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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Enrique Peña

This is a nice little article! Have you thought of putting it up for the Did you know? section of the front page? -- Samir 07:13, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Rating

The article ratings are actually something that authors can themselves evaluate. Having looked at Blyth article and knowing the material on him around I could comfortably put that at B, the highest one can put before going to WP:GA and thence to WP:FAC. The other two are a bit beyond me, but if you think you have covered most of the published biographical material, I think it should be easily placed at B class. Perhaps you should ask others at Wikipedia:WikiProject_History_of_Science to look at style and formatting matters. Might also be just in time for some coverage on Darwin day. Shyamal (talk) 15:26, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Have gone ahead and placed an alert Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_History_of_Science#Article_cluster here. Shyamal (talk) 15:37, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Huxley family

Thank you for noticing my changes to the Huxley family. I've responded on that talkpage. BrainyBabe (talk) 16:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Henry Beasley - Thank you for the information

I am most interested as I am his only surviving grandchild. Altheamo (talk) 22:57, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

He was an interesting person who lived an interesting life. That makes it easy for the biographer. Macdonald-ross (talk)

DYK for Moisés Simons

Updated DYK query On February 10, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Moisés Simons, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Dravecky (talk) 10:09, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Keep up the good work!

The Editor's Barnstar
The Barnstar is awarded to Macdonald-ross, in recognition of many excellent contributions to the biographies of gentlemen of science, naturalists, and related species.--ragesoss (talk) 18:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Huxley family tree

I've been doing some playing around at User:Erp/Sandbox Family Tree fiddling --Erp (talk) 02:29, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Modified the last to make it a bit more compact. I wonder whether Julia Arnold should have her own article. She gets a significant subsection within her husband's DNB article.--Erp (talk) 21:21, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Julian Huxley

Many thanks for your suggestions. I have adopted both and - hopefully - clarified the wording of the paragraph.

The strength of this quote is that it provides a good summary of how Huxley saw his eugenicist views being applied to public health policy. This section required a little rebalancing, as I suspect that one or two editors were inclined to too rapidly justify Huxley on this issue. These views have to be taken as part of the whole thought of this otherwise prodigious author. Orthorhombic (talk) 14:52, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Cuban folk music

Hello.

Can you provide me a link to a sub-article of Cuban folk music for this template?: Template:Traditional music

  • subarticle or section (#Folk music) or
  • article of Cuban folk music

I will cover all the countries. Thank you very much. --Opus88888 (talk) 17:09, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

I replied on your talk page. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:52, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Trying to optimize article of Cuban folk music. --Opus88888 (talk) 02:55, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Could you have a look at On the Origin of Species?

There has been a concerted effort going on to get the article On the Origin of Species through the FA process in time to have it featured on the main page on November 24, the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first edition. We have managed to get it to GA, and I would like to try it at FAC sometime in early June. I would appreciate it if you could give it a good look over in the next couple of weeks and note any deficiencies or suggestions for improvement on the talk page. Thanks. Rusty Cashman (talk) 00:33, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

It has been nominated for FA at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/On the Origin of Species/archive1. Your participation in the FAC process would be welcome. Rusty Cashman (talk) 06:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Thomas Henry Huxley

Thanks for correcting the reference formatting. Gareth Jones (talk) 21:19, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Mr Babalú

Hello, MacD. nice to meet you. Really, I don´t Know why you reverted my edition on Miguelito Valdés. Certainlly, he was knowed as Mr babalú, because of one of his most famous performances, the song Babalú writen by M. Lecuona.

Thanks for your time--Juan Quisqueyano 19:21, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your coments and thanks for your corrections in the introductory para. So long--Juan Quisqueyano 15:03, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

thank you

Thanks for removing distopian from the Malthus Article. Back in the 60s when I studied Economics the argument over whether the social sciences could be considered real science was common. Economics was/is the hardest of the soft sciences. And keeping Malthus more in descriptive rather than philosophic is what I was trying for ( and what your edit has achieved). Nitpyck (talk) 21:04, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

I'll re-read Malthus (been awhile)and see what I can do about the section you mentioned.Nitpyck (talk) 22:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Re:Maupertius

