27 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, carol. I noticed that the location of Malaysia in your ecozones maps has been moved to the wrong location. You probably accidentally dragged it while editing it. I hope that you can fix them. :-) --seav (talk) 04:00, 29 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Could you be more specific about this? Perhaps provide an example of what you mean by "the location" (on the map, in a gallery, category) and a reference of what you consider to be a correct location. -- carol (talk) 21:02, 30 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Please see Image:Ecozones.svg (and all variations showing each individual ecozone). Malaysia is in the wrong geographic location. It's as if Malaysia has been moved about 500 kilometers northwest. This includes both Peninsular Malaysia and the Malaysian part of Borneo. Somebody tried to fix this by doing Image:Ecozones-2.svg, but he only fixed the Borneo part, not the Peninsular part. Please compare the Southeast Asian region with Image:BlankMap-World6, compact.svg, which is the source map you used. --seav (talk) 10:06, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the specifics! In all honesty, errors in this could have been made at any of the points of the structure I mentioned here. I have lately forgotten more about Inkscape (and its weird ways) than I knew when I made those maps. Additionally, it is a region of the world that I am also not so familiar with. -- carol (talk) 23:21, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I see a theme here, references to crack, pictures of speed, and now talk of fungal interuptions (magic mushrooms perhaps). Personaly I prefer slime molds. So the process has begun, how do you wish to proceed in the excercise to excise the exorcism? --Tony Wills (talk) 09:00, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the mention of the cracks that exist between any attempt to define a process with a set of rules has not much to do with the releasing of bad spirits. I could be wrong about that in a larger picture but in that smaller issue they could or should be unrelated. I could probably write a masters worthy paper on problems with gridded logic and it is the mathematics that I really really enjoyed which is about the strange behavior which can be found at the extremes of a natural grid -- upping the text I could generate on the subject to perhaps the length and quality of doctorate dissertation. Once when I was in my thirties, I had a challenge to explain to a woman who only a few days older than me the reason that the county (the next political subdivision of my country after state) with the closed road didn't fix the problem. The closed road displaced one family who lived in the responsible county. Hundreds of other families were effected but they lived in a bordering county and were not the responsibility of the municipality with the broken road. The three most disturbing things about that conversation are our similar age and she had lived in that area for years longer than me, that this woman likes to group with people she considers to be intellectually beneath her and third that the child I was trying to raise to be able to easily think through problems like this is probably still in that womans group (of people she considers to be intellectually inferior to her). This is a different problem than the one I mentioned on your talk page though.
Have you noticed that the ghosts of Thanksgivings past still haunt this interface? Nameless and faceless entities which did not exist before Thanksgiving 2007. I was observing things here since before June 2007 and have no way to prove this -- all I can do is to cite the software that would be used to make such an entity exist. This bad spirit is not so much mine and really does not torment me as much as some interrupted conversations I had before 2003 do. It is more like the spooge that is left after a bunch of hedonistic diners have come and gone -- do you know the word "spooge"? It is the name they give to the crud that is left in the restaurant that needs to be cleaned before the restaurant closes for that day. When I hear the word spooge, I have a mental picture of a water inflated hush-puppy floating towards the drain as the closing cooks shoot at it with the water hose at the end of that particular day that I first learned this word. I think that the ghosts of Thanksgiving past are not much bigger than this image I have of what spooge is, but their persistence here is also like the kind of problem that would exist if spooge had not been cleaned away....
About exorcism, I have a theory. Those things which really are tormenting me are mine and to make them cease is as simple as finishing the conversations which caused them to exist. To just remove them without taking the actual steps towards diminishing them would be hurtful to me -- what makes them bad and makes them torment is the interruption. Other bad spirits, like jealousy, inferiority (an interesting word which has no obvious opposite like onferiority or feriority) and others that can be bad in an extreme like pride and well, I seem to not be able to grab something bad from a different set of whatever these things are -- those "things" have mostly become a welcome part of me and my thinking as long as I don't do anything stupid when they first show up. That the '70s movie with that name was probably just an exaggeration of the effect puberty has on one of the genders kind of underscores my ideas now is a fact that I cannot escape. I saw the edited for television version and it would be a lie to say that it was not part of the ideas I express here and now. Without these "bad spirits" I am not a whole person.
In the eighties, my still "favorite movie ending" inspired me to do the same. The end of Poltergeist when the tormented family moved from a haunted house to a hotel and within minutes of arriving kicked the television out of the rented room inspired me when I first saw that to do the same. I did not sense ghosts which existed due to the abuse of decision making and information exchange as like had caused the problem in that movie -- I sensed that my life was being taken from me so that fictional depictions could live. It seemed wrong for me to spend much of my time for that. I unplugged the television set and spent my time concentrating on the stuff I was supposed to be doing and eventually on entertainment which was being provided locally by similarly alive and living and real people.
There were a few years in California lately that every time I mentioned wanting my stuff back, the next time I would hear a radio broadcast (or music being piped over some kind of medium to where ever I was) Madonnas "Material Girl" would be played or covers thereof. My stuff is not so material as it was mostly a collection of things to not waste time with. Books, music discs, materials for self expression (the hoity-toity name for the output would be folk art) and little tolkens that were ultimately to assist my memory of characters I was fond of or times I had enjoyed.
I really want to keep what is really tormenting me. Those things which are designed to torment via profile or are leftovers from college studies or perhaps that were enabled by people who are unhappy with their own past/activities or whatever put them into place.... The "spooge" of ideas which can be more enabled when prejudice, economic extremes, fear of the unknown, flawed databases (information) and similar problems exist.
I understand that my memory and knowing the software is not enough "proof" but this also doesn't mean that the spooge from a Thanksgiving long past by now should be allowed to continue and enjoy this very wrong life. That your real name is Tony Wills and that my real name is Carol Spears is questionable but possible. That the ghosts all have names which are not possible makes it easier to begin to make them stop. If their creators or enablers could take the time to retire the idea or to disable the interface it would surpass the belief part of the solution methods and start to just work to clean away this spooge which should be tormenting more than just me.... -- carol (talk) 19:54, 6 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The template you changed is kind of cool -- it determines if there is an image in the categories it is used in and if no images exist, will add that category to Species needing images. English wikipedia does this by manually adding a template to the back of articles and selecting a "needs image" option in the template. This is where the images are collected so I really saw that one day, a bot could add all of the species that have articles on the wikipedias (all of them, not just English wikipedia) and that template could just work. A collection of images is very different than a collection of articles.
I just looked at what I think it was you were trying to do. The gallery space for Lavatera acerifolia has been redirected to Malva canariensis and you don't think it should be? It is difficult for me to understand how what I think you were trying to do led you to the species template, so maybe I am not understanding what you were trying to do here. -- carol (talk) 22:40, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
en:User:Lavateraguy would be the place I would ask if and when it is or will be appropriate to change the name of this species -- had a self-righteous, self-defining little voting block not banned me there. -- carol (talk) 22:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You did an excellent job on the clean-up, but lightening the image can tend to over-saturate it. I dropped the saturation a little, darkened the ink (Useful trick: ink that's faded to grey looks "blurred" to the eye, since the eye expects it to be black. Tweaking the levels so that it's darker makes it looks sharper, and brings out the engraving) and also fixed up one tiny bit you missed. I have, of course, specifically named your excellent cleanup work in the FPC. Adam Cuerden (talk) 16:12, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
On English wikipedia, another user was going to be repairing this image -- perhaps you are using two different nicks between the two wikimedia projects?
