User talk:Dysmorodrepanis

Hello Dysmorodrepanis; I notice that you are recategorizing images of fauna. May I call your attention to the guidance of Commons:WikiProject Tree of Life, please? I think that in some cases you may have made changes that are not consistent with that guidance. If you don't agree, it may be appropriate to seek a new consensus at Commons talk:WikiProject Tree of Life. Also, it would be helpful to other editors if you would provide a short summary with each edit. --Wsiegmund 02:46, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

What I am doing is to clear up mess because the proposed system was all but ignored. It had deteriorated to a point where it became unusable, with some taxa having 4-5 pages and categories altogether. I was trying to find images for WP and noted that with the current system, this is impossible. See talk page. Dysmorodrepanis 02:57, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

User page

Hi, you might want to create a user page and put some babel templates and possibly a link to your Wikipedia user page on it. Cheers! Siebrand 13:35, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Image Tagging Image:Zanthoxylum_simulans_close.jpg

This media may be deleted.

Thanks for uploading Image:Zanthoxylum_simulans_close.jpg. I notice the image page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you have not created this media yourself then you need to argue that we have the right to use the media on Wikimedia Commons (see copyright tagging below). If you have not created the media yourself then you should also specify where you found it, i.e., in most cases link to the website where you got it, and the terms of use for content from that page. If the content is a derivative of a copyrighted work, you need to supply the names and a licence of the original authors as well.

If the media also doesn't have a copyright tag, then you must also add one. If you created/took the picture, audio, or video then you can use {{self|cc-by-sa-2.5}} to release it under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license or {{PD-self}} to release it into the public domain. See Commons:Copyright tags for the full list of copyright tags that you can use.

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Image:Euphorbia balsamifera inflorescence.jpg

Hi Dysmorodrepanis, you either confused the plant name or the image shows a misidentified plant. Usually the cythia of Euphorbia balsamifera appear single, never in larger pseudumbels as shown. Moreover it produces minute and scale-like bracts only, never these large ones as shown. Would you please check your records to see what Euphorbia species this actually is? Greetings, Ies 16:37, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Misidentified photo

Your photo Image:Pilularia globulifera culture.jpg is not a photo of Pilularia. It is a photo of a Phaeoceros colony with mature sporophytes. --EncycloPetey 07:11, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Need to check that out, but I am not sure a professional botanist would mislabel a hornwort as a pill fern... Dysmorodrepanis 13:21, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Regarding Image:Pilularia globulifera culture.jpg - are you absolutely (I mean ABSOLUTELY) sure? I should have added a scale - these things are several cm high, rather soft, and have rolled-in tips when young. They do not at all resemble the Phaeoceros sporophytes I know. I'll check it out the next days or so; should be easy. Not visible in the photo: the soil was wet, with a standing layer of a few mm of water on top, and had been for a while. Hornworth proliferating under such condition? I am not sure. Dysmorodrepanis 13:31, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I am ABSOLUTELY sure. Liverworts and hornworts were my field of graduate study. Hornwort sporophytes can gow guite long. They were not coiled in the photo, and you can see the ends turning yellow and then brown as the internal spores mature and are released. Compare with the photo Image:Pilularia globulifera detail.jpg which is a Pilularia. If there is any Pilularia in your photo, it is very difficult to see. If you can access the location again, then I recommend trying to remove a plant and photographic it against a solid-color background for clarity. --EncycloPetey 23:22, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Image:Lentinula edodes shiitake.JPG

Those logs are from Konara (Quercus serrata) tree. It's not shii. Happy Holidays! Sakurai Midori 11:42, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Reorganising birds

I see you've done a lot of work cleaning up some of the bird pages and categories :-). I too have experimented with putting illustrated galleries at the top of category pages to help people find the category/gallery they are seeking - I am not convinced of whether it was worth the effort though :-).
I do not agree with the policy advocated by some TOL project members of removing categories from images and pages. As you probably know this is a highly contentious area and has been discussed many times :-). Categories and galleries are used in different ways and are not mutually exclusive systems, they can both exist side by side, one is not redundant to the other. I have restored and expanded the associated categories, but have left most of your other changes. :-) --Tony Wills 22:48, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:Anas oustaleti last male.gif

Image deletion warning

Image:Anas oustaleti last male.gif has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this image, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue. In all cases, please do not take the deletion request personally. It is never intended as such. Thank you!

This is an automated message from DRBot. (Stop bugging me!) 14:47, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Please stop removing categorries

Just a notification that as previously discussed, I will revert all the removal of categories that you have been doing in the Aves categories. --Tony Wills 08:23, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Your work is becoming even more disruptive, I see you have even taken to removing categories from gallery pages too. If you don't understand the category system, please leave it alone. --Tony Wills 08:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Comment added on user's talk page. For the record, the current "SOP" will create abominations like Category:Myiopsitta - three pages for a monotypic (as per Wikipedia) genus witn no discernible order whatsoever. The cruft-killers should be let loose upon this one. Dysmorodrepanis 18:52, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your long reply, I think your suggestion could work. One criteria that we have to consider is creating a system that conforms to the way the rest of Commons is organised so that we don't have an ongoing war with every new person who tries to categorise or gallerise (?) images. This would necessitate removing (or redirecting) galleries that use taxo names (otherwise the corresponding categories would inevitably be recreated). If you think that getting rid of the taxonomic category system could be acceptable to the main TOL participants, I think we could use the Birds section as a trial. First describe the new system on {{WikiProject Birds}} and invite all the maintainers of Aves (there only seems to be a handful of regulars, but many of which haven't signed up to that project) and implement it there (perhaps hire a Bot or two to make changes). If we can sort out any problems and make it workable, then propose it to the whole TOL project?

I don't know whether it would solve all the 'cruft' problems that you see, but maybe if there are not obvious sub-categories to create (filling out the taxo tree) people will not be so inclined to create branches that end with just one image for one species.

There may be some resistance to using English common names for categories of species, but then that is the current Commons standard and is defensible.

There may be problems, as you say, in areas like insects (etc) where there may not be common names for many species. Initially categorisation by family will probably work, but what to do when categories become too large? --Tony Wills 21:48, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Just re-reading your reply, I see you are expecting that we would retain taxo categories like Category:Buteo (but just not the species level ones). I was envisaging just using taxoboxes for maintaining the scientific taxo-name tree, the categories could exist as redirects but I envisaged them having no content. My concern with retaining them as categories is the inevitability of people continuously creating sub-branches as is the Commons standard way of doing things.

I suppose the bottom line in my philosophy about how they are ordered is that every bird image needs to have a category that links it into an Aves/Birds category structure so that category tools can be used. I am not set on any particular structural details beyond that :-) --Tony Wills 22:08, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Categories - working towards a solution

I'm not sure that I follow all of your last post, but here goes :-)

I have never seen categories as a display page for finding images, in some ways they don't need to display images, or it could be something you turn on or off (perhaps click on a "+" sign to expand the contents). Perhaps it is because they both display images that some see them as duplication of each other, if so just

imagine them without images, and then the ability to see all those images if required.

Ah. I always saw the images as prominent part (maybe because my old catwork involved very many cats with few subcats and many images).

The main fault with categories on commons is that if their are too many images (>200) in one category, the wiki software displays them on separate pages. But displaying those images on separate pages is not the problem, it is that it then spreads any sub-pages or sub-categories across those pages so that it is often hard to find them all (without visiting every page of the category). This gave the impetus for breaking down categories into parts, unfortunately that idea has now become a bit of a religion and things are broken into smaller and smaller categories with less and less reason :-)

Yes.

Categories are partly used for navigation (where galleries might be the appropriate nodal leaves) and partly as an image classification system (systematically associating images together) and making dealing with groups of images easier.

It is the navigational thing that is interesting. en: proves that it is possible to build a highly flexible systematic tree from the present category code - and even 2 interwoven ones - that is highly robust too. I am amazed how well it works these days with only 1 real rule (no single-entry subcats if any possible)

In general having images in a category makes them easier to move around (just move the category), but when the category name reflects the current position within the hierarchy (as with binomial names) that causes problems.

Exactly.

I don't understand your references to 'polbot'. I have read the discussions in User_talk:Quadell/archive1 and as I understand it the bot simply added categories matching the galleries images had been placed in by 'experts'. The disruption was not because of any errors by the bot, but simply the distaste for the category system being used for botanical images. The bot didn't have to look at image pages and interpret anything, it worked from the galleries.

Polbot is a bot that parses the IUCN redlist. Few minor gripes, but it's about 90% mature I'd say. But that is only after it parsed the 2006 redlist. Damn luck it was before the 2007 one came out, because the 2006-07 status changes in birds alone gave a good overview on what exactly the bot messed up so it could be hunted down and dealt with (e.g. it gave incorrect capitalization on non-English names, turned "forest, montane" into generic montane biomes, and still cannot and possibly never will be able to handle monotypic genera).

• I never proposed abandoning "scientific classification", but just abandoning its use in the form of categories, instead using taxo-boxes on gallery pages. I can see pluses and minuses to the idea.

I never wanted to imply you did - only that this user considers it an abolute no-no.

• There is a bot (yes another one :-) that can move images from redirected categories to the right place, thereby making category redirects actually work (I believe it is active on wikipedia). I inquired a long time ago whether that was active here, I will follow up on whether it was ever turned on.

Apparently not in the last half-year or so, or so the "lost" images I found make it seem.

• FWIW I have an education in the sciences, but as you may have guessed, not a biology, but I do appreciate the ideas behind taxonomic classification and have heard of ICZN/ICBN :-)

Good! So we can use jargon :D (I suspected as much, re:Bellbird)

• As far as I'm aware bots just see what we see when we edit pages (either galleries or image pages) and so don't see "The following pages link to this file:" type stuff. But they don't need to, they just work from the other end and can pick all the images out of galleries on the gallery (article) pages. I am not sure why you described "How to make bots handle galleries just as easily as they handle cats" as I don't see where it fits in. Perhaps you are confusing the use of tools by human operators (such as catscan) and the work of bots (basically automated users) ?

No, it's something entirely different. As it seems, the desire to use cats (from a bot's end) is that the tag makes it easy to gather the list of what pages to edit.

What you mean is the actual editing of a document (a gallery page or a category or an image page), but this can be done any way as is desired. What I mean is a way for bots to "know" which selection of the 1000s of documents they are supposed to edit. The category tag relates documents to each other, and it is preferred because direct linking via [[ ]] appareently does not do this. But in fact it does:

"having images in a category makes them easier to move around" - as it appears, "easier" by the margin of a handful lines of code. Because as I described it, all images linked in a gallery might be moved around in precisely the same way. It is just a tiny bit trickier to extract the same information a bot needs to make the move decision from something included in a gallery than it is to do it from something included in a category. But it appears it can be done. The necessaary information is there, it' just harder to see.

Categories are used by humans using search and other tools, I don't see categories as redundant to galleries, or galleries as redundant to categories. They are used in different ways.

Exactly.

All images in a gallery page should (IMHO :-) be classified in the corresponding category, but all images in a category need not be displayed on gallery pages (just think of it as a filing system at a museum, all exhibits need not be on display, but they all carry their identification tags with them wherever they go.)

If this were a museum... But you'll never know when an image or its gallery-displayed metadata might come in handy. (As a side note, I found image metadata of varying reliability and also in need of maintenance. So using image metadata as the #1 source of categorizing information would be nice... if possible, which seems not to be the case, ever.

For example, I found a number of siskin and goldfinch images with non-English metadata on their pages. I knew enough of those languages to extract the information I needed to annotate the images in their galleries. This was sheer happenstance however and is not possible to any user in any case. So image metadata is liable to sit around unused.

• I understand the problems in maintaining binomial named categories on images, and agree with most of your last proposal. As I understand it you proposed retaining the taxonomic categories down to the genus/family levels (etc) but not the species (or levels below that). I may have been assuming you were meaning to allow common names for species level categories (my preference), but perhaps you only thought of having them at higher levels. Could you confirm/deny?

No, I thought of establishing 2 trees, similar as we use on en: Birds project. Accessible via here here and here. We're by no means through of putting all pages into the latter, but the former is not bad for containing about 99% of all living bird species and having been bult largely by Polbot. They are interconnected on WP articles and directly in some cases.

• common-name tree.

This would be categories only and go down to species limited only by number of available media. As there would be no gallery pages at all, there would be very little metadata in the tree itself, images will be jumbled about in no logical sequence, etc. But to people without any dedicated background or interest this will be enough in almost all cases. All the drawbacks of categories with >200 images would be much less severe, as it would be rare that human users using this tree would need to find some specific image of an exotic taxon.

Advantage/rationale: common names are more stable and well-known. Users without scientific background will be happy to have such a tree. Non-English redirects can be easily made. That a few branches of such a tree (owls, birds of prey, waterfowl, etc) have emerged already might be taken to indicate the desire/need for something like it in the long run.

And any image and page could be cat-tagged without this messing up the human-readability and maintaineability of the

• scientific-name tree.

• This would use categories from Kingdom down to genus, or to the first category that has less than say 3 media in any possible subcategory. Skipping of intermediary ranks should be encouraged.

So assuming we have a family for which 10 images exist at present, and each is of a distinct species in a distinct genus. This would not get subcategories, because that would add considerable overhead (If users can't sleep without species gallery-pages though, let them build them. Anything that would have to be built at a later point anyway should not be discouraged.)

Assuming that this family can be divided into 20 tribes and we have 2 which have pictures of 3 species each in the family category, make subcategories for these 2 tribes.

Assuming however that of the 10 images, all are in different tribes except 5 which are of different species in one and the same genus, they would get a genus category but not ribe categories would yet be established (because they would contain the same as the genus category)

• Species dont' get categories but gallery pages. Media does not get tagged with the scientific species name (meaning that Category:Genusname speciesname would never be used, ever). This is the first controversial bit.
• Species pages do not get tagged with the genus category either (meaning that Category:Genusname would also never be used). This is the second controversial bit.

