Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 13:42, 19 March 2003

Hello there, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions or how to format them visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Misplaced Pages:Help or add a question to the Village pump. Cheers! --maveric149

There seems a fair deal of confusion about namimg animals and plants. The normal convention is that English names of species begin with capitals, eg--Magnificent Frigatebird, but groups are lower case and, usually, plural as in the frigatebirds.

Binomial scientific names are written with a capitalised generic name and lower case specific name, Fregata magnificens. Higher taxonomic groupings are always capitalised.

Should these guideline be part of the Misplaced Pages conventions, assuming that they are not already? jimfbleak 16:28 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

What about raptor/raptors or bird of prey/birds of prey jimfbleak 14:54 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC). Some 40 group monographs advertised in a birders' magazine used the plural invariablly for the title, eg Owls of the World. It is standard practice to use the plural for groups, eg woodpeckers, and capitalised singular for species, eg Great Spotted Woodpecker Jimfbleak

I didn't move it. I did make a link to frigatebird more direct, and remove a self-reference. It is standard practice in Encyclopaedias to name things in the singular and not the plural. Look at raptor in Encylopaedia Britannica . Mintguy

Ok jimfbleak 17:00 Feb 14, 2003 (UTC)

Your picture of a vulture Image:Flvulture62.jpg was very nice, but it was a bit big (in both pixels and bytes) and also a bit washed out, so I made it smaller and brought the colour/brightness levels up. Mintguy

One more thing, please don't make redirects to pages that don't exist yet. You end up with a broken link (i.e. one that looks like it works but doesn't e.g. Common Loon. Mintguy ... later.... which now of coure works, cheers. Mintguy

Hi Jim. You are making great progress on the bird entries, I see. Keep it up! I'll try to chime in with some of the Southern Hemisphere species now and then, though I have a terrible habit of over-commiting myself to lots of different projects!

It seems to me that there is some serious confusion about the proper way to name birds (flora and fauna generally, actually), particularly with regard to capitalisation. I think it would be a good idea to thrash this stuff out once and for all at a suitable location, such as Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (flora and fauna). If we can get the policy right by making some proposals, getting feedback and reaching general agreement, then it can become a general recommendation for all to be aware of.

Let me know what you think, or better yet, just go ahead and draft something, post it at that link above (or somewhere similar) and start the ball rolling.

Cheers - Tannin 12:25 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for comments and support. Not sure why all links to British names have been removed from loon article, so I'll put them back. I will try to remember to write main article before putting the redirect to it! Incidentally, in the interests of transatlantic harmony, I've used N. American loon for the group heading, but the British diver form for the species articles with appropriate links. jimfbleak 13:34 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

I removed the links because they are redirects to pages that you have already linked. e.g. "Yellow-billed Loon or White-billed Diver" both end up on the same page, it's not required. Mintguy

If the links were redundant, it is the "Loon" versions that should go, since the "Diver" versions are the actual articles. My thinking in putting in the redirects is that an American or Canadian contributor might write redundant material if a search for, eg, Common Loon gave no result, not realising that editable material existed under Great Northern Diver. I'm just trying to save unnecessary work by linking the N American and British names. jimfbleak 15:50 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

Well the redirects are there, so there is no problem of searching and not finding anything. It's usual to link to the first reference to a particular item, it doesn't matter whether you use the American name or the British one Mintguy

Point taken, I'll reverse the Brit and American names so that the substantive article comes first. I don't mind then whether the extra links are in or out since, as you say there are redirects from the species themselves.jimfbleak

BTW I don't want to discourage you in what you're doing. It's really great. I'm just trying to massage some of it into Misplaced Pages style, but you're catching on fast. :).

Another message for you on my talk page. --mav

Help. I've uploaded a picture Flanhinga2b which I've checked is viewable in the upload file. However, in the article Anhinga it only shows as a place marker. I've put pictures in Ibis and New World vulture without problems. Any ideas what's wrong? jimfbleak

I've fixed it. The problem was that the file was called 'Flanhinga2b.JPG' and your link was to 'Flanhinga2b.jpg' and links are case sensitive. BTW, were the changes I made to Image:Flvulture62.jpg okay? I wasn't sure whther enchancing the colour would have meant that the colours no longer reflected the true colour of the bird. Mintguy 16:56 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)

I just compressed 'Flanhinga2b.JPG' from 25k to 8k for faster viewing, if you're happy with it, I'll delete the older version. Similarly with Image:Flvulture62.jpg. Mintguy

thanks again. I didn't pick up the case sensitivity. All picture changes are OK by me jimfbleak

Over here we have (I think) only four true thrushes, Jim: the European Song Thrush T. philomelos, which is introduced but, in a gentlemanly way, restricts itself to a small area around Melbourne and blends in with the natives without fuss or bother; the Common Blackbird (of which the lesssaid the better!), the Russet-tailed Thrush Zoothera heinei which I know little of as it's range is well north of me bar that it's very similar to; the Bassian Thrush Z. lunulata. I started doing a Bassian Thrush entry just now but then stopped again when I realised that it has a wide range - "PNG, se Asia, Siberia & eastern Europe" outside Australia and figured that you might be in progress with it.