The references are in other Wiki-projects: fr, de, nl ... but, do not worry, the 'fixed' has been undone. Best regards. --Bonás (talk) 22:32, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Hello

Hi there, I notice you've made some additions and changes to some of the articles I've been working on. Would I be right in thinking you could be an ally in my plan to improve the range of Wikipedia articles relating to dance in the UK? I did start by either starting or heavily editing articles about the RAD, ISTD and IDTA, but I notice that most dance related articles are written from a very American point of view. Hope I can call on you for assistance some time and being as you are the more experienced editor, perhaps you can look over some of my work and give me your opinion. Cheers Crazy-dancing (talk) 17:52, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I've turned to this in frustration at the present state of articles on dance. In ballroom dance the main lacks are:
  1. lack of individual biographies
  2. lack of complete coverage of dance organisations
  3. lack of lists of competition winners other than International Dancesport
  4. too much US-slant (in all areas), balance needed!
  5. while there are plenty of people interested in music, there seem to be few working on dance. If one looks up Le Sacre du Printemps, for example, one finds it is almost entirely about Stravinsky's music, not the dance aspects of the ballet.
Good reference sources hard to find. I was able to do a great deal on Cuban music because the Cubans published histories, biographies and reference works. To be WP-proof, an article must be supported by reliable refs, and sometimes they are simply not available. If only there was an encyclopedia of ballroom dance...
I'm currently working on the beginnings of latin american dances in England, and the people involved. In general, I tend to prefer histories, and biographies of noteworthy people from the past. Macdonald-ross (talk) 18:15, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely agree about the lack of coverage on dance organisations. Until I got started, there was literally a paragraph each on the IDTA and ISTD and that was pretty much it. I created an article on BATD, but I need to look at it again and do a complete re-write now I'm more experienced with Wikipedia. But yes, the dance societies are my main focus right now, although I'm a theatre bracher, so my knowledge of ballroom is limited. The ones I want to focus on the most are:

  • ISTD, expanding and general tidying, will add infobox in the next few days
  • IDTA, need to get references put in and general tidying
  • RAD, is more or less okay, but now needs lots of references adding
  • BBO, needs major expanding as is only a paragraph at the moment
  • BATD, I created the article, but it needs completely revising
  • NATD, no article yet
  • UKA, no article yet

Crazy-dancing (talk) 19:06, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Prima Ballerina Assoluta

Had to have a snigger at your comment on the ballerina talk page. I'm very guilty of sticking stuff in on Wikipedia without properly sourcing things, but I always expect people to challenge it. Some people however, will feel very much nose-out-of-joint with your words of wisdom. The issue of Prima Ballerinas is a funny one for Wikipedia I think, as very few companies have any real convention in place for using the title.

For example, the Royal Ballet stopped using the title Prima Ballerina back in the 1960s, yet Darcey Bussell was 'unversally' recognised as the companys prima ballerina, a title which has now UNofficially passed down to Alina Cojacaru. In fact, very few companys still single out a specific prima ballerina, yet far to many ballet articles are being written attributing the title to all manner of random ballerinas. As I have always understood it, the term prima ballerina was traditionally used to refer only to the lead ballerina of a company at any one time and that the title Prima Ballerina Assoluta was only given by Imperial decree or appointment to a dancer of exceptional and international reputation.

Im the case of Markova, it's annoying me that I can't find any reliable web based sources that give information about her. I had the pleasure of being taught by her three times at the Yorkshire Ballet Seminars at Ilkley, a thoroughly brilliant woman whose legacy it seems has been laregely forgotten due to the British love affair with Margot Fonteyn. Having said that, I do know that her receiving the title Prima Ballerina Assoluta is dealt with in her official biography 'Markova: The Legends' by Maurice Leonard. (I happen to have an autographed copy sat with me as we speak, my most treasured possession.)

