User talk:Peter coxhead

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PN article

Hi Peter, I've tried simply going through and re-arranging the sections while deleting large segments of unsourced or unsupportable statements. It still needs a good re-write but I think it's a start. It would be good to re-expand the section on definition types using actual citations, and maybe written in a more accessible way. MMartyniuk (talk) 00:27, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Natural History

Hi Peter, the Definitions section looks good. Sorry for the very belated reply - I haven't been on Wiki in a good while. Please continue working on the article whenever you have time and interest. I'm not planning to devote time to major edits in the next few months. Thanks for looking me up, and happy editing! Pertusaria (talk) 23:24, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Automatic taxoboxes

Yes, the Eukaryote template on wikipedia is an interesting amalgamation of outdated, domain/kingdom mixed levels, ancient, modern, single-sourced taxonomies, well-accepted, and solely hypothesized taxonomies. It's amusing, you have to admit.

Automating the taxoboxes will ultimately be better for wikipedia, but, really you are correct, that we have to get it right first, before automating gives value. I don't know what to do about the eukaryotes on wikipedia. It's a nightmare trying to deal with the photosynthetic ones alone, without daring to consider non-photosynthetic amoeboids. I'm open to suggestions. --Kleopatra (talk) 00:01, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!

Just want to give you a nod for your work with taxonomic articles. Your scholarly and level-headed inputs are very welcome! Petter Bøckman (talk) 14:33, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Yunia

It is unusual, but so is what you are trying to do. As far as I know, cladograms are usually simply copy-pasted. In any case, {{see also}} would only be used in a context where you can use {{main}}: it's a variant of it, meant for summary style use, and thus completely unrelated to what you were trying to do. Circéus (talk) 00:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Template:Clade panlycophyte

Did you mean to tag this for deletion? It is not in your userspace, so {{db-user}} can't be used. I've reverted the tag for the moment, as it was causing deletion templates to appear in other articles. Cheers SmartSE (talk) 19:21, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

French landscape gardens

Dear Peter, dear Mr Coxhead, a very merry happy new year to you and Chinese new year too.

I have been on rather a long wikibreak but have just been editing French landscape garden and René Louis de Girardin. With no disrespect they seem to have been written mainly by a French speaker with English as a second language; certainly they are not machine translations but they are rather back to front with the grammar (I speak a little bit of French myself, comme une vache).

I am asking your help Mr Coxhead as another set of eyes, I will do as much as I can as a tricoteur to unknit the backwards sentences that reel the mind, the articles are good but it needs reworking for English. If you could possibly assist, considering your expertise at Botanical Garden, I would be very grateful.

Yours sincerely

S. Si Trew (talk) 19:34, 9 February 2011 (UTC) [[ [[/User_talk:Concord113

I should have said, in case of any doubt of my bona fides, I also have asked the author User:Concord113 (well nobody owns anything of couse but the main contributor) but I have not had a reply yet. I didn't expect to, we all have real lives too, but just in case you thought I was going behind his back.

Sincerely Si Trew (talk) 19:40, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

The missus User:Monkap and I have done some work tonight trying to put the [[René Louis de Girardin article into good English. (The edits are under my name but we were working together on it, side by side, she did more work than I but it just happens that it was me who signed in not her.) Strange as it my seem, cos English is her second language and my first, she can spot oddities in the grammar where i can't cos I am thinking in French and she in English. French is my second language but I speak it quite well so I kinda automatically switch to French even if it is in English, and the whole series seems written by someone who is a good English speaker but writes English in French, so I kinda have to stand back.

By the way Mr Coxhead, if you have anything missing that is in the French wikipedia but not in English, please feel free to ask me. I am no expert but could do a good first pass. Someone else who worked on Botanical Gardens I asked them and they did ask me, and at least now the English WP has a little article on it, not a great one but better than nothing. I forget what the article was it was quite a little subsidiary article on a botanical gardenist but at least it is better than it was, which is all we can ask isn't it.

