User talk:AshLin/Good Articles

This page records the progress made in improving the Indian Papilionid knowledge base on Wikipedia by the team of Shyamal, Viren and me.

Initiation

I was accepted into the project by Shyamal and Viren on 28 Mar 06. At that point, the list of species for all families were up but were incomplete and needed taxonomic review. Stubs were few, articles were fewer, and, those with images and decent amount of text were fewest of all.

The team swings into action

We realised with our common interests that we form a good team, so we got together and began coordinated work. Since then we have slogged hard and systematically and done quite a bit of work:-

• Family checklists are under preparation ( see next section for details). As soon as a family checklist is up, we carry out a taxonomic review (using LEPINDEX)and create all the stubs.
• Article writing goes on slowly but steadily. We have managed to put a fair amount of text into the articles. Our list of resources is growing and we are confident of making a 'sea change' to the wikibase on Indian butterflies by having a good article for every common butterfly within a year's time ie Mar 2007 and partly filled stubs for most of the other species.
• The standard of our completed articles is quite good and we have set for ourselves the highest standards of article writing.
• We have recieved encouragement from image donors and the initial trickle has turned into a veritable flood. We have uploaded close to a hundred images on butterflies to Wikimedia Commons. We have more than three hundred images in pipeline but the writing needs to catch up.
• We were present at the beginning of WikiProject Arthropods and are now proposing to make one/two WikiProjects - Indian butterflies/Papilionoidea/Lepidoptera. Which one(s) we are yet to decide. We have done a fair bit of spadework on the process, standards, etc.
• We have cleaned up the categorisation of most of the artoiiicles on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.
• Our search for public domain resources has led us to unearth Bingham's Fauna of British India (Butterflies) Vols 1 and 2. See a beautiful image gallery created from this public domain source at [1].
• We are formalising our overall strategy for the Indian Butterfly Wikibase endeavour and then will move into a high gear phase of activity - wellplanned, multi-faced,pro-active and giving dividends to the community.

Filling in species pages

The species list and stubs for the following families have been made :-

• Family Papilionidae.
• Family Riodinidae.
• Family Pieridae.
• Subfamily Charaxinae and Danainae of Family Nymphalidae.

The species list of the following Families are under preparation :-

• Family Nymphalidae (less Danaids and Charaxines).
• Family Lycaenidae.
• Family Hesperiidae.

Other animal articles I have worked on

• Butterfly.
• Insect flight.
• Mimic.
• Difference between a butterfly and a moth.

Other Indian Animal Species

I have also added information and images on the following other species:-

• Saw-scaled viper Echis carinatus.
• Red Sand Boa Eryx johnii.
• Red Fox.
• Nilgai Boselaphus tragocamelus.
• Indian Desert Jird Meriones hurrianae.

Indian Plant Species

• Bael (plant), Aegle marmelos