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Revision as of 19:42, 24 November 2007

Top priority stubs

originally posted on Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Plants

The following articles are the "stubs" which appear in the Category:Top-importance plant articles:

• International Association for Plant Taxonomy
• Phytochemistry no longer a stub.
• Plant hormone no longer a stub.
• Plant morphology no longer a stub. --EncycloPetey 01:16, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
• Plant physiology no longer a stub.
• Species Plantarum Start level
• Vascular plant no longer a stub.

It would be nice to see our Project expand all its Top-priority articles beyond "stub", as having such top-priority stubs is a little embarrassing. --EncycloPetey 00:33, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Do you think we could benefit from creating a collaboration of the month to gear up interest in these, one at a time? --Rkitko 20:38, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

We might, though i don't know whether a formal project is worth the effort. There is a COTM for novels (which I participate in a little), and they have voting and a project page, etc....but typically 4 or 5 people collaborate, and make only 50 edits over the course of the month. We might just try something simple and informal, and only go to setting up something more formal if the response warrants it. --EncycloPetey 22:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

For those who don't know, all the articles are grouped by Top-Stub etc at Misplaced Pages:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Plant_articles_by_quality/4 - it gets updated every 2-3 days. FWIW, I think official collaborations are best targetted at getting B articles up to GA quality (starting with the Tops), as in general you need contributions from more than one person to get a GA whereas Stubs and Starts can be upgraded by individuals. You don't even need specialist knowledge, just a bit of research can be enough to get up to at least a Start. Personally I really enjoy stubkilling, especially in this kind of context as you're dealing with things that are kinda important, but not fashionable, so you end up learning a lot about the back streets of the subject.

I also find it quite helpful to divide and conquer - I've taken the High Stubs and split them very roughly into taxa, anatomy, 'concepts' and 'the rest' to try and tempt someone into taking one of them on ;-/ I've also reassessed quite a few that were marked as stubs but were better than that. Someone might also decide that some of these don't deserve to be Highs - and conversely something like Bryology could be a Top? Anyway, here are those High Stubs :

• Acetabularia, Anacardiaceae, Arugula, Asterids, Bromus bromoideus, Bryopsida, Charales, Chervil, Cladoxylopsid, Cucumis, Equisetopsida, Fagaceae, Jungermanniales, Kaempferia galanga, Lejeuneaceae, Magnoliids, Marchantia, Metzgeriales, Pottiales, Rhyniophyta, Riccia, Savory (herb)

• Accessory fruit, Awn (botany), Axillary bud, Bulliform cells, Capsule (fruit), Cortex (botany), Crown (botany), Endodermis, Fibrous root system, Follicle (fruit), Gametophyte, Glaucous, Lateral root, Pedicel (botany), Perfect flower, Pericarp, Petiole (botany), Sepal, Shoot, Sieve tube element, Statolith

• Abscission, Alpine plant, Day neutral plant, Long day plant, Photoperiodism, Phytopharmacology, Plant respiration, Short day plant, Systemic acquired resistance, The ABC Model of Flower Development, Thigmotropism, Turgor pressure

• American Society of Plant Taxonomists, Arthur Cronquist, Bryology, Compression fossil, Cutin, Flora Europaea, International Botanical Congress, Index Fungorum, Index Kewensis

Incidentally, Photoperiodism seems to be a school essay, it's more than a stub but I've left it as that because it desperately needs a copyedit.FlagSteward 23:29, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for this! I've been doing some of that too, and made one pass through the "High" stubs to get the most obviously mis-classifications, but it could use another pass or two by additional sets of eyes. My personal viewpoint for taxon articles was to allow "Top" "High" status for (1) globally important economic plants, (2) pages that are likely to have critically important morphological and/or ecological information for a globally important group, and (3) divisions and classes. For an order or family to achieve "Top" status it's got to be a huge group with a real possibility of containing significant quantities of information, or at least a major fraction of the including group and radical morphological diffeences from its close relatives.

For example, Oaks are a key ecological component of northern forests, are economically important for its wood and supports a major industry, and the article also is likely to contain a lot of information about the group such as on acorns, subgenera, hybridization, etc., so I would rate Oak as "Top". On the other hand, although Fagales is an economically and ecologically important group, it is really the members of the group that are important. The Fagales page is not likely to have much information that is generally important, and most of the information will probably reside on family and species pages. And for really large families and genera, there has to be a possibility of becoming a sizable article, or it just really isn't that important. At least that's how I've been thinking about it so far.