Sincerely best wishes Si Trew (talk) 21:56, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Typo redirects

Hi Peter, the best forum to talk about to what extent typo redirects should exist would be WP:Village pump (miscellaneous), and you could even set up a request for comments on the topic. For the one you talked about, it would be very rarely typed, but it does seem as though a couple of other uses have been made of this mistake apart from Wikipedia. Or for one redirect you could use WP:RFD. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:08, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Articles on botanical nomenclature

Hi Peter, about merging the articles on botanical nomenclature because there are too many, yes indeed, if you are inspired to go ahead, please do so. Unfortunately I don't have much time. There's also Plant variety (law), Cultivar, and Cultivated plant taxonomy two of which are verbose. Other matters that I've noticed, are that Subspecies needs a rewrite by someone other than zoologists, and the treatment of the BioCode needs updating (it currently redirects to Nomenclature codes, but I think it is time to break it out into its own page). There should be treatment (as soon as it appears) of the revised Draft BioCode (2011) that is being published in the February 2011 issue of Taxon (vol. 60 part 1). If you have time to work on anything of this sort, but need any materials from me, just ask. Nadiatalent (talk) 16:24, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi again, on further consideration I think this is all quite a mess. Whittling away at it and correcting seems to be necessary before it becomes clear how to reduce the number of articles. I've added them to my watch list, and hope to beat at them with a stick occasionally ... Nadiatalent (talk) 12:43, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Article Redirects

Hi Peter, I have undid your redirect of Progymnospermophyta for now. The reason is that cut/paste mergers and moves of pages, suchas what you did, results in the loss of the edit history associated with the article and an orphaned talkpage that is likely to get lost. If the "move" option for a page does not work, then please use the "merge to" and "merge from" templates, with an explanation on the talkpages of the articles to be combined. Thanks --Kevmin § 13:03, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Cordaitales

We don't have an entry here for Cordaitales yet, but while working on Commons, I searched for an found a few images there. I found them by doing a genus-by-genus search for all the form taxa listed in Taylor & Taylor. These images are now in Category:Cordaitales over there. There are also some Voltziales images, FWIW, although none of the images for either of these orders is particularly great. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:50, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

It's surprising, sometimes, how many images there are around which are difficult to find. For example, when extending Asparagales based on the Spanish version I looked at the article in a range of languages, and found that some had much better images than others (in this case the Hungarian version had some good images). Collecting and categorizing images is really useful. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:16, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and just for laughs, you might peek at the taxoboxes on de:Coniferopsida and ca:Pinòpsida. Our situation may be bad, but it's nowhere near as bad as some of the other languages. --EncycloPetey (talk) 02:57, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

No, I agree that nothing I've seen in the English Wikipedia is as bad as the Catalan example!! Peter coxhead (talk) 19:16, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

License tagging for File:Psilophyton Forbesii Reconstruction.gif

Thanks for uploading File:Psilophyton Forbesii Reconstruction.gif. You don't seem to have indicated the license status of the image. Wikipedia uses a set of image copyright tags to indicate this information; to add a tag to the image, select the appropriate tag from this list, click on this link, then click "Edit this page" and add the tag to the image's description. If there doesn't seem to be a suitable tag, the image is probably not appropriate for use on Wikipedia.

For help in choosing the correct tag, or for any other questions, leave a message on Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. Thank you for your cooperation. --ImageTaggingBot (talk) 17:05, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Moss collaboration

A relatively new editor seems eager to work on the Moss article, and I will have a full week off from work in about a week's time. User:Velella has also shown interest in the moss article in the past. Would you be interested in collaborating on this article for the next couple of weeks? I don't know how much experience you have with bryophyte fossils in particular, but you seem to know your way around the current literature on early land plants, so I suspect you could cope. ;) --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:16, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm always willing to try to help, though the weather is improving over here in England and my garden increasingly beckons... To make my current interest in early land plants manageable, I've limited myself to Late Silurian/Early Devonian polysporangiophytes at present. Obviously I've seen stuff on bryophyte fossils while reading around. At present, I find myself rather puzzled by the limited fossil evidence for bryophyte evolution. I'm aware of the argument that they didn't fossilize well and lacked structural integrity on death. Peter coxhead (talk) 20:37, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

isbn

Thanks for reply, but I wasn't asking how to do it, but why. The isbn wikilink works either way, and with 10 or 13 digits. I assume that there is a new MoS directive saying "13, hyphenated", but I don't know where it is,or why it's been introduced. I've been writing FAs for years, and the only isbn comment I've ever had was to be consistent (hyphenate all or none). I am a humble seeker after truth, if there's suddenly a new rule, I'd like to know where and why! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:08, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

thanks for reply, but that's not an MoS page, and there is no indication that it's been discussed outside its topic, or even agreed there Jimfbleak - talk to me? 16:46, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Hey, Pete, thanks for the link! I had never used it because I thought it only did 10 to 13 conversions! I've been using this page instead, which is more cumbersome, and I feel like an idiot. Circéus (talk) 16:11, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, don't be too apologetic, because I hadn't noticed that Wikipedia:ISBN#Types, which I'd been relying on as justification for always putting 13 digit hyphenated ISBNs is not actually a policy until Jimfbleak pointed it out... Peter coxhead (talk) 19:51, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