Advantage/rationale: scientific classification changes, but in predictable ways, and the overwhelming majority of the changes affecting Commons occur at species rank (especially species splits which cannot be handled by bots as each medium must de facto be individually reviewed). Annotations can be made aplenty. Images can be sorted thematically on the pages where they accumulate (species' gallery pages, in the long run). In short, such a tree would be easy maintain and actually become more robust with time, as content is moved gallerywards by and by.

The 2 controversial issues would not have any ill effect, because the function of the category tags is taken over by the common-name tree: Every medium dealing with a single taxon would, as regards Commons:TOL, be featured on a single species-page gallery (or if that does not exist, tagged into some higher-rank scientific-name category). It would also be tagged with a single common-name category, right down to species.

As scientific-name pages (= species' galler ypages) are associated with a common-name category, it is easy to compare the content of both via bot and update each automatically as necessary. It's a sort of "beneficial redundancy" like a RAID filesystem. Only better, as the gallery pages will have a certain background level of expert attention, and thus content that gets exchanged between common-name species categories and scientific-name species pages will be subject to review and uploaders' errors will be spotted for example. Keeping categorization correct is thus piggybacked onto the bread-and-butter maintenance work on galleries for little additional workload :D

Some say that having huge galleries is not useful. To which I reply: a) not according to my personal experience, and b) probably everyone would agree that for groups of >200 media, galleries are the only easy way to arrange and display them in any useful (to humans) way. Compare for example Anas platyrhynchos and Category:Anas platyrhynchos. I think the former is perfectly nice and usable; the annotations are few and far between but they very much serve to show the power of galleries.

A new medium would receive the lowest-rank common-name and scientific-name category tag available or only the former and entered into the species-page gallery. In the first case, the image would be moved towards and eventually into the species-page gallery eventually, manually or by bot. In the last case, it may be desirable to have a section on species pages "Unreviewed images", at the very bottom, containing a gallery into which bots will dump new images. A recording of a mallard's call (complete with echo perhaps ;-) ) would be tagged Category:Mallard or possibly Category:Domesticated ducks or Category:Ducks. It would also be placed on Anas platyrhynchos. The Category:Anas platyrhynchos would be entirely abolished.

This is of course totally different from the present approach. But try seeing it this way: the TOL has always been at odds with the main of Commons because of TOL's needs for image categorization to reproduce a tree of life that is largely but still insufficiently known. There is rigor where elsewhere is leeway of opinion, and change where there is stability elsewhere. A common-name cat tree that is thoroughly catted down to the individual media pages wooud be entirely in line with Commons SOP at large. Philosophically, the non-SOP scientific tree would be a supplement of the SOP-conforming common-names tree for the dedicated user rather than the other way around, and everyone could be happy, because every faction will get the kind of tree/categorizing system it desires. (TOL would be off best though, because it would get 2 trees at the price of 1.5 - one largely new one and some reconstruction work on an existing one. There are cases when I need a hummingbird - any pretty hummer will do - to illustrate a point on a page I edit)

• I really think there is room for a solution to this ever ongoing debate once we accommodate the reasons for each sides preferences. --Tony Wills 23:38, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

It might be useful to make a wishlist on the Talk page at TOL. No discussion at first, but simply listing what a user would like to have, and what one considers a sine ua non and why. Dysmorodrepanis 01:54, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

---

Well if quantity was a useful measure of discussion we should be getting somewhere ;-).

An aside:

It seems that en:User:Polbot and User:Polbot have very different uses on en:w and here. From Commons:Bots/Requests_for_flags/Polbot and Special:Contributions/Polbot I see no evidence that it was used on Commons to parse the IUCN redlist here. It sounds as though it is a more general bot, programmed for different functions here and on en:w. Here it added species categories to images within existing galleries, and created the 'missing' species categories. The problem appears to be that images were put back into categories which they had been removed from as a marker that their identity had been checked.

I think we must recognise that although closely allied wikis, that Commons uses categories somewhat differently than en:w (driven by afore-mentioned side effects of large numbers of media in one category). If we take a proposal to a larger audience, 'this is how we do it on en:w', will grate, especially with those from the other wikis :-)

If we forget that en:w uses taxonomic categories (imagine :-), what reason would we have to use taxonomic categories here (considering how categories are used here - primarily to tag images) ?. We don't need to use categories as part of a taxonomic tree, we already maintain taxoboxes for that purpose. As far as I can see the proposal is to use nodal categories for "as yet unclassified" images/media. What other media will ever get categorized in this tree?

One of my premisses is that we should not have a system for flora/fauna that is different from the rest of Commons, it will just perpetuate the problem forever. If we define a system that uses taxonomic categories but says 'hands off' to the general user it is asking for continuous conflict. Defining a tree that has nodes with no galleries, and only unclassified media, is hitting our heads against a wall (do you like clichés :-). People will add media, define sub-pages and sub-categories, there will always be friction. It does not make sense to set ourselves up for unending conflict.

I am heading to the view that what would suit the needs of TOL is to have a tree structure of Unclassified flora/fauna ie "Category:Unclassified Eukaryota -> "Category:Unclassified Animalia -> Category:Unclassified Chordata -> Category:Unclassified Vertebrata -> Category:Unclassified Aves -> Category:Unclassified Neognathae -> Category:Unclassified Charadriiformes -> Category:Unclassified Laridae -> Category:Unclassified Larus as this is effectively how it will be used. And this automatically means that Category:Unclassified Larus scopulinus makes no sense and won't be created (except by real twerps ;-). These names are of course extremely ugly :-). We might be tempted to compromise and just create the bottom level with the Unclassified prefix, but that must inevitably invite the creation of genus/species subcategories at the same level. If the taxo tree doesn't exist in its present form, I would expect even the most adventurous newcomer to 'question why?' before embarking upon the exercise of creating the entire tree from scratch.

So ignoring the lack of elegance in the names :-), is my assessment correct? --Tony Wills 07:10, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Classification is never provided

Hello my friend,
You can perhaps help me. Many people in wikipedia think that there is only one classification: the last one. But they are wrong:

• there are many classification, many of them have been in their time recognized by the scientific community (of course most of them are outdated)
  • Ex: This wonderful example of many classifications
• the recent one are certainly more accurate, but not perfect and they will be outdated.
• it is not always a good idea to take the latest classification if it is instable
  • Ex: Vitales follows the classification of the APWebSite which will be proposed as future APG III but is modified every day.
• as they think that there is only one classification, they never provide any source, reference, classification name (like APG II) or classification author (like Cronquist, Howard&Moore, Sibley&Ahlquist.) or classification book (like "Catalog of Fishes, 13-May-2004 de Nelson").
  • That is the very problematic: How can you verify or correct the systematic if you don't know which one is followed? + How can you have the same classification on a whole group (for example APG II on all angiospermes) if you don't know which one is followed?
  • For all there reasons, the parameter classification has been added {{Taxonavigation}}
  • Ex: wikispecies never species which classification they follow and rarely provides a source: Do you have any idea what classification wikispecies follows for plants? not APG II ! I know that they decided to follow MSW v 3.0 for mammals, but how can a reader know that ?

At last ;-), my questions:

• Do you have any idea what classification wikicommons follows for birds?
• Do you have any idea what classification wikispecies follows for birds?

I just know that fr.wikipedia follows zoonomen.net, a classification updated by Alan P.Perterson.

• Do you have an external web site displaying the classification followed (other than wikispecies) ?

Cheers, Liné1 12:53, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Hello my friend,

Thks for the complete but sad answer.

Sad, because you said that there is no ultimate source for birds, and that we have to mix. ;-)

It means that there is a risk that everyone will mix differently.

For PaleoDB, you are absolutly right, except that I rarely find systematic info for extinct birds. I will avoid it.

Cheers Liné1

PS: By the way, I saw you english web page. You need to deal with your userboxes adiction ;-) (Sorry if the joke is not accurate as in french)

I also understoud when to use Parvclassis|Neognathae (Sibley) and Infraclassis|Neognathae

Shouldn't we migrate it all to Infraclassis|Neognathae ?

By the way, I also saw Superordo for Neognathae (on Category:Neognathae) and Subclassis (fr:Neognathae, animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu)

Cheers Liné1

Name

How to change name on Commons ? Greets :) Lothar25 22:24, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm I mean to acknowledge to global account en:WP:SUL, to get the unified name on all projects :). Greets, Lothar25 22:53, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Exactly :D Lothar25 22:59, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Dombeya acutangula identification

Hi,
you seemed to doubt about identification of Dombeya acutangula on this picture. There is only one species on Réunion island, somehow with some variations but the tree on this picture is in my garden and comes from the same seeds harvest than those on the following pictures. The light this day was just not very famous and the camera too. The author of the website you linked is a colleague. Rosea ssp is from Mauritius.
Cheers. --B.navez (talk) 19:12, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Harpalinae, Platyninae

Hi, Are You sure that Anchomenus dorsalis and Oxypselaphus obscurus Harpalinae subfamily? in www.faunaeur.org subfamily is Platyninae
. http://www.faunaeur.org/full_results.php?id=105648
http://www.faunaeur.org/full_results.php?id=105595
I dare say that faunaeur.org systematic is up-to-date. Laisverobotams (talk) 14:12, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

deleted categories

Hi Dysmorodrepanis, sorry for my late answer. You wrote on my discussion page, that it would be necessary to recover some deleted categories. I know that many articles at en-wp are very short (would be deleted at de-wp immediately =:-> ) - but I can't see how commons can help to improve short genus articles? Maybe you can help me out with an example? Best regards, --Olei (talk) 22:35, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Pears

I saw a discussion at English wikipedia about pears. They were suggesting making the category of Pears there (that means to everyone in that discussion the edible fruits) a subcategory of the genus. The idea seemed so wrong to me and after some sleep and some discussion of cars to clear my mind with and consider the situation again, afresh -- it still seems wrong.

The few species of edible pears should be subcategorized into the category Pears which is subcategorized eventually from food.

I actually am one who knows the common names of everything where I was looking at them. Mullien, soapwort, pussy-toes <--these things were growing where I spent my time learning things like this. Then even there, there was a subset of people who were familiar with the areas where these plants were growing and had no idea what the traditional common names were. I have only one example of this but also the suggestion that the non-traditional name used was much more descriptive and a more accurate name: "Sting weed" for nettles.

In my opinion, attempting to use the traditional names in the scientific tree "the daisy family" for example, has done nothing but hurt what was already a not so good situation. -- carol (talk) 01:13, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Exactly! Dysmorodrepanis ( ) 01:44, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I feel that this the internet version of a handshake and a "pleased to meet you" and I am glad of it; it doesn't happen so often lately as it did a long while back.

The taxonomy stuff, at first does not make an appealing project for a software writer (I think). The study of flowers and plants and the arguments surrounding them seem not so cool. That is what is in my mind about the group of people who can manage the software parts of the wiki much more elegantly and knowledgibly than me.

I have what seems to be an excellent template writer who while looking into a problem I had utilizing the taxonomy navigation template started to be inspired to make it be more elegant and functional. Helping me with the problems I encountered lead to User:Rocket000/PlantCategorizer which, I admit looks like nothing until you edit the page or view the source. In all honesty about this, I am trusting the author more than I am knowing that it is a well written thing. The taxonomy problems are an interesting dataset problem all on their own.

I have it in my mind that the category vs gallery problem has more to do with the skin that is used here. It makes me want to fix all the "problems" by suggesting that the gallery people stick with their skin and stop messing up the categorization of the species. The idea is that if the category is displayed at the lower portion of the page, that it can be safely ignored.

Things are really cool with the templates I have been making. One edit can change a multitude of categories (or galleries if they ever start to use them). Even then, I am recently informed that they will soon be made obsolete by the PlantCategorizer. Since I am so interested to see the already existing names being managed more like the database that it is, this obsoletion problem is not one -- it is more like a step taken in a positive direction.

Technology sometimes moves too fast, but sometimes it is stopped prematurely -- like if I started to have a problem with my work being obsolete and caused the nicer model to not be made. I am more interested in things working well than in maintaining something I thought was the best approach. Do you think that I am the only person like this? -- carol (talk) 02:33, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Categories

Hi, please do not remove the only content category from an image. "Being included in a gallery" is not a reason to remove from a category, and the current TOL guidelines reflect this: All images should be put directly in the most precise category to which they can be reliably assigned. Images that are known with certainty to represent a particular species should appear in the species article and images not so well-identified must not be.

In the case of Image:Four-Eye Butterflyfish.jpg the most precise category is the genus category. This isn't ideal, but is resolved by creating a species category not by removing the category and having in the gallery - which is against Commons guidelines.--Nilfanion (talk) 20:46, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

I've replied on my talk page; I've had a go at cleaning up the Chaetodon category to make it functional. Tell me what you think of Category:Chaetodon now.--Nilfanion (talk) 23:55, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Tip: Categorizing images

---

Hello, Dysmorodrepanis!

Tip: Add categories to your files

Thanks a lot for contributing to the Wikimedia Commons! Here's a tip to make your uploads more useful: Why not add some categories to describe them? This will help more people to find and use them.

Here's how:

1) If you're using the UploadWizard, you can add categories to each file when you describe it. Just click "more options" for the file and add the categories which make sense:

2) You can also pick the file from your list of uploads, edit the file description page, and manually add the category code at the end of the page.

[[Category:Category name]]

For example, if you are uploading a diagram showing the orbits of comets, you add the following code:

[[Category:Astronomical diagrams]]

[[Category:Comets]]

This will make the diagram show up in the categories "Astronomical diagrams" and "Comets".

When picking categories, try to choose a specific category ("Astronomical diagrams") over a generic one ("Illustrations").