I am still confident that you will be able to answer the questions I asked here: User_talk:Adam_Cuerden#problems_with_scans. I admit that I had no previous experience repairing sepia prints. And to be perfectly honest (I am sorry if this is offensive or seems to be rude or crude) and more with understanding that wikimedia wiki's are a collection of many, many images, articles, sound files, and especially people -- the little bit of acknowledgment from a shallow, rude and interlinked voting block is nothing compared to if that little voting block would start to play like well-adjusted and decent children.
Once again, I am still playing like a well-adjusted and decent child (that is who I like to play with....) and waiting for the discussion of the levels adjustment on those images in that conversation I started on 24 November 2008. -- carol (talk) 22:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Put simply,in the previous one, neither (original) image we had to work with was particularly good, so I just went with a quick guess and didn't fiddle too much. That sort of thing- where an image is largely a placeholder awaiting a better version - isn't really worth stressing over.
As for the question you just asked - Put simply, I saw you did some good work, and thught it polite to say so. If there were problems a while ago, they were a while ago, and I don't hold grudges. Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:31, 9 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Today it is a year since I uploaded that image. I admit that I was both glad to see it when it went up at English Featured Picture Candidates and queasy also because it has been a long and cruel year since then and I have learned much about the renovation of old images but nothing like the adjustments that you made. I really would like to encourage you to put your version into the namespace which is being held by my version.
Touche (or whatever appropriate word) for including my wrong word at English wikipedia "sepia". The collaboration I was thinking about had more to do with the exchange of methods. This eh, style of collaboration possibly was earned by me when I made fun of one of your supporters/"award-winning image restorers" use of the word histogram on another users talk page. Additional embarrassment that I currently have over the mis-use of this word a year after I worked on the image I mis-used this word while describing is that I wrote a plug-in for the application that I use which passes a layer between plug-ins (a first that I know of for this application) and one of the uses of this was to convert a grayscaled photograph into a sepia-like photograph. Even then, when I wrote that, I was uncomfortable with the color information I had access to and used to create this sepia coloration. My embarrassment seems to be useful to the little voting blocks which are in existence here and elsewhere in the free world so, please feel free to use this information along with my honest thanks for making greater improvements to that image.
Those old prints are kind of cool, aren't they? Even last century, the task of putting an image to paper was well, impressive to say the very least. My grandpa had, in his garage, little blocks of wood with metal negatives of photographs on them. When I saw them, I was at an age that I had no reason to believe that everyone (not just me) had a grandpa with these items in their garage. Those would have been made with a chemical process. The previous negatives which were made via chisel and reductive sculpting are almost beyond my imagination with the exception of when my high school art class had the assignment to remove portions of linoleum for the same kind of printing.
Technology and art seem to converge as often as science and religion do.
Let me know when you are able to collaborate in other ways. Until then should I continue to tell you when I know there is a mistake I made that I should be embarrassed of (like the misuse of the word sepia)? -- carol (talk) 02:43, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The only way in which the world is broken, is in the respect that there are too many of one particular species, which individually try to maximise their own well-being (*1) at the expense of the collective whole. Which wouldn't perhaps matter all that much except the other species sharing the planet suffer too and have no say in the matter. This could be well illustrated by a time lapse photo of a petri dish inhabited by a small number of different organisms. We start by zooming in and observing individuals, feeding replicating, doing their normal day to day stuff. Then zoom out to see the overview with the different populations of different species inhabiting different sections. Then we pause and notice that one organism (a slime mold perhaps) is growing faster than the others. We then watch as it grows and devours the other populations, spreads out and fills the whole dish (perhaps even climbing up the sides trying to escape into another universe). The final scene is the whole dish dieing as it kills itself with its own waste products.
(The family or Disneyland version [or perhaps this is the horror version] might fade out on an image of a small bit making it over the side of the dish ...)
(*1 genralisation: in some individuals the prime motivator is to maximise benfit for its relations or other groups eg village, country, or religion)
Thank you for a thoughtful reply. These words are not strong enough for the gratitude they were written to relay.
I have been thinking a little of Merlyn recently, who ages backwards through time -- of how liberty, freedom and civil equality seem to disappear rather than get stronger. That I spend this decade regretting that I contributed to a system which is (apparently and as reported) only there for the wealthy or at least economically secure when I wasn't either of these things (among many many other things) makes it very difficult to imagine, foresee or mentally calculate a good end.
The feelings that I have that time doubles back on itself are weird and wrong. That other people have access to my stuff has been a good portion of the wrongness. The missing "please watch our fiction" is ever prevalent. Thank you (additionally) for allowing me to explode a little occasionally. I really did used to have people who I had gotten to know and invested a little of my time and resources with who I thought would be available for this. -- carol (talk) 09:17, 12 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
When I first started here I expressed the opinion that projects should stay small (refer to en:Small_is_Beautiful), they need to be small enough so that those involved can properly communicate. The communication is somewhat hindered on commons by the large diversity of native languages and social norms. So not only do we have the difficulties of people not understanding each others messages and mis-reading their intents, we also have great differences in how people expect others to respond to them, how people understand collective decision making, how people respond to and use positions of "power" (additionally there are many very young members who get carried away when given a bit of power for the first time).
And the main problem with groups getting together here and forming a sub-community with a particular project, with a particular goal, is that they have no real control. If the sub-group makes decisions and heads in a particular direction they can only prevent people from mucking things up by persuasion, coercion or bullying. The "Tree of Life" (TOF ) project comes to mind here :-). I think communities only work here if they are working on something relatively obscure, some small corner where they don't continually collide with the general horde :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 11:54, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the protective-ness that can build up from nothing that I saw via the TOL people. The threat of the endless and un-winnable argument about which single taxonomy to use here. Using bots to maintain which were authored by people who followed instructions and are no longer involved (perhaps due to the unending discussion that the "science" itself provides). I also understand how learning enough about one thing takes learning time and cognition from other things.
What I don't understand is the mindless adherence and worse, the adherence which seems to be simply to delight in abuse. It is difficult to disconnect my mind and see that it doesn't just happen to me but I have seen evidence that it does happen to others. The Blanco images I am working on, for example. The original uploader of those images, after researching their modern names, attempted to upload them into a category for images from those books and met with aggressive opposition. At least that is how I describe a category which is to be found in a user space. That was in 2005 here! I would like there to be a way to find others who have been aggressively managed like that here. Those who manage aggressively, perhaps another wiki can be found for them and they can play with themselves until they grow bored with it?
I do not want to search and find a species which is only to be found on one of the small islands which are also a part of New Zealand. That others can not recognize that there is a difference between New Zealand North and North Island, New Zealand makes me think that the wrong people are driving the bots here. And honestly, I was not always enjoying the way that the writers of that paper that divides the globe into similar environments has divided the globe. There are some changes I would have made to it but that would have been to make the stuff I had been doing easier and I hadn't gotten to the grasses yet -- which might have changed my mind about the sense of those divisions for the natural world.
It should be somewhat easy to determine those groups or individuals which are drawn to the interface purely for the abusive situation it presents and to disconnect them. Administrators who follow the contributions of one user -- I had to fight to keep some of my single page genera lists here and that can be "hacked" by including an image or two. Then, when I find an imageless page, without a talk page explaining its presence that is here and undisputed since 2005 -- I start to think that it is people who are being managed and not a database. -- carol (talk) 01:13, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have almost come to the conclusion that the catagories and "article" pages here are not worth my time maintaining. I generally search for images using either the search facility here or via Google with site:wikimedia.org. Both of which search descriptions. In my experience descriptions are not mucked around with as much as catagories.
I have seen many people put in a lot of work in various directions, but the problem is that there seems to be only one goal that is strenuously stiven for - free usage of images. All the other organisation is done by individuals or small groups, with competing ideas on how things should be done - often diametrically opposed ideas, so that one undoes the work of the other. The catagorization systems will never get anywhere because there is no over-all direction or guidance (it is not headed anywhere, so won't get there!). There are lots of piles of rubble and lots more ways of building piles of rubble than those nice structures.
