User talk:Philcha/Archives/2011/August

Your GA nomination of Portia fimbriata

The article Portia fimbriata you nominated as a good article has been placed on hold . The article is close to meeting the good article criteria, but there are some minor changes or clarifications needed to be addressed. If these are fixed within seven days, the article will pass, otherwise it will fail. See Talk:Portia fimbriata for things which need to be addressed. Kaldari (talk) 04:20, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

• You have not responded to my comments last night. --Philcha (talk) 11:36, 1 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Sorry, just flew to Israel for Wikimania (from San Francisco). I'll try to respond tomorrow. Don't worry about the 7 day deadline. I won't close it until we've worked through the issues. Kaldari (talk) 19:53, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I hope you have a good time and safe journeys both ways. --Philcha (talk) 21:08, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Poetry portal Q

Thanks for posting your request on the Poetry Project page. I can try and help. Can you send me a link to the page? Best wishesSpan (talk) 23:05, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Span. See User:Philcha/Sandbox/To a Louse#Poem - it's at an early stage of development. --Philcha (talk) 00:39, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

On first glance, my first thought is that large blocks of quoted text are not encouraged. You could probably get away with a few stanzas but not this much. I'm not sure if you have had other feedback on this. Mostly full texts are uploaded onto Wikiquote and linked on to the article. Span (talk) 07:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

That's fine. I'll keep the 1st and last stanzas (the funniest and the most famous), and summarise the others. --Philcha (talk) 07:59, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

How about the glossary? --Philcha (talk) 07:59, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

PS I suggest Wikiproject Poetry gives more guidance about the largest poems that can be quoted entire, and examples of multiple stanza poems and continuous ones. --Philcha (talk) 07:59, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

American White Ibis

Hey there, I've either copyedited, explained or excised everything I can. Haven't remade a map yet as I have to start from scratch as to get a bigger blank map (and I don't know which are breeding/non-breeding areas in Sth America so will be a bare range map I think). Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:35, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Casliber. --Philcha (talk) 15:15, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Sponges

I see you did not like the "spicules" section I added to the Sponge article (and casually reverted what had taken me about an hour to create). Spicules are very important in the identification of different species of sponge. I am writing several articles on individual species of sponge and want to refer to them. Would it be better if I were to write a separate article on them which could be linked from the Sponge page? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 20:06, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

That might be a good idea. You can't call it Spicule as that's already used for spicules in general, but you could create e.g. Spicules (sponge). Then put in Sponge a paragraph which says that spicules are very important in the identification of different species. You could then create / improvement articles about sub-groups of sponges, using this info. All of this would need to be back up citations from good sources (see "Reliable sources" at WP:V) and properly formatted - see User:Philcha#Tools, which includes citation builders.

I suggest you set up a subpage or set of subpages for sources and drafts, e.g. create User:Cwmhiraeth/Sandbox as an index, with a link on your User page, and then User:Cwmhiraeth/Sandbox/Spicules as the content page - then other User:Cwmhiraeth/Sandbox/xxxxxx pages for other topics. At My User page the pic of a sandbox is the link, and has a list of links to subpages about various subjects - look, but don't touch. Wikipedia:Subpages will give you more details about how to use subpages.

In the meantime, go back to the revert and you can screen-scrape your text, and save it in a a text editor in your PC, or in an draft email if you use web-based email. --Philcha (talk) 22:03, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. In fact I find there is already an article Sponge spicule which I had not discovered before. With regard to sandboxes, I have always just used my editor userspace to work on articles but I notice that Google picks up half written articles when I search for further information on obscure species. Does use of a sandbox prevent this? Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I hope Sponge spicule is a good place for your content. No, use of a sandbox does not prevent search engines from showing half written articles. The robot.txt standard assumes URLs of the form http://www.site.com/directory1/directory2/.../page.htm, and you'll see from your browser's address bar that WP uses a different method, where pages are identified by query parameters, starting after "?". --Philcha (talk) 06:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

GA review of Most recent common ancestor

Hey, my friend, I am still waiting for your reply at Talk:Most recent common ancestor/GA1. I would like you to strike out the paragraphs on 'merit', so I can withdraw this review to bring it to a happy conclusion. I wrote down a list of ideas on how to improve this article from your comments. Thanks. Fred Hsu (talk) 02:25, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay. I regret that I'm overloaded, and it may take me a week to respond. --Philcha (talk) 06:58, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Spider ID

Looks like you're 'active' here, and from Talk:Spider/GA1 I wondered if you might be able to help out with some spider-ID-ing, on Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Miscellaneous#Spiders.  Chzz  ►  15:42, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'd be able to help in general, as I have no resources of identifying spiders's images. Most of my work is about the behaviour of jumping spiders, and only where I've researched for articles - at present I'm working on members of Portia (genus). However, please call me if I can help in the limited range where I may know something useful. --Philcha (talk) 18:59, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Triassic excretory biology

I have redone my January 2011 edit of Triassic Takeover eliminating Kermack & Kermack 1984 as a source attributing the takeover to the relative excretory biology of archosaurs and cynodonts. You undid the edit, claiming that the book "describes urea and uric acid." If you still think so, please provide a page number. I cannot find such a description.