TfD's

I've started a relevant topic at Template talk:Automatic taxobox. As for the Google search deal, I believe Martin modified the template page output so it would be a little more visitor-friendly. There's a piece of code around here somewhere he talked about adding to the not-so-friendly pages-- so some those pages at least shouldn't show up. I'm not sure which ones he added it to, though. Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:11, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Gasteria

Hi, just saw your conversion of this page to use an automatic taxobox, and tried to add the genus authority (Duval), but it didn't work. Is there a way to do that with the automatic taxobox? Nadiatalent (talk) 11:57, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, you just use "authority = " to attach the authority for the taxon being displayed. I've added it to Gasteria just to demonstrate (but without wikilinking, which I leave to you).

Just for information, as per the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Plants#How_to_handle_families_not_in_APG_III:_a_proposal, I'm using automatic taxoboxes for all the families which were submerged in APG III but originally had articles on them and also have replacement subfamilies in Chase, Reveal & Fay (2009). The reason is that we don't usually display subfamilies in taxoboxes, but I'm proposing that we do so for these ones. The automatic taxobox mechanism makes it easy to switch the display on or off across all relevant articles by changing one parameter in Template:Taxonomy/SUBFAMILYNAME. It would also make it easy to switch back to families if the large APG III families got split up again. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:56, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I was trying to add genus_authority. I'm staying out of the APG arguments because there's plenty of other work for me to do, and because I very much expect that a lot of changes to those names and classifications will come in the next few years, except that I do want subfamilies in Rosaceae to be included in some way, ideally making it clear that there have been different classifications at different types (so people don't keep correcting what they see here with what they find in an old but authoritative book). Nadiatalent (talk) 11:41, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

I've argued for some kind of indication in taxoboxes of the classification system being used, which would perhaps prevent this kind of 'correction', but more importantly would make it clear that a classification is not an objective reality but a point of view. However, I haven't found much support. Peter coxhead (talk) 19:19, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

So far, I'm mostly adding citations for synonym lists, hoping eventually to have a body of pages with that information. I fear that you'll have to wrestle with too many people who can't accept that the latest paper isn't necessarily an improvement on earlier work, including people who have no idea of what scientific endeavour is about. Sorry that I'm not up to entering the fray with a lot of energy. Nadiatalent (talk) 11:46, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Well done