Thanks again for your uploads! More information about categorization can be found in Commons:Categories, and don't hesitate to leave a note on the help desk.

BotMultichillT 11:49, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• Image:Aeonium hierrense.jpg was uncategorized on 6 September 2009.

Hello idiot bot. You break code and generally have not an inkling of understanding about biological nomenclature, and in how far it requires different categorization systems (being a categorization system in itself) than astronomy diagrams and comets. Please eat shit and die. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:04, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Francis de Castelnau's expedition

Fine Thanks for your work Jeffdelonge (talk) 19:57, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

Bird classification

Hello my friend,
fr.wikipedia.org just decided to follow en:International Ornithological Congress bird classification provided here. What do you think of this idea?
Cheers Liné1 (talk) 20:22, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

It has some nice ideas but altogether too old-fashioned. Science advances too fast. Anything that has not incorporated this has serious errors (note that the recent Science paper also uses that bad DNA sequence). The BMC paper on top of Christidis & Boles (2008) and Mayr (2008) is probably the best "single"-shot solution, but in a year on it may be different. Mayr (2008) will long stand as the definite must read though. They solve the "Pelecaniformes" problem. Though I would rather include Ardeiformes in Ciconiiformes than split it, as is sometimes proposed.

Also definitely rather include seriemas (and phorusrhacids!) + "Accipitriformes" in Falconiformes than split them 2-way. Pending a morphological cladistic reanalysis including seriemas, storks, herons, owls and a few others, the only way the data fits together is "tentatively monophyletic". We have fossils that argue against a split but none that argue for it. The molecular data is highly aberrant among this group (less capable than among any other similarly-sized group of simiilarly-related birds, I think, in not achieving consensus *between* DNA sequences). We have a presumed "missing link" between woodpeckers and passerines - or actually a lot of apparent missing links among and between Coraciiformes (nice try, but 3-way is better), Piciformes and Passeriformes. Falcons and parrots do not seem to be able to squeeze in there. I suspect there's something awry like with the "Metaves".

The Caprimulgiformes are also wrong. In general, the "higher landbirds" are the weakest part.

Arrangement-wise, I'd better put tropicbirds, grebes, flamingos and waders before Procellariiformes, and perhaps make a few minor adjustments.

I have not checked many family changes, but most I saw are good and helpful. Toucans in "Barbets, Toucans" barbets though? Hell no, split the two toucan-barbets! It's more reasonable than splitting the two seriemas...

Oxyruncidae is also not valid, treat as incertae sedis. Same with Coerebidae. The Passeriformes family-level taxonomy is probably >95% definite.

The problem is the timespan from the K-Pg impact to a few million years after (say to 60 Ma). This corresponds basically to the uncertainty region in the taxonomy. Until (The genetic data is extremely "noisy" and the niche diversity is really high. That are the survivors. "noisy" as is to be expected. The family-group taxonomy of birds is not gonna change a lot after 2015 or even 2014 I suppose. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:42, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Plates

Hello, I have some various points and/or hints:

• Your writing is long.

True.

• What is an alternate name for the word "plate"?

There is none I know.

Historically, they printed books using metal letters and ink. You could not add good illustrations that way, so they were printed on a separate plate of lithographic rock and glued or bound into the book. Thus, "plate". It is still used although they started to use photos intead of lithographs and eventually changed to offset printing.

• Do not use sole word "Illustration" in name of categories. Categories named "illustrations" are useless for commons because it is completelly synonymous with the word "image". "An illustration is a visualization such as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art"

I know. I have not chosen these names. But Category:Illustrations is a main category, so it sort of sets the name. Various other people have also complained before... there also is some related discussion at Commons:Categories_for_discussion#Category:Pictures_and_images (It was only an example anyway. I did not mean that they should be named exactly like that).

• I think you should divide the problem into 1) how to categorize 2) the templates. (templates are additional feature and everything should work without them too.)
• Use scientific names in names of categories. I think you should avoid brackets in names of categories. --Snek01 (talk) 00:10, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't make or need the categories anyway. If you want them, go ahead. But it may be that it will not work as you expect, because the entire image extraction and categorization system is based on these templates (templates are also used already to put images in Category:Images with extracted images). It may be that your idea works right away, it may be that it cannot work at all. I do not know. You should discuss it at User talk:Yarl or User talk:Siebrand; they should know what to do because they understand it better than I do. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:36, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

Hello, I have started Category:Plates of Gastropoda requiring extraction and that's OK for me. Feel free to use every your proposals, because nobody added comments. Thank you for cooperation. --Snek01 (talk) 22:18, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Alpabetical order

I uploaded two Boloria pics -frigga and epithore. How do I put them into alphabetical order on the Boloria page? All the best from Ireland Robert aka Notafly (talk) 09:11, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

File:Rodrigues West.jpg

Hi, not far but I think, if my mind is good, it was about 1,5 miles more at east. greetings --B.navez (talk) 10:18, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Category move proposals

Please see my replies at Category talk:Zoological illustrations of spiders and Category talk:Zoological illustrations of tigers. Thanks. Kaldari (talk) 23:46, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, I think I have everything cleaned up now to be consistent with similar category trees. Category:Drawings of spiders has been moved to Category:Illustrations of spiders and made a subcat of Category:Illustrations by subject. Category:Zoological illustrations of spiders has been made a subcat of both Category:Illustrations of spiders and Category:Zoological illustrations. This is also the most logical structure so that cartoon drawings of spiders don't appear under Category:Zoological illustrations, but scientific drawings of spiders do appear under Category:Illustrations of spiders. Hope that addresses your concerns. Kaldari (talk) 01:57, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your help with the Lepidoptera categories. It didn't seem like the fancy categorizing templates slowed you down, but if in the future you want any help with doing not-so-minor updates to the classification, just let me know. Now that everything is templated it's not so easy to simply convert a tribe to a subfamily or whatever, but hopefully we won't need to do that too much. Thanks again. Rocket000 (talk) 11:50, 30 December 2009 (UTC) P.S. I don't if you saw my post over on en.wp, but that may be of interest to you. Cheers, Rocket000 (talk) 11:50, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Category:Olethreutes micana

Hi, whats the taxonomic source of this request? --Olei (talk) 09:12, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

[1] Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:36, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Please list the species list with Display species in this genus. O. micana does not belong to genus Phiaris. The genus Phiaris was described by Hübner by using Tortrix micana as type species. Later this species was moved to another genus, but T. micana remains as type species in Phiaris. --Olei (talk) 13:12, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

The type species of a genus cannot be moved to another genus without synonymizing the two genera.

That they do not list the type species of Phiaris as "Tortrix micana [Denis & Schiffermller, 1775] sensu [some other author]" (compare e.g. here) means that T. micana = O. micana = P. micana, and that

• either O. micana needs to be placed in Phiaris,
• or Phiaris becomes a junior subjective synonym of Olethreutes.

(Yes I know the "List species in genus" says otherwise, but it's an automated database and not fully reviewed, and has a few errors - "Hbner" and "Schiffermller" are revealing mistakes. The citation they give for the genus description of Phiaris is correct however. As you can see, the confusion is due to Diakonoff (1973) including Phiaris in Olethreutes as a subgenus. But current authors treat them as distinct, and thus Olethreutes micana must become Phiaris micana again.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk)

Duplication?

Hi, not sure if you can help, but I came across the following two categories that seem to be concerning the same thing, but are categorised differently (one according to the TOL scheme, one in the "diseases" scheme). Are these the same? Should they be merged? Or is it OK the way they are. Cats in question are: Category:Trichuris trichiura vs Category:Whipworm. (And I don't know the first thing about this, I just came across an image that needed categorisation but which to my mind now sits in 2 duplicate cats). If I should ask this elsewhere, let me know. Thanks for your help! -- Deadstar (msg) 09:32, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

"Whipworm" should a) be "Whipworms", and b) in any case it should probably redirect to Category:Trichuris. It's the medical people - we had the same problem on en:. In a nutshell, "whipworm" refers to T. trichiura in a (human-)medicine context, to any Trichuris except T. trichiura in a veterinary context, and to any Trichuris in a general biological context (because they all share the "whip" shape).

Arguably, it might redirect to Category:Trichuris trichiura, as per "most common meaning". But it's only relatively more common - "whipworm(s)" refers to T. trichiura more often than it refers to anything else (because of its prevalence in human-medical contexts), but less often than do the other meanings combined.

Either way, I'd guess "Whipworm" should be merged either to the genus or to the species article, which should then receive a "redirects here, see also" hatnote, i.e. either of:

• "Whipworm" redirects here. This category contains content about the whipworm infesting humans. For whipworms of other mammals, see [Trichuris category]
• "Whipworm" redirects here. For the whipworm infesting humans, see [T. trichiura category]

Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 08:46, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

OK thanks for that. I'll redirect Whipworm to Trichuris and add the note as suggested. -- Deadstar (msg) 18:57, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:00, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Category:Cats of South America

Category:Cats of South America has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this category, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

--134.96.220.122 09:04, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Category:Cats by region

Category:Cats by region has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this category, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

--134.96.220.122 09:04, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Edit summaries

Please write some edit summaries, as on en wiki. Snowmanradio (talk) 16:02, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

"Routine maintenance (locality)", if no summary is provided (I'm not gonna add a summary that is longer than the edit itself in most cases to every one of those ~1500 minor edits; the increased workload simply does not justify it. We have a diff function for such situations.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 16:20, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Edit summaries help others to decide which edits to check by viewing the dif. It is considered good practice to always provide an edit summary. See en:Help:Edit summary. From my watch list, I have noticed that you have edited a number files without providing an edit summary, and I feel that an edit summary would have been useful in order to help me monitor files that I am watching more easily. Snowmanradio (talk) 17:25, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Hi! I agree with Snowmanradio that edit summaries is a good thing. If you do not use it then others have to check to see what you changed. It may take you 5 seconds to add but it may save 10 users or more time to check what you are up to. And what is "Routine maintenance"? Why not add "Fixed typo", "Removed overcat", "Suggested move" etc.? As you can see on {{Summary2}} edit summaries is considered important on Commons. --MGA73 (talk) 11:27, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

That is all nice and well in theory, but have you ever actually done the work I do? It saves the changes patroller or whatnot 10 seconds, but it creates literally hours of work for me. Writing those edits takes 2-3 times as long as the actual work (which is usually simply marking a line and pressing CTRL-V to update a category or so). This is unacceptable. I skip the summaries for one reason: otherwise I'd have to spend 3 hours of my time for work that could be cone in 1 hour. This is IMO much more of a problem than skipping the summaries, because Commons relies on volunteers donating their time. As soon as people think their work here is a waste of time, they will not contribute.

In a nutshell: insist on summaries -> work does not get done. I acknowledge the problem, but there needs to be a solution. We have a maintenance backlog that is already horrible, and it's not gonna get better as the amount of content increases. Commons needs to tread lightly with the bureaucracy, SERIOUSLY. It was all well in the early days, when we had e.g. 100 photos of birds from Brazil. Today we have 1000. All recategorization of such content needs to be done manually, after inspecting each of these photos.

There should be something like a flag or such, available to veteran users only, by which a default edit summary can be set for an entire batch of rote-maintenance work. Writing the summaries by hand is simply inane. And you cannot copy/paste in such cases, because the maintenance itself is done by copy/paste.

As an interim fix, I'd guess what helps is to check out an user's edit count and recent contributions. If one can see that an experienced editor is doing routine maintenance, this should allay fears of mass vandalism. For trivial edits such as the ones in question, the only person who'll ever have problems caused by the lack of summaries is the recent changes patroller. And regards these, I find their occasional lack of good faith disturbing ;-)

Finally, I can only repeat: walk a mile in my mocassins, i.e. clean up a 200-item-or-more category in need of dispersal (reviewing all items manually). Then you will realize how detrimental strict insistence on the summaries policy is to the quality of Commons. Simply saying "we have this policy, stick to it" is not relevant and never has been as long as the consequences of sticking to this policy are detrimental to the project as a whole.

(For the lack of merge request summaries, I do apologize. This should indeed have been done.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:59, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

---

Case in point:

I have placed Category:A History of the Birds of New Zealand under Category:Birds of New Zealand, meaning that al lot of the content is now superfluously listed in the latter. These are some 80 content items (if I'm not mistaken) which each need to have a single category removed. The shortest summary would be "rm cat", but this is not good (why did the editor remove a category?). "rm redundant cat" is probably the shortest meaningful summary. Even though in this case it can be copy-pasted, I advise anyone who's got a problem with lack of summaries to do this work and calculate the time spent on the summaries only, and the time used for the actual work (removing the category and saving the results). I'd assume that a proper summary will drive the workload up by two-thirds.

But this work needs to be done. The category is too full - it has subcategories aplenty, and it spills to a second page (meaning half the subcategories are not directly visible). The category has never been reviewed in the last years, as it seems; I'd guess that far more than half of the content is better placed elsewhere. But to clean up the category for good, some 230 items of content and all the categories and pages need to be inspected and recategorized as appropriate, and very little of this can be done by a bot or in any way that keeps down the editor's workload.

Another case: Category:Birds of Indonesia needs to have all "COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM" content reviewed and recategorized if necessary. About 150 items of content, and copy/paste does not work well.

So, my working hypothesis is that the two aims of "not breaking the rules" and "keeping Commons usable" are irreconcilable in these cases. To falsify, go and do this work ;-) (I won't touch the Tropenmuseum stuff anytime soon. People will only complain about bureaucracy, but nobody will come up and say "well done, now the content is properly categorized at last". This sucks; my time is too valuable to spend on such shite.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 13:35, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

It is not just a patroller that looks what you have been doing. Many users can have the files on their watchlist. That is why I wrote that perhaps 10 users will check your edit.