I did have to laugh at the person who put forwad that one potential source as evidence, a source that is complete and utter nonsense in many respects. There is no definitive description of, or history relating to the title and so trying to say there is one specific way of defining what is a Prima Ballerina or Prima Ballerina Assoluta is, is just futile. Crazy-dancing (talk) 20:00, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

What does Leonard actually say about Markova and pba? Of course, without doubt she was well worth pba, and the Royal Ballet should have arranged for the Queen to give assent at the same time they arranged Fonteyn's pba. Web's a poor place to look for confirmation of facts, though; they all copy each other, and references to reliable sources are notable for their absence. I think there's a distinct difference from merely being the senior or best-rewarded ballerina in a compamy, and being pba, which implies, I would say, having a signal and possibly historic effect on the dance. (That's not very precise, I know!) See my addition to Virginia Zucchi for another pba-standard dancer, who was rejected by the Tzar because of her love-life (Fonteyn was lucky that her youth was forgotten...).
I note that Clarke & Crisp say of Maya Plisetskaya: "Unchallenged prima ballerina assoluta of the Moscow Ballet" (p186). That still leaves open the question of whether it is the authors themselves who made the decision... Natalia Makarova is another whose merits would have justified pba. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:22, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
The book does match up to an edit made on here saying that she was appointed by George VI in 1933, but it is almost a passing comment. This would have been after she was a founder dancer with the Rambert Company and immediately after de Valois made her Prima Ballerina of the then Vic-Wells Ballet. Of course, I agree with one particular statement of Leonards... "Alica Markova is the history of British ballet personified." I'm quite pleased actually that Fonteyn was made pba of the Royal Ballet really, after all, she spent her whole career with them. Markova was the original 'guest star' ballerina so tying her name to one company would have been difficult. I think the list of companies she danced with or helped establish, must still be unsurpassed even by todays standards.
Unfortunately, this is where things get eggy, it's very difficult to seperate those dancers who 'should' have been made pba, and those who were. This is where Imperial appointment makes life easier, whether it's by a Tzar in Russia, the King or Queen of England or any other head of state, there is some record somewhere of it taking place, officially. Yesterday I was reading the Times obituary of Eva Evdokimova. They title her as a pba, however there's no other mention about where the title came from and reading between the lines, it would seem that she received the title from Kenneth MacMillan who was Artistic Director of the Deutshe Oper Ballet at the time. So yes, I agree, in some resepcts there have to be many dancers who have been referred to as pba without necessarily being granted the title officially.
As for the shoulds, I think I'm going to petition the French government to make Sylvie Guillem a pba, she is without a doubt the epitomy of a modern ballerina, which is strange when you think she was the protegee of Nureyev who is as old school as you can possibly get with ballet.

Alicia Markova

I have reworded the lead paragraph again to assert the title of Prima Ballerina Assoluta and also added more supporting evidence. I hope you will agree that this is acceptable, given my choice of words and the consensus of opinion in the articles given. Although for me, the most important article there is the one from English National Ballet, because as the company she founded, they recognise her as Prima Ballerina Assoluta, which in my opinion is sufficient evidence on its own to support her claim to the title, as the PBA of English NAtional Ballet itsself. Crazy-dancing (talk) 12:06, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, not convinced, see Markova's talk page.
Hello, Macdonald-ross. You have new messages at Robertgreer's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Your opinion probably needed

Another thing I thought you might like to take a look at is the ongoing debate about whether or not Undine (ballet) should be merged into Ondine (Ashton). I know this led to something of an edit war a while back, but there still seems to be some ill-feeling about it. Personally, as the music was composed specifically for the ballet, I think it should be dealt with in an article about the whole production on the Ondine page, rather than as a seperate entity. Your opinion would be very welcome. Crazy-dancing (talk) 14:00, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Karyotype

I recieved your message. I made a mistake (I'm using Lupin's tools to remove vandalism ) I reverted your page in error. I appologize as it was DEFINETLY not needed. Naluboutes, Nalubotes Aeria gloris, Aeria gloris11:45, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Ballroom Dance