The "free market" of ideas on how to organise things means there can be a lot of innovation and improvement, but there is no system to recognise when an improvement comes along. A single person working hard can make changes or improvements but they are up against lots of people going in all sorts of directions. To get any idea adopted you need to get a bunch of people to agree and then impliment and defend it - basically "politics". The whole thing is a bit like a "democratic" nation in minature, perhaps you should ask Chomsky about how to "manufacture" the outcome you want :-) --Tony Wills (talk) 11:30, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The first through third search results are favored -- especially via a universal mindset which is has speeded up over the last 40 years that I know of. I once was young enough to appreciate when information was delivered more quickly and now I am growing into the age group that probably thinks that we sped it up enough and it should stay at that speed. Hmm, that is an essay about me and media speed -- my teachers tended to tune themselves to us, at least the ones I remember with gratitude.
I really like using the search to find an image but then looking at the image page and having easy access to several and perhaps all of the images that are available of the same subject.
About the manufacture. I tried to be a good citizen of my country for a short while and see what was going on via CSPAN the congressional television channel. What I saw can only be described as me being tested and not the delivery of information of what the congress was doing to me and the other people in my country and also the rest of the world. I think it ended with the delivery of local football scores, perhaps because the local newspapers which used to convey this no longer existed. In one of my least favorite Vonnegut science fiction scenarios, college football had become a different organization than the colleges they shared a name with. What I saw on CSPAN was so much worse and so much more bleak than this fictional warning.
I mention all of that now because of the overlap between the administrative actions here and what they claim was the election stuff for the United States and interestingly enough, de.wikipedia plant articles having followed the taxonomy used by GRIN. These international wikis should not be reflecting those questionable politics and USGov things. Here more than anywhere else, they should not be involved.
The only other person I know of who knows of Noam Chomsky is my mom. She pointed him out to me. For every six or seven interesting things/people I pointed out to her, she has pointed out one for me. An astrologer as well as being my mom, she told me in the early 2000's that me and George Bush had a lot in common and that I should look to him to for insight as to what is wrong with my life. Since that time, the Bush children have switched birthorder -- when George Sr. was president, Jeb was the oldest and George was second born. I have no problem looking at not so attractive images and seeing myself in them -- the only possible thing I can see which is an overlap between me and George Bush is that the people who are around me and who have been responsible for the ways my life have gone (those who determined my employment and income being the biggest example) and my friends are no way capable of running a country. The departure in the analogy here is that I didn't think it would be my friends who are running this country. And the people I believe in (or did believe in) were individuals who had my belief for where they were and what they were doing. Like the young'uns I thought could grow up and be a productive part of their community and that the older people could make their marriages work and things like that. I get so angry even now with that advice that my mom gave me -- it honestly was more fitting for my little brother who had spent ten years on a coast guard boat or in a radio station on one of Michigans coasts who thought that he would find an intelligence which is uncharacteristic of the military he had seen within the commercial and what should have been capitalistic system.
Most of the decisions which injured my ability to live where I wanted to live and do what I wanted to do had nothing to do with simple ideas like the actual selling of groceries (at the store I was selling them at) and when I was fired from substitute teaching, they did not ask me what the problem was and I do not think that the problem went away when they got rid of me. Not unlike the decisions that were made here on 1 September 2008. -- carol (talk) 00:45, 16 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I made Category:Fauna of Western Indian Ocean probably. I was not consistent with this, but I attempted to make it easy for any person (like me) who was hand-typing the category names onto image and other category pages. It does seem to be much easier to arrive at a consensus about if a category name should include a linguistic article or not than it is to determine what the contents of a category are or were supposed to be (the Aussies proved this by instigating the fastest deletion request and close that I have ever seen here). Also, I am not certain if an area that was defined by the Taxonomic Database Working Group[11] should be called "the <defined area>", they are mostly non-political groupings of areas of this globe and not "the area" for many other uses of the location name.
there are "Birds of" categories and maybe even a "Fish of" category to be found within the existing categories here -- I was attempting to make a well defined and easy to contribute to and understand category tree.
I am as uncertain about what the contents of the "Animals of" categories contained as I was about what the "Plants of" categories contained.
I thought that a clean up of the categories contained below the new tree would not be software managed but instead be re-researched to know what goes where and why this time.
BTW, I see you are cleaning up duplicates and similar in the Recent Changes today. Thanks for that. Is this task as mind-dulling as I sometimes imagine it would be? -- carol (talk) 01:32, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
OK thanks, let me ruminate on that (and go to bed first). And BTW, dupe clearing is worse than you think and never-ending and especially tricky with replication on 2/3 of the servers halted ;-). Lycaon (talk) 01:43, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
My question is: do the categories Flora of ... and Fauna of ... include (in one or other) things like slime molds and fungi, whereas Animals of ... and Plants of ... should not? --Tony Wills (talk) 10:29, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure we have local 'native' species. But that's where the whole 'Animals of', 'Fauna of' etc thing has me very confused. Does it mean anything at all - I don't know whether any of the three simultaneous uses of such categories is of great use to anyone (1:Photos of animals taken in a particular region, 2:Photos of animals whose species can be found in a particular region {does this include domestic & zoo animals etc?}, 3: Photos of animals whose species are endemic to a particular region).
Heh. In my college days and when I was keeping an aquarium, it was fairly well known to the freshwater enthusiasts that it was important to only get your fish from one of the two stores. A "north side" aquarium receiving additions of fish from the south store was certain to get southside ick and I don't know if the inverse was true. That ick was very regional and imported.
Your Sow Thistle photographs -- the image pages -- they should go into the Category:Flora of New Zealand North or Category:Flora of New Zealand South, whichever is more accurate and if they still existed but the species category wouldn't be subcategorized there because I am quite certain it is an import and not one of the natives there. This seems natural and I wonder if you will laugh because it is simple and I was caused to type it again. A little more research should be required before making a category here than adding an image to a category.
The question you asked is interesting -- I would like to see where they put those things into that tree. Virus and bacteria should be in that tree also? The whole effort is such a pleasant exercise in futility -- I am curious if there is any other similar exercise that has had the endurance of the Linnean classification system. I admit, I enjoy contributing to something that is impossible to ever actually achieve, yet still kind of useful for the results of the attempt. Is it sane if you at least recognize that it is not sane? -- carol (talk) 12:29, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Most human endevours are insane (especially looked upon in hindsight) - the actions are insane, the actors are defined as sane until the next change of government ;-). Ok, you've narrowed it down to either using my definition (1) or (2). So do I expect that if we have Polar Bears in some zoo in NZ, that a photo of one then goes under Category:Fauna of New Zealand North? (Or only if it escapes into the wild?) or does the whole category of Polar Bears get tagged Category:Fauna of New Zealand North. --Tony Wills (talk) 19:04, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Category:Wellington Zoo which is subcatted into Category:Zoos by country. Category:Wellington Zoo could also be subcatted into Category:Fauna of North Island, New Zealand which should be subcatted into Category:Fauna of New Zealand North as this zoo is not on any of those other islands. And maybe into Category:Flora of New Zealand North also since sometimes those zoos have plant specimens also. There is a similar tree for Botanical Gardens Category:Botanical gardens by country. A few of my plant images were taken at a botanical garden (although I might have the name confused and were actually taken at an Arboretum which is associated with a botanical garden, we always just called the whole area "the botanical garden") and are also native to the region. So the image of them should be categorized to the species and the Botanical garden and the species categorized to the region. That is a violation of that diagram to have the image subcatted twice into the same tree -- but categorizing the image like that keeps it into two trees and it belongs in two trees. Native species by region and contents of a biological reserve.