We all want the work done. If we thought that you did a crappy job we would have blocked you. So please do not think that we do not appriciate your work.

If you work a lot with categories you can use "HotCat". That is fast and easy and it also adds an edit summary automatically.

If you have a lot of similar edits perhaps someone with a bot can help you. --MGA73 (talk) 14:14, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

You can read about hotcat here Help:Gadget-HotCat. --MGA73 (talk) 14:16, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't help in cases like the "Tropenmuseum" one. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 17:45, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

If Tropenmuseum needs to be recategorized then I do not see why HotCat should not be usefull. Perhaps you know something I don't? Changing from Category A to Category B only takes 5 seconds with HotCat. --MGA73 (talk) 18:37, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

You need to look at 130 photo captions and tell which ones yshould be recategorized. Why don't you do it? You know it much better than I do. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:39, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

• Here is another user that had commented on your edits summaries; see this edit. In particular, I would like to draw you attention by providing this quote from his edit; "is an unacceptable way to attract notice for a discussion; when such an edit is marked as minor with no edit summary, it's hardly surprising that no objections arose." I would tend to agree with this. Please to not cause these sort of problems, because I think this tends to spoil the wiki for other editors, who are slowed down by having to check what you are doing, or even worse not even notice what you are doing. I think that it is your responsibility to write adequate edit summaries and that this is essential on the wiki. I once did about a thousand edits in on day on commons and they all had edit summaries, so I really think that even if you are doing a lot of edits you should always provide adequate summaries. Snowmanradio (talk) 17:19, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

All that is very well, but consider: "I spend a lot more time dealing with categories on Wikipedia rather than Commons, where it seems that there unfortunately isn't much infrastructure and process for dealing with these kinds of things. There should be more of a centralized discussion on these matters rather than a unilateral and/or piecemeal approach, and I think that discussion should happen before any more are changed."

I have nothing to add to that. Basically, category maintenance on Commons is a festering sore. I have recategorized literally hundreds of items of content in the last months. In a few cases, I have forgotten summaries where it is really a mistake.

I can only repeat: Category:Birds of New Zealand is in need of an overhaul, Category:Birds of Indonesia is too.

I'll try to be more careful with summaries, but this does not change anything about the above work being in search of an editor who'll do it. I for one won't; thank you very much. My point being that these lapses do happen if you handle a load of content needs to be refuted, I think.

So how about cleaning up the categories before continuing with this discussion? See Category:Birds of Madagascar for an example how it should look afterwards. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 17:45, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

• Commons is a collaboration where each editor will edit according to their own interests and knowledge. I have spent some time attempting to elevate your priority for edit summaries. I would like to get on with my hobby of uploading images to commons. Snowmanradio (talk) 18:01, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

• You appear to have done a number of edits that I would not call minor. This can be confusing to other editors, so please only mark edits when a very small change is being made. This is spelt out on the en wiki. Snowmanradio (talk) 18:40, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

File:Haeckel Nudibranchia.jpg

Hey- could you tell me why you added a note to File:Haeckel Nudibranchia.jpg saying it was featured on the English Wikipedia? I've been unable to find a nomination page. J Milburn (talk) 16:23, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Copied from old version or by accident. If you can't find proof, remove it; thanks nor notifying! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 02:09, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Ornathology book categories

I think that you are going out-on-a-limb with your recent series of requests to move about a dozen book category names. You did not write edit summaries, so perhaps not many editors have noticed what you are doing. It seems that some of these moves have got though without comment, but I suggest that you put the categories back pending discussion and consensus. I was watching a few of these pages and looked into your edits. I think that book names should not be prefixed with the author, because I presume book categories are supposed to be in alphabetical order by book name. If you want to list books by author then you you could make a meta-category "Ornithology books by author" and pipe the category with the author for alphabetical listing by author. I feel that discussion would be beneficial to work out a lasting and logical style for ornithology book data organisation. Snowmanradio (talk) 17:43, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, franky I didn't care about a particular style but about an unified one, so I just took one of the two major styles ("author - title" and "title - author"). If I had any reasons of not choosing the latter, it is because a) bibliographies list by author (and we're basically building a bibliography), and b) an inordinate amount of these books are titled "The [birds/fishes/mammals...] of...", and this will not really make it any more readable.

But the same can be said for Gould's works if we use author-first.

My point for not discussing these things is stuff like Commons_talk:WikiProject_Tree_of_Life#Default_category_name:_.22animals.22.2F.22plants.22_or_.22fauna.22.2F.22flora.22.3F. That was almost a month ago, and the issue is critical. There is no consistency, so I tried to instal a working draft cat system for this and that. It all can be changed to something other, I have no problem with that. But unmoved, it is unconsolidated, different schemes all over the place. I just took the 2-3 that were used most and tried to guess what works best.

(I think the "Birds of" system works. The higher-level cats are not perfect and may never be, but downwards from Category:Birds of the Americas it should work quite well already. ) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:24, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

For interlinking to wiki's then the cat and page names would be best matches with what is most used on wikis. This is one more reason why book names should be "book name" and not "author-book name". There is no reason why you should not have a matacat "Category:Ornithology books by author", but the category names for the books are still "Book" here. I used "Book (author)" sometimes for clarity, but the start of the cat name is for an alphabetical book sort. I feel that you could be going out-on-a-limb on your own and it would be a shame if you spent time editing and it needed to be re-done or reverted. I have asked an administrator to participate in discussion threads I have started on your talk page. Snowmanradio (talk) 18:36, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Category:Birds of Madagascar

I have a complete non-understanding of the following heading found in "Category:Birds of Madagascar":
"Put in this category:

1. categories and pages of birds endemic to Madagascar, but not images and other media

2. images and other media taken on Madagascar of birds not endemic to Madagascar, but not their categories and pages and content taken elsewhere".

• What commons principals have you been following? This is not a meta-category, so presumably images can go in this category. I think that discussion should have taken place in order to make data organisation consistent and logical across ornithology pages and commons. Snowmanradio (talk) 18:09, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

"presumably images can go in this category"

Indeed: "Put in this category [...] images and other media taken on Madagascar of birds not w:endemic to Madagascar".

"What commons principals have you been following?"

If there is no structure, build one. For w:taxa, this is best built upon w:biogeography. Anyone who thinks he can do better, do so. Go ahead; "be bold".

BTW everyone would probably appreciate if you used categories like Category:Birds of Sweden for uploads like File:Turdus iliacus -Orebro, Sweden-8 (1).jpg and File:Acrocephalus schoenobaenus -Sweden-8 (1).jpg. The latter ought also to be annotated with the "Hallsberg, Orebro" from Flickr in the description, and don't forget Category:Hallsberg, and check out whether Category:Nature reserves in Örebro County may apply... We cannot be sure that the data will always be available, and to look up the coordinates every time is cumbersome. Also, your uploads are wasted if they do not have 3-4 categories these days.

"This is not a meta-category"

Yes. And?

People like me, who write long articles and like to add generous imagery on Wikipedia, need to use Commons as a repository we can trust.

So you want to upload stuff. Go ahead. But e.g. File:Kea (Nestor notabilis) -Wellington -NZ-6a.jpg was uploaded long ago and still has not received proper categories. So please clean up your own backlog, please. You will see that most categories I proposed make much sense. Seriously: your mass contributions are a boon to all of us, but as long as they have the species category only and a barebones description, nobody can appreciate them properly. Check out the categories of File:Indian Robin I IMG 9755.jpg or File:Telespiza cantans.jpg, this is how a properly uploaded image looks like. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 19:02, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

• I do not know where you are coming from. About 800 of the images I have uploaded to commons have been in collaboration with Wiki Project Birds, and no one has ever said that before. You appear to have found an image where I have written rather a short description, I will see if I can improve it. Looking at the image's details on Flickr again, I have some difficulty understanding the locations in New Zealand and I am not sure where this parrot is kept in captivity in New Zealand. I uploaded that image about 2 years ago and I think that I generally would tend to write the image description a little better now. The Kea is in the species category, which is in tern in three categories including "Category:Birds of New Zealand". I think that it covers all of the important categories. If full details of the species is needed, then reference should be made to the wikis, which are often interlinked on the category or species page. I really feel that readers can find this Kea image, that they can appreciate it, and that they can read about it in detail on a wiki. Anyway, I would be interested to learn what improvements you would make. I uploaded and nominated a FP on the en wiki of a Kea; see File:Nestor notabilis -Fiordland, New Zealand-8b.jpg, and I hope viewers can appreciate that. Snowmanradio (talk) 19:21, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
• Incidentally the robin in India image has a watermark, so I have added a maintenance tag. Snowmanradio (talk) 19:21, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
• I have updated the Kea image file that you were referring too. However, please focus on the problem of your treatment of the categories, which I think you have mistaken for meta categories. I suspect that you have made a massive number of errors with category structures and data organisation that will have to be modified. Snowmanradio (talk) 20:54, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Meta categories

I just wonder if you have she same understanding as me of what a meta-category is. To me "Category:Birds of the Americas" is not a meta-category, however "Category:Birds of the Americas by species" would be. Snowmanradio (talk) 18:22, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Why should "Category:Birds of the Americas" not be a meta-category? We tried a "by species" approach on English Wikipedia, where we have more species (all complete) but fewer content. The Neotropics have (I think, roughly) one-third of bird species. "Birds of the Americas by species" would have 3000 subcategories in the end. It can't work and still be usable. You need to break the species down by country, which has been done. But Category:Birds by country is also very unwieldy, so I have added another level (one-and-a-half actually). You still have "Category:Birds by country", but also Category:Birds by region now (compare Category:Nature which is the main categoriy for animal content). The level beyond "Region" is almost a meta-category. There is some content where you can only say it's from somewhere in South America, and this of course would go to Category:Birds of South America as it does now. But it is very little. If you want to break down Category:Birds by country too, this is all fine with me. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:55, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I will do a little thinking on this topic before replying, and I plan to re-read the explanations of meta-categories on Commons. Meanwhile, I hope that user MGA73 will participate in this discussion to help us with this. Snowmanradio (talk) 19:09, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

See Commons:Naming categories. Meta categories are "Categories by CRITERION". Categories with the format "Category:Birds of xyz-land" are not meta cats. I think that you should be making extra categories "Category:Birds of xyz-land by region" (ie Category:Birds of the Caribbean by region"). I think you are attempting to force a meta cat structure on "Category:Birds of xyz-land", which is in error. Snowmanradio (talk) 20:46, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

This is difficult to understand and clumsy in your categories:

• "Put in this category:
• 1 categories and pages of birds endemic to the Caribbean, but not images and other media
• 2 images and other media taken in the Caribbean locations of birds not endemic to South America, but not their categories and pages and content taken elsewhere"
  

I think that the second group of birds should be in a separate appropriately named category, and put as a subcategory of the meta-cat "Category:Birds of the Caribbean by country". This is an evolving idea, which I am still thinking about. Snowmanradio (talk) 21:15, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Moving pages

See Template:Move, which you have been using. It says; "The page where discussion about the move is taking place. It is highly recommended that a discussion section about the move proposal be started. People may not notice the edit summary about the move proposal in their watchlist. Especially if another edit occurs within a few days with a different edit summary. People oftentimes wait days or more between checking their watchlists. Editors don't check up on every edit, especially if the subsequent edits are from trusted users, or the edit summaries are for edits that don't require checking up on." Snowmanradio (talk) 18:32, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

What is wrong with you? Can't you read? It says "highly recommended"; this is not the same as "mandatory". You want a discussion - go and start a discussion. I have given a reason, which is (I think) uncontroversial. Anyone who disagrees is free to open a discussion. But there is no policy that says we must have a discussion if we don't need to.

(Case in point: File:Lamprocolius1Smit.jpg. Someone saw it, understood it, renamed it. No need to bicker or discuss, the issue was clear. In the time where I could have set up the discussion, I was half through with copyediting File:Lamprocolius2Smit.jpg already...)

And now listen up:

I think I understand the underlying problem, after having had a look at your contributions.

I am doing maintenance work. I am one of the people who keep Commons running and usable. You, on the other hand, just upload 1000s of images and leave it to others to clean up the mess you make with your lack of categorization and proper information.

I know now where I know your username from - you stand out like a sore thumb by rarely properly categorizing your uploads, you can't be bothered to add proper information and so on. For almost every file you upload, someone else needs to spend between 15 minutes and 2 hours of quality-control work, because the quality of your uploads is so low.

Tell me this: Why can 1000s of people properly categorize and annotate their uploads, and you refuse to, and have been doing so since several years?

You want to discuss maintenance issues? Well I think a "mere" few thousand of your own contributions have serious maintenance issues. Clean up your backlog of crappy uploads, learn why unwieldy category names must be avoided (many of our users do not understand English very well, so the least complex category name is usually the best) and so on. Then we can discuss such issues.

But I refuse to discuss them as long as your Commons experience is little other than uploading content. You categorization proposals make sense only if you do not consider other people's uploads, for example. The mess in Category:Zoological illustrations ("Egg illustrations" vs. "Fish drawings" vs. "Illustrations of Trilobita" vs. "llustrations of birds" vs. "Insect drawings and paintings" vs. "Zoological illustrations of spiders") is the result of people like you - who only care about their own uploads and have no hands-on experience beyond that - messing things up. All these schemes commingling there are the product of some grand idea of some user with a limited scope of experience (it was even worse before I arranged the taxonomic subcategories at the start). "Zoological illustrations of spiders" is a category you would propose according to your so-called metacategory "policy", but as a spider is "zoological" by default, there is no good reason to use such complicated names.

(BTW the supposed meta-category "policy" you use to justify your ill-conceived category names is a proposal. You really need to learn the difference between proposals, recommendations, standard policy and mandatory policy. Most of your accusations against me are blatant nonsense, because you have not understood these differences. You claim to be covered by some mandatory requirement, but on looking it up I have generally found that your supposed "rules" are just suggestions or guidance lines.