Yes definitely agree on the North America part. As someone in the U.S. I totally understand some of the edits and realize these were well meaning...and it's human nature (or rather, ugly American nature :) ) to think that whatever goes on locally is also applicable to the rest of the world. In any case, for a high-importance article the content is really quite skimpy...I was staring at it for a good 10 min last night thinking of all the stuff that should be added, and there's so much material missing it's almost paralyzing to edit. On the other hand one also want to avoid making it too dancesport-centric, as ballroom dance does can be practiced different ways depending on locality + whether one's a social dance/competitor...I was thinking of possibly sectioning the article to address the idiosyncracies of each region (e.g. pro-am in US, new vogue down under, etc), plus breaking out dancesport-specific stuff into a major section, so major competitions, age categories etc can be explained as well with proper cites to idsf etc without making ballroom dance = dancesport as it is not. No matter what, the more editors involved def the easier in this case. Tendancer (talk) 19:11, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

Dimitri Petrides and Nina Hunt

Wow! I had such a hard time last time round - i was only twelve... - but it is so nice to find someone who has actually heard of let alone met Nina and Dimitri. I was wondering what were your sources(how did you know that Dimitri's father died when he was eighteen for example). I think that he also came to England with his sister who he fell out with and lost contact with... When I first made the article my dad was keen that I did not mention his marriage to Gwenethe, why I am unsure but just thought I should let you know. I was under the impression that his book was always called "The Latin American Technique" (I think that my dad has one of the 1949 copies with this title). I was not sure that Nina did have a hand in setting up the All England with Sidney and Dimitri. Also, I think that Dimitri came to England via Italy (hence the Italian) and did not arrive until the mid 1930's. He also worked with the Anti Aircraft guns in London for a short time in the war. I am keen to upload a few pictures of them but am uncertain how to go about this. We have a really nice one of them demonstrating with Victor Silvestre and I have found another good one of Gwenethe and Dimitri, (again with VS).

All of this is one side of my herritage I would love to be more in touch with. Dimitri died when Dad was still at university and Nina died not long after my first birthday. The only dancing I know is a brief waltz routine Bobbie Irvine taught me a Barbara Macoll's fourtieth birthday party. I hope you do not mind me asking but who exactly are you as you seem to have such interst and knowledge in dancing (you have Frank and Peggy's book) and met my grandma, a privilage I never had.

Dleep2 (talk) 23:29, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks: I'll reply on your talk page. Macdonald-ross (talk) 11:43, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Culbertson

  • I've uploaded a picture and also diagramed the page so it looks a bit better. There seems to be some missing info that you could pick up here. In case you want to make a change on my move, go ahead !
  • The article is getting better. I just wish the others had a good picture too. Anything you need, just give me a ring, ok.... :) ! Krenakarore (talk) 18:02, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Yeah, Scarne picture's gone too, but that's because I used the wrong choice ! You can try, but make the right choice instead ( It is a pity that picture wasn't taken by one of us ). I am leavin' home for a couple of days maybe till monday night. We meet tuesday to see what we can do for the article, ok ? Have you tried Google books ? Who's who in America might be a good source. Krenakarore (talk) 05:56, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

ISTD

Hi there. Have made lots of revisions to the ISTD article, moving things around and trying to condense things down and streamline. Have a look to see if we can improve further, as I would like to edit the IDTA article in a similar fashion. Crazy-dancing (talk) 16:20, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Polite Notice - Possible solution to Ondine merging

I am creating this notice to invite all interested parties to vote on the proposal to merge Undine (ballet) and Ondine (Ashton) to a new article at Ondine (ballet). You can read the discussion and add your vote to the poll at:

Look forward to seeing you there to help resolve this situation, thanks! Crazy-dancing (talk) 11:25, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

ISTD

Hi there, was just looking over the ISTD article again, and just checking over some of the details and I spotted a discrepancy that you might be able to throw some light on. In the Faculties section for the ballroom board, we have Club Dance listed as a faculty, and I know there is a Club Dance faculty so I didn't question it. However, on this page of the website it talks about an Alternative Rhythms faculty??? As that page seems to have been written in 2001 I am assuming that the Alternative Rhythms was renamed Club Dance, but I just wanted to check to see if you could confirm that or not? Crazy-dancing (talk) 12:52, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

References

I've restored the NY Daily News and ABC News references to the Katusha Demidova article. They are very reliable sources that help verify the information contained within the article and solidify notability. It is the external links guideline that states that links should add substantial information, which is completely separate from the requirement of WP:BLP articles to have reliable sources. --Jezebel'sPonyoshhh 18:48, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