Peter Coxhead has earned a plusbox for doing something witty, brilliant, or otherwise noticable. Thanks for your recent contributions. WOOOOOOOO. Andy4789 (talk) 20:31, 7 May 2011 (UTC) Nice! Amazing what spaces do... thanks for fixing that! Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 19:18, 9 May 2011 (UTC) By the way-- be sure and document any and all changes to the taxobox template family on the appropriate talk pages. That way we're not "working under the covers", so to speak. People don't really like the invisibility so much on Wikipedia as they do in the real world-- instead, they consider it "creeping around". The way we've been doing this is by creating a section dedicated to logging edits at the top of the talk page for the template. If you make an edit to an upper-level template, use your best judgment in deciding which talk page to log it on. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 23:36, 9 May 2011 (UTC) Sure. I do want to implement |taxon= as an alternative parameter to |genus= and |species= in {{Speciesbox}}. I think my version of the template works correctly, though it's not easy to test – it's the interaction with the page name which has been slightly wrong, and you can only test this on pages whose title is the species name, which rules out special test pages. I suspect the decision (?Martin's) to allow taxon details to be omitted and then picked up from the page name, although apparently helpful to users, may actually be a mistake, in terms of the complexity of coding which results. Looking at the code, {{Subspeciesbox}} doesn't allow this (although the genus and species could be found from the page title) – however the documentation currently doesn't explain this difference. Peter coxhead (talk) 06:18, 10 May 2011 (UTC) Sounds reasonable. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 14:38, 10 May 2011 (UTC) Evaluating the templates Actually, if we discuss it on the actual pages, we are more likely to get input from other minds. Have a look at Template talk:Automatic taxobox/Archive 8#Speed and scalability-- I've detailed the methods I've used for evaluating the speed. Martin knows of a way to see how much memory is being used during the code expansion, but I don't remember what that was. And I just graduated from computer science with a CIS minor myself. I believe Martin's another CS student (graduate?). I'm not sure about him, but I got sucked into this whole spiel when I first heard he was working on it back in the summer-- it's very exciting to work on and see what we can do with this wikisyntax which was never intended for actual programming! Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 18:11, 13 May 2011 (UTC) Thanks for the link. Ok, I'll stick to the talk page of the template. However, I'm concerned that people only interested in using the templates may avoid the talk page if it looks too technical. I left a note on Martin's talk page drawing his attention to my query about speed, but he doesn't seem to be around at present. You'll have to excuse me if I now go into teaching mode. On the subject of wikisyntax and programming – this is the kind of excitement I used to lecture against when I taught software engineering (and I hope you were taught the same!). Yes, it's exciting to find that something designed for one purpose can be used for another, but in any engineering discipline, the best quality product comes from using the best (i.e. most appropriate) tools (aka don't use sledgehammers to crack nuts). The wikimedia expression language is definitely not a good tool to use in writing programs. I've suggested a couple of MSc projects at my institution which might help if anyone is willing to take them on ([1]). Peter coxhead (talk) 18:30, 13 May 2011 (UTC) But when it all boils down, a dime is a much handier screwdriver, and a paper clip is wonderful for retrieving a CD from a powered-down computer. On Wikipedia, we work with whatever syntax is available. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 04:58, 23 May 2011 (UTC) James & Pourtless (2009) Hallo, Peter coxhead! While reading the cladistics article I happened upon the phrase "It has been argued that this kind of reasoning has been used by proponents of the view that birds are nested within the theropod dinosaur clade" with a reference to James, Frances C. & Pourtless IV, John A. (2009), Cladistics and the Origin of Birds: A Review and Two New Analyses, Ornithological Monographs, No. 66, American Ornithologists' Union. I understand that this article might be useful to source certain valid general criticisms of cladistics. However, its particular criticism of the "dinosaur hypothesis" of bird origins or the methods underlying it, should, I think, not be mentioned as it would give undue weight to what is an extreme minority position regarding both. As far as the hypothesis itself is concerned: the majority of palaeontologists, whether they prefer phylogenetic nomenclature or Linnaean taxonomy, support it. But also the claim by James & Pourtless (2009) that homology had been assumed because of some confirmation bias is a very marginal position, in fact even one they themselves do not really defend. To the contrary, as reading the article makes abundantly clear: the proponents of the dinosaur hypothesis are accused of interpreting identical traits as homologies! James and Pourtless then systematically question each homology merely because it would support the hypothesis — and thus commit the very sin they perceive in others... Greetings, --MWAK (talk) 16:27, 22 May 2011 (UTC) There seem to be two points here. James & Portless's views on the evolution of birds Using their paper to support the possible circularity of character-based cladistics approaches. I would entirely agree, from my relatively