As regards meta-categories, you seem to think they should be created without need. This is not correct. A subcategory should usually only be created if the content in the main category becomes too much, because every subcategory you add creates a delay in reaching the content.)

I just saw another of your mass-uploads: File:Britishentomologyvolume1Plate20.jpg. What kind of mess is this? A properly uploaded file should look like File:Carabus.nitens.-.calwer.03.06.jpg; it need not have all the information but it must have at least the basics (e.g. File:AccipiterWallaciiKeulemans.jpg).

Your uploads often don't even have descriptions! And you are not new to Commons; in other words, these are not good-faith mistakes anymore. You steadfastly ignore the most basic policy governing file uploads there is, in particular the section Commons:First_steps/Quality_and_description#Good_file_descriptions.

You are probably the last person on Commons who should accuse me of anything as persistently as you do!

If your uploads were of a quality like for example File:Gonipterus scutellatus from Coira, Portosín, Porto do Son, Galicia, Spain - 20100830-6.jpg, I'd gladly accept any criticism from you. But as long as your contributions rank among the worst of the worst on Commons, as long as you violate fundamental standards dozens if not hundreds of times each day without having a good reason for that, you'd be well advised not to point fingers at others.

I consider this "discussion" ended until your behavior has improved and your maintenance backlog has been cleared.

Improve the quality of your work, and you won't have to object to me fixing your errors and negligence.

Thanks.

(Same thing with the "minor edits" issue. I have perhaps gotten 2 or 3 complaints about that in as many years, and it happened - as it did now - as trivial negligence: one or so of the edits was factually objectionable. I am used to Wikipedia standards here, play fast and loose. Some ppl sem to get kicks out of patrolling, but in my POV patrolling should try to catch unconstructive edits and see that potentially unconstructive ones are flagged. These things happen often enough on Wikipedia that patrollers have no time to waste on sloppy lazy honest-errants like me; on Commons this seems more common.

But it is pointless. If I flag an edit as "minor", it is in good faith. I have made about 70000 edits on the English Wikipedia, and I think none were not in good faith... so a patroller has little to nothing to gain from flagging me down, time to dis me for negligience is time badly spend IMO.

You do a lot of uploads and some category work (to accomodate own material, mainly), which is fine, but it seems you write very little yourself. I do. That makes a whole lot of difference on how Commons looks to you. I'd appreciate if you appreciated this difference.

BTW If I came across to harsh above, I apologize. The matter is this: We make mistakes occasionally, and I think the quality of my work is generally OK to good, constructive and vigorous; after all, I am one of the few ppl who routinely build things like File:GeothlypisKeulemans.jpg. I would like to work here a bit in my spare time, and do so unmolested by self-imposed bureaucratic concerns without factual basis; it is hard enough to avoid bureaucracy in real life. Like I said, back when you ignored the mistakes I made and I ignored yours, it was nicer; I'd rather have it that way.

Thanks.

PS: as regards the meta-cat scheme, I have a gut feeling it'll create a massive w:pigeonholing issue if it is implemented strictly. I fail to see the tree-thinking in this scheme; the fact is that category terms themselves often are nested sets (i.e. "yellow" is a "color" and "Osteichthyes" are "vertebrates"). COM:TOL has applied this principle by necessity, and has very, very easy category names. Perhaps the most usable ones of any major Commons subtree. In short, the proposed scheme is too rigid in its terminology to indicate subsets, its restriction to "of/in/by..." makes for bad category names. Category:Animals in zoos by zoo name is one of the worst "improvements" I have seen. When we have content from 150 zoos, it makes sense. Right now it creates another unnecessary level one has to click through to get at the content, and is confusing to read. (And you complain about "Birds of Madegascar"... ;-))

And what is the great idea of having Category:Categories by zoo? Category:Zoos goes in Category:Animals and that is that.

Or have you misunderstood the whole issue and are now trying to create meta-categories by default? Please stop, and possibly revert. The meta-categories project has been idle for one year; before that, they had a very controversial discussion. Mass creation of meta-categories is DEFINITELY against consensus.

Also, the last set of rules ("office/politicians/Canada") cannot be made to work. This is a fact, as far as I can tell from here. Someone who knows w:set theory and/or w:linguistics needs to look into this; someoine in the discussion may also have noted it. I would strongly advise not to make any new meta-categories, but rather see that those that are are fully populated and tested.

Because I think the meta-cat idea might generally work (it certainly does im main and sub-main categories), but I am also 98% sure the system as proposed has at least one critical error. And I am usually rather good in spotting flaws in networks, trees and such structures. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:47, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that their is an element of emotions in your comments, so your apology above is understandable. I think we probably can sort out categories and meta-categories structures after some thought and focused discussion. Snowmanradio (talk) 13:05, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Book rename requests

Hi, thank you for your great work here. Concerning category naming and punctuation, I plan to do a number of naming proposals in the coming weeks that reflect the de facto standard. One of the proposals is for book names (and names of paintings, sculptures, movies, poems, songs ...). I feel that the current de facto standard is "'Book title' by author" followed by "'Book title' (author)". Since you introduced several book rename requests which follows the far less used standard "author - book name", I would like to hear your rationale. Best regards. --Foroa (talk) 12:36, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Simple - I just happened across a category where the majority was in that format (I think Category:Ornithology books), and being used to working with bibliographies, I adopted it. I wouldn't say that it is superior though; I have not tested it. But it may be more useful, considering that books in a particular category often follow a particular titling scheme (e.g. "[A] Manual/History/... of ..."). This would argue for putting the author first. On the other hand, there are cases where most books in a particular category are written by very few authors, this would argue by putting the title first.

But there is only one somewhat clear reason in favor of author-first I can think of: In libraries, biibiographies and so on, books are generally sorted alphabetically author-first. This is well-established, but their rationale might not apply to Commons (some bibliographies do stil use date-first, which is clearly not suitable for Commons); I have not pondered whether it would. I'd guess that the rationale is to make content more easy to locate when you have lots of it, and in this case it would probably indeed apply... surnames are consistent and usually rather unique, but book titles follow no consistent scheme except the habit of similar names for similar topics mentioned above.

It it probably best to take two well-populated categories (20 subcategories or more) from Category:Books by genre, and try out each scheme in one of them (place a note on the categories indicating a trial is taking, so that people don't start moving things back). Because I think the ultimate decision should be according to what creates the least conflicts or ambiguity or overpopulated subcategory-letters.

One or the other scheme will prove to be superior (less ambiguities, less subcategory-letter clustering), and this would need to be confirmed in other well-populated book categories. I think in the end either author-first or title-first will turn out to make content more easily locatable, and this scheme is the one we should use. But I have no idea which one it will be; it needs to be tested in practice. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 13:09, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

(Since I had all the requests up already, may I suggest to choose Category:Ornithology books to try name-first?

Another advantage, as you will see then, is this: it is easier to collect works by prolific authors into a subcategory (e.g. John Gould). This subcategory will sort normally within an overall author-first scheme, but with title-first it is more tricky to handle (it can be done, but it might mean one additional category to go through til you reach the content). We also have Category:Books by author, but a title-fist sorting method is not well supported or in fact unsupported by Category:Books. These are probably quite strong reasons against title-first.) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:59, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

The standard on Commons is by book name first; see Category:Fiction books, Category:Geography books, Category:Fantasy books, Category:Botany books as examples. I suggest you use the standard format with book title first for books rather than upsetting a traditional apple cart here. Snowmanradio (talk) 13:03, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

To start, I've got a look into [2]. What strikes me is there are many books where the author is not meaningful or unknown, a collection of authors, where the most important author is the artists or engraver, ... Specialised magazines have no author neither. I feel that the most important book characteristic is the name, which is always known, so a notation "title by author" seems the most generic one. Category:Books by author makes only sense if there is a special subcat for "books by xxx". I've got a look in Category:Ornithology books but Category:Botany books looks more representative. Anyway, to judge about the best system there, it would be better to have a few hundreds items in the category, but I am under the impression that there is no good system because there is no system in the titles anyway. If you want to try out another naming system, the easiest is a simple table. alternative, you can make a list with {{Move|old name|New name}} and submit it to COM:DL for renaming. --Foroa (talk) 17:22, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

File:Confuciusornis,_edited_300px.jpg

File:Confuciusornis,_edited_300px.jpg has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this file, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue. Please see Commons:But it's my own work! for a guide on how to address these issues. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

FunkMonk (talk) 16:07, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Image descriptions

There is something wrong with a lot of image descriptions. I found this; '''' <small></small> = ''[[]] [[|]]'' <small></small> {{en|1=}} on a lot of files in "Category:Novitates Zoologicae". It looks unfinished. What is it supposed to say? Snowmanradio (talk) 12:01, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I just uploaded these and completing them now. See e.g. File:NovitatesZoologicae18 064.png for the result - it'll take some time to determine all those taxa. Probably til the weekend. The strange code is just a placeholder, it makes it easier to fill in the species etc for the majority of images. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:08, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Extinct Birds (Rothschild book)

Two weeks is up following your suggestion to move Category:Extinct Birds (Rothschild book) to "Rothschild - Extinct Birds (1907)" made by this edit, which did not have an edit summary. The result was that three people objected to your move suggestion; see Category talk:Extinct Birds (Rothschild book). An administrator or neutral editor should remove the move request template now. Snowmanradio (talk) 18:49, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Old edits without meaningful edit summary

Re: this edit and others. I think that the edits summary is inadequate to describe such a large change that included the addition of a controversial section on the use of the category in a non-standard way. I have reverted your edits suggesting the non-standard use of categories on the use of "birds of country" categories, partly because of the lack of prior discussion on these changes and partly because of the inadequate edit summaries. Snowmanradio (talk) 14:01, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Buprestidae

Thank for re-cat my coleoptera picture --Penarc (talk) 15:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

A pleasure! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:36, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Cotinis mutabilis gallery edit

Hi, You removed the taxonomic information from the Cotinis mutabilis gallery with the following explanation: "(rm error)". Could you provide a little more explanation? What error were you referring to? Thanks. --Davefoc (talk) 07:00, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we cannot use this format for gallery pages. Including the info is OK of course, but it must be coded in another way (not using the "Coleoptera" template), because using it will cause an autocategorization in Category:Species of Scarabaeidae that is not used for gallery pages. Sorry for removing it - it was in a rush.

I have added the correct template ("Taxonavigation") to the page so you can check it out and copy it for further use. Note that it differs quite a bit in formatting style. (Note also that now, the page links to the category and the category links to the page, if you click on the species name in each taxobox) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 10:55, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Warning - Biota categories

In October 2010 your request to move categories from Biota to animasl was rejected by consensus, I have reverted yuor changes back to that consensus if you move those categries again without obtaining consensus for a different structure I will block your account for disruption. Gnangarra 23:40, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the trouble, I'll keep them up. Can you link me to the decision for reference please (CfD)? Some did not have the note removed, so I thought it was OK, sorry. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:03, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

It may be pointed out, though, that some of the "biocountry" categories must be deleted - the categorization is based on en:phytogeography and does not apply to animals (or at least to some of them), as any biogeographer would tell you. Also they are redundant with the "nature" categories. Also, can you please proovide the link to the discussion/consensus? I cannot find it. Thanks! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:58, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Don't bother, I found it. So Wiktionary is now a reliable scientific source. Cute if you weren't such a bully. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 04:00, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Warning

Please do not place Animals of ... anywhere in the Australia project without checking to see it was opposed SatuSuro (talk) 22:55, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

How do I check this? Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:23, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I'll find it - but - putting up Animals in Australia is bit like things that float as a category above Ships - it is a real no-brainer if you dont mind me saying so SatuSuro (talk) 01:32, 15 February 2011 (UTC) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Categories_for_discussion/2010/02/Category:Animals_by_country_%26_Category:Flora_by_country you are talking to yourself there - that conversation was happening almost over a year ago and has gone nowhere - I would personally be very against the animals categories remaining intact - but as you can see the conversation dies and no one replies - regardless of the people that come and go - and it appears not to be resolved despite your comments - something you have to get used to on a voluntary thing like wp SatuSuro (talk) 01:49, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

In how far was I talking to myself? I was replying to Marco and Elekhh, in a discussion I had hither to not participated in yet (and neither have you), which runs about an entirely different topic (namely whether to run a by-country-by-policial-province system or a biogeographic system of categories, or whether to use both; I am all for both).

Also, the "Ships" example only makes sense if you use "fauna" as well as "animals", and not synonymously (which they essentially are). I simply took the oldest and most widespread system, which happens to use "Animals" and not "Fauna".

In fact, we had a perfectly working (if nascent) system from 2005 onwards ("Animals" and "Plants" as subcategories of "Nature"), until the change to "Flora" made it inconsistent post-2008; to use your example, everyone had been using "Ships" categories and this worked fine for 3 years, thank you very much. Only then you came along and demanded that for anything Australian (and for everything else too if you had it your way), the term needs to be "Means of aquatic surface transport", and it needs to be put in a special category "Things that float" together with "Means of aquatic subsurface transport" which itself should supercede "Submarines"... and now we're stuck with both systems.

Check out Category:Environment by country - how many entries have a "Biota of ..." subcategory? So now tell me: who's special-pleading here?

(Also, the actual point of conflict is this: I am presently down-sorting content from "Nature of..." (and "country") subcategories to the specific taxonomic categories. The mess at Australia is painful, it is very hard to place things correctly because we have a category tangle, not a category tree. OK, but if you want Australian organisms content sorted <--- LOL how did that get in there?, then you'll have to do it yourself. This is another aspect of a collaborative project: if you put the hurdles too high for others to assist, if you enforce your own irregular and barely usable standards, others will find some other project to contribute to.