IMHO, no press or broadcast sources could sanely be regarded as "very reliable" in general, but I will not pursue this item further. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:11, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

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new user

Please keep an eye on edits of dance articles by a new well-meaning but reluctant to follow wikipedia policy WP:CITE Javacaliente (talk · contribs). As you may guess, one-on-one does not work. - Altenmann >t 04:24, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

P.S. Looking at his edits in Endomorphine article, I am starting to doubt whether he is just trolling. - Altenmann >t 04:27, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
P.P.S. your input into Lead and follow & Frame (dance) pages would be extremely useful. They are important subjects, but completely unreferenced, and I have no time to grab some dance books. - Altenmann >t 04:30, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for your time. I am well aware of problems related to ballroom dance technique articles stemming from lack of written instruction material, unlike, say, ballet. Wikipedia has its WP:CITE for a reason. Without it there is no way you can prevent plausibly-looking nonsense entering articles. Five years ago it was close to impossible. However I see that in recent times more and more respected ballroom dance teachers put many advice onn their websites. All we need to do is to establish the "basis of credibility": to write articles about prominent dance coaches, so that material taken from them will satisfy wikipedia criteria of "reliable sources". We don't really need videos and stuff: wikipedia is not "how-to" instructional book to teach details of dancing. General "word-based" descriptions suffice here. Regarding the case I at hand, I am pretty lax. I am not runniong around deleting all unreferenced texts from ballroom pages. I am asking to keep an eye on this person so that he does not writer dubious stuff, since I don't know his credentials and, like I said, lacking references, it is impossible for a single person to oppose another one. - Altenmann >t 17:04, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

your edits to Eugene Znosko-Borovsky

In Eugene Znosko-Borovsky, why did you take the capitalization out of book titles (except for the first word? As far as I know, the major words in the title should be capitalized. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books)#Capitalization. Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 14:14, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

And why did you remove two references? Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 18:06, 17 April 2010 (UTC)
Not all references have to be inline. The book that you say was duplicated was used once as a book he wrote and once as a reference for material in the article. The Oxford Companion does not replace Sunnucks. And read the conventions for the title of your book and please correct your changes to that article and any others. Bubba73 (You talkin' to me?), 23:01, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

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Prima ballerina assoluta

Hello - I responded to your "prove it!" comment on the ballerina talk page. --Mrlopez2681 (talk) 20:45, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Cha Cha Cha

Thanks for responding. I think I'll have to devote a few hours to analysing YouTube 1st lessons sometime ! It's not the same in words. Of course A-V is often out of sync on YouTube ! --195.137.93.171 (talk) 01:58, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

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Islam & evolution

Did you see my reply at my talk? I'm hoping you will clarify something. Thanks. Johnuniq (talk) 01:05, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Progress report Just want to let you know that I have decided to implement a script that I have been dreaming about, and it is nearly ready. The script is given a page title and it inspects the history to determine the minimum number of diffs required to see what Jagged did on the page. In one article I am currently testing, that reduces around 900 actual edits to about 100 diffs (because one diff covers any runs of consecutive edits by Jagged). The point of this is that I will do what we discussed on my talk, and will post here when I have some results. Johnuniq (talk) 10:47, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

More progress I have added an enormous amount of material to a subpage of the talk page for Science in medieval Islam with a summary of what Jagged did to that article. See Talk:Science in medieval Islam#Misuse of sources (which has a link to the Cleanup subpage). I realize that the stuff I have done is fairly useless because there is too much material, but I got a bit interested in the technical issues regarding making such a summary (groan). At any rate, I have confirmed the obvious: the material at Science in medieval Islam#Zoology was largely contributed by Jagged and needs pruning. In a few days I will do something for the other pages you mentioned on my talk (with much less detail), and I will update here when done. Johnuniq (talk) 04:03, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

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Hello, this is just to let you know that I have granted you the "autopatrolled" permission. This won't affect your editing, it just automatically marks any page you create as patrolled, benefiting new page patrollers. Please remember:

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Islamic science

I have been feeling guilty for many months, having put off what I said I would do regarding the inappropriate claims regarding Islamic science (background at WP:Jagged 85 cleanup). I have finally looked at the outstanding issues you mentioned at my talk in September 2010, and I'm very glad to report that everything has been done. There is no need for any action from you, as the dubious claims have been removed by others. If you want to remind yourself, see User talk:Johnuniq/Archive 4#Islam & evolution which I have just updated with a final "done" (despite it being an archive page). There has been some pushback by misguided editors who won't engage with the egregious nature of the misuse of sources, but their efforts at raising complaints about how information has been removed have only led to a resurgence of interest in the need to perform a cleanup. Some fairly brutal pruning has occurred in a number of articles. There is now a {{Jagged 85 shortened}} template that can be used to tag a page that has been stubbed. If interested, use its what links here link to see the pages that use the template (i.e. those which have been shortened). I will notice any reply here, although none is needed. Johnuniq (talk) 08:08, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Mimicry, one aspect of Animal colouration

Thank you for the 'in good faith'. However, this was more than a hasty or casual move.

In brief, the 'Animal Colouration' page - note the antique spelling - dated from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, and felt like it. I've rewritten it on the basis that the colours animals have can be for several reasons, such as camouflage, physical protection (sunburn etc) and, well, Mimicry. From that point of view, it is helpful and even necessary that we add 'further' to Mimicry.

Of course, if a reader is ONLY interested in mimicry then other uses of colour in animals may indeed not be 'directly relevant', but then this is always the case with a set/subset relationship of any pair of Wiki pages: and I totally accept that what is a subset of what is to a degree subjective, time-dependent, and dependent on a reader's intentions. What I do feel is clear is that SOME readers will be looking at Mimicry as an INSTANCE or EXAMPLE of what evolution in animals has done with colour, and those readers will certainly find the 'further' link entirely helpful.

I recognise that it may be too much to put the 'further' link right at the top of the article. Perhaps we could put it at the end?

Hope this all helps. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:03, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

It is OK to put a link under 'See also', which you have already done. It is not correct usage to put it in the pre-intro space. The pre-intro space may be used only for obvious ambiguities. Too much there interferes with the introduction, which is a critically important part of the article.
More broadly, experienced users of WP are pretty expert at using links to find their way around, so long as the links are actually there.
Another point: British spelling on WP is completely acceptable, not 'antique'. Our only guideline is that an article should be consistent in its spelling usage and, with biographies, reflect the nationality of the subject in its dates and spelling. Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:39, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice which I'll try to keep to in future.

As for the Britishness, I'm a Brit, and qhile I'm very grateful that my native tongue is supported, I'd instinctively say "coloration" (but "colour", "coloured"), i.e. there is not to my native English competence any need for "colouration" - we Brits just wouldn't say it. Those of us who were taught to spell at school, leastways, but don't get me started on that! Perhaps we should have a redirect between colouration and coloration. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:27, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I see my Concise Oxford English Dictionary allows both 'coloration' and 'colouration' as alternatives. Naturally, the spelling of the word makes no difference to its pronunciation. Macdonald-ross (talk) 14:05, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Reviving collaboration on WikiProject Cuba?

Check out this discussion on WikiProject Cuba, I'm trying to drum up some teamwork and collaboration to create an article on the Cuban Liberation Army. Despite the fact they won Cuban independence in the 1890s, they don't have their own article! If you, or anyone you know would be interested, reply on WikiProject Cuba. –NickDupree (talk) 04:19, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Senile Dementia

Dear Sir I am new to Wikipedia and not sure this is the right way to communicate with you, but thanks for your reply to my edit on James Cowles Prichard. He was actually the first person to name senile dementia which I am campaigning for its own page in Wikipedia, at the moment you get deflected to dementia. Prichard's definition of senile dementia is on page 92 of his Treatise on Insanity (1835) which antedated the Oxford English Dictionary's entry (of 1851) in 2009 when I found it. 'Senile dementia, or the decay of the mental faculties is not the lot of old persons universally, though it is a condition to which old age may be said to have tendency, and to which the last stage of bodily decay some approximations are generally to be perceived.' What's fascinating is that Prichard dedicated his Treatise on Insanity to Esquirol who was taught by Pinel who famously released patients from their shackles in France. It seems that most historians threw the baby out with the bathwater when they discredited Prichard's 'insanity' masterpiece on senile dementia as he also talks at length about 'moral insanity' which has since been disproved. I think it might actaully help older people with dementia if their condition was renamed 'Prichard's Disease'. I also think the length of Wikipedia articles on the histories of dementia, Alzheimer's Disease, senility and senile dementia needs to increase. Annatatton (talk) 05:32, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your interesting reply. Macdonald-ross (talk) 09:46, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Diccionario enciclopédico de la música en Cuba vol. 2249