The only other source cited is from Palaeos.com. As this site is no longer available, can we regard the thesis as unsupported? Or does support from a dead link still count as support? Peter M. Brown (talk) 01:06, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Kermack & Kermack 1984 was a library book, apparently now discarded. Palaeos.com can be read via the Internet Archive, I can see the home page. You can use the Internet Archive to retrieve the exact page - I'd have given the exact Archive URL if you had given the exact original URL. Google for archosaurs cynodonts "uric acid" urea got me:

• Climatically driven biogeographic provinces of Late Triassic tropical Pangea - May 2011, so behind a paywall, but PNAS makes it free after a year. Meanwhile thwe Google snippet looks promising.
• Lab exercise 19: Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals syas "reptiles" use uric acid, says nothing about cynodonts' or mammals' urine.
• Ecology and Behaviour of Mesozoic Reptiles (J. L. Cloudsley-Thompson; publ. Springer-Verlag; Berlin Heidelberg; ISBN 3-540-22421-1; 2005) p. 12 is paydirt. --Philcha (talk) 13:11, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I assume that, as you apparently don't have access to the Kermack & Kermack book, you will not again undo my deletion of the reference.

Thank you for guiding me to the Palaeos link on the Triassic. As I cannot find a discussion of excretion there either, I propose to delete this link as well.

According to Triassic Takeover, the most likely explanation for the Triassic Takeover was that "archosaurs' superior water conservation gave them a decisive advantage." None of the work that you have cited uses this factor to explain the takeover.

• The first article cited above considers excretion to be a factor limiting traversodonts to tropical and temperate environments. It does not propose that this factor contributed in any way to their failure to be successful, long-term, in these environments.

• The second, as you note, is not relevant. Many other sources could be cited to the effect that uric acid is chararcteristic of diapsid urine.

• The third adds that uricotelic metabolism is advantageous in that nitrogenous wastes can be excreted with minimal loss of water. Supposing that, in the Triassic, archosaur excretion was uricotelic and cynodont excretion was not, this was indeed an advantage that the archosaurs possessed. The cynodonts, on the other hand, had the advantage of differentiated dentition. That each group had advantages is surely not surprising. There is no claim, here, that archosaur superiority in this limited respect explains their increasing dominance in this period.

It appears, at this point, that the section engages in inappropriate editorializing. Peter M. Brown (talk) 18:44, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I read only the first 2 pages of "ordinarly" Google, you may find something relevant at Google Books or Scholar with the same seach string. --Philcha (talk) 19:04, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

American Akita merger

Heya Philcha, What do you thing we should do about the American Akita and Akita Inu Articles? I posted a possible merger article in the merger discussion, but noone has commented enough to come to a consensus. Should we just carry on with the American Akita GA nomination? Cheers, Keetanii (talk) 10:17, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Keetanii. I've asked the only member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Dogs (User:Anna) to comment. Do you know any other dog lovers who would comment? --Philcha (talk) 10:34, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

The only three I really know of are Miagawa, anna and thirteen (who has already commented in non-support of merger), I'll try Mia Keetanii (talk) 22:37, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi Pilcha, Now that a few more people have commented, what is the next step? Cheers, Keetanii (talk) 06:19, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Keetanii. I see that at 17:09, 15 August 2011 5 support the merger and 1 opposes. That looks good.

At Talk:Akita_Inu#Merging_procedure I think I've summarised the procedure, with links to Help:Merging, etc.

If the merger goes ahead, I'll have to mark American Akita "Not listed", as the article as nominated will then exist only as a redirect. Are you OK about that? --Philcha (talk) 17:33, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi Philcha, thanks for that info, and yes I'd be fine with the "Not Listed" thing. I'm wondering how long I should wait before going ahead with the merger? Cheers, Keetanii (talk) 23:43, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

The merger was formally proposed at Talk:Akita_Inu#Merger_proposal:_July_2011 on 4 July 2011, so it's had about 7 weeks. I think it's time to go for it - yipee! --Philcha (talk) 07:10, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I was looking up about how to do mergers and I found WP:RMCI. It seems to me that an admin needs to close the discussion first? Keetanii (talk) 01:44, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

The one oppose was loud but gave little actual reasons, so Wikipedia:RMCI#Non-admin_closure may apply. However, I suppose getting an admin would covering our arses. :-) --Philcha (talk) 07:17, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Portia fimbriata GA review

I have listed my remaining concerns here. Kaldari (talk) 22:07, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

American White Ibis

Finally did the map (had to get the template, re-cut to get more of the US and re-do the shading all over) but as I didn't have the breeding/non-breeding variation for Scarlet Ibis, just thought it was better to have total ranges of both critters. I think I got all the points bar the flying formations one, which I have to think about....I vow never to fix another article like this ... :p Casliber (talk · contribs)

I agree! I may be a bit slow to resume, as I'll be away for the week-end, and have 2 nominations undergoing GA review my self - reviews are like buses or taxis, nothing for ages then a bunch :-( --Philcha (talk) 07:07, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, don't sweat it, I got plenty of pots on the stove...Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

errr....? Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:19, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Casliber. I'm very sorry for the delay. I've just moved house and set up my new internet connection 2 mins ago. I'll be operation in a week. --Philcha (talk) 16:58, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Yikes! Congrats...I guess. Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:18, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I just moved house myself, so my sympathies. Still have a few boxes I haven't gotten around to unpacking yet (which probably explains why I can't find anything). Kaldari (talk) 22:28, 31 August 2011 (UTC)