User talk:BarnaclePete

Tephrocybe palustris

Pete -- First of all, welcome to editing Wikipedia and joining WikiProject Fungi. Great start on Tephrocybe palustris! I made some changes, but mostly just to conform to Wikipedia convention (no image galleries, bolding common names, favoring paragraph prose over lists, adding wiki links where appropriate, etc). Over at Wikimedia Commons, I put all the Tephrocybe palustris images into their own category and added an external link to the Wikipedia article. Let me know if you have any questions, I've been editing Wikipedia off and on for a while now. I've seen your posts over at MushroomObserver; it's always great to have crossover between sites like that and Wikipedia. Good job! -- BlueCanoe (talk) 17:44, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

BlueCanoe -- Thanks for the help and encouragement. I've only played with one article, but it's already getting addictive :) 18:26, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(In reply to your message)- Hey, not a problem, a new fungi editor is always a welcome addition! The article's already shaping up nicely- you've got down a lot of the key stuff. It'd be nice if we could get this onto did you know on the main page- it's not that far from the level needed! A few things you'll need to do, if you're interested-

First of all, it'll need a little more expansion. There's no mention of where in the world it is found apart from in the categories, and this is obviously important information. A taxonomy section would also be a nice- a lot of the information is already there, but could be converted to prose (I don't know how familiar you are with taxonomy- it was all new to me when I started writing mycological articles!) The lead section (that is, the bit before the sections) should summarise the information provided in the other sections.
Secondly, you need to make sure everything's referenced. Where are you getting the info from? A guidebook? Tell us! I'm happy to help with the formatting if necessary.
Thirdly, make sure you're not copying or closely paraphrasing any of the sources you use- Wikipedia, as a rule, takes copyright very seriously. Information can't be copyrighted, but wording can be!

I'm happy to help with any of these things if you like. We also have a lot of high-quality fungi articles on Wikipedia with which you can compare. Just as a "for instance" of what a decent article looks like is Inocybe maculata- that's one I wrote on a rather minor species. Don't worry about getting the article to that sort of length, and I appreciate that the list of references could look a little off-putting, but that will hopefully give you an idea of the sort of information and formatting appropriate to this sort of article. Again- if there's anything you want help with, feel free to drop me a line on my talk page. J Milburn (talk) 23:47, 17 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is probably the fact that the image has to competete with the taxobox and mycomorphbox. You can place an image on the left (sandwiching the text between the image and the boxes) by using this syntax:

[[File:Imagename.ext|thumb|left|Caption.....]]

That code should be sufficient for most images, but there's all sorts of weird stuff you can do. Alternatively, you could put another image in the taxobox; that's sometimes more appropriate. For an example of an article with that, take a look at Mycena leaiana. J Milburn (talk) 21:04, 18 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

G'day and welcome. I am another fungi enthusiast, though from Oz. I often tinker other folks' contributions. One way to check is to look at the page hsitory and the edit summaries to get an idea of what I've done, like this. Anyway, that was only the first thing I saw. Will have a think about what else to do. By the way, check out the front page of wikipedia tomorrow (monday...) Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:26, 22 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]