Hi. It seems you're the most appropriated person to answer the question I've just made on Talk:Los Compadres#Diccionario enciclopédico de la música en Cuba vol. 2249. Regards. Xic667 (talk) 09:15, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I've corrected it. Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:10, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! Xic667 (talk) 10:18, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

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WikiProject Dance

Hey! I am trying to revive WikiProject Dance and am contacting all members to see if they are still available. If you are interested in continuing, please let me know so I can keep you on the members list. If not, let me know and I'll move your name to the inactive members. Please respond on the project talkpage within seven days or you name will be labeled inactive. Please don't reply here. You can always rejoin if you forget to respond. Also, if you have any knowledge on how to design pages, please note that. Thank you! ReelAngelGirl Talk to me! Tea? 15:00, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Peer Review

Hello! I submitted the Irish Stepdance article for a Peer Review here. Could you please take a look and comment? Thanks! ReelAngelGirl Talk to me! Tea? 20:47, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Latin American music task force

Hello Macdonald-ross! I've noticed your work article related to Latin American music especially on articles related to Cuban music. I would like to invite you to the Latin American music task force a collaborative effort which aims to create, expand, and maintain Latin American music-related articles. If you'd like to join, please sign up here. Thank you. Erick (talk) 18:29, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

WP:Latin music members

Hello, I posted a message on WP:Latin music about a future collaboration between all members to bring Latin music to FA status. Please join in the discussion :) Best, Jonayo! Selena 4 ever 22:47, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

Alfred Newton

Seeing that you are a major contributor to this biography, you will find this [1] Ibis article of interest and use. Shyamal (talk) 12:19, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I've immediately used it in the article.

Cleidoic egg

I notice you wrote the Cleidoic egg article on Simple Wikipedia. For some reason, no such article exists on en.Wikipedia. I am not a vertebrate paleontologist, so I hesitate to start such an article, but I was wondering if you would considering writing it? I will help by adding sources and editing, if you are willing to start it? -Fjozk (talk) 07:25, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm fairly limited in time. If you have articles that are of major concern, post on my talk page, and I will look them over. The Simple articles tend to run the range from rather good and well-written to tangled up from trying to simplify, but I can probably help. Yes, en.Wikipedia is a social networking site; editing is pretty low on the list. I'm still at the laughing at it stage, though. :) -08:56, 1 November 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fjozk (talk • contribs)

Cheers

Thanks very much for your kind comments, and many more thanks for your years of work which have greatly helped the encyclopedia. I replied at my talk, but am taking this opportunity to wish you well for the festive season. Johnuniq (talk) 03:11, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Do you remember a chart that was used on one of the evolution pages that showed a timeline of something? It had horizontal bars showing the periods in which certain events occurred, and had lots of links. The chart was very ugly (and I think it might have been removed) because it used various kludges, but it had good information. I'm asking because a new module is being developed, and it might be able to implement such charts in a more attractive manner. If interested, an example of a stacked bar graph produced by the chart module is at here (near the end). Sorry to be so vague, but you might know! Johnuniq (talk) 01:13, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

So far, no luck. When you say "events", might that be geological events or biological events? Was it a chart in Commons, or a 'hand-made' chart? Macdonald-ross (talk) 06:54, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
BTW I posted the above after agreeing with you re Template:Evolution. I removed the new social structures section. Johnuniq (talk) 00:19, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. I don't usually read, let alone comment, on template talk pages. Macdonald-ross (talk) 06:54, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Don't worry about my request, I knew it was very vague! I'll describe what I remember, but please don't do any searching because it's not important as I was thinking of the chart simply as an example of something that would benefit from being replaced with a clever procedure to create linked text in a diagram. I think the chart was biological events, not geological. It was essentially a table but had horizontal bars to indicate periods in which events occurred. There were quite a lot of text labels, and most of them were wikilinks. The result was very cramped, and almost unreadable. My recollection is that while it was useful, it was so ugly that it was removed a year or two ago. Johnuniq (talk) 10:36, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