In my specialty field of liverworts, I would rate Marchantiophyta, Jungermanniales, Metzgeriales, Marchantiales, Lejeuneaceae, Marchantia, Plagiochila, and Riccia as "Top", and maybe Porella and Frullania, but that's a complete list out of 6000 to 8000 liverwort species. I include orders rather than classes because, as we're set up, there are no articles on the two classes of liverworts. I include Lejeuneaceae because it is by far the largest family (75 genera and >1600 species) and is ecologically important in tropical forests as eppiphytes. It also has highly distinctive morphology among liverworts.

Incidentally, I wouldn't rate Bryology as "Top" because I expect the article will be mostly a history of the field and its workers. It is certainly a broad area of Botany, but not a critical one to understanding plants generally. Bryology is something of a specialty field. I expect that most botanists haven't a clue how Bryology differs from the study of vascular plants (Tracheophytology?), so it doesn't really qualify as a core article, IMO, and I say that as someone with a primary interest in Bryology and Pteridology. --EncycloPetey 00:20, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Aha! So it's your fault that there's so many bryophyte Stubs! :-//// Fair enough, I only mentioned bryology as a suggestion, I just thought it might make a convenient 'jumping off point' article given that Bryophyta doesn't really exist any more. Certainly over on the Wine Project, we've ended up with a couple of articles getting ranked highly more for their qualities as a way in to the rest of the articles than the for the merits of the subject in itself.

>to allow "Top" status for (1) globally important economic plants

That'll be grapevines then ;-/ Hey, it's WPP's business how they classify articles, I wasn't really trying to make a point, but even among Highs there are Highs and not-so-Highs. A Plant that effectively has an entire WikiProject to itself is a fairly high High ;-/

As you can see I've killed the Chervil stub, but Arugula has been classified in its place.... FlagSteward 01:48, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant "High" status and have corrected my statement above. I understand your viewpoint, but do disagree with it. Grapevines aren't central to understanding plant biology. We have only one species listed as "Top" if that makes you feel any better. :) Aside: What do you mean Bryophyta doesn't exist anymore? It still exists, it's just been more narrowly defined as the division of the mosses. There is an article at Bryophyte too. --EncycloPetey 02:11, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Bryophyta - argghhhh, you're not the only one writing stuff that you don't mean :-)) Blame it on a late night and trying to do 5 things at once. ;-/ What I was trying to say was that Bryology or Bryophyte would make a more comprehensive 'way in' article than Bryophyta, since the English words haven't changed as the Latin name has, making the English versions more 'inclusive'. No big deal, it was only an idea that was formed before I'd really seen what the Bryophyte article said. On the Top/High thing, a devil's advocate might suggest that your logic would work for a 'Botany' project, but not one calling itself 'Plants'.;-/ But no matter - I'm just a visitor here, I'm not trying to throw everything upside down.

Onto more substantive matters - might I suggest that Day neutral plant, Long day plant and Short day plant get merged into Photoperiodism before it gets its copyedit? I'm all in favour of having one good article that covers a subject, rather spreading it over bitty half-articles. It also gets a third of the 'concept' articles destubbed :-)) By the same token, there's probably scope for merging some of the anatomy stubs - capsule and follicle might be merged into Fruit, or perhaps into a new article of Simple fruits? And so on - it wouldn't be right for me to propose any such mergers, but the regulars here might want to scan some of those articles and think about whether they should be stand-alones or would be better as part of a more comprehensive article. Experience suggests that it takes a while to sort these things out, so it's better to start things moving on any potential mergers and then start on the uncontroversial stubs whilst you're debating the mergers.FlagSteward 20:43, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