The fauna and flora that I had subcatted into New Zealand North and New Zealand South, to the best of my knowledge occurred on the larger island of the region and also the smaller islands that the region included. (New Zealand North includes Chatham Island and Kermadee Island and New Zealand South includes Antipodean Island). Did I get it wrong and those smaller islands are actually without vegetation? -- carol (talk) 00:47, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
How about "the actions are insane and the participants are defined as sane". When does the government in New Zealand change? In some ways, everyone is an actor. I did not speak totally as myself when I was waitressing or cashiering or substitute teachering but I tried to speak as closely to myself as the rules of the employment allowed me. I participated in those endeavors. I did not try to be like (for example) my typing teacher -- this would have taken an actress with much greater ability than I ever had for this occupation. As much as I enjoyed some of the waitresses and later cashiers I was working with -- they were already there being that person so it was encouraging for me to be there and be my person. Me, Carol Spears, was participating. -- carol (talk) 00:53, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(reseting indent)
Just an aside, but where do pictures of Wellington Zoo go? (not of animals in the zoo, but the place itself?) Eg File:Wellington_Zoo_Elephant_House.JPG, with that category structure the buildings etc are categorized as Fauna.
I have no specific knowledge of the flora of the Chatham Islands, but would have thought that latitude wise they go with the south. There seems to be many references to "Kermadee" on the net, but around here they're always called the Kermadec Islands. I don't know much about Antipodes Island, but Campbell Island and the Auckland Islands are certainly vegetated and considered part of NZ. I expect that every rock that doesn't have sea washing over it has vegetation, and even those that do have sea washing over them have seaweed :-).
We had an election last year about the same time as some other nation up north had a presidencial election, and basically a week later, after vote counts were confirmed, the old lot packed their bags and the new lot moved in - we're at a loss to understand why it has taken that other nation so long to kick out the old guy and install the new guy - they'll never get anywhere in the world if they muck around so much ;-).
I was using 'actor' in the older sense of just a participant, but I agree that many jobs, especially those with uniforms, allow people to take on a role and seperate themselves from their actions.
You still haven't addressed the question of which of my definitions you are using, I am now assuming you are using "1:Photos of animals taken in a particular region", which is what Lycaon assumes. --Tony Wills (talk) 09:39, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Probably your assumption is correct. The animals have different problems and a person who has researched and authored articles about animals (insects and birds and fishes) would perhaps be better to assist with the definition of that category and probably understand the failures of the tree that ends at "Animals by country". Migration is an interesting problem that the flora doesn't have -- at least interesting in the "how to categorize these" goes. When my range maps looked very not accurate (and amateurish) for the articles I was writing about plants -- that tree was part of the solution. The tendency for some regions to have had more plant counts and online information for the range of plants (United States, South Africa, European countries, Australia) seems to be a fact of funding and reflective of those political divisions. Once when I asked one of the inkscape experts here to assist me, I was shown a map of the United States which was divided into counties as an answer. I still consider this to be an international project -- it will be nice when the previously productive administration can think that way also. -- carol (talk) 12:43, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the bias is a reflection of the relative wealth of the participants and their respective interests. I certainly find commons more of an international project than en:w, and it is often new comers from en:w that fall into US-centric views of things. Of course the pre-dominance of English makes it difficult for a lot of people to fully participate. --Tony Wills (talk) 20:01, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I was suprised to not see your input into the discussion at Commons:Category scheme flora, which refers to your work and sprung up after the plant -> flora move debacle. If you can get a category scheme nailed down then it is a lot easier to maintain the whole structure. --Tony Wills (talk) 11:04, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Not invited! Not told of the discussion. Has the paper I shared with so many users here been mentioned? Have the people who merged the categories released the secret of what the "Plants of" categories contained?
Who is there as an expert of what the original schema of the "Flora of" categories here are? Do they know the paper? The Aussies were working on further subdivisions that did not match what the paper recommended -- I thought that should have been an interesting discussion and one in which I would have sided with the Aussies for if they had opted for better names for their subdivisions. One of them was something like "Southeast Area" and I asked the maker of the subdivision to show me where "Southeast" is on the globe....
I still so want to know what it was that the "Plants of" categories contained. That there is no answer to this question and that there was no consistency in what they contained unfortunately only provides me with more, eh more impolite things to say and offensive to people who apparently need ass kissing or something to only do sensible things. It isn't even funny; so if humor or comedy was the purpose, it really failed unless I really have over-estimated the intelligence of the majority. So, if they are able to determine what the "Plants of" categories contained or even what they were supposed to contain -- I would be grateful for this knowledge.
My best guess is that whoever setup the "Plants of" scheme is long gone, and the current content was a mixture of the 3 categorization schemes that I mentioned above. The secret is that no one really knew what it contained, but that different people made different assumptions. One thing that commons suffers from is a high turn-over of participants and a short institutional memory. Things need to be well documented and new participants need to read the documentation. Category schemes are part of this :-)
From what I can see from the links to the category scheme pages the only invites went to these pages
Unless invites were posted elsewhere and not archived. But regardless, it is a little strange that no one asked for your input when they saw you hadn't participated. But then the discussion fizzled out fairly quickly. So if you need a formal invite, here it is:
I remember discussing the ToL problems about species categorization/gallerifying with you. I don't remember you ever expressing an interest in, problem of or concern for the "Plants by country" problem.
Those people who are in that discussion are people who have the appearance and record of taking advantage of people who care about their work and contribution. Of not actually being kind and decent leaders (I tried several times to speak with Foroa about this, for example). Of people who give the appearance of speaking to and for the community but only really speak among themselves and abusing the community. I am sorry that the evidence is present for what I just claimed. -- carol (talk) 00:39, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I raised the point at ANB because it is not the sort of behavior I would like to see being done here, as in my opinion it is disrespectful to a previous uploader and until explained, I can't see the reason for it. Fortunately this is the first time it has happened, hopefully it stays isolated and this person stops, otherwise at least now other users are aware of the situation. BrokenSphere17:57, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Aggression instead of communication or aggression before communication is a mark of which era of the development of the species? -- carol (talk) 00:42, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Once when in a project where I was involved and we were all working together (it seems like centuries ago, only the reverse where now I am in a century in which women are owned -- from 2003 back to 1403) I joked one evening during an argument on the irc in which people seemed to have exchanged roles. The argument was interesting and the interplay was fun and the discussion was not about anything that mattered so the interaction between people was fun.
I mention this now because you seem to be playing the role of Slaunger who started the same way when VIC was created.
I would rather that you be the same person at the nickname "Gnan" who might insist with me that the merge of the "Plants of" categories get reverted and who is able to offer an experienced opinion about the subdivisions I started with from the paper I deposited on your talk page once long ago. -- carol (talk) 00:54, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I havent changed with the way I do things remember I setup QI long before VI and I did make suggestions there, since these two processes have become more a part of the community the problems at FP have become even more apparent. Since QI is so successful I thought why not spend some time and energy in making what should be our pinicle more towards that end. I would appreciate your thoughts on what I'm proposing as you see things from a different perspective. I will get to look at the plants issue in the coming weeks as kinder return to school and as I move away from the ball chain type employee workforce. Gnangarra02:29, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A quick scan of your ideas for FPC was to make the vote subpage to display the image at the same size as images are displayed on the image pages and to include the votes where they are more easily seen. This seems like a step towards making better comedy and I appreciate that.
