Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Arthropods

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Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 08:49, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

4000th article

WikiProject Arthropods has just reached a milestone – our 4000th article! We haven't had so many since WikiProject Insects separated in April last year, at which point we were left with fewer than 2,500 articles. That increase equates to 40% growth per annum. The 4000th article was Branchinecta longiantenna – an endangered fairy shrimp from California – written by User:IceCreamAntisocial. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the state of the project's articles. None of the top-importance articles are below a B rating, none of the high-importance articles are below a C, or mid-importance below start-class. A mere 28 articles (0.7%) are tagged as needing cleanup (since "potentially dated" is not necessarily a sign of anything wrong), which is far lower than any comparable project I've seen. Aside from creating new content, which I am sure will continue, the one place where we could most improve is probably increasing the amount of recognised content. In May 2010, we had four Featured Articles, and now we only have two, although User:Sasata and others are working on restoring coconut crab to FA status. We have a featured portal, but no featured lists. We have 14 good articles, but rather biased representation: the only species-level good article which is not a crustacean is Andreacarus voalavo. It would be good to get some myriapods, trilobites and others up to that standard. If anyone has any suggestions of articles that they think are already good enough, or which could be with a little attention, please suggest them here (or directly at Wikipedia:Good article nominations). --Stemonitis (talk) 20:27, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Glossary - Crustacea

Hi! I'm searching a glossary/dictionary about Crustaceae. I'm aware of Holthuis book (An annotated and illustrated catalogue of marine lobsters known to date - here), which includes a glossary... Is there anything similar on the Internet? Here in the WP? Thanks! --92.195.3.220 (talk) 15:20, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Holthuis (1991) is available in a more web-friendly electronic format, including the glossary. There is also a very good resource maintained by Joel W. Martin of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, available here (usually; it seems to be offline for the moment). --Stemonitis (talk) 16:27, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I also found this one (Glossary - Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission). Not sufficient. For example, "branchia" is missing... ok maybe I have to write one by myself. A Glossary of botanical terms exists here; sadly no counterpart for crabs. Regards! --92.195.59.4 (talk) 10:26, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Automatic taxobox

Hey! Why don't we use {{Automatic taxobox}}? It's the future! In Paleontology Project voted for changing their old taxoboxes for these others. 193.152.188.114 (talk) 20:15, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

It moves the article content away from the articles themselves and allows single edits to propagate errors over vast numbers of articles, for starters. All its benefits can be achieved by other means. It's not the future, it's an alternative. --Stemonitis (talk) 20:59, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Allows single edits to correct errors over vast numbers of articles. 88.19.142.189 (talk) 11:41, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

No, "propagate". In what circumstances do we have errors spread over vast numbers of articles? There may be out of date information, but not outright errors of the sort than vandalism produces; that's not at all the same thing. The problem you mention is one that simply doesn't exist. You cannot prevent errors in the taxonomic templates from vandalism and well-meaning but incompetent editors without adding page protection to the templates, and thus making it harder or impossible for unregistered users (such as yourself) to contribute. There are benefits to automatic taxoboxes, but as far as I can see, they are seriously outweighed by the disadvantages. Almost no-one finds them easy to use, which will be an enormous discouragement to new editors, and any changes to large numbers of articles can already be handled by the existing mechanism of bot requests. I think the restriction of taxonomic editing to a handful of cognoscenti is likely to produce a particularly unfortunate kind of elitism. There is nothing wrong with the existing taxoboxes, which are flexible and fairly readily understood (although even they are much too complex for uninitiated users). There is simply no need for conversion to an alternative system, even if it were thought to be beneficial. Which it isn't. --Stemonitis (talk) 12:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)