As a matter of interest, I saw one on Saturday, in a suburban Ballarat garden. They are normally very shy and stay in thick cover. The fact that one was poking around that garden only 3 or 4 metres away from three humans spoke volumes for the severity of the drought in the bush nearby. I think it might have been a very young one - it seemed quite fearless, and I am sure that it's somewhere inside a cat by now.

Most of our "thrushes" are actualy shrike-thrushes, family Pachycephalidae, including the Grey Shrike-thrush, Colluricincla harmonica, which manages to be a direct competor with the Blackbird in two senses: (a) food & habitat, (b) song - the Grey Shrike-thrush never fails to amaze us with its volume, melody and variation. Bar lyrebirds, he's probably the best singer in the country. (The little Golden and Rufous Whistlers, pound for pound, are louder though. (Same family.)

On the organisation thing, it seems to me that you are steaming along very nicely, and I'm up to my eyeballs in all sorts of subjects. Best if you do it your way and if I can't make sense of it, I'll sing out.

Best -- Tannin

PS: looks like there is some confusion coming up with White's Thrush! See: http://www.wpbirds.com/WP%20birdspecies/Taxonomy/Taxonomy%20d.htm My Handbook of Aust., NZ & Antarctic birds will give the latest official classification in great detail - unfortunately, I need vol 7 and they are only up to vol 6 at present!

RE browser issues: Let me guess, you have IE 5? Do you have the same problem with lithium and United States? --mav 19:59 Feb 21, 2003 (UTC)

I have the same problem at school with their ancient installations of IE5. In addition to many rendering bugs the first version of IE5 also had serious security holes. It would be a good idea to upgrade. --mav

Jim, you are doing a great job on the bird entries. I saw your plea for a little help on the New World species. That's not my area I'm afraid, but I certainly intend to add some more Southern Hemisphere ones (I've done three or four so far). Might not be right away though. I seem to average just one or at most two substantial entries a day, and I'm doing a series of aircraft ones right now. But don't feel discouraged! Tannin

Re: Vance Packard you asked "Is this a work in progress??" Answer: Its all a work in progress, buddy, as youve no doubt figured out by now. :) -'Vert

Hi Jim! I had to do some research, what "Thorburn" could mean, but now I found out ;-) No, they are not, the pix are from a German field guide ("Naumann, Naturgeschichte der Vögel Mitteleuropas", 1905). You find all public domain images on this page: http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/birds/naumann.htm. There is also an index of english bird names on that page: http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/birds/regengl.htm. So if you want to include these pictures yourself in your articles, you can do so, as all images are public domain. -- Cordyph 19:25 Mar 13, 2003 (UTC)

Hi there. Great work you're doing on birds! just one thing -- when you turn Wren in to a general page, and put what was there into a specific name (which is a good thing to do), could you use the "move page" function rather than a copy & paste? That preserves the article history of the text that is moved to Winter Wren. keep up the good work! cheers -- Tarquin 17:18 Mar 15, 2003 (UTC)

Where did you get the great image of a turtle dove? --mav

Naumann's 1905 paintings are at http://www.biologie.uni-hamburg.de/b-online/birds/regengl.htm. See Cordyph's message above.jimfbleak 17:29 Mar 16, 2003 (UTC)

That's great! It would also be a good idea to mention that and provide the weblink when uploading the images. That way everybody knows the images are in the public domain and where to get more. --mav

RE image question:
I use an image program like the free GIMP (image > scale image) or not so free Photoshop to resize the picture and then place that in an empty cell in a table (<tr><td>{image goes here}</td></tr>). --mav

Hi Jim. I've been having an experimental tinker with the table layout for the bird families in Pardalotidae. Take a look and see what you think. It's a work in progress, but you'll get the idea.

Also, I think some of the passerine families are out of date. I'm inclined to run an eye over them and bring the Australasian ones into line with HANZAB (see reference in Pardalotidae). What do you think? Tannin 13:42 Mar 19, 2003 (UTC)