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Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Palaeophis, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Marine (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Vital Articles/Expanded: we need help evaluating dancers

Macdonald-ross, would you be available to help assess the relative historical importance/significance of several dancers? None of the present VA/E project participants have any particular experience in dance or expertise in dance topics, and I thought it would be a smart move to reach out to someone who did. Please let me know if you would be interested in helping; the time commitment would not be very great, but would involve you reading 20 or so dancer biographies, and giving us your opinion regarding the relative significance of each subject (see here.) Are you willing to help? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:28, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for thinking of me; I am not so active as I was. Yes, I am qualified to comment on dance biographies. I will put some thoughts on your talk page. Let me know if there are any particular issues you are considering. Macdonald-ross (talk) 17:38, 1 June 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for responding, MR. A couple of other dance project editors have already left comments on my talk page, and you are welcome to join us there. Since the VA/E list of 10,000 vital articles was first compiled five or six years ago, it had remained largely unmonitored and various editors have added over 400 topics without consensus or event comment by others. We are now trying to pare that total back to the specified 10,000-article limit. Obviously, it is easier to add than cut. We wanted knowledgeable input regarding the present sublist of 26 dancers to make certain that we don't cut any topic that is truly "vital." We are probably looking to cut one to three of those dancers presently listed to help reduce the overall total; your help in prioritizing those currently listed would be greatly appreciated. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:33, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

The Signpost: 03 July 2013

Mimicry

I see you're still active at Simple—good! I've been working on a large project to replace a complex series of {{convert}} templates with an even more complex Module:Convert. That has taken me to Simple where I noticed your dismay concerning a trolling page created by one of the trolls thrown out of en.wiki. We have to take the good with the bad, I guess.

Anyway, I wonder if you feel like commenting at Talk:Mimicry#Why is there a paragraph on Camouflage in the lead?. No need to bother if you don't feel like being drawn into more of the same, but it may be of interest. Johnuniq (talk) 22:56, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject Dance

Hello, I’m contacting you because you are a participant in WikiProject Dance. Myself and another editor, User:Mwacha are interested in developing some notability guidelines on WikiProject Dance for dancers, dance critics, performers, and other genre articles as there is no such thing at the moment comparable to what I have heard other editors use for Visual Arts, IE “if they are collected in a major museum, then they are considered notable.” There are of course exceptions to this standard but it is nice to have a rule of thumb to help with AfD, and other moderated discussions. We hope to start this discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dance under Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dance#Notability Guidelines.OR drohowa (talk) 18:48, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Introducing the new WikiProject Evolutionary biology!

Greetings!

A photograph of Charles Darwin

I am happy to introduce you to the new WikiProject Evolutionary biology! The newly designed WikiProject features automatically updated work lists, article quality class predictions, and a feed that tracks discussions on the 663 talk pages tagged by the WikiProject. Our hope is that these new tools will help you as a Wikipedia editor interested in evolutionary biology.

Hope to see you join! Harej (talk) 21:06, 10 July 2015 (UTC)


Five minutes to help make WikiProjects better

Hello!

First, on behalf of WikiProject X, thank you for trying out the WikiProject X pilot projects. I would like to get some anonymous feedback from you on your experience using the new WikiProject layout and tools. This way, we will know what we did right, and if we did something horribly wrong, we can try to fix it. This feedback won't be associated with your username, so please be completely honest. We are determined to improve the experience of Wikipedians, and your feedback helps us with that. (You are also welcome to leave non-anonymous feedback at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject X.)

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Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you, Harej (talk) 17:49, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello! Just sending a reminder to complete the survey linked above. (This is the only reminder I'll send, I promise.) Let me know on my talk page if you have any questions. Thank you!!! Harej (talk) 22:16, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

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