What I noticed about QIC was that I found it because I was looking for good images. The discussion for images that will appear on the Main Page perhaps keeps it more sane and nice. What I dislike about it is the sense that I have gotten that stuff was acquired via that review system. I disliked the feeling that I had that this was happening all of last year. I dislike that "feeling" for many things, not just that review system so, please don't take the accusation too personally. -- carol (talk) 03:31, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
sorry the B&C is more in the physical sense of past eras where a convict is tethered by a B&C breaking the same rocks day in day out, but like W:en:Moondyne Joe I have been secretly digging at he wall behind planing my escape from the prison that is 9-5 work. I just happen to be committed to looking after a friends business while he's off playing with trains and seeing family in far flung exotic places. Gnangarra03:17, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I liked the train accident movie from Australia, I liked it enough to want to add the DVD into my personal collection. I think that I would have liked it even if not being forced to watch it. I would have liked it much more if the main female had not looked like my friend from my bartending years. I am not as appreciative of the "looks like" games being played here as the effort requires. The blending of animation and of images was excellent and probably as much like a brain actually works than many moving picture display has shown previously. I dislike the ending of the movie with cancer therapy as much as I dislike the way that Osama and Obama both end with AMA (American Medical Association). Once again, the the lack of sanity displayed here starts with the lack of it in the situation that put me here. -- carol (talk) 03:31, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I really need your answer to that other question I asked. Do you think that a completely irresponsible mess was made here for the purpose of re-creating an old art image that I renovated here and that the makers of this mess for such artful purposes should be also able to clean up their mess once the performance is eh, appreciated and finished? -- carol (talk) 03:31, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
with the other I'm an ecozone type person but then I dont have the problems of bad neighbours and political indignities to deal with. Gnangarra03:22, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
wiki moondyne assisted to "keep me" incarcerated and had the appearance of being perhaps a bad neighbours and political indignitary via this modern interface. Did any of your wiki-friends suggest the nick was not being used correctly? -- carol (talk) 03:41, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I comment has nothing to do with Wiki-Moondyne, sorry for forgetting that you have had en.issues with him in the past and using the link to joe as a way of clarifying my comment. Gnangarra03:58, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It was a good read and I thought about my suggestions of a choice of username and considered many of the lyrics I know from the Bee Gees (although I use my actual name here). The link to the publishing company called Hesperian at the article was somewhat bothersome. Had I authored the article, I would have excluded a link like that -- simply because I really like the goals as stated. I honestly never thought that I would be able to make an income equal to my skill and contribution via GNU licensed projects -- it is one of the reasons that I tried to do a good job at my for payment work. Truthfully, the 14th century abuse of the terms "girlfriend" and "wife" started to be very loud and all I heard when a publishing company became involved in everything I had been contributing to. Be careful in those waters (the publishers environment)! The original definition of chivalry should have died a long long while ago and been replaced with the idea that the genders are different yet equal. From what I have seen, those ancient ideals make a great convenience for publishing where they can install a chunk of their version of history and a person who looks and speaks like the author they want to have authored the text. Please be careful. -- carol (talk) 07:31, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there. I just would like you to know that when you say something, I usually understand about half of what you say (my English is far from perfect), and it is very frustrating. It's not very important, just be aware that when I don't answer to your comments it's usually that I don't know how to. Regards, --Eusebius (talk) 12:38, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
My English is very native American and somewhat dated due to my age and probably not very "English". Our version of this language is used on television and in the movies, but rarely to discuss the subjects that are discussed here. If you ever are of the opinion that a comment I have written anywhere is worth your further understanding, feel free to ask me to clarify.
That being said, if you are not understanding my comments about OTRS (that is the most recent comment that is probably the most confusing) -- I tried to suggest to encourage those things that need to be done here with the exposure that some of the enabled here want (the administrators and trusted people who mostly just nominate their images at FPC) and with the exposure that others may not want (like the reviewing of a pornography collection that was recently restored here). That main page exposure is a reward? The rewards are not being given for what needs to be done here.... -- carol (talk) 12:59, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your answer! About your OTRS comment, actually I understood this one, but if I don't reply it's mainly because I'm unsure about my opinion on this proposal. I like the idea of the reward, because like many people it's one of my weaknesses ;-), but I'm afraid it might include a bias in admin activity (but maybe I'm wrong, or maybe the bias is what we need). I also think that it would be hard to find common and objective criteria. The actions appearing as most needed or difficult to someone may not appear as such to some other. Finally, users sometimes (often?) apply for adminship in order to get more "power", I wouldn't like to see some more applying for a reward. --Eusebius (talk) 13:30, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the "power" stuff is a problem. The actual tasks that admin are supposed to do should be highlighted. I wouldn't mind seeing a "biggest administrative fuck up" on the Main Page or "administrators who only add articles into category names". I have found a lot of fun here and stayed mostly in scope while finding it and knowing what administrators are supposed to be doing is also (for me) knowing that it isn't that much fun. But the presentation is of exclusivity and of "power". Using the Main Page to encourage activities that are within the SCOPE of the project seems more important than using it to show review approved images -- until the SCOPE is more widely understood.
I did check to see that it was the Administrators talk page before I saved the comment with that idea. What comment confused you? -- carol (talk) 13:47, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing specific for the moment, but I will ask you when it comes! I like the idea of the "biggest administrative fuck up", but I'm not sure it should be on the main page ;-) --Eusebius (talk) 13:58, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a little confused about your saying, I'd assume that when you see someone commenting that a higher resolution image should be uploaded you think that they want the image for private sale? I think that on the whole it is pretty unlikely that regular commons users are doing so.
I am however sure that people do take images from wikipedia with no regard to copyright. File:Colosseum in Rome, Italy - April 2007.jpg was used in a set of Mac OS commercials without any mention of its licence for example, and I've had my own images pinched (not meeting the conditions of the licence) before today as well.
I keep the full resolution shots for private sale of prints and so on, not to improve my chances at getting featured pictures. I haven't bothered nominating images here at all for some time, it isn't worth getting crucified about 40% of the time because I choose to provide reduced resolution copies of my hard work. Noodle snacks (talk) 03:25, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for thinking about improving the picture. If I understood correctly, you believe it is a painting? If so, no, this was a picture of the cone that I took a few days ago. The colours are as the picture illustrates. Because I was going for a high res image, I stitched a few pictures and the exif was lost in the process. --Muhammad05:12, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, it is clearly a photograph to me. The color though -- these are color problems that the aged prints I have been working with have. On many of the prints, the leaves are too blue and the browns are too red. I only mentioned it because it bothers me because it is a photograph and not a painting....
If you have one of the original images still available, I can restore the exif data if you would like this done.
Sorry, I had had a previous bad experience on Commons and so was somewhat frustrated when I posted my query and received no response. I appreciate your assistance. Take care and regards, MarmadukePercy (talk) 04:36, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks for taking the time to explain things to me the way you did. That really does help. I'm not a technie in any sense of the word (I'm lucky to find the on/off switch), so your explanations have given me some handle on that. I can see your point exactly. When my friend told me that he'd uploaded the images to Flickr this time, I was a bit concerned, as we'd had more luck the other way -- and as you say, it was working fine. But I figured I'd give it a go, trying the new method. I think we should have just stuck with the old. I'm going to let these works be deleted, and start again from scratch. (Which I'd actually done with a prior entry of his, and doing it the new way worked just dandy.) Again, my apologies for my rant in the beginning: I was feeling like Wall-E, lost in an incomprehensible environment I wasn't equipped to understand. You've eased that problem by taking the time to explain. I wish more folks did that. I hope we have the chance to work together on something again. Best regards and have a lovely evening wherever you are.MarmadukePercy (talk) 06:00, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
WALL-E was pretty cool -- especially the way it presented its pro-enviromental ideas to its audience (children from quite young to as old as could see it) as if that audience could and did think for itself. There was a great moment in the movie where the little trash compactor did not seem to recognize that the really big trash compactors on that escape ship were exact replicas of him and the movie did not go out of its way to point that out either. I look forward to re-seeing this movie and wonder that it did not show here on the digital displays which are available.