Also, I notice that in Australia, mushrooms are apparently plants. Ho hum. Not only Thomas Cavalier-Smith would find this highly objectionable given it is not 1968 anymore. So stick to "Fauna" and "Flora", and have fun one day telling people they should put their mycological content in "Category:Funga of Australia". BTW what about microorganisms of Australia? "Protistata"? "Protistaea"? There is no widespread and unproblematic term corresponding to "Fauna" and "Flora" for fungi and protists, and neither is there such a term for bacteria and archaeans. Thus, the argumentum ad Wiktionarium is technically valid, but only if animals and plants were the only organisms on this planet. But they aren't; people who have studied biology know this. We have 6 organismic kingdoms, and while the old ("Animals") approach has slightly imprecise names for them all (Animals, Plants, Fungi, Protists, Bacteria, Archaea), the Australian approach ("Fauna") has a super-correct name for one, a slightly imprecise name for another, and no good name (or no name at all) for the remaining 4 (I presume that since you use jargon like "fauna" and "flora", I don't have to tell you which one of these two is imprecise, and why).

I am really curious: did any of you people actually study these things? Like, university graduate in evolutionary biogeography or such?) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 03:49, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok so you might have an argument from a position of authority and knowledge - and indeed your arguments show an albeit somewhat exasperated editor frustrated by others who wander in after youve been through all that, I only was coming from a very different angle - but hey I can understand your frustration - I must say when I was photographing lichen about 12 months ago - the sources from different eras sure showed where people fell over their feet in categorisation of living things. I bow out, I cannot possibly engage with you on what is obviously for you a very frustrating time - I clearly misunderstood the original issues of your edits - and cannot help you in any way - it is clear. At least you have explained it well. My apologies. SatuSuro (talk) 12:55, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Podostroma cornu-damae tag

Hi Dysmorodrepanis, I noticed you removed Category:Fungi and added Hypocreaceae instead. I prefer and believe it's better that the fungus has the Fungi tag, because it's more general classification and also helpful for users searching in Commons. --Sateros (talk) 11:34, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

As I already mentioned, I want to keep the Category:Fungi. Please don't remove. --Sateros (talk) 09:44, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Category:Fungi is the main category taxonomic tree for fungi. Files are only placed in the taxonomic tree once, except in particular cases (more than one species on image, disputed taxonomy/systematics). Neither of this is the case here. See COM:OVERCAT.

Note Category:Fungi, Category:Animals, Category:Plantae are main categories. The general rule on Commons is not to keep species-specific content in these categories, but sort it down as soon as possible. So didn't see any reason to treat this one image different from the 1000s of others that have made their way down from the main category for all those years Commons has been running.

Admittedly, in this case it's a bit awkward, because there are quite a few categories that might be added. I have added the four that were obviously missing; check it out. In the end there should be 5 ways to reach the image from "Fungi" category - by color, by shape, by locality, by taxon and by edibility. Unfortunately, we have no category for club-shaped fungi yet. Normally, this would also be used. In any case it is unnecessary to put the image in "Fungi" directly, and if we would do it we would end up with 1000s of images in this category (meaning nobody would find anything).

Perhaps User:Strobilomyces might give you a second opinion, if it's all important to you. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:44, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Warning about your edit summaries

I note that you continue to add inadequate edit summaries for important edits to pages. See your edit on this page, where you have proposed a move cat discussion marked with a minor edit. Snowmanradio (talk) 21:43, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Listen. Your behavior is so groussly outside all bounds of the acceptable that you can cram your "warnings" elsewhere.

I have not seen a substantial qualitative contribution to the project from you in a long, long time. You are not especially one to accuse anyone of not sticking to rules, because you yourself violate Commons rules on a daily basis. Your categories make no sense and interfere with existing category schemes, you do not properly annotate, tag, categorize and sort the content you upload. What you do amounts to little more than spam.

I have told you again and again to cease your unilateral actions and improve the quality of your work instead of simply spamming Commons with files that queue up in the backlog. You decided to ignore this.

There have been many cases of people like you; eventually most of them were kicked from Commons for being disruptive dicks. I had nothing or little to do with this; so I can simply note the fact that you are threatening, ignorant and abusive.

Go do some decent maintenance work for a change, or any work that improves Commons instead of just inflating it.

Then you can complain.

Thanks for your attention.

PS: Be glad I botched only once in correcting some of your most egregious errors. It is really not a joy cleaning up after automata like you. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:03, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

There were a number of moves that where you did not write an edit summary. Snowmanradio (talk) 20:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

• I am not happy with your reply and I see that you continue to omit edit summaries, so I will inform the administrator, who warned you about your lack of edit summaries; see his edits on your talk page here and here. I note that you have not written edit summaries on several categories where you have added a put a move template; see here and here as examples. Snowmanradio (talk) 20:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

What you arer happy about or not, sir, is completely irrelevant here. Your Talk page speaks volumes about the low standard of your work.

I note that your behavior is a source of constant problems and complaints by a lot of editors. Copyvio in particular is not an offence taken lightly. You have been warned to change your upload and categorization behavior, and instead of doing so you have the cheek to threaten others.

With all your uploads of nonpermitted, misnamed and badly categorized content, you might perhaps be a bit more careful about shifting blame. One look at your Talk page shows that you commit far more severe errors than I do, and on a regular basis. I have hitherto chosen not to complain, but you are testing my patience.

It is not appropriate behavior at all to dis and threaten others for the errors they make when correcting your errors. Because your standard of work is so low that mistakes such as those you complain about are inevitable when correcting your errors; you simply make too many of them.

So gimme a break please, or face administrative action yourself (and I can tell you the admins won't like what they'll see on your Talk page). Besides, it is notable that unlike other users who have complained about errors I made, you seem unwilling to assume good faith, and that you have a tendency to consider yourself above criticism. Neither is acceptable behavior on Commons. If I have made a not inconsequential error by accidentially flagging an edit as minor when it shouldn't, you're welcome to correct that. But I can assure you it's not being done deliberately, but simply because it is easy to mis-click, if you edit dozens of files needing correction in a row. And I note that in all these files needing correction, one username seems more common than others - yours.

This is all I can say about the matter: I made mistakes, but these happened in the course of correcting other peoples mistakes - in particular your mistakes. And it is telling that you are the only one who complains again and again, even though your contributions create more need for correction than those of other users; yet you refuse to acknowledge that and take more care with your edits. Instead, you seem to demand more care of others while considering yourself above criticism.

Point in case: The "Anser indicus -Beale Park" series, the "Aix galericulata -Belgium" series, the "Hylocichla mustelina -Central Park" series, the "British Wildlife Centre" series - none of theye have been adequately categorized. This is OK for a novice user who uploads a handful of images. But you are not a novice user. You should know better.

You seem to think that it is acceptable behavior to dump hundreds of undercategorized images on Commons for "someone else" to clean up after you, and when "someone else" makes mistakes you threaten them with administrative action.

It is not acceptable. Not at all. It may even be argued that since you have been warned and since you (unlike me) commit errors as a matter of habit, it constitutes bad-faith disruptive editing. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:25, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

•  Comment I was given a hint to look at this page so that is why I'm here.

Categories and edit summaries are both very helpful for other users. Categories because it makes it easier to find the files and edit summaries because they help users that check recent changes or have the files on the watch list.

I have never seen a user that was blocked for not adding a relevant category or not adding an edit summary. If a user keeps adding wrong (disputed) categories and perhaps even keeps edit warring then user could be blocked. If a uses misleading edit summaries to "sneak" a suggestion through (example a disputed move or a deletion) then perhaps the user could be blocked. I have no basis to think that any of you are trying to manipulate or disrupt Commons so I do not think that the word "warning" is called for.

I really hope that both of you (will) do your best to add relevant categories and use descriptive edit summaries. It is easy to add categories with hotcat (provided you know a suitable category) and it is possible to mark "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" Special:Preferences#preftab-3. So both should be easy to do/remember.

Perhaps if Snowmanradio could check uncategorized uploads and give Dysmorodrepanis the requested "break" then Dysmorodrepanis would perhaps try to use more/better edit summaries in the future (especially if it not just trivial edits like cleanup or fixing a typo)? --MGA73 (talk) 16:48, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Crown Dependencies

Hello. Thanks for the message. You'll note that the convention on Commons is for the CDs to be categorised by country as they're not part of the UK (I think you've slightly misunderstood the interpretation clause in the British Nationality Act - as nationality is one of the things constitutionally dealt with by the UK, that's the way that particular law is phrased: it doesn't say that the CDs are part of the UK, it states that for the purposes of the interpretation of that law "In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires", "“the United Kingdom” means Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Islands, taken together" it can't be relied on in other contexts and doesn't change the constitutional relationship). The current constitutional phrasing as agreed between the governments of the UK and the CDs is that each CD has "an international identity that is different from that of the UK". On another constitutional point, the CDs are constitutionally self-governing in the matter of the environment - that is something that constitutionally the UK has no say in, and something on which the CDs can act internationally in terms of environmental protection in their own right. So, thanks for paying attention to the matter, but they're not the UK's animals or plants, neither do they have any constitutional or legal responsibility for them (the British Nationality Act clearly not applying to flora and fauna), so I'm going to revert back to the standard by country cat:s, unless you have further arguments to bring to the discussion? Thanks. Man vyi (talk) 08:59, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Not at all; my aim was simply to make all these accessible from the higher-level categories until we have a more complete system. Considering you have put more thought into the issue than I did, just proceed as you see fit. Until now the larger-scope discussion on geocategories has not progressed beyond agreement that "something" needs to be done, but this is nothing new. I'll try to remember to notify you should there be agreement on a solution, because the issue is perhaps also relevant to other countries (French DOM/TOM come to mind). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 03:09, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

category:illustrations of cicada and cicada species.png

thanks for your good suggestions--Pierpao.lo (listening) 20:51, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

You're welcome! Got any more content from that book? Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 20:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

No, very sorry. I'm a categorist users. I only use to pull out media and categores from mess. But times ago I saw a category with a lot of illustrations of unidentified insecta, but i don't remember its name. I'll notice to you as i found it again--Pierpao.lo (listening) 21:07, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Category:Unidentified insects of course but maybe you already know it :)--Pierpao.lo (listening) 03:10, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Nah, I was more thinking of stuff along the lines of this from which I like to make stuff like this. The cicadas (and "cicadas") were tricky though; for some I had to dig deep into the literature. But it keeps me trained ;-) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 03:13, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Re: File:ThamnophilusMelanonotusWolf.jpg

Hi, I just reuploaded File:ThamnophilusMelanonotusWolf.jpg (after messed the files' histories up :^D) and think it's better now. You should check the description to see if there's anything need to be fixed. Regards, I'm glad I can help. PRENN (talk) 12:20, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Perfect now :D Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 12:21, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Ummm... SA flora???

Hi, On files Imbrasia tyrrhea larvae on Allocasuarina Garies Namaqualand.jpg and Imbrasia tyrrhea on Allocasuarina Garies Namaqualand.jpg, you added the category "Flora of South Africa". Not that I mind, but I am puzzled. Did you mean "Flora of Australia"? JonRichfield (talk) 11:40, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Well the photos were taken in Namaqualand. I have put Category:Allocasuarina in Flora of Australia.

Just like e.g. File:Padda oryzivora -Honolulu, Hawaii, USA -adult-8.jpg is in Birds of Hawaii, but Category:Lonchura oryzivora (formerly Padda oryzivora) is in Category:Birds of Indonesia. Or like File:Francolinus leucoscepus -Denver Zoo, Colorado, USA-8a.jpg is in Category:Birds in zoos in the United States which is in Category:Birds of the United States, but Category:Pternistis leucoscepus (formerly Francolinus) is in Category:Birds of Africa.

Most photos are taken in a species' native range, so we can simply put the species/genus category in the appropriate geo category and don't need to categorize all the pictures. So the taxonomic categories get tagged according to their native range, but the pictures get tagged according to their actual locality (if that is different).

It's still much work-in-progress though. Category:Birds of Brazil is probably the one where you can see best how it would look in the end (it's not 100% complete, but it's getting there). Compare it to en:Category:Birds of Brazil - on Wikipedia the categories are mainly technical and not used for browsing, but on Commons they are the main way of browsing. So the challenge on Commons is to put everything in the appropriate categories for people to find it, but not to use more categories than necessary. The mammal and plants folks tried to do it like on Wikipedia (categorizing everything to everywhere), but this way you end up with things like Category:Cervus elaphus and Category:Flora of South Africa which make it very hard to actually locate content. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:59, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't sulking, just hadn't flagged the site for watching. Rediscoverd the topic by accident. Yes, I certainly sympathise, but sooner you than me for THAT quagmire!  :-) JonRichfield (talk) 19:53, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

{{Genera}}

Can the "for" be changed to "via" or "from" or something? It was introduced in error by a non-native English speaker (long before we had this template), probably meant to say "from"... "For" simply little if any sense, it's not technically wrong but you probably wouldn't say it as a native speaker (we take the lists from there for Commons). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:22, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Hello my friend.

Just change in {{Taxolang}} the fifth line "|en=for" by "|en=from".

I will make the change for {{Subspecies}}, {{Species}}, {{Species2}}, {{Genera}}, {{Genera2}} and {{Taxa}}.

But you cannot change the second line "|for =". It is only an internal tag.