limited knowledge of the field, that it would be undue weight to emphasize (1). They clearly hold a minority view. This isn't what their article is used for. As for (2), James & Pourtless may well be wrong in their conclusions about the evolution of birds. They are not wrong in questioning whether making prior decisions as to which characters are sympleisomorphic begs the question the cladistic analysis is trying to answer. The fact that they commit the very sin they question in others surely only reinforces the point? However, I would be happy for a better example to be used if one can be found which is as accessible as the dinosaurs/birds example. (An example which is, in my view, much less accessible although supportable relates to the early evolution of land plants, where initially purely character-based cladistic approaches suggested conclusions which molecular evidence later showed could not be correct. The error lay in the assumption that isomorphic alternation of generations was a pleisomorphy, so that both gametophyte dominance in "bryophytes" and sporophyte dominance in tracheophytes represented apomorphies. Cladistic character-based analysis of extinct land plants, as in Kenrick & Crane 1997, now uses molecular evidence from extant groups to define the outgroups and thus the ancestral characters/pleisomorphies. But this would take too long to explain and isn't of interest to most readers, unlike dinosaurs/birds.) Peter coxhead (talk) 20:41, 22 May 2011 (UTC) I agree that the dinosaur-bird example is very appealing to a general public. But should not this example be only presented if there would be some minimal acknowledgement outside of the narrow circle endorsing their minority view that James & Pourtless might at least be possibly correct in their assessment? E.g., in geology there is a comparable circularity problem in that the identity of the guide fossils used to determine the identical age of strata is in danger of being presumed because we already assume the layers to be of the same age. Would it be correct to give an example of this problem by stating "It has been argued that this induced geologists to assume the Earth is more than 10,000 years old" while referring to a creationist paper? If it should be doubted that James & Pourtless have stooped to comparable levels of pseudoscience, allow me to point out in some detail why their paper is flawed. Before the famous Chinese discoveries of feathered dinosaurs were made, the authors unproblematically accepted that creatures like Velociraptor and Troodon were indeed dinosaurs, that their traits were obviously homologous to identical traits in other dinosaurs — and that there was a false homology with the only seemingly identical traits in birds. When the discovery of the feathers made the authors feel that their previous position was untenable they suddenly unproblematically assumed that creatures like Velociraptor and Troodon were birds, that their traits were obviously homologous to identical traits in other birds — and that there was a false homology with the only seemingly identical traits in dinosaurs. This remarkable volte-face was made without the slightest attempt to empirically test the homology. Far from being particularly biased or naive, mainstream palaeontologists to the contrary have taken the problem very seriously and continuous research has resulted in a growing body of evidence, either supporting the homology or, in the case of the famous "digit homology problem" bringing forth a whole new line of investigation into what we exactly mean with the concept. In view of this situation, citing James & Pourtless as if they might have a point, will raise quite a few palaeontological eyebrows! For a more humorous illustration of how the paper in question is regarded in mainstream circles ;o), see the fifth image in this blog by Naish: http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2011/05/no_necks_for_sex_in_sauropods.php#more Greetings, --MWAK (talk) 07:03, 23 May 2011 (UTC) Ok, so given that you agree that there are "certain valid general criticisms of cladistics", one of which is that there can be (but of course equally may not be) some circularity in deciding what traits are pleisomorphies, and accepting that the James & Pourtless paper isn't a good one to cite to support this view, can you suggest a source that is? As I noted above, I'm very happy to change the source, but not to see the point removed. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:11, 23 May 2011 (UTC) Well, we could keep the point together with the source — and only remove the reference to the bird-dinosaur issue...--MWAK (talk) 18:23, 24 May 2011 (UTC) This is perhaps the quickest solution: will you make the change? Peter coxhead (talk) 09:56, 25 May 2011 (UTC) I will :o).--MWAK (talk) 13:50, 26 May 2011 (UTC) Unofficial barnstar           Hello Peter coxhead! In appreciation for your attention to detail, and steadfastness in trying to tackle categorization in an ocean of plant articles, here is a sort of unofficial barnstar (as I'm not sure if only admins are supposed to give 'official' ones). This creature is a very robust ochre sea star (Pisaster ochraceus). It may look simple at just a glance, but when seen up close, it is complex and intricate. Hamamelis (talk) 06:33, 24 May 2011 (UTC) Thanks, this is much appreciated; I was coming to the conclusion that I may be wasting my time on this topic, but perhaps not... Peter coxhead (talk) 07:19, 24 May 2011 (UTC) Autopatroller Hi Peter coxhead, just wanted to let you know that I have added the autopatrolled right to your account, as you have created numerous, valid articles. This feature should have little to no effect on your editing, and is simply intended to reduce the workload on new page patrollers. For more