From a techie point of view -- The Incredibles and the designer who did not want her superheros to wear capes, that was such a pointing at the re-naming of Netscape to Mozilla, btw. At least, from this once techie-fan's limited POV. -- carol (talk) 06:26, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I too look forward to seeing Wall-E again. These movies have come so far it's astonishing. I did one of the earliest stories for a general interest publication on computer graphics -- the movie Tron way back in the 1980s. Wandering about the Disney lot in Burbank, listening to the old guys in bowties (Walt's guys) bemoaning the death of the old hand-drawn graphics, I wondered what would become of animation. At the same time, the hipsters on Melrose working on the very beginnings of computer graphics were claiming that one day they'd be able to summon crowds on the screen with the flip of a wrist. I doubted them then. I sure was wrong. It's extraordinary how far that entire field has come since then. One can only stand awestruck with admiration. Thanks again for your help and for the nice chat.MarmadukePercy (talk) 06:59, 29 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"see more"-template with Categories in Commons[edit]
Hi Carol,
I'm not an expert on the Commons editing, I found the botanical illustrations of the orchids more or less by chance, when uploading my own old slides (see my user page here). I had a lot of good advice from Orchi (who wrote the "see more"-templ), and I follow his way of making new galleries and categories. I copy 2 subjects from his user page:
___________________________
"
== Use of {{see more}}==
Hello, Wouter, I created this template a short time ago to have and give a quick link to the most better organized and (I think) better identified galleries of species. The galleries/articles have the possibility of controlling over the "Special:Watchlist". Greetings. Orchi (talk) 21:18, 24 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
"
_________________________
"
There was a no ending discussion between the advocates of galleries and categories in plants and animals. In the meantime it was decided, that every picture must have a category. Unfortunately in categories is not the possibility to check, control or classify new pictures. This is only possible over the watchlists of the galleries.
In the moment my personal way is, to sort the articles of Species in the genus category (genus|species). When other users remove the"|", the sorting is only against the Species category. Then I put the second category of the genus in the article (to avoid "editwar"). This is the only link from a Species article to the relevant Genus category. (Taxonavigation gives this possibility not).
To sort and classify all the thousends of orchid pictures and Species and hundreds of Genera, I think, currently this is the best way of sorting, until better tools are present. Also the tempate "see more" is a present help today also and a preparation for a further information later.
Many good and active friends of botany and animals left commons due to this conflict in the "Tree of life". Cheers. Orchi (talk) 00:48, 9 December 2008 (UTC)
I hope this is an answer to your question. For me the most important is that changes show up in my watchlist only for the galleries, not for the categories, so it seems useful to use both. If you have more questions you can always ask me.
Hi Carol,
The whole gallery/category controversy is a complete riddle to me. All I know is that very few people (3, myself included) are really active in the Commons orchidaceae subject, first and foremost User Orchi, and further Dalton Batista, who is a recognized international expert in this field. Both have provided thousands of excellent photographs as well. When you write "It starts to have the appearance that the motivation is to keep the commons from being the greatest image server available for the subject matter/contents that are here. What do you think would motivate users like Orchi to do this?", I really feel some anger, here is a man who has devoted an awful lot of time and expertise, and you accuse him of a kind of sabotage (is this an English word?) It is not the way I communicate with people, not in my professionnal life and not in my private life. A little respect, please, no unmotivated accusations.
You did not see the great respect I have for Orchi then. I don't think that an honest consideration of motivations is equal to disrespect. The idea of disrespect -- I think that my curiousity about the motivations would only be disrespectful if the motivation had been to prevent the commons collection from becoming the greatest server of botany images that is available online at this time. I also don't share the opinion that submission to a set of non-facts is the way to respect a great contributor.
Did you find any disrespect to Orchi from me when you looked through the archives of his talk page?
Who cares about categories or galleries? I don't, as long as everything is easily accessible for plant identification and maybe later for some historical insight about the development of knowledge of (tropical) orchids in Europe, especially in the 19th century.
Please, please, don't make a point of this. A lot of work has been done in the last years, but of course it's all coming from interest and love for beautiful plants and illustrations. I know for myself that if there should be all kind of rules and regulations, it would stop immediately my interest in doing something for Commons. The double gallery/category for every species is not by any means a problem in accessing the content, on the contrary, I should say. If it's a little bit different from some other subjects, so what? Maybe they should see the orchidaceae as an example of how to organize a large plant family. (That's not serious, but let everybody do things in his or her own way, as long as it works.)
Category:Malvaceae is on its way to becoming a good example of how to organize a large plant family. The problem which exists there was injected by (interestingly enough) the TOL with a non-existent classification system. The wiki software provides a good way to avoid the argument of "this taxonomy" or "that taxonomy" which also should not happen on a wiki which serves images to so many wiki. Sub-catting the species galleries into the species categories does not interfer with galleries on a watchlist and interestingly enough, coincides with the way the rest of categorization works here.
No hard feelings, I think you write with the best of intentions, but please don't interfere in a field where you are not active, leave it to the people who do the work. No need to answer me, I think my opinion is clear, and I don't like endless (and most of the time fruitless) discussions.
Thank you for the no hard feelings assumption. If Orchi opts for this method due to an old and non-existent war, then perhaps I am the more respectful of me and you since I am interested in communicating that it is safe now? I think that Orchi tried to warn me that the TOL had injected that non-existent classification system. This can only be a theory until he feels strong enough to clearly state that this is what he did.
It is true, I know nothing about Orchids. I don't know where the reliable information can be found. Even where I was active with the growing things, I think that there was only one native orchid there (Lady's Slipper) and I am not sure that there was only one. The background that I have which spans the decades with botany tended to be more for medicinal plants and orchids were not an option due to their rarity and being protected where I was.
If and when I get around to making the taxonomy templates for the orchid family, I would probably consider the three names you mentioned to be experts greater than other online sources with this one big exception. For me, it has been like wondering onto an old warfield -- say like years after the American Civil War and finding three people still fighting for the Confederate (the people who beyond reason wanted slaves in my country). These three are still lobing canonballs and suffering for a cause that was over so many years ago. These three are still citing mis-facts and perhaps planning on what to do with their slaves once they can afford some.
If you could possibly put this situation I see to rest with some facts that are to the contrary, I would greatly appreciate it! As it stands, and with great respect, I feel like I am trying to explain to the three of you that the war is long over, please come out of your little hole (bunker or whatever) and consider a world that will more probably be filled with volunteers instead of slaves and what nicer things enthusiastic volunteers can make than slaves to the ideas of others.
Since 2004, I have been in a climate that goes yearly from about 35F to 90F and not too many days at those extremes listed. The more than 40 years before this was spent in a climate that yearly could go from -10F to 110F that had actual weather going over it. After having spent a few years here, I can quite confidently say that I prefer a climate where the "bumpy ride" is provided by the weather and other more natural forces. The "bumpy ride" here has an artificial feel to it -- as if psychologically motivated by a lack of real (actual) problems. My experience here might have much to do with my looking at the psychological motivations that started and maintain the "edit wars" here. Please forgive my actual experiences and how they show themselves here.
I really miss complaining about the weather and those conditions which were actually difficult that everyone had to share in. I was surprised at how much of my voice was lost when actual problems were no longer existent. Kind of weird and sorry, huh? -- carol (talk) 03:35, 31 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hello again, Carol. I wonder if I might ask a favor? I have been collaborating with a photographer in Massachusetts who has taken a bunch of really outstanding shots of Hingham, Massachusetts, that I've been posting to wikipedia. When we first started out, I didn't understand the licensing procedure at Commons, and had worked before with another photographer who simply emailed me the images and her permission via 3.0, and then I went the OTRS route. That was okay but very cumbersome.