Cheers Liné1 (talk) 06:46, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Gallery

Thank you for the work you do on my images. By cons, we have a different vision of the role of the gallery. I put a lot of time before one shows me the importance of this pathway. When the category is bloated it is the galery that will quickly choose a good image. They must be complete and cured to give a good image of the subject. --Archaeodontosaurus (talk) 05:47, 1 September 2011 (UTC) (Sorry for my bad english)

True, a good gallery is worth a lot. I am presently making a lot of these, it is very helpful to see which parts of the book are missing. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 05:51, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Info about categories

Hello, you are interested in categorizing and standardization of names of categories so I am informing you to not miss this: Category talk:Images from Annals and Magazine of Natural History and Category:Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. Thank you. Have a nice day. --Snek01 (talk) 20:07, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

BTW either you need to fix your computer's time/date settings or you were making a point I do not understand. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:02, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Heros efasciatus

Hi Dymorodrepanis, I noticed you labeled the top fish in this image as Heros efasciatus. I was going to extract this, but noticed that there is already a File:Heros efasciatus.jpg. This was extracted from another Castelnau image, which was also originally labelled by you. I'm no fish expert, so correct me if I'm wrong, but these don't seem like the same fish. Let me know what you think. —Akrabbim^talk 16:30, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I noted that too when I made it. I have not fully figured out the problem, but it seems as follows:

1. the photo File:Heros efasciatus - Zoo Frankfurt.jpg is an aquarium-breed adult H. efasciatus with color aberation. But the black pattern is genuine (at least in some moods).

2. File:Heros efasciatus.jpg (Chromys?? fasciata) is almost certainly a juvenile H. efasciatus. (I have bred some cichlids, the difference in shape is quite right. But to be sure, one would have to check the description of Castelnau, how long )

3. Chromys appendiculata (what you want to extract) is probably an adult H. efasciatus, but it was likely not drawn from life I think. It may either have been a freshly dead specimen where the black pigments simply diffused, or it may have been a preserved one (usually dried and/or in alcohol) which has become discolored (en:foxing).

I have set up the other pic for renaming. I recommend you extract as you wanted and name the new one "Heros efasciatus - Castelnau 1.jpg" (its 2 plates earlier in the book). I'll copyedit the descriptions when you're done. Thanks! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:39, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. —Akrabbim^talk 15:28, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Opsilia coerulescens

It looks as if Category:Opsilia coerulescens has now been moved back and forward. Can you have alook ? Thank you. --Foroa (talk) 10:25, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Almost every entomologist I find uses Opsilia as subgenus of Phytoecia. The only one who seems to push it as valid genus is Özdikmen (and some who copy from him, mostly co-authors in Munis), and he alternates with Phytoecia (Opsilia), and well, Özdikmen's not exactly a taxonomic authority, no matter how hard he tries, and seems to provide no rationale.

Sigh. Özdikmen's paper trail. I'd stick with Cherepanov (1991) Cerambycidae of Northern Asia. The "solid" authors are all following this as it seems. Some people (non-ento-taxo) grab the next paper they come across to look up the current taxonomy, and that's Özdikmen of course. He's been using this genus or that, but never seems to have given a reason. So his opinion (and that of those based on him) is simply nonexistent for Wikimedia purposes.

So, until actual evidence (not opinion) is given, we must treat it as Phytoecia (Opsilia) because that's what the last (as it seems) reliable secondary source has done.

Dyanega might be the author to ask. I suspect if anyone on Wikipedia knows the source/rationale here, it's him. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:21, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Proceedings_of_the_Zoological_Society_of_London_1874

Proceedings_of_the_Zoological_Society_of_London_1874 has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this gallery, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

Mohamed Aden Ighe (talk) 16:21, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

RE: Operation Grapple

Hello there. It looks like a file I uploaded, File:OperationGrappleXmasIslandHbomb.jpg, is up for deletion based off of information you put on the file page in 2008, regarding "1957 misinformation". The only citation I have is from the Royal Air Force's website, which states that it was dropped over Christmas Island on 15 May 1957. Since it was an atmospheric test (as I recall), no specific atoll appears in the picture. Do you have an authoritative source that would override the RAF's website? Thank you. --Indolences (talk) 00:18, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks and more...

Thanks for the edit to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carabidae_Anthia_Uniondale_South_Africa_1150.jpg, in which you mentioned Termophilus. I have edited the file to make the remark explicit in the description; I for one had not known of the correct name and had not noticed the edit, and I bet most other people did not know of it either. In fact I was so suspicious that I tried to look it up and found just ONE useful hit that I entered as a link. If you have any firm material on the point, I would be grateful if you could give a link; I think it should be documented a bit more conspicuously in WP. Thanks again, JonRichfield (talk) 14:49, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

http://uio.mbl.edu/NomenclatorZoologicus/ or what do you mean specifically? (Whether to place it in Anthia or Termophilum is probably a matter of taste; whether we use carabid genera sensu stricto or sensu lato is not yet streamlined, so I preferred sensu lato - it's easier to make a new category than telete/move it) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 23:07, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Right. Thanks. I have done a bit of editing to Anthia and have added redirects from Thermophilum, Termophilum, Thermophilium. I think that is easier than separate articles. Cheers, JonRichfield (talk) 19:58, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Cool! Thanks! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:31, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Category:Metamorphosis (biology)

Why don't you like it to be under Category:Biological life cycles? Thanks--Pierpao.lo (listening) 08:47, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

They need to be merged or disentangled. Presently, too small subcategory with insonsistently sorted content. Merging is less work than sorting it (which may not always be 100% unequivocally possible, metamorphosis is a process that takes time, not a singular event that happens at once. E.g. videos or animations of metamorphosing animals would show metamorphoses as well as a considerable part of the life-cycle, so where would such things go?). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:43, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Category: Mellicta

You said that Mellicta, is a synonym for Melitaea. I think so. Can you give me a reference publication on this subject. Thank you.--Archaeodontosaurus (talk) 16:52, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Mellicta is a subgenus of Melitaea at best. Phylogenetically, it it best considered a mere species group of Melitaea subgenus Melitaea. It is not warranted to recognize Mellicta if we do not recognize Cinclidia, Didymaeformis and other genera at the same level of distinctness (rank etc) or higher. But doing so would leave only a few species in Melitaea. So, recognizing Mellicta is not impossible, but highly unpractical.

If Melitaea is split up at all, the first genus to separate would be Didymaeformis, not Mellicta.

See here for the phylogeny, and here for the taxonomy (+ sources).

Moschiola

Hi Dysmorodrepanis,

This skeleton do not belong to the Moschiola meminna? File:Em - Moschiola - GMZ 1.jpg On the label at the museum was written Moschiola meminna. Regards. DenesFeri (talk) 13:58, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Until the late 1990s, every Moschiola was placed in Moschiola meminna. But today, 2-3 species are considered valid. The true M. meminna is only found in the dry parts of Sri Lanka, but the skeleton is labeled "Indian Chevrotain" and perhaps more likely is a M. indica. But it is not 100% certain without an actual collecting locality - "India" can also mean "British India" (India + Sri Lanka + Pakistan + Burma), and "Indian Chevrotain" was also used for all Moschiola.

In short, a "Tragulus meminna" without actual collection locality cannnot be identified to species with full certainty. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:13, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

OK, thank you for the info! So this skeleton remain unidentified. DenesFeri (talk) 16:25, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Declined move

I declined the move of File:PZSL1889Plate23.png because there is already a file with the name you suggested that this be moved to. INeverCry 19:53, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Wrong. A redirect is already there. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:54, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Would've been pretty helpful if you had noted that the target file was a redirect in your move request. You'll have to put another move request tag on it. Have a great day. INeverCry 23:10, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Look again please... Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:22, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Category:Lagopus lagopus scoticus

You must respect the official denominations even if there are mistakes acord. Please cancel the renaming of Lagopus lagopus scoticus --Archaeodontosaurus (talk) 05:59, 5 June 2012 (UTC).

The gender of λαγωπους is feminine. Translated to French, "Lagopus lagopus scoticus" would be la pied-de-lièvre [qui est] un homme d'Éscosse. Hence, "scotica" (une femme d'Éscosse) is correct. See:

David, Normand & Gosselin, Michel (2002): The grammatical gender of avian genera. B. B. O. C. 122(4): 257-282.

See als here.

I have reverted your change. Next time do us all a favor and research the literature. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 06:28, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

The reference you give is not consensual and is inconsistent with the rules of nomenclature. Are not corrected, a posteriori, even spelling errors. --Archaeodontosaurus (talk) 06:34, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Please provide a reliable source to prove your point. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 06:35, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

There are two contradictory theory that is the wisest course is to stay on the use name. --Archaeodontosaurus (talk) 15:53, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Clearly, the only one who needs to stay out of the issue is you. The matter is unequivocal as per ICZN Code Chapter 7 Article 31.2.:

Agreement in gender. A species-group name, if it is or ends in a Latin or latinized adjective or participle in the nominative singular, must agree in gender with the generic name with which it is at any time combined.

"Lagopus" is feminine, "scoticus/a" is an adjective, hence the correct form is "scotica" and "scoticus" is a subsequent incorrect spelling that has no standing whatsoever. It is a lapsus calami and would not even qualify as a nomen conservandum. In fact, everyone who knows a bit about biological nomenclature has not used "scoticus" for the last 10 years! (This explains your failure to provide a source for your claim: "I found it on the internet" is not a "reliable source".)

FYI here is the single most authoritative (secondary, peer-reviewed, directly pertinent to the area of endemism) source that exists anywhere in the world. I don't know how often I have to prove you your point is patent nonsense and you understand nothing of biological nomenclature, but I will do it again and again if need be; there are a few more such sources (but none are as good by Wikipedia standards), and they all say "scotica" is correct. Whereas I found no recent taxonomic/nomenclatorial source at all that say "scoticus" is correct. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 16:34, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Source

Hello my friend,
I saw your modification of Helicinidae.
You seem to dislike ITIS, but you should still provide a source.
You can either use source=<AWellKnowSite> or ref=[http:anyUrl anyDescription] or ref=<Your book>.
You can even provide the date of the data with |accessdate=2012-06-6.
Cool, no ?
Best regards

I didn't know that printed works can also cited this way - thanks for letting me know! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 17:03, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Hello, you can still provide your source in Category:Helicinidae. Personnally I prefer to reference an obsolete source like ITIS than just add 2 genera (for which we don't have any picture) and have and totally unsourced information. Liné1 (talk) 07:47, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Source is http://borneanlandsnails.lifedesks.org/. I didn't add it because it is a regional checklist.

The problem with unreliable sources (ITIS, zipcodezoo, biolib.cz, EOL etc) is that readers will think the information we give them is reliable. Having no source is better, because then it is obvious that the information is not necessarily reliable. Basically, by including ITIS we are knowingly giving wrong information to the readers. This is the exact opposite to the original mission.

As per Wikipedia:

Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.</blockpuot>

ITIS is unreliable, has little fact-checking and the worst reputation for accuracy of any taxonomic database (even NCBI and zipcodezoo are better). Strictly speaking, it is not permitted as a source on any Wikimedia project at all, and should be completely purged. 12:06, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Hello Dysmorodrepanis

Vandals don't give a source

You still need to provide a source, even with ref=<your source> ("a bit unreliable")

after we left the construction work, the next generation needs to know our step in order to develop the next step

Regards --Chris.urs-o (talk) 13:41, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

You are mistaken and have thoroughly failed to understand en:WP:SOURCE, en:WP:NOR#Using sources and en:WP:RS. It is necessary that you read it again and again until you understand the difference between "sources" and "reliable sources". To just give "a source" is not permitted; we are required to give "a reliable source" or no source at all.

(This mistaking of Wikipedia mandatory policy regarding reliability of sources is spreading like a plague. Not citing any source is the lesser evil - after all, anyone can see that the claim is unverified. Citing a bad source and thus giving false claims the air of trustworthy truth is the worst thing one can commit on any Wikimedia project, other than outright vandalism.

There is no policy "everything must be sourced" whatsoever; there never was and there never will be.

The policy is: "any disputed claim must be backed by a reliable source.")

If your source is "a bit unreliable", we are theoretically not allowed to use it at all and it must be deleted. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:24, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

In brief, what makes a source unreliable is that its claims are not supported by any reliable and up-to-date source. Therefore, if you cite unreliable sources, you are commiting original research. Whereas if you make an unsourced claim, as long as the claim is not disputed, it is perfectly OK. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 14:45, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Thx Dysmorodrepanis :o) Cheers --Chris.urs-o (talk) 15:33, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry for being so harsh. But I am a biologist with formal training in taxonomy (this is quit rare these days, at least for people less than 50 years old or so), and 2-3 years ago I would recommend Wikipedia and Commons almost blindly (and plead its case with my colleagues, and with good succes too), with the only necessary caveat "you will recognize unreliable information by the absence of citations".

But these days, so many people mistake "cite reliable sources for every disputed claim" as "cite some source" that the level of accuracy has notably dropped, and I actually recommend against using Wikipedia for taxonomic information, even if a source is cited. For some invertebrates (those that haven't gotten a taxonomic review within the last 20 years or so) if a source is cited it actually means "this information is spurious crap someone found on some amateur website, which got it from EoL, which got it from Google and 19th-century literature, and nobody ever bothered to review a single shred of it"

There is a trend to cite sources even after every species in genus lists. This is absolutely harmful, because even of the sources were reliable (usually they are not), it obfuscates the code, and new editors will find it harder to contribute. It may be justified for redlinks, but if we have bluelinks this source belongs in the species article (if RS) or nowhere at all (if not RS).

In a nutshell, the difference betwen "sources" and "reliable sources" is the difference between Wikipedia and Conservapedia (or similar projects; I picked Conservapedia because it explicitly advertises itself as "trustworthy" and from the sheer quantity of sources cited is not much worse than Wikipedia). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 16:53, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

I really don't get it. You had a source. Why didn't you provide it ?
I don't see any scientific explaination for that.
And I know you are a good contributor, that is why I asked you that much (I hope that I asked nicely enough, otherwise you have my apologies).
The debat here is not about good or bad sources (being or not a biologist, by the way), it is about the fact that if you provide information you should say "from where" (and when you retrieved it) so that others can:

• determine if they like your source.
• verify your information today
• verify your information in some time to check if the information has changed
• discover new sources

Best regards (because I do respect you and your work a lot) Liné1 (talk) 17:43, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Mesopotamia/Kurdistan ...