information on the patroller right, see Wikipedia:Autopatrolled. Feel free to leave me a message if you have any questions. Happy editing! Sadads (talk) 20:42, 29 May 2011 (UTC) Hey, since you are obviously one of our more trusted contributers, I am wondering whether you would be interested in supporting New Page Patrollers by helping us patrol articles in the backlog of Special:NewPages. Thank you for being a great content contributer and happy editing! Sadads (talk) 20:42, 29 May 2011 (UTC) It's very nice to learn that my efforts to create good new pages have been endorsed to this extent. As for page patrolling, at present I'm more interested in creating new content in the area covered by WP:PLANTS. Further, I'm very unsympathetic to Wikipedia's containing so much material on living people and current (and hence transient) popular culture, most of which would not be considered suitable in a traditional encyclopedia. Simply removing almost all such added pages would be my solution, which I guess would make me an undesirable page patroller! Peter coxhead (talk) 07:25, 30 May 2011 (UTC) No problem, glad to see that you have your niche, keep up the good work! Sadads (talk) 13:51, 30 May 2011 (UTC) Though thinking about the proportion of living people and current popular culture, you might actually be impressed at what percentage of the new articles are not about that. An amazing number of the articles I have been reviewing lately are about geographic locations or historical biographies, Sadads (talk) 14:05, 30 May 2011 (UTC) Where to post In general, if something affects all the taxoboxes, Template talk:Taxobox is the place to put it (since {{automatic taxobox}} and the rest of the automated family are simply specialized variants of it), with a notice at WT:TOL directing people to that topic. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 18:00, 2 June 2011 (UTC) I see no need to confuse the user by linking to an article with a different title. "Scientific name" is good enough. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 18:12, 2 June 2011 (UTC) Yeah, the community here makes it really hard to move forward with change for the better, but I've been harassed quite extensively for not requesting consensus before. I'd hate to see it happen to you, too. Requesting consensus is the least we can do to avoid a fight. Bob the WikipediaN (talk • contribs) 18:27, 2 June 2011 (UTC) /* Quamash vs. camas */ I responded to your concern here. Murderbike (talk) 03:01, 8 June 2011 (UTC) Specific name Nice job! I just converted the redir to a disambig page. Just two points, A.) we need to see the "what links here" link to change anything that links specifically to zoology or botany (which isn't such a big concern since I blinked and you made Specific name (botany). B.) for some reason the talk page for the new disambig still looks like the original one for "Specific name" - how did that happen if it was moved? Do we preserve it, delete it? I'm not sure. Hamamelis (talk) 10:29, 8 June 2011 (UTC) Epithet Hi Peter, I noticed you are not including changing "name" to "epithet" in your dab edits to zoological articles. I realize that International Code of Zoological Nomenclature on Wikipedia mentions 'epithet' nowhere, but I did some searching on the web, and it appears that the term is used in zoology as well, for both the specific and subspecific. Are they synonymous with each other in zoology? If so, I'll stop adding it on my edits to save some time! Thanks, Hamamelis (talk) 11:32, 10 June 2011 (UTC) Sadly my information about the zoological code comes from International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (so as it's in Wikipedia it must be right – how many times have I told students not to use Wikipedia as primary reference!). I believe that in zoology you can say either 'name' or 'epithet', whereas in botany you can only correctly say 'epithet'. All I would say is that there are a very large number of articles on dinosaurs, which seem very detailed and well-referenced, and they all say "specific name" and then talk about the epithet, not the binomen. So I've left them alone. (Reading and trying to make sense of the ICBN is quite enough for me, I'm not going to start on the ICZN!) Peter coxhead (talk) 15:11, 10 June 2011 (UTC) Btw, I may not have internet access for the next couple of days as I'm travelling, but won't forget the long list of articles awaiting us... Peter coxhead (talk) 15:14, 10 June 2011 (UTC) No problem, Peter. I think I'll do it for now the way you've been at it, and not bother with changing zoological dabs to epithet. Maybe later... It reminds me of the tasks pyramid, where one can continue to find problems, and continuously add them to the 'to do' list, until you have erected a virtual pyramid of priorities. Wikipedia's great for that! Hope you are on holiday, and whether or not, hope it is enjoyable for you. See you later. Thanks, Hamamelis (talk) 05:40, 11 June 2011 (UTC) The Specific name disambiguation project ... ... is now complete. zzzzzzzzzzzz Hamamelis (talk) 20:13, 11 June 2011 (UTC) You have been exceedingly busy! Fantastic job! Actually, by going back to Specific name and looking at "what links here" I found about another 20 that need fixing (i.e. are not in "Talk:", "User:" or "Wikipedia:" space). If I haven't done them yet, they will be listed at User:Peter coxhead/Work page. Some were where unnecessary second wikilinks existed on the page; I just removed the link. Some were where the link to covered both zoology and botany (e.g. "specific name or epithet"); on reflection, I've changed these to something like the second part of a [[binomial name]] to avoid ever linking to the dab page (e.g. Problematica). Others are just odds and ends. Peter coxhead (talk) 23:12, 11 June 2011 (UTC) Hi Peter, some of those last twenty I did just leave alone, where I thought the context was already ambiguous, and so should just point to the disambig. page. Others I wasn't sure (protists, for example), and others I just missed. Two had been added within a short time of my "completion", and so weren't on the original list.    