When I started to work with this other fellow, I followed the same system. He often would take photos that I requested to fit certain wikipedia articles. He would send me the photo and 3.0 permission and I would post. Later, he posted some of these images to his Flickr page. So I have the same contributor under various licenses, which is understandably confusing for the folks at Commons (and is my fault because I didn't understand the license system). In any case, I really want to keep all the photos he took up at Commons, and am told that the thing to do now is to go back through his old images and note which are now on Flickr, and to provide the Flickr addresses. That's fine by me, but today for instance I was receiving emails from OTRS (Stan) about some of the old images, which he was approving. In short, my goal is to get the best image possible up there, and also to comply with Commons licensing rules. I wonder if you might take a look at these images and let me know where they stand so that I can keep them all on Commons? File:HinghamBellTower.jpeg , File:FirstMeetingHouse.jpg , File:OldBuryingGroundHingham.jpg , File:HinghamBellTower1.jpg , File:HinghamMarker.jpg , File:OldShipChurchExterior.jpg
Sorry for the confusion. It must be maddening to deal with technologically-challenged folks like myself! :-)
Best,MarmadukePercy (talk) 22:13, 1 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Reviewing those images is probably no longer necessary. It looks like the Commons' Lupo has done it all. He is extraordinarily helpful. Out of curiosity, is there someone I can write to about his help? He went way out of his way. Thanks again and look forward to more chat one of these days Best, MarmadukePercy (talk) 01:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I am really glad that a person who knows how to handle these situations and had access to handle them did handle this. I would have been more competent to crop and adjust that image of Sing Sing which appears in your recently DYK'd article (which was also a pleasure to read, btw). I was blocked from English wikipedia by people who only volunteer to improve images which stand a chance to be on the Main Pages of English wikipedia and of Commons. So what the moral of this is has yet to reveal itself to me.
As far as notifying people of good deeds done on wikimedia projects, I have no idea. In fact, there is a similar problem of not having a place to report complete incompetency to. I have recently started to want to usurp the image portion of the Main Pages for a while and feature administrators. Those who take the time and work diligently within the scope and also those who are incredible fuck ups and so far refuse to admit to the problems they took part in and to clean up their blunders. If such a competency review (for a Main Page Feature) were to occur, the time of review would need to be limited, perhaps starting when the 'pedias did and ending January 2009 because there is a certain amount of appeal to being a fuck up to land a featured position. I have been unable to think of anything else which would work so well to clean up those areas of contributed content and the management of volunteers -- if you have another idea, please let me know of it.
One of the things that I disliked about the people I had worked successfully with in a similar project was that after our success, it seemed to be that we became each others enemy and I was not working for that or contributing to that. Their lack of success since then perhaps has a lot to do with that -- maybe other things I have yet to learn about who was pulling the strings and pushing the buttons. I am sorry that there doesn't seem to be a way to get images that are scheduled to be shown in the DYK articles cleaned before they show up on the Main Page. A machine that is working together would have been able to accomplish this small task.</rant>
Another thing I had been working on/for before becoming blocked at English wikipedia was an article which was qualified to be considered for a DYK article (5000 words, citations, etc) and contained only 10 words or less of article. Some of the botany titles from the 1800's and before contained literally dozens of words (24, 48....). Botany articles were more entertaining than I would have thought before actually writing a few. Heh. -- carol (talk) 04:10, 2 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for not being upset! Categorization of United States buildings by decade seems like a challenge and additionally like a challenge that once accomplished might create the eyes of an authority of styles by decade. Trends in archtecture by decade... I am a little jealous :) -- carol (talk) 16:11, 7 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just me two cents worth ;-) - I usually only added a total when an nomination might be closed soon - sort of a 'heads up' to reviewers to show what was liable to happen. So no need for a total if there was only the initial reviewers vote or if it was a draw (unless it was nearing the CR time limit). It is a total for human eyes, not for the bot as the nomination is closed manually by a human (or other sentient being :-). --Tony Wills (talk) 20:21, 8 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I added the template the same way that Mr. Wills is describing here. I didn't add the template and calculate the time according to the comments though, I do all of that from the time of the last vote. I did this because it became too complicated when people would request changes but not change their votes after the changes had been made. Oh, and also for the occasional overly long comments that can occur. -- carol (talk) 12:29, 9 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Your love of that image arrived to me in the middle of many thoughts which included the problem of being a celebrity photographer anywhere and some of my problems which I need to be somewhere else to even be able to begin to consider repairing. Related also is that image of the reflection in the mirror I nominated there. I was surprised at how few reflection photographs that included the photographer were available here. It is among the first 50 or so photographs that I took when I first got the digital camera (that did not have the associated expense of film included with pushing the expose now button). It is a valid argument that photographs like that do not necessarily fill a purpose here, but the fact that the photographer is present when the photograph is taken is similar to that thing about how observing something changes the something (something I learned in physics).
To explain how the modified image is related to that reflection image would be to expand the other idea about how I am not in the right location to fix/repair some problems. I loved that image also and would have done a nicer job with it if I thought there was a purpose for it other than being nominated and declined at QIC. -- carol (talk) 13:09, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Carol, Where does one ask for a Third Opinion around here, or anything like it? I seem to be in engaged in an intractable dispute with another editor and am looking for a way out. Oh, and what status does COM:TOL have: policy, guideline, or just some nut's advice that nobody has yet felt the urge to correct? Cheers, --Jwinius (talk) 11:29, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
COM:TOL is pretty much dead. Anything you find there is archaic at best. If you are looking for editing guidance you're best off doing whatever seems like common sense to you, while keeping one eye on what everyone else has done in similar situations. Hesperian12:41, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It would be nice if those categories remained similar. While I understand that there are users who are interested in only one area (and some that simply squat on their area and pee on anyone who dares to approach it even), the six areas which are not in a state of deep freeze started life here all having the same characteristics and links or at least a plan for this. I did not do the image maps for all of them, but they are here for when I resume there.
I am not sure what your request is. I am mainly interested in categorizing the maps. The overall ecozone categories others can deal with. I can put the maps in subcategories of those main ecozone categories.
Personally, I think it would make more sense to have "ecozone" in the names of all those main subcategories of Category:Ecozones. But there is so much to do elsewhere, and that is not my priority.
So I am concentrating on the maps. I categorize a lot of maps.
It looks like the main subcategories when one drills down the ecozone categories are flora, fauna, and geography. I am just concentrating on creating the map subcategories. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:09, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The intention for these was the mostly non-political division of the globe which would make areas that contained similar plants, animals and environment. Some countries have a lot of area while others are very small -- the intention of this set of divisions is to make that less of a problem.
I think that my request was that you work with all of the major divisions, not just one or two. I asked this while having not completed all of them also, so if you would like to comment on the rudeness of my request, this is where to start. -- carol (talk) 09:06, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we disagree. I just got started on the map categories in the ecozone categories. So it may take a few weeks or months to get finished with everything. You could help too, if you want to. Mainly, though, setting up the map categories could happen sooner, with the actual inclusion of all the maps taking as long as it takes. I start a lot of map categories, and others seem to appreciate it. Many people help in the categorization once the categories are set up. Many map categories are never finished since people keep uploading maps, and there are so many uncategorized ones! :) --Timeshifter (talk) 18:42, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if I am using the term "intrawiki" correctly or if it is even a legitimate term.