Hello Dysmorodrepanis, how are you? what do you think about such edit? Same person has started a discussion to delete categories as Birds of Kurdistan here. Do you think, its necessary? Cheers.--Gomada (talk) 16:50, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I have already suggested how to deal with it. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 21:54, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your objective opinions.--Gomada (talk) 14:48, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

File:Petromyzontiformes mouths PZSL1851.png

---

There seems to be a problem regarding the description and/or licensing of this particular file. It has been found that you've added in the image's description only a Template that's not a license and although it provides useful information about the image, it's not a valid license. Could you please resolve this problem, adding the license in the image linked above? You can edit the description page and change the text. Uploading a new version of the file does not change the description of the file. This page may give you more hints on which license to choose. Thank you.

This message was added automatically by Nikbot, if you need some help about it please read the text above again and follow the links in it, if you still need help ask at the → Commons:Help desk in any language you like to use. --Nikbot 00:01, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

Done. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:09, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

File:Mesoplodon traversii distribution.png

Hallo Dysmorodrepanis,

may you add the two whales on Opape Beach, New Zealand, in Dezember 2010 to this map? For further information see Current Biology

Thanks, 84.181.60.113 08:41, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Sure. But it will take some time (til mid-January) because I will be on the road til then. You might want to add a note on Wikipedia that he image is outdated. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 11:45, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

File:Audobon's Shearwater.jpg

Hi Dysmorodrepanis - the location for this pic is available now (and added). The identity looks OK to me, though I've no personal experience of Audobon's Shearwater. Want to take another look at it? - MPF (talk) 13:48, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Notification about possible deletion

Some contents have been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether they should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at their entry. If you created these pages, please note that the fact that they have been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with them, such as a copyright issue. Please see Commons:But it's my own work! for a guide on how to address these issues. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

—innotata 15:30, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Category:Insecta

Hello my friend,
I took care of the pictures in Category:Insecta.
The fuc..ing User:File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske) is uploading thousands of pictures and adding 20 categories each.
Most of the categories are contained in each other.
The last part is the most problematic as it is forbidden.
Cheers Liné1 (talk) 10:21, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I have seen, it's horrible! So many beetles alone!

I have started to fix some of them (beetles mostly) as I find them.

I think it is due to 2 reasons:

1. The bot proposes categories according to keywords/tags, but these often make no sense.
2. New users don't review proposed categories.

If it is possible to restrict the bot to proposing only 3 categories at most (a name - species or genus or personal name or vehicle type etc - a place, and one other) it might be fixed. Most files start with 1-3 categories but usually should have at least 2 ( name and place). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 00:09, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

File:Common Flat Lizard 2355693508.jpg

File:Common Flat Lizard 2355693508.jpg has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this file, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue. Please see Commons:But it's my own work! for a guide on how to address these issues. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

Marsault (talk) 15:47, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

File:Common Flat Lizard 2354858631.jpg

File:Common Flat Lizard 2354858631.jpg has been listed at Commons:Deletion requests so that the community can discuss whether it should be kept or not. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this file, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for deletion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it, such as a copyright issue. Please see Commons:But it's my own work! for a guide on how to address these issues. Please remember to respond to and – if appropriate – contradict the arguments supporting deletion. Arguments which focus on the nominator will not affect the result of the nomination. Thank you!

Marsault (talk) 12:28, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Category:Lepidoptera

Hello my friend,
What about emptying Category:Lepidoptera together ?
You take the first images, I take the last.
There are only 336 262 of them!
Cheers Liné1 (talk) 13:03, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

I will continue on this on monday. Cheers 16:17, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

I will see that there is not much left on Monday :D Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 18:29, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

whhhhhhhoooooo. That was fast.

Excellent jobs!

Cheers

Taxonav can only be used in Categories?

Hi, I'm wondering why you made this change: http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dugong&diff=72456456&oldid=72456424 ? There are a good many galleries that contain Taxonavigation templates. HYanWong (talk) 20:09, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Taxonav uses auto-categorization assuming it is put on a category. Putting it on a page will cause a mis-categorization that violates COM:OVERCAT, and cannot be prevented or overridden; it is thus not permitted. To use taxonav on pages, a different version would need to be written, or the present version would need to be changed.

It is being used for many gallery pages, but this is an error and it was put there by people who do not understand how the template/the category tree works, and usually they added it by a bot script and never bothered to check the result... this "I don't give a fuck about the mess I make" attitude is the most common source of miscategorization for taxonomic pages. (See for example Category:Species_of_Coleoptera) Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 01:41, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

The discussion at Template_talk:Taxonavigation#Feature_request seems to imply that many informed people are specifically using {{Taxonavigation}} for galleries, and have made changes to the template to make this easier. In fact, fully 25.8% of uses of {{Taxonavigation}} are currently on gallery pages (24485 of them, actually!). From my cursory inspection of them, I don't think that most have been added by a bot. But if it is causing problems, shouldn't there be an equivalent way of providing structured taxonomic information for gallery pages? And shouldn't there be a warning in the documentation page? HYanWong (talk) 07:53, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

{{Taxonavigation}} is meant to be used in categories and galleries.

Only {{Coleoptera}} and {{Lepidoptera}} are restricted to categories.

But I intend to replace them with {{Taxonavigation}} + include=

What is the issue with categorisation ?

Cheers Liné1 (talk) 08:16, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Since Liné1 re-wrote most of {{Taxonavigation}}, I'm assuming that it no longer causes problems violating COM:OVERCAT on gallery pages, and I'm uncommenting the Taxonavigation on Dugong (I see Liné1 has already done it: thanks!) HYanWong (talk) 08:45, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Category:Biota of Pretoria

I've added the above category, which may be useful for the specimens where I labeled the location as Pretoria. JMK (talk) 08:03, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Leaving?

Hi Dysmorodrepanis. I just noticed that you have not contributed since April. Are you taking a wikibreak or have you retired? I hope all is well. If you are leaving, I wanted to make sure to thank you for your vast contributions to the project. Best regards, --99of9 (talk) 02:00, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

Nah, I just had lost my password ;-) Recovered it again. Thanks for the kind words! Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 15:31, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for pointing out files File:Unidentified_moth_6308.jpg, File:Unidentified_moth_4819.jpg & File:Unidentified_moth_4823.jpg are same, all are Creatonotos transiens (Walker, 1855) --Vaishak Kallore | വൈശാഖ്‌ കല്ലൂര്‍ (talk) 15:31, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Removing Category

Hallo, you removed at File:Curculio.cf.venosus.1.jpg a Category and replaced it with a less correct one, and I don't understand why. I would redo it, but first want to ask, perhaps that will cause problems, I do not see. Here the line from Versionsgeschichte: 18:35, 2. Mai 2011‎ Dysmorodrepanis (Diskussion | Beiträge)‎ K . . (397 Bytes) (-8)‎ . . (removed Category:Curculio venosus; added Category:Curculio using HotCat) (rückgängig machen | danken) --Siga (talk) 16:35, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Because identification is tentative. Arguably, I should have added an "Unidentified Curculionidae" or such category. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 15:28, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Lake for CorroboreeSeaEagle.jpg

In File:CorroboreeSeaEagle.jpg you added Chilika Lake, Western Australia. I can not find such a lake. The photographer is from Australia but is it a visit to Chilika Lake in India? Maundwiki (talk) 13:31, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Lepidoptera illustrations

Hi Dysmorodrepanis, thank you for your categorization edits, but there are a few recurring things that I don't agree with:

• diff 1: please don't remove such red links, they are meant for the categories to be created at some point.
• diff 2: I see no reason to remove Category:Lepidoptera illustrations in this kind of situation; the file should instead go in the appropriate "(Family) illustrations" category.
• diff 3: while I can see how one could want to avoid over-categorization here, a much better action would again be to replace Category:Lepidoptera illustrations by the appropriate "(Family) illustrations" category. If you don't know what the family is, please at least don't remove this category.

Kind regards. --LamBoet (talk) 21:17, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

I am presently doing a major review of papilionid content (like File:Macrolepidoptera01seitz 0021.jpg). I am removing some files' "Lepidoptera illustrations" category because that category is too full to be usable, and it makes no sense to go on with the papilionids until that mess is cleaned up. E.g. there are a lot of "Lepidoptera Indica" files in "Ilustrations" that have never been properly categorized. I can't realistically find them and put them where they belong until the "Illustrations" category is much less cluttered.

Most of the content where I removed the category (e.g. all the "Iconographica Zoologicae" content, the Lepidoptera Indica" etc) is actually in a sub-category of "Lepidoptera illustrations", usually "by work" (should be "by type", really) -> "Lepidoptera books" and then whatever kind of book it is.

Some batches of content (eg "Lepidoptera Niepeltiana") was double-categorized, once in "Illustrations" and another time in a daughter category thereof. Much of these still had a check categories tag.

Otherwise (images like the Glyphipterix euastera), the source image shoud be in or below "Lepidoptera illustrations". If that is not the case I'll try to locate the family category. (I'm doing it for papilionids right now, and it is A LOT of cleanup work. BTW Category: Atrophaneura is a big mess, but I ain't gonna fix that.)

I understand your point, but the categories need to be workable, which is simply not possible if they have almost 2000 files, of which 80% are not properly categorized (i.e. taxonomically)!

Solution: throw out everything except the files that by no means can go elsewhere ("Haeckel Tineida.jpg" etc), and sort out the rest while we're at it.

In the end, it should be

• the gate to the "illustrations of [family]" sub-tree
• have a list "by type"
• have files which illustrate only Lepidoptera, but from more than one family, if they're not already in the "type" tree (e.g. if they're not from a Lepidoptera book or journal)

The species redlinks - bad idea. I am constantly finding "lost" images where taxonomy has changed since someone set the redlink (moth, basically, they are not on funet so there's a lot of legacy stuff), so the redlink is obsolete. The correct category was since created, but due to the name changed, the image never was put there; it is orphaned now.

Simply use the lowest-rank bluelink instead. E.g. use the genus if no species category exists. This way, the species' content collects at the genus category, and when the species category is created, it can be moved in one batch.

We have thousands of Lepidoptera illustrations (5000 to 10000 I'd roughly guess) and much of it was harveted by bot from BHL and never reviewed since. We have things like Category:Die Gross-Schmetterlinge der Erde which was simply floating around somewhere with no obvious connection to where it belonged, before I put it there and set the whole mess up for merge. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:04, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

If you have any files where you think the "[family] illustrations" category is missing, put them back in "Lepidoptera illustrations" and I'll sort them out when I have looked over the rest once (There are some, mostly lycaenids and hesperiids AFAIR). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:11, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Eg File:Lepidoptera1Butler.jpg is now in "Nymphalidae illustrations". (I reviewed it in 2011, and back then we didn't have the category, or I would have put it there in fact. Good you mention it, I thought I had them all updated since then, but I didn't get them all.). Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 22:16, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the redlinks - I just checked out what happened. One user spammed those redlinks in violation of the MoS 5 year ago, unlinking many files in the process. The user apparently wanted to create all those categories, but stopped after a short time, and has not been active for almost 2 years now, meaning the files are orphaned and the redlinked categories won't be created anytime soon (usually they are 1-item categories with no content specific to the particular species, but simply 1 illustration on a plate with many others). The redlinks are egregious MoSviolation and need to be removed; they should never have been created in the first place. See in the file history for the appropriate bluelinks to replace them with. Dysmorodrepanis (talk) 02:50, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

It is great that you are putting some order into this mess, the situation had indeed gotten difficult.

About the red links, please notice that the file was already in the existing lowest-rank existing category (here genus-level), and additionally in the species category as a red link, so everything was covered. Of course taxonomy can change, but the red link is better than nothing, and it can easily be corrected later. I don't understand your argument "The redlinks are egregious MoSviolation and need to be removed", but perhaps you can re-explain. (What is MoS?)

About diffs 2 and 3, it was indeed clear that you were trying to decongest Category:Lepidoptera illustrations, but you don't need to sacrifice information (the "illustrations of [family]" information) in the process. There are ways to avoid this: you could use temporary (even redlinked) categories to store files you have yet to classify, and you could create a Category:Lepidoptera illustrations to be classified by family that would hold pictures until future family-level categorization (the latter strategy is what we have been successfully doing in Category:Unidentified Lepidoptera, which similarly has 2 gateways: by location and by family).

Hope this helps. --LamBoet (talk) 23:20, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Category:Oberthur_Études_d'entomologie_-_extracted

Oberthur Études d'entomologie - extracted has been listed at Commons:Categories for discussion so that the community can discuss ways in which it should be changed. We would appreciate it if you could go to voice your opinion about this at its entry. If you created this category, please note that the fact that it has been proposed for discussion does not necessarily mean that we do not value your kind contribution. It simply means that one person believes that there is some specific problem with it. If the category is up for deletion because it has been superseded, consider the notion that although the category may be deleted, your hard work (which we all greatly appreciate) lives on in the new category. In all cases, please do not take the category discussion personally. It is never intended as such. Thank you!

Josh (talk) 23:05, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Kalanchoe synsepala photos

I believe that the photos that are labeled as Kalanchoe Synsepala are incorrect. The photo is that of a Kalanchoe Nyikae. I realize that the plant labels say 'Synsepala' but this is also a mistake. However, if you compare your photo showing a 'Synsepala' to other true Synsepala, you will find that they are not the same plant. Also, I have both a Kalanchoe Nyikae and a Kalanchoe Synsepala so I am quite sure that your photos are mislabeled. You may want to consider relabeling the Synsepala as a Nyikae to prevent further confusion. Thank you. Panicmose (talk) 20:36, 24 July 2021 (UTC)