Glad to see you found a way to rewrite around some of them, either to link to both animal and plant related articles, or prevent pointing to the dab link - I could have done that with some of them, but was so sleepy at that point.    One thing to keep in mind is that, hence forward, some editors will still be adding to the list. Only, now it is quite manageable, and we can check "what links here" from time to time and correct the new ones as they arise. To the extent that it is not any longer 'huge' (and should remain so), boy, am I glad! Thanks, Hamamelis (talk) 17:48, 13 June 2011 (UTC) After speaking with User:Squidonius, apparently in bacteriological articles the link should point to "specific name (botany)". It has also been semi-confirmed to me at this page (International Code of Nomenclature of Bacteria). And since protista includes algae, then I think those should point to the same. I have just edited those few pages from "what links here" to reflect this. Hamamelis (talk) 22:11, 13 June 2011 (UTC) Ok, so when in doubt, point to the botany version seems to be the rule! The only one you'd missed, I think, was Pfiesteria piscicida. Now the task is to try to sort out the articles on botanical nomenclature, so that there is a page "specific name (botany)" to link to (or perhaps a section of an article). At the moment I'm just trying to understand what articles there are and how they interconnect. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:48, 13 June 2011 (UTC) Oops, good catch! :) Hamamelis (talk) 23:43, 13 June 2011 (UTC) I'd say that there ought to be an article in its own right at Specific name (botany), rather than a section of another article, least of all because of the disambguation requirements and parallel article for zoological specific names. --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:01, 14 June 2011 (UTC) I incline to agree. The problem at present is that, as noted above, there is a confusing jumble of articles on biological nomenclature, some of which were clearly written by editors who don't understand the differences between the two Codes (or even that there are differences). I'm trying to understand and sort out some of these. If no-one else does (be my guest!), I'll start an article "Specific name (botany)". I think that there could usefully be three articles: Binomial nomenclature, which is really "Specific name (general biology)", and is a relatively non-technical introduction to the general topic, and as far as possible, Code-neutral, while of course acknowledging that there are differences. The current title may not be the right one. I think that quite a bit of the stuff at the end of the article should go and should be in the other two articles. I see this as the place that non-biologists, school students, etc. would start. Specific name (zoology) which, now that the botanical stuff has been removed, I'm happy to leave to the zoologists. Specific name (botany) which is to be written. But I don't want to pre-judge the issue of an ultimate merge after discussion; previous threads suggest that editors are quite divided about whether one long article or several short articles are best. You and I have both disagreed with User:Ettrig in the past about merging pages, but he got support from others. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:03, 14 June 2011 (UTC) Binomial nomenclature You and Hamamelis are doing a great job, and I've generally intended to stay out of it until you seemed to have finished, but made that one edit that you responded to because I thought it was uncontroversial, oops! What a mess! I'll stay out of things for a while, I don't have time at present to think about these things in sufficient depth. Please revert my edit if you like, I was about to do so in response to your comments, but then noticed that there is also a page Linnaean taxonomy. Perhaps a pointer to that on the Binomial nomenclature page could be helpful to make clear that Linnaeus' classes and orders aren't part of binomial nomenclature. Nadiatalent (talk) 01:45, 13 June 2011 (UTC) Your edit is correct for how the page should be, and how I hope it will be, i.e. an article only about the binomial part of Linnaean nomenclature, so I think it should be left. "Linnaean nomenclature" and "Linnaean classification" are both redirects to Linnaean taxonomy, but although classification is roughly the same as taxonomy, nomenclature is not: Linnaeus could have come up with a different system of nomenclature for the same classification/taxonomy (e.g., as I think the original of your edit was trying to say, it could have been the rule that a species is named as Family-name Genus-name species-epithet rather than just Genus-name species-epithet). Wikipedia articles on this subject are just such a mess, it's hard to know where to begin! Peter coxhead (talk) 10:08, 13 June 2011 (UTC) Asparagales and Amaryllidaceae Hi Peter! I am very sorry for delaying in answering your commentary. In fact, I revised Amaryllidaceae in the spanish wikipedia in order to conform APG III and also I placed Alliaceae and Agapanthaceae as subfamilies of it. All of them are GA, and for this reason I wanted to chage them first of all. I also changed Alstroemeriaceae to conform APG III and I am still working on Asparagaceae (a lot of work!! :-) I do not edit Asparagales yet because I want to change the families first. Hope I respond your question! Regards! --EnCASF (talk) 21:40, 3 July 2011 (UTC)