Via wiki software a link to other wiki's articles is provided with this kind of notation: [[en:Ecozone]]. To type a link to one single wikis article in text on the category is redundant and not really in the best interests of the host wiki that serves images to all of the other wiki's. I think that there is sometimes a non-understanding from people whose experience is mostly at English wikipedia that other wikis exist in other languages elsewhere. Commons serves images for close to 800 wiki.... -- carol (talk) 09:49, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have over 9,000 edits on the commons and understand interwikilinks fairly well. Please take a look at Category:Maps. Note the many interwikilinks to articles at the top, and the many interwikilinks to categories in the sidebar. It helps to consolidate the article interwikilinks sometimes into a paragraph. It conserves space in the intro area. It can be condensed further if necessary by using a show/hide collapsible box.
The location of the interwikilinks on the page has to do with the skin that is being used. Including a link to one of the 800 wikis which this wiki serves images for made me think that you were new to the commons and had more experience at that single (and not only) wiki. Forgive me if I mis-read the situation. Did your plans for the text links to other wiki's include adding all of the wiki's which have articles for the category?
Here is something that perhaps you did not notice during your 9000 edits here: categories tend to be plural while articles tend not to be. So the interwikilink to English wikipedia "Ecozones" goes to a redirection page as the article there is not pluralized. I think this is probably one of those things that the commons inherited from English wikipedia but do not know this for certain. -- carol (talk) 19:01, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I try to get the plural/singular situation correct in order to avoid redirection, but sometimes I miss one.
I am there now. Sorry to have mis-interpreted a small mistake. I certainly do not like that when it happens to me so this apology is sincere. -- carol (talk) 19:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What I don't like is this feeling which I have that the attention paid to style and trivial matters has to do more with avoiding a clean up of a very wrong few decisions that were made last September. Is there something you could do to ease this feeling I have? -- carol (talk) 19:29, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Siebrand&diff=prev&oldid=14044613 is a diff from in the middle of it all. A merge was made, there was no concensus where it had been discussed. None of the people who were involved with the move asked me. The whole thing ended in a pleasant little chat about style options among users which did not include me. I am still unhappy with the way that the users who were involved with the merge did not ask me nor did they find what the categories which were merged together either contained or was supposed to contain. Have you ever had a boss who refused to listen to you or ask you what you were doing -- in particular when it was within the stated scope of the employment? I was communicating with these newish administrators at that time, they were not communicating back very well. The person answering questions at the Siebrand talk page made the claim that they were unable to author software like SieBot. It was a very frustrating time. A pile of style is no excuse for what used to be a logical structure -- at least not in the world I have lived in for several decades now.</rant about the memories> -- carol (talk) 19:50, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't involved in that. I do understand though about people not listening and working out some kind of accomodation, consensus, synthesis, or something. You might go to the notice boards and ask for other opinions. The variety of responses there have been helpful to me. They oftentimes see ways forward I had never thought of. Sometimes both parties in the initial dispute have good, bad and impractical ideas. And everything in between. Sometimes I am in the wrong too. :) --Timeshifter (talk) 20:06, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There was a discussion that started at the notice board. The administrators involved ignored the lack of outcome from that discussion and the way the discussion was tending to go. The links to this image show where I was attempting to explain the problems. As you mentioned, none of this has anything to do with you.
I tend to really dislike the links from categories here to categories at the wikipedias. I find the categories at English wikipedia to be kind of weird and a little not as helpful as they could be and that most of the information that I need for each subject to be in the article where the interwiki links (that is the difference I think between interwiki and intrawiki -- interwiki here is to other pages/categories that are on this wiki, intrawiki would be links to other wiki's considered to be part of the same project but not the same IP). A collection of images is different than a collection of articles.
Can you explain to me what the usefulness of the categories are at the 'pedias and the usefulness of links from categories here is to categories there? I have tried to think of some of these myself and was unable to come up with anything with the exception of (perhaps) users who are trying to make their 'pedia categories match these or the other way around. -- carol (talk) 20:21, 19 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I discussed some of the reasons to link to categories at Category talk:Ecozones. As I said there I believe the solution to make the most people happy is to link to both the category and the article. It is fairly common to see this. I believe category links are most common in the sidebar. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Without a mention of your actual experiences editing here, should I assume that your edits were via software and without your cognitive abilities engaged? 9000 edits of experience -- I would prefer that you talk of your experience and not of tradition. -- carol (talk) 10:27, 21 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"without your cognitive abilities engaged" - One snide comment I can let slide. But when you continue to insult me, then I don't see any point in further communication on our talk pages. I have better things to do. Please avoid comments on my talk page. I will avoid comments on your talk page. I would prefer we kept our communications to category and article talk pages. --Timeshifter (talk) 05:47, 23 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks -- mistakes are bound to happen though. Volume 7 appears to be in need of 18 repairs and re-uploads, heh. I will certainly attempt to not make a mistake with those. -- carol (talk) 17:35, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Carol, I do NOT deal with taxonomy. My field of interest is history and art history. Yes, if I stumble on an empty category, I normally put it in the deletion list, as a normal maintentance rule, so it might have simply happened this (without any extra reason you wonder about), however in the page you mention there is no trace of an edit of mine. Are you sure you wrote to the correct person? Best wishes. --User:G.dallorto (talk) 20:00, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Carol, why are you so confrontational? You already had the explanation of what may have happened. This is Wikicommons, edits HAPPEN all the time. If you feel you want something nobody may touch, not even by mistake, please just start your owen website. Good luck. --User:G.dallorto (talk) 01:04, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Empty categories on WikiCommons are as a rule relics of a category that was used for a while and that is no longer so now, since all the files were either moved to another category, or deleted, for instance for copyvio. Since deletion of the empitied category is not authomatically made by a bot, it must be requested r by hand every time a contributor happens to find one. This is ordinary maintenance.
If you need a category redirect in an empty page, then please use the appropriate grammar, by adding to the empty-but-useful category page the template: {{see cat|Name of the category to chich you want to redirect}}. Furthermore, if a page was deleted, just re-create it and explain in the discussion subpage why you need it. It's THAT simple. --User:G.dallorto (talk) 01:32, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
When the categories you find in this page http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:CommonsDelinker/commands#Move_requests (that must be moved to another category, mostly because of a mistake in the spelling), are moved to the brand new category, a page will remain with the wrong name, and no file inside. The reason to delete it, therefore, is that this category is:
1) useless,
2) in most cases, purely and simply, wrong.
The question should be therefore reverted. You should explain what is the use for a category that is useless and wrong. Categories are meant, here, as a way to gather files and to bundle them together. Therefore, no files, no use and no need for a category.
If you nevertheless need a special empty category for some reasons of yours, then you should either put at least a file in it, or use it as a redirect, or explain your need. For instance, I created this category to warn people NOT to upload images unless they have a special permission. Most of the subcategories in this category are empty, and should stay so. This category exists to let people know NOT to upload images. However, I explained in every page what and why I am doing. If you don't, then your category looks like it were a mere useless page. And useless pages are deleted on Commons every second: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/2009/02/27
As a final remark, please remember you are on Wikicommons, here, not on Wikipedia. This project is for files, not for texts. If you are more interested in texts than in files, you should consider switching to Wikipedia, which will give you much more satisfaction than Commons. Remind, Commons was created for FILES (images, films, music, drawings...), not for texts.
Carol, I already answered you thrice, and you still repeat the same question, which means that you have no intention to liste to what I am telling you. In fact, what you want is to change the policy in Commons by claiming empty category pages are necessary and useful and we should fill Commons with them. The proper place to do it is not my discussion page, then, but this page. I have nothing else to add. Good night. --User:G.dallorto (talk) 02:14, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I am quite certain that Village Pump is not the place to ask for your thoughts at. I am really honestly interested to know what the motivations and similar are and what the expected outcome is for the way they work here and what they do. The lack of an individuals ability to answer with their own ideas and experience is not as interesting as you might think (even if you already think it is not too interesting). -- carol (talk) 02:42, 27 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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