I've got Flora Europaea up to a good Start, it's probably not far off being a bad B with a bit of tidying up and mebbe a bit more of the history after 1993. I didn't hunt too hard for articles on the editors, but it's worth mentioning that only one of them came up blue on a simple link test - I'd suggest all of them are notable for this and other reasons.FlagSteward 01:04, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Useful information I don't see in the article yet is an explanation of what information is presented for each particular species, number odf species treated, whether there are illustrations (and how many), and what boundaries are used for "Europe". --EncycloPetey 02:25, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Why don't we move this discussion to Misplaced Pages:WikiProject_Plants/Collaboration? I feel that the Project is very poorly used. I mean, this is the only page we look at, while writing something to the others is actually like piping to /dev/null (by Hesperian)! Everyone should have at least Announcements, Collaboration and Peer reviews on their watchlist, don't you think? A 'Collaboration of the month' would be a great idea, but first let's learn to use these other pages. Aelwyn 07:52, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Plant physiology

I've made a start on expanding this Top-priority article from a stub. I've added a general overview of the scope of plant physiology, but the article still needs full sections on each of the major areas summarized in the "Scope" section I added. If someone can add even one such section, it would help.

Also, the article has no images at all, and could benefit enormously from a few. --EncycloPetey 20:49, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

A dramatic improvement in a short amount of time. Thanks to EncycloPetey and everyone else who has helped out so far. (I made a few minor cleanups, but that's all I found). Kingdon 15:54, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Photomorphogenesis

Currently this Top-priority article consists of a two sentence definition. --EncycloPetey 15:48, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

One of the first google hits was which is notes for a lecture which might be a good outline, or at least starting point. Kingdon 16:23, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Pollen

The page has a lot of good information, but it is rather messy and needs revamping more than additions. I have suggested some edits on Talk:Pollen, I could do something to improve it after I've finished with Brassicaceae, but I'm not an expert. Aelwyn 19:30, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Deciduous

Deciduous - need to figure out the scope of this article (abscission and related processes? the ecology - kind of like hardwood forest but broader? And is the suggested merge with evergreen a good or bad idea?). (From Collaboration from page)

The merger depends -- If this article is about the physiology and ecology of individual plants dropping their leaves, then a merger is a good idea. If the article is about deciduous forest (which redirects there) then no, a merger would be inappropriate. --EncycloPetey 23:02, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

A quick glance through "what links here" shows a lot of geographical articles (which seemed to have in mind deciduous forest or something pretty similar), a lot of specific plants (including many shrubs and vines), which are perhaps closer to the "physiology of individual plants", and at least one (Termite) which has in mind the meaning which now seems to have been moved to Deciduous (disambiguation)). The #1 reason why we'd pick this article for collaboration is probably just that it is linked to from many articles (I don't even know how to get a count, but seems to be 1500+). This made it hard for me to really evaluate all the links, in terms of which sort of article they'd most sensibly be linking to. At this point it is probably more worth worrying about whether to put this at the top of the list, than figuring out exactly what we'd do with it. Kingdon 00:35, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I propose to merge Deciduous and Evergreen, whilst Deciduous forest, which is another topic, deserves an article on its own. This would make things much easier. Aelwyn 23:23, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like a good way to organize. --EncycloPetey 03:12, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Requested articles

Is there a place for listing plant-related articles that should exist but don't? I just noticed that there's no article on betalains, the "beet-red" colors found in beets, cacti, carnivorous plants, and other Caryophyllidae. --EncycloPetey 03:11, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Note: I've gone ahead and created the betalain article (comments and copyedits welcome), but would still like to know whether there is a place to list plant articles that are needed. --EncycloPetey 06:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

There is Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Plants/Article requests, but, as usual, not much used. You'd better cross-post a request both there and on in this page (possibly in Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Plants) if you feel it is much more important than all of the articles listed there. It's like image ID request, if I wanted needed a quick answer on this () image I wouldn't have put in Commons's Category:Unidentified_plants! Aelwyn 08:46, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Merger of two articles

I propose to merge Binary name into the article Botanical name. While the former may eventually merit an article of its own, both articles have sat around with minimal content for well over a year now, and the content of Binary name nicely fits under the coverage of Botanical name.

Please discuss at Talk:Botanical name#Merge Binary name here. --EncycloPetey 16:18, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Core Improvement Contest

See Misplaced Pages:The Core Contest. There are details not specified yet (such as the start and end dates), but I see that the following Top-importance plant articles are all listed:

• Botany
• Flower
• Plant

This would be a nice time for a focused collaboration from our little community. --EncycloPetey (talk) 19:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)